#IF YOU TEST NEGATIVE ON YOUR NEXT RANDOM JOY TEST THERE WILL BE CONSEQUENCES STOP

[agallimaufryofoddments]

I regret overtly "putting aside Elmer’s tendency to be sidetracked with aforementioned ‘smile projects'" when writing that speculative post a while back on what theoretical impact Huey's request for Elmer to "remain the same" actually had on Elmer's quest for a universal "Happy Ending." I ended up imbuing Huey's request with much more import than I thought it actually possessed, which undermined that of Elmer's "tendency" in the process.

In practice, Elmer's sidetracking is the obvious direct / immediate impediment to Elmer's envisioned (universal) "Happy Ending." Elmer is the Gamer™ who takes forever to finish a game's main storyline because he keeps accepting side quests and pursuing them to completion. 

On that note, @toushindai​ once wondered if there’s something to the fact that Bride and Elmer both like video games. I suspect the stimulation of dopamine may be of relevance to both, considering Bride’s drug use and Elmer’s extreme childhood maltreatment. Both impact the brain’s dopamine system; drug use decreases dopamine function, causing drug users to seek out ‘hits’, while childhood trauma & stress damages the brain (pp. 58–59) and its dopamine system during development. Bride and Elmer may be chasing after ‘dopamine hits’ via video games...

...just as Elmer gets his fix through other people’s smiles. Addiction, thy name is sabotage.

The most damning (ha) case in point for Elmer is, of course, his deal with the (so-called) devil c.f. 1711/12, as depicted in Volume 5.

It’s within that volume that Elmer famously declares "for the sake of a happy ending, I’d sell everyone in the world to the devil without a second thought.” This is the man who not only met the devil c. 290 years prior, but was offered the chance to be granted “some sort of power.”

Elmer could have wished for the power to give everyone a Happy Ending—but, when presented with the "demon’s” face, what does he do? He asks the demon to show him a smile. He wants his fix, he has his fix, and so it goes, and so goes his chance to sell everyone in the world to the devil. 

Or, at least, his chance to give the devil a really good marketing pitch as to why he should purchase the souls of all humanity for the price of a Happy Ending. Elmer is the sort of person who would do that, in theory, and perhaps he would have—had Ronny kept his face concealed. Lucky for us that the devil has a vain streak, eh?

Now, to Elmer’s credit, he does think over Ronny’s offer for a little while before he makes his request; it would be uncharitable to consider this a case of “Elmer’s ‘addiction’ winning out’ and not a potential case of Elmer’s cleverness at work. In meeting the devil and thus becoming assured of his existence, Elmer has one more entity to pencil in on his Happy Ending ark’s passenger list. How can he be sure that the devil won’t miss out on his own happy ending if they make a deal? If the devil can’t smile on demand, then Elmer has quite a bit of work to do before everyone’s happiness can be assured.

To Elmer’s additional credit, his amended wish—that Ronny accompany Maiza until Maiza and hopefully Ronny also can smile—is definitely not a wish with an immediate reward. It’s not even a wish with a ballpark ETA. Granted, Elmer is already experienced in patient addiction via Huey; if he can wait on Huey, he can certainly wait on a demon. One might even go so far as to call his amended wish a two-smiles-with-one-stone strategy; he throws a stone at Goliath and Goliath’s summoner a few centuries in advance with the intention of eventually collecting on the devil’s debt. 

You know, when the devil has been softened in his old friendship. Great time to unleash the marketing pitch, right? Let’s renegotiate that deal with the devil business. Elmer is the special sort of person who would take the devil smiling as a sign that the person has gotten the better end of the deal. Anyone else might think, Uh oh, I’ve made a mistake, but no, Elmer would thank the devil and say “since you’re in a good mood now all according to keikaku”Pst, you wanna buy humankind? All it’ll cost is one Happy Ending” and at that point the devil is the one thinking uh oh, I’ve made a mistake!—

—Ahem.

"Or perhaps” Elmer really just can’t resist a smile and squandered his deal with the not-a-demon-or-devil because look, the guy’s face was right there, can you blame a Junkie? Something something dopamine. Repeat eternally ad nauseum every time Elmer comes across a mini-Elmer or, heaven forbid, the heretics who are so unfortunate as to be smileless in his line of vision. Never mind that the majority of the smileless population are only temporarily smileless, never mind that!

(Someone ultra-charitable might entertain that Elmer’s “sell the world” declaration was one said by an older and wiser Elmer, an Elmer who in retrospect regrets not having sold humanity to the devil when he had the devil’s ear. Elmer, older? Absolutely. Elmer, wiser? ... Elmer, regrets? The fellow just reaped Maiza’s smile, thereby confirming the devil kept up that part of the bargain. How can he regret a high when he’s still riding it? He’s probably recalculating the probability of seeing Ronny’s smile with this new information. Oh, you’d like to ask him once he’s come down; well, he’ll be busy chasing his next high, but let’s see what we can do—pencil in regrets from September 2002 to September 2002, squeeze in your meeting for 200X assuming he is still alive...)

[magic-magpie]

Brilliant

I’m here with another fic! Well, a drabble, really. To me, calling a person ‘brilliant’ is the best thing you could call them. It implies intelligence, a shining personality, and an incredible amount of talent. It implies that to you, they shine like a star against the night sky. I wanted to use the word for a fic, so here we are! It’s UsUk. ^^ Also, happy new year to you all! I wanted to write a New Year’s fic, but I never got round to it. I hope your 2018 goes well for you!

Word count - 1,303 words

“Hey,” Alfred said, sitting next to Arthur on the bench as they waited for the train, “if you had to choose one word to describe me, what would it be?”

Arthur didn’t even have to think about that one. He’d known the answer for ages.

Alfred F. Jones was brilliant.

Alfred was brilliant in every sense of the word. He was as intelligent as they came, amazing Arthur with the completely random facts he came out with (consequently, Arthur was now rather knowledgeable about quantum physics and archaeology) and scoring incredibly high on each exam. Ever since Year Seven when he was the only student who came out with a better test result than Arthur, he’d known that Alfred was something else. Top of the class in half the subjects, second after Arthur in the others, and joint in a few. Now they were in college and although they weren’t in the same classes anymore, Alfred was still the best in his. Honestly, he could solve complicated equations in his head and recite important dates better than he could recite his own phone number. The boy was a genius, and the chances of him not getting into the world’s most prestigious university were incredibly, incredibly minimal.

His intelligence was not the only thing which knew no bounds; Alfred had an imagination to rival his own. It wasn’t uncommon for him to assist Arthur in world-building for his stories, collaborating with him to draft plots and sketch maps and doodle concept art. But although the ideas he came up with for Arthur’s stories were rather sound and down-to-earth, his other ideas were a completely different ball game. They were outrageous. Messing around with people’s cells to prevent the body from aging? Modifying DNA to create a ‘superhero’ in order to stop global warming? They were insane, and Arthur made it his job to show him just how insane they were. But – and this was the unbelievable part – his stupid ideas made sense. Highly illogical, impractical, and probably illegal as they may be, they still made sense, in a weird sort of way. These ideas were simply testament to how much of a genius he was.

Aside from being a genius, the boy was also incredibly talented. Not in the art department, nor the musical area (he could sing decently, but his voice tended to be a little on the squeaky side), but in the sports department. It was as if he was made for sport. He’d been on practically all the sports teams in secondary school, usually being the Captain and star player, too. In college he was only on the football one due to time management issues, and lo and behold, he’d been elected Captain. Arthur remembered their P.E. lessons and how he’d hoped to God he’d be put on the same team as Alfred, because he was as bad as Alfred was good. They’d sometimes play football by themselves at lunchtime, and Alfred would double over laughing at Arthur’s attempts to kick the damn ball into the net. The best (or worst) attempt in both of their opinions was when Arthur had kicked the ball high and far, and instead of going the way he’d wanted it to, it had smashed through one of the windows right onto the headteacher’s head. After that fiasco, they’d agreed that they’d play far away from buildings. Arthur never did get better at the game, but he was fine with that. He was content with watching Alfred’s games, watching Alfred gleefully jump about when he scored the winning goal, taking his picture when he held up that trophy proudly, grinning for all he was worth.

