The Practice of Recovery

Recovery is not one big thing we do, it's a million little ones. It is an art of living. It is a set of tools, thoughts, and actions that keep us on the path of progress towards our better self.

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When I trust my body does what it needs to survive, when I trust my feelings are here to remind me of my experience and help me benefit from it, when I trust that what is happening around me holds opportunity for growth, I live in faith, I am free.

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We don't need acceptance from others to exist... We are who we are whether or not they accept us. That seeking, testing and doubting their acceptance is the manifestation of the disease itself. The question is... •••  "Do I accept myself with that dark side of mine?"  ••• because it is there whether or not I accept it. When I embrace my truth - the truth of who I am, the reality of my existence and my imperfection - then I can accept others. Therefore there is another question... •••  "Can I accept others for who they are?"  •••   because if I can't accept them, I can't accept myself, and vice versa. We are all God's creatures, we are all a cell of the humankind organism, we are all connected to the same source. Behind it all, the last question is •••   "Will I let the light shine through me or am I so committed to the dark side that this fight is all I will be?" •••

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Stop fighting.

In our years of active addiction, we fought. We got angry and we fought back, we felt steamrolled and we fought for ourselves, we saw injustice and we spoke up, we saw life was hard and we took it on headstrong. 

At the root of the fight, there is a belief that unless we do fight, things won’t happen the way they should. We believe we know how things should be, and we believe that if we don’t fight, it won’t go the way it is meant to. We believe we will get abused, we will not be respected, we will not respect ourself, and our basic material and emotional needs alike will not be met.

This belief is exhausting, it is hostile, it cuts us off from people, from help, from purpose, and essentially from the ability to enjoy life.

When we let go of the armours, the weapons, the pre-emptive attacks, the justifications, the disclaimers, the righteous statements, the need to be right, the need to be on schedule, and we start observing how things go without our intervention, we realise we actually have very little effect on how things go, that they very much go the same way they would, except without our agitated self in the middle. 

Nothing crumbles. No one vanishes. The world doesn’t change or worsen because we stop fighting. 

But we do change. We have more energy, we are more present, we understand what happens better, we are available to recognise better solutions, we have time to be kind and supportive, we can listen to our intuition. And when we do take the opportunity to be kind and present and helpful, we do change the situation for the better. We do get respect. We got on the side of the solution.

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Skip past the faux pas.

Fear of abandonment hurts. It destroys trust in relationships, it keeps us from building intimacy, it leads us to think we’re unlovable.

When we lean into the fear of abandonment, we believe that one faux pas can break a relationship, even a long-standing one, even a committed one, even a family one. If we lean steep, the “point of no return” is close to home, the faux pas is a rather mundane thing to do, something we could do by accident or worse, as we mean well.

And because we believe faux pas’ are hard breaks, we do not comprehend how to get past certain things in relationships. Faux pas’ feel unforgivable, they are a stain on the relationship that will never fade, they spoil the relationship for good.

We believe a faux pas makes us pathetic, that it labels us as the clumsy, the incompetent, the rude, the inadequate.  Either it makes us weak in the relationship or it means we are not holding our hand of the bargain, we are failing the other person.

When others make mistakes, we either receive that as them failing us, or we find a great deal of compassion for their fallibility. Either way, we feel we don’t have a choice but to take the blow, because if we don’t, we cash the loss and break the relationship - if we don’t suck it up, we either abandon them and make them abandon us.

These beliefs are incredibly harsh and destructive, they are devoid of love for oneself and others. 

The spiritual response is to practice forgiveness. Forgiveness is not forgetting, it is not taking on the blame, and it is certainly not condoning, Forgiveness is acceptance of and compassion for our fallibility. It means accepting that the hurt happened, and then choosing to leave it in the past. Forgiveness says “This was wrong, but I’m not going to let that define our present and our future.”

When faced with a faux pas, wether our own or someone else’s, we can have empathy and picture ourselves making or facing the same mistake, we can connect to the intention rather than the deed, we can acknowledge our feelings and others, we can learn something about how to take better care of each other and turn that faux pas into joyful skipping down our path.

[thepracticeofrecovery]

Embrace your imperfections.

Self-loathing often involves unmeetable standards of perfection in ourselves and others… We think in absolutes and feel imperfections are reasons not to love or be loved, that guilt is a normal state of mind towards our flaws.

We forget that our imperfections make us us - they personalise us, give us character. We are not standardised human beings.

Imperfection is not a helpful word or concept, because it tells us there is a way we should be and aren’t, where we actually need to accept who we are and make the best of it. As a rule of thumb, it is harmful to be perfectionistic in anything that can be understood as performance or be measured or supports comparison to others, because we will never reach a state of contentment, and if we did, we couldn’t maintain it.

