As part of the mindful and cognitive approach to recovery support, balance and aligning thought requires support of the action. This supportive action is critical to the thinking. The thinking, matter how strong and positive it is must have immediate consistent action for the mindfulness approach to take place. “You can’t think your way into right action, but you can act to your way into right thinking”. This is a quote by Bill W. Bill was one of the cofounders of alcoholics anonymous. I do agree with this statement. When we come into recovery we did so as an emotional response to the negative consequences of our addiction or behavior or a combination of the two. Not every negative behavior is accompanied by an addiction to a substance. Having said that, all addiction two any substance promotes and supports negative behavior. Once we begin recovery we set emotion aside. Our way of living must be supported by a new way of thinking. This is where the mindfulness/haunted guidance comes into play. Per quora.com, “Cognition is the process by which one acquires knowledge through their experience, thoughts and sensory input. When a person uses this cognition to integrate various inputs to create an understanding, it’s called cognitive thinking”. Also, per the same web site, “Cognitive skills are used to comprehend process, remember and apply incoming information. Every individual has his/her own method of cognition and thereby assimilate information differently; for example, convergent and divergent thinkers use different methods of cognition. Cognition includes, but is not limited to perception, memory, attention, reasoning, emotion and action. As we look at perception in recovery we see our life through our addiction as an active user and then we see our life as a person who has hope. Because we know that perception is reality, having hope in our life will often lead to a more positive mindset. We come to believe that we can get and remain well. When it comes to memory, under the influence of substances, we don’t stand a chance because everything is happening while we are distorting reality. Even our attention is diverted to the things that aren’t going to be important to us when we are no longer under the influence. Because we all are coming from a drug influenced mindset we do not stand a chance when it comes to reasoning because we are in on unreasonable mental, emotional, physical and spiritual condition. Reason does not have a place while we are under the influence. We are being unreasonable. The emotion we experience while we are in a medicated state is altered because we are negating the things that are important while engaging in behavior that is injurious. We feel badly about things that we are ignoring because of our condition. Finally, action is what ties everything together. When we were in our addicted states we were living in a reactive mode. Action was not a part of our life while we were drinking and using. I would even go as far to say, that we were avoiding action while we were in that condition. When we choose a life of recovery, these cognitive approaches; I.E. perception, memory, attention, emotion, and action, take on a brand-new significance. We need to learn how to live in aligned way that agrees with the new life we say we want. Our new thinking supports our new living.
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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