All forms of recovery require some very common things. Regardless what a person is recovering from there are things that we all must do to achieve long-term success. Utilizing aversion therapy and other forms of coercion most of us could realize some short-term gain. Beyond that, unless we have a systematic approach to life, that has proven itself to work for others, the likelihood is we will not succeed. One of the aspects that is common to most all people of recovery is that we would live a chaotic life that was mostly directed by how we felt. There was never a reason to the rhyme. We were emotionally responsive and very rarely did we have on intellectual or practical approach to our daily living. Many things we would do because it was a degree of normalcy in our life, but for the most part we would go through life flying by the seed of our pants. Our real attention was focused on our emotional response to otherwise intellectual situations. When we are introduced to principles of recovery we began to realize that chaos was the order for the day. We did not keep things in order but rather that order was dictated to us based on are emotion and instability. That is not a very good way to run anyone’s life, but especially a person who is subject to negative behavior and or substances. Keeping things in order becomes instrumental in our daily response. This is required to put together substantive change over time. We cannot just keep things in order for a day or two days or weak or even a month. The type of change we are talking about can bring about lifelong recovery and these things need to be a part of our life, for the rest of our life. In the beginning, we do things because we had to do them. The result of not doing them would lead us to our relapse and back even into a worse conditioner situation that we were in prior to our approach to recovery. Over time, we begin to see the amazing changes that are occurring in our life because of the consistent concerted effort of incorporating this new order into our life. Consequently, we do things because we like the result were getting. We find ourselves doing things from a standpoint of a positive reinforcement rather than the fear of a negative result. It makes things much more enjoyable to do them when we anticipate the result rather than not doing something because we fear what would come if we don’t. In the beginning that might be affective, but over time we learn to replace the fear of not keeping things in order to the joy and success that comes when we do decide to keep things in order. I hope you are keeping things in order in your life. If I can help you in recognize why you need to, some of the ways to do it, and then even to implement those ways, please reach out to me. At the end of the day, I think people of recovery all want the same thing. As it says in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, “We are sure God wants us to be happy, joyous, and free”. I Trust you will all be well.
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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