Instead, it is useful to really internalise that EVERYTHING has a flip side. We can’t persevere without being stubborn, we can’t be unique without being different, we can’t be funny without a peculiar way to see the world, we can’t get good at something without being invested in it, we can’t see the world without uprooting ourselves, we can’t grow without experiencing discomfort, we can’t build intimacy without showing ourselves … 

There is no fault, there is shadow. The dark is what makes the light so bright.

We can refocus our “high standards” onto more fluid concepts… It is Ok to practice perfect curiosity, presence, grace, empathy, open-mindedness, gratitude, usefulness, acceptance. And we can embrace our flaws as the flip side of something beautiful.

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One day at a time.

Recovery is just for today. We are told that day one, and again indefinitely. The first reason "just for today" works is because it right-sizes problems. When we think of the big picture and how everything is intertwined and the trajectory of our lives, everything becomes overwhelming and it can't possibly be in our power to fix so we let go of owning our part. We feel the need to envision how things should be instead and we drift away from acceptance. We count our mistakes and the times we've been wronged and we lose faith in the the possibility of resolution. When we live beyond today we drown in fear, compulsion to control, and judgement. "Just for today" is a powerful coping mechanism.

But there is more to it... Recovery invites us to live on a plane of inspiration. Being connected to spiritual guidance, whether it be creative, charitable, introspective or contributive, require being present to our reality, to listen and to be willing to follow what is offered to us that day. Inspiration can take us to the traffic department, to rekindle a friendship, to clean our closet, or to find the exact right words or show us the way through our latest challenge, it is rarely about producing a masterpiece... But inspiration is in the day - or more accurately in the now. We don't need altitude or expansion to be inspired, we need presence.

[thepracticeofrecovery]

Your truth is your truth.

Can we own our truth?

The need to fight to get our truth validated really is flaking on that ownership. When we own our truth, we act accordingly, we show up to the world accordingly, and we don't feel threatened when someone disagrees or disapproves.

We feel calm in ourselves, we know what feels right in our heart, we don't need to justify anything and smiling back is good enough to restore peace.

There is no judgement to be had on own our truth, other than "it is" - not from ourselves and not from others.

[thepracticeofrecovery]

[thepracticeofrecovery]

The path to where you need to be is in front of you. Walk it one step at a time.

[thepracticeofrecovery]

Fly high, then land.

Lust for life - the high life - is no stranger to most of us. While we may choose these days to keep away from excitement and be grateful for quiet times, we may also still strive to live a full, adventurous, ambitious and eventful life, in other words fly high.

The trick to flying high happily in sobriety is to learn to land the plane.

There used to be a time where the price to pay for excitement was depression, or self-loathing that whips us like a boomerang. Some call it the emotional hangover. That is flying high until we crash and burn.

Instead, we can apply spiritual axioms at that altitude. Ambition is how we honor the gifts we are given. Adventure is how we practice faith and show readiness to enjoy what life has to offer. High pace is trust in, and acceptance of the fact of abundance in the universe. Presence keeps us energised and joyous. The practice of gratitude at the opportunities we are given grounds us. We land the plane by reminding ourselves the credit is not ours, we are just demonstrating the power our spiritual alignment gives us.

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As alcoholics, we've either always wanted to be different, or always needed to be special. In both cases, the cure is to stop comparing ourselves to others.

[thepracticeofrecovery]

We can’t acquire humility. We can practice acceptance and usefulness until it happens to us. We can recognise that spite, chaos and inner disturbance in our lives are the direct results of arrogance and belligerence. We can be grateful when our actions are met with love and respect, for that means we have received the gift of humility.

[thepracticeofrecovery]

Sponsoring is practice for how to show up in any relationship. It teaches us to be useful, accepting, and let others follow their own journey. We learn to trade control for direction and care, we learn to respect our own pace and purpose, we become a soulful end to healthy relationships.

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The easy way is NOT the lazy way. The easy way makes you want to wake up in the morning and put in the effort.

[thepracticeofrecovery]

Un-harm.

Adding people to our list of harms means acknowledging we have the power to harm... We are not the victim, powerless and invisible.

We are a side of a relationship in which we play a role, whether we like it or not. There is no way to not play a role in an existing relationship. Inaction is neglect, absence is distance, detachment is indifference, isolation is stonewalling. Self-harming is worrisome, if not heart-breaking to those who care about us.

The fact that we self-harm when we surrender to self-pity, loneliness, emotional pain, lethargy and procrastination does not mean we don’t harm others. It does not entitle us to extra attention or support. It does not put our relationships on hold.

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There is a spiritual plane of existence that is a source of sanity, and the condition of our health on the intellectual, emotional and physical planes. If we don’t exist spiritually, if we don’t intend to keep right-size in the universe, practice empathy and take the right action, our thinking derails and obsesses, our emotions magnify and distort, and our body surrenders to addiction and lethargy.

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Science Of Persuasion

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