Speaking of grinning, Alfred was brilliant also in the sense that he was the personification of shining optimism. He complemented Arthur’s pessimism perfectly; whenever Arthur had a negative thought about a situation Alfred would swoop in with a wide smile and shine his optimistic light – the resultant view would be not pessimistic, not optimistic, but realistic. Arthur liked Alfred’s optimism. It meant the boy was happier, and whenever he was happy it was as if he exuded light and joy. His loud, obnoxious laugh was infectious, and so was his smile. Honestly, his smile was dazzling, and Arthur wanted to be the one to make it be there all the time. Whenever Alfred smiled because of him it sent the butterflies in his stomach into overdrive, fluttering with everything they had. Arthur figured it was because of this that he’d inadvertently become wrapped around Alfred’s little finger. He’d never admit it, but he’d do anything for him. Alfred wanted to eat at McDonalds? They were going to McDonalds. Alfred wanted this new comic book but he didn’t have enough money? Arthur was already taking out his wallet, not caring that Alfred insisted it wasn’t important. Alfred wanted to go to Comic-Con? You could bet your arse that Arthur had already bought the tickets. All to see that perfect smile.

Along with that smile came an inexhaustible amount of hyperactivity. Honestly, he never seemed to be tired. Even just before he fell asleep he didn’t act tired, he just dropped off to sleep. The only way Arthur would ever see him tired was if he’d been doing an incredible amount of work, in which case he was very much exhausted (Arthur had to pretend not to like these moments, because Alfred almost always ended up resting his head on Arthur’s shoulder or lap, and Arthur had to resist stroking his soft blond hair) – otherwise, he was as energetic as a child. Running about, twirling, skipping, he’d do it all as Arthur would look on with a fond smile, wondering how he’d managed to be so lucky as to get Alfred for a friend.

Alfred was energetic and would get excited over the simplest thing, but he would be startlingly mature when the situation called for it. Alfred was a huge dork who liked superheroes too much and was a complete idiot, but at the same time, he was anything but an idiot. Ever since Arthur had first met him, he'd shone out against everybody else, a star against the night sky.

If Arthur had to pick one word to describe him, he’d choose ‘brilliant’.

But Arthur couldn’t tell Alfred that, and risk revealing what he felt for him. So instead, he gave a little laugh.

“I think I’d choose... ‘idiotic’,” he answered, smirking when Alfred shoved him and stuck his tongue out, blue eyes behind silver-framed glasses sparkling playfully.

“Yeah, well I’d choose ‘sarcastic little shit’ for you!” Alfred retorted, smirking himself.

“That’s three words, idiot.”

“...Shit, it is.”

The train pulled up, and the two of them stood up and manoeuvred their way to the front of the crowd. It was busier than normal, meaning that Arthur had to grab hold of Alfred’s jacket to stand a chance of staying together.

“Here-” Alfred held out his hand-“hold my hand, it’ll be easier. Don’t want to lose ya.” He punctuated his words with a playful wink. Arthur merely rolled his eyes but took his hand anyway, heart beating faster as he willed himself not to blush.

The doors opened, and Alfred got on and quickly pulled Arthur up. The pair were soon squashed up next to the opposite door, holding onto each other for stabilisation as the train started moving.

“At least we’re together,” Arthur said, his hold on Alfred momentarily tightening as he felt himself about to fall.

“And whose brilliant idea ensured that?” Alfred said with a grin.

“Honestly, you only held out your hand.”

“Yeah, but it got us together, didn’t it?” He grinned. “I’m brilliant, you just don’t want to admit it.”

Arthur simply rolled his eyes, a small smile playing on his lips. That you are, Alfred.

[stoopjuice-blog]

Self-Motivated

Introduction

Seeing yourself having a balanced healthy lifestyle will go a long way in determining how long it will take to for it to become a realization. The clearer the vision, the easier it will be to create a plan to focus on the tasks needed to reach your goal. See yourself meditating, exercising and eating healthy everyday. See yourself being your natural weight. Envision yourself modeling healthy eating habits for your kids to emulate. Avoid having to take unnecessary medication. Understand the realities of work, leisure and family time. Create a realistic schedule in order to succeed even if it means thinking outside the box.

Regardless of person, most of us want the same thing; we want to be loved. We love music, our favorite sports teams, family, community, work and our faith. But do we love ourselves? Before we can truly love any of the latter we have to love ourselves and be proactive in so doing. It starts by seeing ourselves living life in a healthy range in regards to diet and exercise. We all think about what we have to do to lead better lives, but do we have a plan? Can we visualize a plan? Where do you see yourself in 4 years in regards to health, weight and emotional state? How are you managing work, family and me time? As you seek answers for these questions keep in mind to be alive is to connect with all living things around you. Most of us have an abundance of love and good intentions we want to share with the world. Begin with yourself and a clear vision of the best you possible. Once this starts to become a self fulfilling prophecy a light will start to glow from within you. As you take care of this light your glow will gradually encompass the room you're in. All the people around you will start to fell the warmth emanating from you. Soon all those around you will see it too. In time it will spill over into the streets reaching all your friends, family, neighbors and coworkers. Soon everyone will be exposed to the better you. As you leave your house you’ll be more in tuned with all living things around you. The trees, birds, plants and flowers will share the moment with you as you realize all living things are connected to the earth and share the same energy, love and good intentions the only difference is in terms of degrees. It all starts from within you and what you envision for yourself.  

Gratitude

In 1998, I remember having dinner at my in-law’s home. My wife and both our immediate families were also present. It was during the winter holidays and I just received my first professional bonus. As I sat next to my wife at the dinner table, I daydreamed of all the additional things I would be able to buy. I also began planning purchases with next years bonus, projected to be even larger. At that moment my wife whispered to me, “this is the richest we will ever be”. Surprised, I asked her “what do you mean”? She replied, “They’re all here, both our mothers, fathers, siblings and your grandmother, the only one of your grandparents alive in your lifetime is right here with us now”. I was blown away how perceptive she was. I was so wrapped up daydreaming about money I wasn’t aware of the treasures being in the moment offered me.

Be grateful of the things sometimes overlooked or taken for granted like our health, family, past achievements, relations and opportunities. Appreciate the small things. When was the last time you got excited just because you’re able to walk? I’ve seen people who have lost both legs and become physically challenged while at the same time their will and outlook remain positive and intact. Have you ever start to dance because birds are singing by you? Go ahead, its alright to show your joy for life by busting a move while a bird sings. Lost your job? Change can seem scary but find the opportunity in the event. Utilize the new found availability in your schedule to start or complete a project that is near and dear to your heart.

Be thankful for the opportunities afforded to you even in tragedy. Unforeseen events like injuries caused by accident, death of a loved one and financial loss are undesirable, but nonetheless a part of life. Our emotional state is tested in these instances and how we react during these trying times can shape our lives and health. Appreciate the fact we have a choice of how to react in these difficult times. One choice is to become an advocate and promote awareness of preventive measures to reduce the frequency of such tragedies in the future. As for health, people who have been injured or have experienced tragedy can also visualize themselves living a healthy lifestyle. Envision yourself exercising regularly and making healthy food choices taking into account physical limitations and checking with your doctor which activities to avoid. With the passage of each day, appreciate how your vision is crystallizing and your plan of action is plain to see and in so doing we begin with a mental picture of the desired end in mind.

Motivated and focused

Having a plan and being positive are essential for reaching our healthy lifestyle range. The next step is to continually stay motivated, focused on the daily execution of your plan. In the past, despite my best efforts, I had a hard time staying motivated. Prior to going to sleep I would say to myself I’ll start tomorrow making healthy choices and go to a place I’ll refer to as Healthy Town. (Dream sequence)

In the morning things change. I wake up in the back of a cab, full of negative thoughts and excuses not to do as planned. The cabbie looks at me and ask, where to? I don’t say a word. After 5 minutes of silence, I exit the cab without the cab moving an inch. As I start to walk away from the taxi I tell myself, who cares life is random anyway. Would me taking the cab to Healthy Town really matter now that I know how things really are? So many terrible things happen to many undeserving people while others literally get away with murder. So why bother? I start to get hungry and want to get some breakfast. I walk into a diner, look at the menu embracing the randomness of life, order and eat a meal with no regards to nutrition, highly acidic and no attempt at moderation. After the meal, I feel awful, upset and disappointed.

