One of the first things that I had learned in person recovery was two separate who I was from what I did. Not everyone agrees with this statement, and that is OK, “we aren’t bad people trying to get better, we are sick people trying to get well.” One of the most affected inhibitors That keeps me held hostage is my past. Making a break from my past is about living and working in ways enrich my life and those around me. One of the suggestions in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous is “clear way the wreckage of your past, give freely of what you find and join us.“ It is so important to remember that I am cold to clear away the wreckage of my past before I am free to give or to join. So often I would try to add good works while still corrupting my life. Early on in recovery I had heard a Gandhi quote “You cannot do wrong in one department of life, while attempting to do right in another department. Life is one indivisible whole.”
Stephen Covey taught me “that every major scientific breakthrough came as a result of a break with.” Based on these great men of wisdom and the things I learned in the plan of recovery it has become noticeably clear to me that I needed to cease doing what I was doing to become what I had desired to become. Bill Wilson, cofounder of Alcoholics Anonymous, stated “you can’t think your way in to write action, but you can add your way in to right thinking.” In other words, I had to begin acting differently to begin acting differently. As it states in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous “we have tried to hold onto old ideas and the result was nil until we let go absolutely.“ This is so true. I must make a break for it I must decide here and now that I need to change my way of thinking to live a different way and because of that new way of living, I will have a new way of thinking. I will no longer be a walking contradiction. I will stop caring my negative past into the positive future I say I want to create. If I offered you a drink of water from a gallon jug in right before you drink, I’ll let you know I only put a little bit of arsenic into the water, would you still drink it? The answer is obvious. Why do we think we can conduct our lives in the same fashion? Why do I think I can be healed while I continue to do the things that brought me harm? The choice is always ours. Please, please, please make a break from the past to embrace your new future.
Robert Pardon
Robert is the Recovery Guy. Getting clean and sober on April 25, 1986 has given me the insight and practical skill set to not only stay sober, but to also re-invent myself to the person I always wanted to become. Showing others how to do this is my life goal.
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