In Recovery You Get to Create a Specific Life For Yourself
Recovery isn’t all drab and dull. It isn’t boring or difficult; I would have to say it is actually the opposite of all of those things. The only way anything is drab, dull, or difficult or boring is because you are a drab, dull, difficult, or boring person. Sorry but not sorry. It is true. We create the world around us. But that is the cool thing about recovery; we learn the essential tools to create the world around us. We get the tools to create a specific life for ourselves. And that is the first thing you are missing out on if you aren’t in recovery yet.
1. You Know How to Create the World Around You
You could also call this personal responsibility. You see when you take responsibility for your actions and the role you play not only in your own life but in the world around you, you realize that your life isn’t dictated by people, places and things; you actually are the one with the ability to do that (and your higher power depending on where you are with that.) So basically you create the world around you. Your life and the way it is going have nothing to do with anything else. What recovery gives you are the tools you need to create an AMAZING life. By teaching that it is up to you and then giving you what you need to make it awesome—recovery becomes pretty awesome.
2. A New Set of Economic Policies
You see in the tangible word, economics works like this, what you give away you lose. When you give, you are left with less. And this is true when it comes to giving almost everything, money, time, clothing, gifts etc. But in recovery you have a new set of economics, economics that aren’t on the physical plane but are on a more spiritual one. You see in spiritual economics the more you give the more you get in return. And this is especially true when it comes to your recovery. The more you share your recovery with other addicts, the more recovery you get back. The more you get this life. The more you give your life to helping others, the more amazing your life gets. It is pretty cool right?
3. An Awareness of all You Faults and How to Handle Them
Most people spend years in therapy trying to pinpoint how their childhood has played into certain character traits they have today and how to correct them. Luckily, for those of us in recovery we get a crash course in character defects. And we learn that they aren’t necessarily bad but that they just have gotten out of control for a bit. In recovery you will become aware of those traits that run your life to the point of excess and then learn how to balance them. And for the rest of your life you will have a network of people who work as a sort of check and balance system and can keep those traits in check for you. Whether you are fueled by pride, lust, envy, or like most of us, fear, you will become capable of keeping those things in balance and reacting correctly when they come up for you.
4. You Really do Change What You Can and Let Go of What You Can’t
Believe it or not, just saying the serenity prayer doesn’t make you more capable of doing this. You see, prayer has to be followed up with action. So if you are truly going to change what you can and let go of what you can’t, you are going to have to put some effort into it. It can be really hard on some days to let go of stuff. But the cool thing about recovery is you learn those tools or actions to take to truly let it go. And you really do. You don’t carry stuff around with you for days on end anymore. At most a few hours and that is only because you didn’t call a support for that checks and balances talk. At the end of the day, if you are actively working towards this ideal, resting your head on your pillow at night is easy. There are no racing thoughts, no going over you day again and again or stressing out about tomorrow.
5. No More Sweating the Small Stuff
When you have been to depths of total darkness where you thought you had lost your soul to whatever kind of hell or devil there is in the universe and come back, the little stressors don’t seem to matter so much anymore. That is because you know if you have happiness in your heart and your soul (integrity, love, peace, serenity, all that,) you are going to be ok. All that stuff which we place such importance on you know at the end of the day isn’t really what it is all about. This is when you get to the place of knowing, knowing that no matter what you are going to be ok, and I mean really ok. You are free from the bondage of self and this world. You can now live life based on your own principles without the little stuff dragging you down. You could lose everything tomorrow, and while it would be devastating you know that if you just put one foot in front of the other you will be okay and that end of the day what matters most is what is in your heart.