Negative thoughts can be paralyzing and make you your own worst enemy. As I began to take notice of my thoughts and how I spoke, I realized how negative I was about most things. I was very judgmental and opinionated about things I’ve yet to try or experience. I also had no structure or strategy of how to reach my goal. I had no vision, no ideal or idea what I had to do. I knew I wanted to lose weight but I couldn’t articulate how? I felt powerless and somewhat depressed. Two months later, I caught a break. I got an email from my insurance company to renew my policy and the receptionist who sent it closed the email with a George Bernard Shaw quote:

“Some men see things as they are and say, why. I dream things that never were and say, why not.  

In the weeks that followed I asked myself, why not be happy? Why not stop being judgmental? Why not stop being negative? Why not try new things? I also thought about my past and took responsibility for my poor choices and their consequences while embracing the lessons learned from these experiences. I owned my mistakes and acknowledged I enabled people to take advantage of me by not seeing what are now obvious flags or when obvious, not speaking up. My past insecurities prevented me from self reflecting and self regulating my behavior. I now know that the only things I can control are my actions and placing my hopes on the acts of others hoping they guess what I’m thinking or wishing for is foolish. Should I avoid certain people? No, be in the moment, don’t waste your time judging others from afar instead engage with all people who come in contact with you. Focus on expressing yourself clearly and when not in agreement with an individual, respectfully disagree. If someone uses words to try to offend you remind yourself what was said is not what bothers you, but your opinion of what was said is what bothered you. You have control over your opinions, use patience and silence in such instances. I’ve learned to express my emotions in a constructive and positive way. Instead of saying “hell no” I opt for “no, thank you”. Same outcome, less stress. Expressing my feelings in a constructive way regardless of my emotional state is ongoing work for me. I think that being in the moment, not being judgmental of others or myself is a good starting point.

Gradually, my confidence grew. I started thinking about my future and started to prioritize my time focusing on the things that are most important to me. I wanted to create a plan for myself which allowed me to make the most of my time with my family, work, friends and alone. I saw myself committing to a healthy lifestyle instead of a short term diet.

In April 2011 I set out to live in a way I could reach and maintain my natural weight range for my height (5”8) and frame of 175 - 180 pounds. We achieve our natural weight by eating in a healthy balanced way which makes your body feel nourished with the food you eat so you stop craving more. A married couple friends of mine (2006) had done a juice fast and ate raw vegan for 5 weeks and in the process lost 25 & 35 pounds respectively. Impressed by these results, I started eating raw vegan too in 2011. At first, I’d make green smoothies (kale, spinach, apple, banana). By day 10 I purchased a juicer (omega 8006) to reduce my sugar and fiber intake. By juicing, 95% of all the nutrients in fruits and vegetables are in it’s juice. By not having to digest the fibers, the nutrients in the juice work more efficiently.

Armed with a positive outlook I started to exercise too. I wanted an exercise routine I could do regardless of age. On prior occasions, I lost weight by running between 25 to 40 miles per week, only to see the weight return when I stopped running because of soreness, injury or laziness. I started walking a minimum of one hour in the morning and one hour after dinner. I decided to keep first things first as I envisioned my daily schedule. My health, family and work are my priorities. In order to get the walking in the morning, I changed my wake up time to 4:15am from 6am. All my other free time I spent with my family. My 5 minute commute from work makes dinner together possible more times than not. Everything and everyone else had to take a backseat. Today through daily meditation I free myself of all negative energy as I remind myself all things that I think are negative are not. The only thing that’s negative is my opinion of things. I forgive those who in the past would’ve annoyed me and in situations I get annoyed, I forgive myself for not controlling my opinion. Tonight, prior to going to sleep, say to yourself, I will start or continue making balanced healthy choices by living according to your plan (Dream sequence)

  I wake up in the back of a cab again, full of positive thoughts. I’m in the moment and understand this is a dream and I’m in control of it’s outcome. I look at the rearview mirror and realize I’m also the cab driver. I give myself directions, arrive at my destination and exit the taxi. As I start to walk away from the taxi I ask myself, is life random? Yes it is! Why not make the most of the randomness of life by seizing every opportunity! Terrible things continue to happen to many undeserving people while others literally get away with murder. Though upsetting, these are things I can’t control. I focus my energy on the things under my power by following through with my daily plan of healthy living offsetting some of the negative occurrences in the world. I have love for myself and love for all. I get hungry and have my morning green juice.

The 4 Year Plan

In four years I see myself in front of my house being my natural weight spending time with my wife, daughter, family and friends. I see myself continue to pleasantly surprising my wife with acts of kindness and chivalry on our 22nd year of marriage. I will listen before talking and when I’m not sure of the meaning or significance of a topic I will ask for clarification regardless of how silly my question may seem to me. Professionally, I will manage Stoop Juice and let the quality of the fresh organic fruits and vegetables sell themselves. I will continuously seek to improve the customer’s experience by expediting orders promptly while introducing additional quality vegan options namely a line of vegan ice creams with up to 5 new flavors. I will continue to train, hire good people with positive attitudes who live close to store locations. I will continue to seek feedback and exchange stories with our regular and new customers. I will have one day off a week to share with my family, myself and friends. I will continue to add content to Stoop’s blog with two purposes, 1. I want to create content I can use to keep me motivated and enhance my healthy quality of life. 2. I want to share this information with the rest of the world with the hope others find it useful. Financially, my wife and I will continue on schedule with our savings plan and make adjustments to remedy any unforeseen events.

I wrote my 4 year plan in a constructively skeptical manner taking into account the randomness of life and all it’s uncertainties. Seek out opportunities that create a win-win situation that are inline with your vision of a healthy lifestyle. Communicate your needs as clearly as possible to get the most out of the opportunities you come across. Before trying to explain to people your vision of a healthy lifestyle, listen first to all the options each opportunity offers. Only look into opportunities inline with your healthy lifestyle. Below is an example of a lost opportunity because of poor communication:

There are two people in a kitchen. There is only one lime left and both of them want it. What would you expect as the solution? Compromise is one option. They might cut it in half and each gets half. Let's assume that's what they do. One person now goes to the juicer and starts squeezing herself 3 tablespoons lime juice realizing she needs 6 tablespoons for the drink being prepared. The other, with some difficulty, begins to grate the rind of the half lime to flavor a cake. Had they communicated their intended use of the lime both demands would’ve been easily met and created a win-win outcome.

In those instances opportunities present themselves that don’t promote your healthy lifestyle; simply say no thank you and proceed. The faster you learn to identify and utilize opportunities inline with your healthy lifestyle, the sooner your vision will become reality. The best opportunities are the one’s you create for yourself and have full control. For example, running is a wonderful way to exercise and teaming up with a person or a group would be inline with a healthy lifestyle. Creating a dependency on others to go running will reduce the number of opportunities you go running. Run with friends, but be ready to run by yourself if no one is available to run with you.

Daily Plan

My alarm rings at 4:15am to signal the start of my day. At 4:25am I start the 6 phase meditation (22 minutes)

1. Connection (See yourself for what we all are, a piece of consciousness directly connected to every other life form on the planet)

2. Gratitude (Know that when you express gratitude for beautiful moments in life, you open the way for these moments to repeat themselves and grow in terms of their magnitude)

3. Forgiveness (Know that at a deeper level we are one, and any negative charge towards any other living person is a charge against yourself)

4. Visualizing (As you wrap up, mentally tell yourself, let this or something better unfold in my life)

5. Daily Intention (Visualize yourself making today amazingly wonderful too)

6. Blessings (Know that you create your own luck and the universe has your back)

As I meditate my daily intentions, I visualize how my day is going to be from start to finish making sure my habits are inline with my 4 year plan. I visualize finishing my meditation, doing 150 sit-ups, getting dressed, selecting a playlist on my phone, go swimming at the 9th street Y for an hour, returning home, walking the dog, tending to my daughter, showering and getting dressed.

