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.
Being teachable is the prerequisite for learning anything. If I am not teachable in an overall perspective or in a specific area I wouldn’t find it necessary to be taught anything. With that, being teachable is to learning what air is to breathe.
As vital as meditation is it is, unfortunately, involuntary. there is no involuntary characteristic to it. there is no spiritual or otherwise fire alarm that automatically kicks in when we need it. meditation only occurs when I decide to meditate.
Have you ever heard of The Everlasting Gobstopper? Pulling information from Wikipedia, It is a candy from Roald Dahl’s 1964 children’s novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that is intended, according to Willy Wonka, its creator, “for children with very little pocket money”. It not only changes colors and flavors when sucked on, but also never gets any smaller or disappears. It is like the gift that is recovery. Recovery is the Gift that keeps on Giving.
When I value my skills and talents, respect my own intelligence then I can act on my beliefs and feelings. The key is to feel better about me.
Suzy W and I discuss the importance of addiction as a family disease. The programs of Al-Anon and Alcoholics Anonymous have so much in common. Beyond the addict-codependent connection, it has been our experience that each need to become well. Without each person working on their own recovery, balance will not be achieved.
Experience, Strength and Hope
In this podcast Robert P. shares his story of recovery and the path he has chosen along the way. For those who suffer from addiction, there is hope for life-long recovery One Day at a Time.
Therefore, we must set ourselves on a proven path and follow this path as religiously as we drank alcohol and or used drugs. Without this degree of diligence, we will revert to the destructive path that the least resistance brings to us.
If recovery were hard very few of us would achieve it. I am so grateful the plan of recovery is designed to be simple. I am not assaying it is easy, I am saying it is simple. The simplicity of recovery makes it accessible to and by everyone. I am not a good artist, but if you arrange the dots in the proper sequence I can draw a horse, a person or anything else you place the dots to portray. That is exactly what was done when the 12 Step Plan of Recovery was laid out. It is my experience that those who do not connect the dots and recovery are those who don’t want to connect the dots. I hope the recovery is for you and you decide to connect the dots as they are laid out.
Do you remember when you first came into personal recovery. Do you remember feeling alone, having a feeling of depression, destitute, companionless, solitaire, as if you were standing apart? If you felt this way as so many of us did, then you just described the classic definition of the word lonely
One of the most challenging things for any person of recovery is holidays and the triggers that often accompany them. In the beginning, holidays can be the most challenging obstacle to our personal recovery. This is true whether you are the addict or the Co-dependent. Keep in mind that most addicts, are also adult children of Alcoholics, therefore co-dependent as well. Keeping this in mind, there are things that we can look out for that can help us stay insulated against relapse, while enjoying ourselves in this festive and holiday season. Here are a few of the things that we need to lookout for as we approach this time of year.
Coming from where we come from, many of us are fortunate to be alive, let alone free and most of us in our right mind. So many of us have had new things added to our life and many have had things restored to our life. Both the new things and the old things restored are beyond our comprehension.
One of the things that I have learned in my recovery journey is balancing expectations. I’ve come to learn that expectations can be positive and negative. Expectations can also be fair or unfair. Oftentimes, expectations will get in the way of our external relationships. Expectations that aren’t met can be different to understand and often judged. Therefore, it is better off to balance the expectation with fairness toward others and the uncontrollable. Expectations are best served with understanding.