We often hear it said in meetings that we should "stick with the winners." Who are the winners in Narcotics Anonymous? Winners are easily identified. They work an active program of recovery, living in the solution and staying out of the problem. Winners are always ready to reach their hands out to the newcomer. They have sponsors and work with those sponsors. Winners stay clean, just for today.

Winners are recovering addicts who keep a positive frame of mind. They may be going through troubled times, but they still attend meetings and share openly about it. Winners know in their hearts that, with the help of a Higher Power, nothing will come along that is too much to handle.

Winners strive for unity in their service efforts. Winners practice putting "principles before personalities." Winners remember the principle of anonymity, doing the principled action no matter who is involved. Winners keep a sense of humor. Winners have the ability to laugh at themselves. And when winners laugh, they laugh with you, not at you.

Who are the winners in Narcotics Anonymous? Any one of us can be considered a winner. All of us exhibit some of the traits of the winner; sometimes we come very close to the ideal, sometimes we don't. If we are clean today and working our program to the best of our ability, we are winners!

Each and every addict who comes to NA and hears a message is able to do so only as the direct result of members serving NA. Plenty of NA literature discusses the paradox of keeping what we have by giving it away, and our Traditions outline a practical guide for doing so. As this Tradition One quotation indicates, it starts by thinking about the good of the group before thinking of ourselves.

As addicts, putting anything ahead of ourselves is a foreign concept. Some of the first things we do in NA are perfect practice for this. "In my first year, I never wanted to share," one member wrote. "A home-group member told me that I had to start opening my mouth or I would be stealing. I thought I had nothing to offer, but when I shared, I realized it wasn't about me." Being part of NA by sharing or taking service commitments helps us, but it's not just for us—when we share in a meeting, when we show up early to set up chairs, we are actively participating in the common welfare of NA.

The same holds true as we gain cleantime. One member shared, "When I had a few years clean, I told my sponsor that all the meetings I had been going to were pretty bad lately. My sponsor suggested I start focusing on what I was bringing to the meeting instead of what I was getting out of it . . . and wouldn't you know, suddenly I was going to a lot of good meetings!"

Contributing to our common welfare lets us "be the we." We focus on giving instead of getting—at the group level and beyond—and we find that the way we experience recovery gets better and better.