When school is in session I wake up my daughter after walking the dog, we both get ready for the day and have breakfast. On the ride to school my daughter and I will catch up free of smartphones or other electronic devices. After drop off, I walk to Stoop Juice, set up, have 32 ounces of green juice and open for business. I see myself enjoying conversation with new and regular customers, making juices, smoothies and acai bowls. When no one is in the shop and everything is setup I work on content for the Stoop blog, research new purchases like new counter refrigerator for organic vegan ice cream. I see myself doing time and motion studies with new product offering in order to make sure the new offerings can be prepared as promptly as possible. I envision my wife and I having our daily midday phone conversations to make sure we’re on the same page regarding all things happening in our daughter’s life. After work, I see myself having dinner, spend time with my wife and daughter, help my daughter with homework, going for my walk with the dog, shower get to bed and repeat the following morning.

The images of my routine while meditating daily motivates me, give me clarity, structure, keeps me focused on my goals, creating a mental blue print that rejuvenates my soul. I remind myself that I’m a spirit with a body not a body with a spirit. I can be what I will to be!

Faith

Out of the billions of people in the world the person I least trust is myself.  I can walk away, ignore anybody with negative thoughts. When I have similar thoughts, I’m unable to walk away. Instead, my negative thoughts are self imposed barriers which prevent me from visualizing a plan to reach my goal.  Back in 2011, I lost 70 pounds in 120 days after experiencing a paradigm shift in how I saw myself in relationship to external things. The realization I’ll always be both my own best friend and worst enemy are with me everyday keeping me modest, humble and receptive to learning new things. My confidence comes from managing my internal uncertainties. My first step is to have a clear and defined vision of a healthy lifestyle with a focus on things I can control. Since I don’t rely on externals, I seek to create new habits and continue to replace bad habits with new ones inline with my vision.

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg explains a simple three-step process that all habits follow. This cycle, known as The Habit Loop, says that each habit consists of…

The Trigger: the event that starts the habit.

The Routine: the behavior that you perform, the habit itself.

The Reward: the benefit that is associated with the behavior.

Each phase of the loop is important for building new habits, but the first factor: habit triggers is were self-motivation blossoms.

There are five primary ways that a new habit can be triggered. If you understand each of them, then you can select the right one for the particular habit that you are working on.

The 5 triggers are:

Trigger 1: Time

Trigger 2: Location

Trigger 3: Preceding Event

Trigger 4: Emotional State

Trigger 5: Other People

No matter what trigger you choose for your new habit, there is one important thing to understand. The key to choosing a successful trigger is to pick a trigger that is very specific and immediately actionable. For example, let’s say you want to build a new habit of drinking a green juice every morning. You might start by choosing a time-based trigger and saying something like, “I’ll drink 32 ounces of green juice in the morning.” This might work, but it’s not very specific. Do you drink your juice at the beginning of your morning? At the end? Any time?

Alternatively, you could create a trigger around a very specific preceding event that happens right around your morning. For example, “When I finish brushing my teeth, I’ll drink my green juice.” In this case, the very specific action of “brushing your teeth” is a perfect trigger for what to do next (drink your green juice). There is no mistaking when you should do the new habit.

As always, self-experimentation is the only real answer. Play around with these five habit triggers and see what help you realize your vision of a healthy lifestyle.

[bobbiejwray]

Overcoming Failure and Relapse in Addiction Recovery

What is the key to overcoming failure or relapse in alcoholism or addiction recovery?

The most important concept to understand about relapse is that you must make a quick decision to jump right back into recovery. The longer you entertain the idea of relapse, the longer you let yourself go in terms of drinking or drug use, the harsher the consequences of this are going to be. Also, due to shame and guilt, it becomes more and more difficult over time to bring yourself back into recovery.

This can be especially true if you had any sort of support community that was helping you in recovery, which most all of us had in some form or another. So maybe you went to AA or NA meetings, or perhaps you had a religious community that was supporting your recovery efforts. Whoever it was, you have to bring yourself to face those people and admit that you screwed up and that you need help.

The best way to do this is with simple, direct, honest communication. It doesn’t help you or serve you to try to keep any of it secret in any way. The best approach is to come clean, to be honest, and to ask for help. If you are humble and genuine in doing this then you will be met with nothing but the utmost of respect. Nobody is going to look down on you if you are sincere and humble when you admit to your faults. We always build such things up in our minds and imagine that people will react so negatively to us, but in reality we just need to be honest with people and admit that we screwed up.

In my opinion the most important thing that you could do after you have relapsed is to admit that you screwed up and then ask for help again. At one time you likely asked for help and got started in recovery, but somewhere along the line you lost your way and things did not work out. The only solution at this point that makes any kind of sense is to try again. Ask for help again, go to treatment or rehab or meetings again, talk with therapists and counselors again, and start working a recovery program…..again. This is the only possible solution that makes sense. This is the only possible solution that could lead you back to happiness, peace, serenity, and joy one day.

The alternative to this is to avoid, to hide, to run from your problems. It is easy to run away from your problems, to continue to self medicate, to just keep going back to your drug of choice and hope that everything somehow works out for the best.

But it won’t. Addiction is a downward spiral into misery and chaos. Those are the outcomes and there is no alternative to this. In the end, addiction ruins lives. Every time. The only solution that makes any sense at all is to overcome the addiction by asking for help and getting into recovery.

You have to realize that many people who are in recovery programs have gone through similar experiences. If you go to a random AA or NA meeting and ask the people at the table if anyone has ever relapsed in the past, if anyone had to struggle at all in the beginning in order to “get” recovery, you are going to hear a number of experiences that you can relate to. In fact, nearly every single person at the table is going to share something that you can relate to, that coincides with the kind of things you are going through yourself right now. Everyone struggles with addiction at some point, everyone had to fight in order to finally find real recovery. It doesn’t come super easy for anyone, ever. If it did then we would not call it addiction, there would be no label at all, because there would be no problem at all. The whole reason that someone claims the label of “addict” or “alcoholic” is because they have struggled and struggled over the years to try to conquer and control their disease. Without this intense struggle there is no need for a label. The people who do not struggle are “normal” and they don’t have an addiction at all, there is no problem.

So don’t beat yourself up because you screwed up. Don’t beat yourself up over a relapse. This is an opportunity to enhance your story, to make it stronger. Now you can proceed in your recovery and after a few months or a few years you can look back and see exactly where you went wrong before you relapsed, and also what you did right the next time in order to remain sober. Your story becomes more powerful and more illustrative to the newcomer because now you have examples of both how it works as well as how it can go wrong. Your “misfortune” in having relapsed can become an asset in the future, something that becomes a teachable moment for others who are new in recovery. Take this seemingly “negative” experience of relapse and turn it into a positive, by using it as an illustrative example of how NOT to work a recovery program.

Of course in order to be able to do that you have to get back into recovery, you have to dive back into it head first and try harder than you have ever tried at anything in your entire life. That means you need to look back at what you were doing the first time around in recovery, see what your mistakes were, and then correct your course so that you do not fall into the same traps this time around. One way to do that is to sit down with a therapist or a counselor and figure out what went wrong and where you did not commit yourself fully to sobriety. Sometimes it is a resentment, sometimes you became complacent, and in some cases it may have been a lack of surrender. Or maybe you started working through the steps of AA or NA and then you just stopped and gave up on them. Or perhaps you were attending meetings and then suddenly you had lots of excuses to drift away from them and you started focusing on other things.

Whatever the case may be, you need to look back and analyze where you went wrong so that you can fix it.

My best suggestion to you is to go back to rehab, listen and learn, and then start applying the suggestions right away. Take every suggestion as seriously as you can and put everything into action as earnestly as you can. Instead of just dismissing ideas that sound like hard work or big commitments, you should engage with the idea for a trial period and test it out first. For example, going to 90 meetings in the first 90 days is not something that you can just dismiss with a thought experiment and declare “oh, that won’t work for me, so I won’t do it.” That is ridiculous. No one has any idea how those 90 meetings would impact their life unless they followed through with the commitment and actually went to all of them.

In other words, be humble enough so that you can actually take some advice from other people and test it out for yourself. Don’t just dismiss ideas, instead, test them for yourself and see if they work for you or not. One person may thrive on seated meditation while another person may thrive with distance running. Both of those people could be successful recovering alcoholics, but neither of them will find the path that works for them unless they are humble and open to new suggestions.

Your ideas did not work. Even if you had some clean time in the past, your ideas proved to lead you to relapse. You need new ideas and new suggestions, and you need to put those new ideas into action. Good luck with your new path in recovery!

The post Overcoming Failure and Relapse in Addiction Recovery appeared first on Spiritual River Addiction Help.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8241842 http://ift.tt/2thqGDK

[alyssamanson5]

Overcoming Failure and Relapse in Addiction Recovery

What is the key to overcoming failure or relapse in alcoholism or addiction recovery?

The most important concept to understand about relapse is that you must make a quick decision to jump right back into recovery. The longer you entertain the idea of relapse, the longer you let yourself go in terms of drinking or drug use, the harsher the consequences of this are going to be. Also, due to shame and guilt, it becomes more and more difficult over time to bring yourself back into recovery.

This can be especially true if you had any sort of support community that was helping you in recovery, which most all of us had in some form or another. So maybe you went to AA or NA meetings, or perhaps you had a religious community that was supporting your recovery efforts. Whoever it was, you have to bring yourself to face those people and admit that you screwed up and that you need help.

The best way to do this is with simple, direct, honest communication. It doesn’t help you or serve you to try to keep any of it secret in any way. The best approach is to come clean, to be honest, and to ask for help. If you are humble and genuine in doing this then you will be met with nothing but the utmost of respect. Nobody is going to look down on you if you are sincere and humble when you admit to your faults. We always build such things up in our minds and imagine that people will react so negatively to us, but in reality we just need to be honest with people and admit that we screwed up.

In my opinion the most important thing that you could do after you have relapsed is to admit that you screwed up and then ask for help again. At one time you likely asked for help and got started in recovery, but somewhere along the line you lost your way and things did not work out. The only solution at this point that makes any kind of sense is to try again. Ask for help again, go to treatment or rehab or meetings again, talk with therapists and counselors again, and start working a recovery program…..again. This is the only possible solution that makes sense. This is the only possible solution that could lead you back to happiness, peace, serenity, and joy one day.

The alternative to this is to avoid, to hide, to run from your problems. It is easy to run away from your problems, to continue to self medicate, to just keep going back to your drug of choice and hope that everything somehow works out for the best.

But it won’t. Addiction is a downward spiral into misery and chaos. Those are the outcomes and there is no alternative to this. In the end, addiction ruins lives. Every time. The only solution that makes any sense at all is to overcome the addiction by asking for help and getting into recovery.

You have to realize that many people who are in recovery programs have gone through similar experiences. If you go to a random AA or NA meeting and ask the people at the table if anyone has ever relapsed in the past, if anyone had to struggle at all in the beginning in order to “get” recovery, you are going to hear a number of experiences that you can relate to. In fact, nearly every single person at the table is going to share something that you can relate to, that coincides with the kind of things you are going through yourself right now. Everyone struggles with addiction at some point, everyone had to fight in order to finally find real recovery. It doesn’t come super easy for anyone, ever. If it did then we would not call it addiction, there would be no label at all, because there would be no problem at all. The whole reason that someone claims the label of “addict” or “alcoholic” is because they have struggled and struggled over the years to try to conquer and control their disease. Without this intense struggle there is no need for a label. The people who do not struggle are “normal” and they don’t have an addiction at all, there is no problem.

So don’t beat yourself up because you screwed up. Don’t beat yourself up over a relapse. This is an opportunity to enhance your story, to make it stronger. Now you can proceed in your recovery and after a few months or a few years you can look back and see exactly where you went wrong before you relapsed, and also what you did right the next time in order to remain sober. Your story becomes more powerful and more illustrative to the newcomer because now you have examples of both how it works as well as how it can go wrong. Your “misfortune” in having relapsed can become an asset in the future, something that becomes a teachable moment for others who are new in recovery. Take this seemingly “negative” experience of relapse and turn it into a positive, by using it as an illustrative example of how NOT to work a recovery program.

Of course in order to be able to do that you have to get back into recovery, you have to dive back into it head first and try harder than you have ever tried at anything in your entire life. That means you need to look back at what you were doing the first time around in recovery, see what your mistakes were, and then correct your course so that you do not fall into the same traps this time around. One way to do that is to sit down with a therapist or a counselor and figure out what went wrong and where you did not commit yourself fully to sobriety. Sometimes it is a resentment, sometimes you became complacent, and in some cases it may have been a lack of surrender. Or maybe you started working through the steps of AA or NA and then you just stopped and gave up on them. Or perhaps you were attending meetings and then suddenly you had lots of excuses to drift away from them and you started focusing on other things.

Whatever the case may be, you need to look back and analyze where you went wrong so that you can fix it.

My best suggestion to you is to go back to rehab, listen and learn, and then start applying the suggestions right away. Take every suggestion as seriously as you can and put everything into action as earnestly as you can. Instead of just dismissing ideas that sound like hard work or big commitments, you should engage with the idea for a trial period and test it out first. For example, going to 90 meetings in the first 90 days is not something that you can just dismiss with a thought experiment and declare “oh, that won’t work for me, so I won’t do it.” That is ridiculous. No one has any idea how those 90 meetings would impact their life unless they followed through with the commitment and actually went to all of them.

In other words, be humble enough so that you can actually take some advice from other people and test it out for yourself. Don’t just dismiss ideas, instead, test them for yourself and see if they work for you or not. One person may thrive on seated meditation while another person may thrive with distance running. Both of those people could be successful recovering alcoholics, but neither of them will find the path that works for them unless they are humble and open to new suggestions.

Your ideas did not work. Even if you had some clean time in the past, your ideas proved to lead you to relapse. You need new ideas and new suggestions, and you need to put those new ideas into action. Good luck with your new path in recovery!

The post Overcoming Failure and Relapse in Addiction Recovery appeared first on Spiritual River Addiction Help.

from http://www.spiritualriver.com/addiction-treatment/overcoming-failure-relapse-addiction-recovery/

[violetsgallant]

Overcoming Failure and Relapse in Addiction Recovery

What is the key to overcoming failure or relapse in alcoholism or addiction recovery?

The most important concept to understand about relapse is that you must make a quick decision to jump right back into recovery. The longer you entertain the idea of relapse, the longer you let yourself go in terms of drinking or drug use, the harsher the consequences of this are going to be. Also, due to shame and guilt, it becomes more and more difficult over time to bring yourself back into recovery.

This can be especially true if you had any sort of support community that was helping you in recovery, which most all of us had in some form or another. So maybe you went to AA or NA meetings, or perhaps you had a religious community that was supporting your recovery efforts. Whoever it was, you have to bring yourself to face those people and admit that you screwed up and that you need help.

The best way to do this is with simple, direct, honest communication. It doesn’t help you or serve you to try to keep any of it secret in any way. The best approach is to come clean, to be honest, and to ask for help. If you are humble and genuine in doing this then you will be met with nothing but the utmost of respect. Nobody is going to look down on you if you are sincere and humble when you admit to your faults. We always build such things up in our minds and imagine that people will react so negatively to us, but in reality we just need to be honest with people and admit that we screwed up.

In my opinion the most important thing that you could do after you have relapsed is to admit that you screwed up and then ask for help again. At one time you likely asked for help and got started in recovery, but somewhere along the line you lost your way and things did not work out. The only solution at this point that makes any kind of sense is to try again. Ask for help again, go to treatment or rehab or meetings again, talk with therapists and counselors again, and start working a recovery program…..again. This is the only possible solution that makes sense. This is the only possible solution that could lead you back to happiness, peace, serenity, and joy one day.

The alternative to this is to avoid, to hide, to run from your problems. It is easy to run away from your problems, to continue to self medicate, to just keep going back to your drug of choice and hope that everything somehow works out for the best.

But it won’t. Addiction is a downward spiral into misery and chaos. Those are the outcomes and there is no alternative to this. In the end, addiction ruins lives. Every time. The only solution that makes any sense at all is to overcome the addiction by asking for help and getting into recovery.

You have to realize that many people who are in recovery programs have gone through similar experiences. If you go to a random AA or NA meeting and ask the people at the table if anyone has ever relapsed in the past, if anyone had to struggle at all in the beginning in order to “get” recovery, you are going to hear a number of experiences that you can relate to. In fact, nearly every single person at the table is going to share something that you can relate to, that coincides with the kind of things you are going through yourself right now. Everyone struggles with addiction at some point, everyone had to fight in order to finally find real recovery. It doesn’t come super easy for anyone, ever. If it did then we would not call it addiction, there would be no label at all, because there would be no problem at all. The whole reason that someone claims the label of “addict” or “alcoholic” is because they have struggled and struggled over the years to try to conquer and control their disease. Without this intense struggle there is no need for a label. The people who do not struggle are “normal” and they don’t have an addiction at all, there is no problem.

So don’t beat yourself up because you screwed up. Don’t beat yourself up over a relapse. This is an opportunity to enhance your story, to make it stronger. Now you can proceed in your recovery and after a few months or a few years you can look back and see exactly where you went wrong before you relapsed, and also what you did right the next time in order to remain sober. Your story becomes more powerful and more illustrative to the newcomer because now you have examples of both how it works as well as how it can go wrong. Your “misfortune” in having relapsed can become an asset in the future, something that becomes a teachable moment for others who are new in recovery. Take this seemingly “negative” experience of relapse and turn it into a positive, by using it as an illustrative example of how NOT to work a recovery program.

Of course in order to be able to do that you have to get back into recovery, you have to dive back into it head first and try harder than you have ever tried at anything in your entire life. That means you need to look back at what you were doing the first time around in recovery, see what your mistakes were, and then correct your course so that you do not fall into the same traps this time around. One way to do that is to sit down with a therapist or a counselor and figure out what went wrong and where you did not commit yourself fully to sobriety. Sometimes it is a resentment, sometimes you became complacent, and in some cases it may have been a lack of surrender. Or maybe you started working through the steps of AA or NA and then you just stopped and gave up on them. Or perhaps you were attending meetings and then suddenly you had lots of excuses to drift away from them and you started focusing on other things.

Whatever the case may be, you need to look back and analyze where you went wrong so that you can fix it.

My best suggestion to you is to go back to rehab, listen and learn, and then start applying the suggestions right away. Take every suggestion as seriously as you can and put everything into action as earnestly as you can. Instead of just dismissing ideas that sound like hard work or big commitments, you should engage with the idea for a trial period and test it out first. For example, going to 90 meetings in the first 90 days is not something that you can just dismiss with a thought experiment and declare “oh, that won’t work for me, so I won’t do it.” That is ridiculous. No one has any idea how those 90 meetings would impact their life unless they followed through with the commitment and actually went to all of them.

In other words, be humble enough so that you can actually take some advice from other people and test it out for yourself. Don’t just dismiss ideas, instead, test them for yourself and see if they work for you or not. One person may thrive on seated meditation while another person may thrive with distance running. Both of those people could be successful recovering alcoholics, but neither of them will find the path that works for them unless they are humble and open to new suggestions.

Your ideas did not work. Even if you had some clean time in the past, your ideas proved to lead you to relapse. You need new ideas and new suggestions, and you need to put those new ideas into action. Good luck with your new path in recovery!

The post Overcoming Failure and Relapse in Addiction Recovery appeared first on Spiritual River Addiction Help.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8241844 http://ift.tt/2thqGDK

[haileyjayden3]

Overcoming Failure and Relapse in Addiction Recovery

What is the key to overcoming failure or relapse in alcoholism or addiction recovery?

The most important concept to understand about relapse is that you must make a quick decision to jump right back into recovery. The longer you entertain the idea of relapse, the longer you let yourself go in terms of drinking or drug use, the harsher the consequences of this are going to be. Also, due to shame and guilt, it becomes more and more difficult over time to bring yourself back into recovery.

This can be especially true if you had any sort of support community that was helping you in recovery, which most all of us had in some form or another. So maybe you went to AA or NA meetings, or perhaps you had a religious community that was supporting your recovery efforts. Whoever it was, you have to bring yourself to face those people and admit that you screwed up and that you need help.

The best way to do this is with simple, direct, honest communication. It doesn’t help you or serve you to try to keep any of it secret in any way. The best approach is to come clean, to be honest, and to ask for help. If you are humble and genuine in doing this then you will be met with nothing but the utmost of respect. Nobody is going to look down on you if you are sincere and humble when you admit to your faults. We always build such things up in our minds and imagine that people will react so negatively to us, but in reality we just need to be honest with people and admit that we screwed up.

In my opinion the most important thing that you could do after you have relapsed is to admit that you screwed up and then ask for help again. At one time you likely asked for help and got started in recovery, but somewhere along the line you lost your way and things did not work out. The only solution at this point that makes any kind of sense is to try again. Ask for help again, go to treatment or rehab or meetings again, talk with therapists and counselors again, and start working a recovery program…..again. This is the only possible solution that makes sense. This is the only possible solution that could lead you back to happiness, peace, serenity, and joy one day.

The alternative to this is to avoid, to hide, to run from your problems. It is easy to run away from your problems, to continue to self medicate, to just keep going back to your drug of choice and hope that everything somehow works out for the best.

But it won’t. Addiction is a downward spiral into misery and chaos. Those are the outcomes and there is no alternative to this. In the end, addiction ruins lives. Every time. The only solution that makes any sense at all is to overcome the addiction by asking for help and getting into recovery.

You have to realize that many people who are in recovery programs have gone through similar experiences. If you go to a random AA or NA meeting and ask the people at the table if anyone has ever relapsed in the past, if anyone had to struggle at all in the beginning in order to “get” recovery, you are going to hear a number of experiences that you can relate to. In fact, nearly every single person at the table is going to share something that you can relate to, that coincides with the kind of things you are going through yourself right now. Everyone struggles with addiction at some point, everyone had to fight in order to finally find real recovery. It doesn’t come super easy for anyone, ever. If it did then we would not call it addiction, there would be no label at all, because there would be no problem at all. The whole reason that someone claims the label of “addict” or “alcoholic” is because they have struggled and struggled over the years to try to conquer and control their disease. Without this intense struggle there is no need for a label. The people who do not struggle are “normal” and they don’t have an addiction at all, there is no problem.

So don’t beat yourself up because you screwed up. Don’t beat yourself up over a relapse. This is an opportunity to enhance your story, to make it stronger. Now you can proceed in your recovery and after a few months or a few years you can look back and see exactly where you went wrong before you relapsed, and also what you did right the next time in order to remain sober. Your story becomes more powerful and more illustrative to the newcomer because now you have examples of both how it works as well as how it can go wrong. Your “misfortune” in having relapsed can become an asset in the future, something that becomes a teachable moment for others who are new in recovery. Take this seemingly “negative” experience of relapse and turn it into a positive, by using it as an illustrative example of how NOT to work a recovery program.

Of course in order to be able to do that you have to get back into recovery, you have to dive back into it head first and try harder than you have ever tried at anything in your entire life. That means you need to look back at what you were doing the first time around in recovery, see what your mistakes were, and then correct your course so that you do not fall into the same traps this time around. One way to do that is to sit down with a therapist or a counselor and figure out what went wrong and where you did not commit yourself fully to sobriety. Sometimes it is a resentment, sometimes you became complacent, and in some cases it may have been a lack of surrender. Or maybe you started working through the steps of AA or NA and then you just stopped and gave up on them. Or perhaps you were attending meetings and then suddenly you had lots of excuses to drift away from them and you started focusing on other things.

Whatever the case may be, you need to look back and analyze where you went wrong so that you can fix it.

My best suggestion to you is to go back to rehab, listen and learn, and then start applying the suggestions right away. Take every suggestion as seriously as you can and put everything into action as earnestly as you can. Instead of just dismissing ideas that sound like hard work or big commitments, you should engage with the idea for a trial period and test it out first. For example, going to 90 meetings in the first 90 days is not something that you can just dismiss with a thought experiment and declare “oh, that won’t work for me, so I won’t do it.” That is ridiculous. No one has any idea how those 90 meetings would impact their life unless they followed through with the commitment and actually went to all of them.

In other words, be humble enough so that you can actually take some advice from other people and test it out for yourself. Don’t just dismiss ideas, instead, test them for yourself and see if they work for you or not. One person may thrive on seated meditation while another person may thrive with distance running. Both of those people could be successful recovering alcoholics, but neither of them will find the path that works for them unless they are humble and open to new suggestions.

Your ideas did not work. Even if you had some clean time in the past, your ideas proved to lead you to relapse. You need new ideas and new suggestions, and you need to put those new ideas into action. Good luck with your new path in recovery!

The post Overcoming Failure and Relapse in Addiction Recovery appeared first on Spiritual River Addiction Help.

from http://www.spiritualriver.com/addiction-treatment/overcoming-failure-relapse-addiction-recovery/

[jaylazoey]

Overcoming Failure and Relapse in Addiction Recovery

What is the key to overcoming failure or relapse in alcoholism or addiction recovery?

The most important concept to understand about relapse is that you must make a quick decision to jump right back into recovery. The longer you entertain the idea of relapse, the longer you let yourself go in terms of drinking or drug use, the harsher the consequences of this are going to be. Also, due to shame and guilt, it becomes more and more difficult over time to bring yourself back into recovery.

This can be especially true if you had any sort of support community that was helping you in recovery, which most all of us had in some form or another. So maybe you went to AA or NA meetings, or perhaps you had a religious community that was supporting your recovery efforts. Whoever it was, you have to bring yourself to face those people and admit that you screwed up and that you need help.

The best way to do this is with simple, direct, honest communication. It doesn’t help you or serve you to try to keep any of it secret in any way. The best approach is to come clean, to be honest, and to ask for help. If you are humble and genuine in doing this then you will be met with nothing but the utmost of respect. Nobody is going to look down on you if you are sincere and humble when you admit to your faults. We always build such things up in our minds and imagine that people will react so negatively to us, but in reality we just need to be honest with people and admit that we screwed up.

In my opinion the most important thing that you could do after you have relapsed is to admit that you screwed up and then ask for help again. At one time you likely asked for help and got started in recovery, but somewhere along the line you lost your way and things did not work out. The only solution at this point that makes any kind of sense is to try again. Ask for help again, go to treatment or rehab or meetings again, talk with therapists and counselors again, and start working a recovery program…..again. This is the only possible solution that makes sense. This is the only possible solution that could lead you back to happiness, peace, serenity, and joy one day.

The alternative to this is to avoid, to hide, to run from your problems. It is easy to run away from your problems, to continue to self medicate, to just keep going back to your drug of choice and hope that everything somehow works out for the best.

But it won’t. Addiction is a downward spiral into misery and chaos. Those are the outcomes and there is no alternative to this. In the end, addiction ruins lives. Every time. The only solution that makes any sense at all is to overcome the addiction by asking for help and getting into recovery.

You have to realize that many people who are in recovery programs have gone through similar experiences. If you go to a random AA or NA meeting and ask the people at the table if anyone has ever relapsed in the past, if anyone had to struggle at all in the beginning in order to “get” recovery, you are going to hear a number of experiences that you can relate to. In fact, nearly every single person at the table is going to share something that you can relate to, that coincides with the kind of things you are going through yourself right now. Everyone struggles with addiction at some point, everyone had to fight in order to finally find real recovery. It doesn’t come super easy for anyone, ever. If it did then we would not call it addiction, there would be no label at all, because there would be no problem at all. The whole reason that someone claims the label of “addict” or “alcoholic” is because they have struggled and struggled over the years to try to conquer and control their disease. Without this intense struggle there is no need for a label. The people who do not struggle are “normal” and they don’t have an addiction at all, there is no problem.

So don’t beat yourself up because you screwed up. Don’t beat yourself up over a relapse. This is an opportunity to enhance your story, to make it stronger. Now you can proceed in your recovery and after a few months or a few years you can look back and see exactly where you went wrong before you relapsed, and also what you did right the next time in order to remain sober. Your story becomes more powerful and more illustrative to the newcomer because now you have examples of both how it works as well as how it can go wrong. Your “misfortune” in having relapsed can become an asset in the future, something that becomes a teachable moment for others who are new in recovery. Take this seemingly “negative” experience of relapse and turn it into a positive, by using it as an illustrative example of how NOT to work a recovery program.

Of course in order to be able to do that you have to get back into recovery, you have to dive back into it head first and try harder than you have ever tried at anything in your entire life. That means you need to look back at what you were doing the first time around in recovery, see what your mistakes were, and then correct your course so that you do not fall into the same traps this time around. One way to do that is to sit down with a therapist or a counselor and figure out what went wrong and where you did not commit yourself fully to sobriety. Sometimes it is a resentment, sometimes you became complacent, and in some cases it may have been a lack of surrender. Or maybe you started working through the steps of AA or NA and then you just stopped and gave up on them. Or perhaps you were attending meetings and then suddenly you had lots of excuses to drift away from them and you started focusing on other things.

Whatever the case may be, you need to look back and analyze where you went wrong so that you can fix it.

My best suggestion to you is to go back to rehab, listen and learn, and then start applying the suggestions right away. Take every suggestion as seriously as you can and put everything into action as earnestly as you can. Instead of just dismissing ideas that sound like hard work or big commitments, you should engage with the idea for a trial period and test it out first. For example, going to 90 meetings in the first 90 days is not something that you can just dismiss with a thought experiment and declare “oh, that won’t work for me, so I won’t do it.” That is ridiculous. No one has any idea how those 90 meetings would impact their life unless they followed through with the commitment and actually went to all of them.

In other words, be humble enough so that you can actually take some advice from other people and test it out for yourself. Don’t just dismiss ideas, instead, test them for yourself and see if they work for you or not. One person may thrive on seated meditation while another person may thrive with distance running. Both of those people could be successful recovering alcoholics, but neither of them will find the path that works for them unless they are humble and open to new suggestions.

Your ideas did not work. Even if you had some clean time in the past, your ideas proved to lead you to relapse. You need new ideas and new suggestions, and you need to put those new ideas into action. Good luck with your new path in recovery!

The post Overcoming Failure and Relapse in Addiction Recovery appeared first on Spiritual River Addiction Help.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8241844 http://www.spiritualriver.com/addiction-treatment/overcoming-failure-relapse-addiction-recovery/

[roberrtnelson]

Overcoming Failure and Relapse in Addiction Recovery

What is the key to overcoming failure or relapse in alcoholism or addiction recovery?

The most important concept to understand about relapse is that you must make a quick decision to jump right back into recovery. The longer you entertain the idea of relapse, the longer you let yourself go in terms of drinking or drug use, the harsher the consequences of this are going to be. Also, due to shame and guilt, it becomes more and more difficult over time to bring yourself back into recovery.

This can be especially true if you had any sort of support community that was helping you in recovery, which most all of us had in some form or another. So maybe you went to AA or NA meetings, or perhaps you had a religious community that was supporting your recovery efforts. Whoever it was, you have to bring yourself to face those people and admit that you screwed up and that you need help.

The best way to do this is with simple, direct, honest communication. It doesn’t help you or serve you to try to keep any of it secret in any way. The best approach is to come clean, to be honest, and to ask for help. If you are humble and genuine in doing this then you will be met with nothing but the utmost of respect. Nobody is going to look down on you if you are sincere and humble when you admit to your faults. We always build such things up in our minds and imagine that people will react so negatively to us, but in reality we just need to be honest with people and admit that we screwed up.

In my opinion the most important thing that you could do after you have relapsed is to admit that you screwed up and then ask for help again. At one time you likely asked for help and got started in recovery, but somewhere along the line you lost your way and things did not work out. The only solution at this point that makes any kind of sense is to try again. Ask for help again, go to treatment or rehab or meetings again, talk with therapists and counselors again, and start working a recovery program…..again. This is the only possible solution that makes sense. This is the only possible solution that could lead you back to happiness, peace, serenity, and joy one day.

The alternative to this is to avoid, to hide, to run from your problems. It is easy to run away from your problems, to continue to self medicate, to just keep going back to your drug of choice and hope that everything somehow works out for the best.

But it won’t. Addiction is a downward spiral into misery and chaos. Those are the outcomes and there is no alternative to this. In the end, addiction ruins lives. Every time. The only solution that makes any sense at all is to overcome the addiction by asking for help and getting into recovery.

You have to realize that many people who are in recovery programs have gone through similar experiences. If you go to a random AA or NA meeting and ask the people at the table if anyone has ever relapsed in the past, if anyone had to struggle at all in the beginning in order to “get” recovery, you are going to hear a number of experiences that you can relate to. In fact, nearly every single person at the table is going to share something that you can relate to, that coincides with the kind of things you are going through yourself right now. Everyone struggles with addiction at some point, everyone had to fight in order to finally find real recovery. It doesn’t come super easy for anyone, ever. If it did then we would not call it addiction, there would be no label at all, because there would be no problem at all. The whole reason that someone claims the label of “addict” or “alcoholic” is because they have struggled and struggled over the years to try to conquer and control their disease. Without this intense struggle there is no need for a label. The people who do not struggle are “normal” and they don’t have an addiction at all, there is no problem.

So don’t beat yourself up because you screwed up. Don’t beat yourself up over a relapse. This is an opportunity to enhance your story, to make it stronger. Now you can proceed in your recovery and after a few months or a few years you can look back and see exactly where you went wrong before you relapsed, and also what you did right the next time in order to remain sober. Your story becomes more powerful and more illustrative to the newcomer because now you have examples of both how it works as well as how it can go wrong. Your “misfortune” in having relapsed can become an asset in the future, something that becomes a teachable moment for others who are new in recovery. Take this seemingly “negative” experience of relapse and turn it into a positive, by using it as an illustrative example of how NOT to work a recovery program.

Of course in order to be able to do that you have to get back into recovery, you have to dive back into it head first and try harder than you have ever tried at anything in your entire life. That means you need to look back at what you were doing the first time around in recovery, see what your mistakes were, and then correct your course so that you do not fall into the same traps this time around. One way to do that is to sit down with a therapist or a counselor and figure out what went wrong and where you did not commit yourself fully to sobriety. Sometimes it is a resentment, sometimes you became complacent, and in some cases it may have been a lack of surrender. Or maybe you started working through the steps of AA or NA and then you just stopped and gave up on them. Or perhaps you were attending meetings and then suddenly you had lots of excuses to drift away from them and you started focusing on other things.

Whatever the case may be, you need to look back and analyze where you went wrong so that you can fix it.

My best suggestion to you is to go back to rehab, listen and learn, and then start applying the suggestions right away. Take every suggestion as seriously as you can and put everything into action as earnestly as you can. Instead of just dismissing ideas that sound like hard work or big commitments, you should engage with the idea for a trial period and test it out first. For example, going to 90 meetings in the first 90 days is not something that you can just dismiss with a thought experiment and declare “oh, that won’t work for me, so I won’t do it.” That is ridiculous. No one has any idea how those 90 meetings would impact their life unless they followed through with the commitment and actually went to all of them.

In other words, be humble enough so that you can actually take some advice from other people and test it out for yourself. Don’t just dismiss ideas, instead, test them for yourself and see if they work for you or not. One person may thrive on seated meditation while another person may thrive with distance running. Both of those people could be successful recovering alcoholics, but neither of them will find the path that works for them unless they are humble and open to new suggestions.

Your ideas did not work. Even if you had some clean time in the past, your ideas proved to lead you to relapse. You need new ideas and new suggestions, and you need to put those new ideas into action. Good luck with your new path in recovery!

The post Overcoming Failure and Relapse in Addiction Recovery appeared first on Spiritual River Addiction Help.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8241843 http://ift.tt/2thqGDK

[journalingthisjourney]

Overcoming Failure and Relapse in Addiction Recovery

What is the key to overcoming failure or relapse in alcoholism or addiction recovery?

The most important concept to understand about relapse is that you must make a quick decision to jump right back into recovery. The longer you entertain the idea of relapse, the longer you let yourself go in terms of drinking or drug use, the harsher the consequences of this are going to be. Also, due to shame and guilt, it becomes more and more difficult over time to bring yourself back into recovery.

This can be especially true if you had any sort of support community that was helping you in recovery, which most all of us had in some form or another. So maybe you went to AA or NA meetings, or perhaps you had a religious community that was supporting your recovery efforts. Whoever it was, you have to bring yourself to face those people and admit that you screwed up and that you need help.

The best way to do this is with simple, direct, honest communication. It doesn’t help you or serve you to try to keep any of it secret in any way. The best approach is to come clean, to be honest, and to ask for help. If you are humble and genuine in doing this then you will be met with nothing but the utmost of respect. Nobody is going to look down on you if you are sincere and humble when you admit to your faults. We always build such things up in our minds and imagine that people will react so negatively to us, but in reality we just need to be honest with people and admit that we screwed up.

In my opinion the most important thing that you could do after you have relapsed is to admit that you screwed up and then ask for help again. At one time you likely asked for help and got started in recovery, but somewhere along the line you lost your way and things did not work out. The only solution at this point that makes any kind of sense is to try again. Ask for help again, go to treatment or rehab or meetings again, talk with therapists and counselors again, and start working a recovery program…..again. This is the only possible solution that makes sense. This is the only possible solution that could lead you back to happiness, peace, serenity, and joy one day.

The alternative to this is to avoid, to hide, to run from your problems. It is easy to run away from your problems, to continue to self medicate, to just keep going back to your drug of choice and hope that everything somehow works out for the best.

But it won’t. Addiction is a downward spiral into misery and chaos. Those are the outcomes and there is no alternative to this. In the end, addiction ruins lives. Every time. The only solution that makes any sense at all is to overcome the addiction by asking for help and getting into recovery.

You have to realize that many people who are in recovery programs have gone through similar experiences. If you go to a random AA or NA meeting and ask the people at the table if anyone has ever relapsed in the past, if anyone had to struggle at all in the beginning in order to “get” recovery, you are going to hear a number of experiences that you can relate to. In fact, nearly every single person at the table is going to share something that you can relate to, that coincides with the kind of things you are going through yourself right now. Everyone struggles with addiction at some point, everyone had to fight in order to finally find real recovery. It doesn’t come super easy for anyone, ever. If it did then we would not call it addiction, there would be no label at all, because there would be no problem at all. The whole reason that someone claims the label of “addict” or “alcoholic” is because they have struggled and struggled over the years to try to conquer and control their disease. Without this intense struggle there is no need for a label. The people who do not struggle are “normal” and they don’t have an addiction at all, there is no problem.

So don’t beat yourself up because you screwed up. Don’t beat yourself up over a relapse. This is an opportunity to enhance your story, to make it stronger. Now you can proceed in your recovery and after a few months or a few years you can look back and see exactly where you went wrong before you relapsed, and also what you did right the next time in order to remain sober. Your story becomes more powerful and more illustrative to the newcomer because now you have examples of both how it works as well as how it can go wrong. Your “misfortune” in having relapsed can become an asset in the future, something that becomes a teachable moment for others who are new in recovery. Take this seemingly “negative” experience of relapse and turn it into a positive, by using it as an illustrative example of how NOT to work a recovery program.

Of course in order to be able to do that you have to get back into recovery, you have to dive back into it head first and try harder than you have ever tried at anything in your entire life. That means you need to look back at what you were doing the first time around in recovery, see what your mistakes were, and then correct your course so that you do not fall into the same traps this time around. One way to do that is to sit down with a therapist or a counselor and figure out what went wrong and where you did not commit yourself fully to sobriety. Sometimes it is a resentment, sometimes you became complacent, and in some cases it may have been a lack of surrender. Or maybe you started working through the steps of AA or NA and then you just stopped and gave up on them. Or perhaps you were attending meetings and then suddenly you had lots of excuses to drift away from them and you started focusing on other things.

Whatever the case may be, you need to look back and analyze where you went wrong so that you can fix it.

My best suggestion to you is to go back to rehab, listen and learn, and then start applying the suggestions right away. Take every suggestion as seriously as you can and put everything into action as earnestly as you can. Instead of just dismissing ideas that sound like hard work or big commitments, you should engage with the idea for a trial period and test it out first. For example, going to 90 meetings in the first 90 days is not something that you can just dismiss with a thought experiment and declare “oh, that won’t work for me, so I won’t do it.” That is ridiculous. No one has any idea how those 90 meetings would impact their life unless they followed through with the commitment and actually went to all of them.

In other words, be humble enough so that you can actually take some advice from other people and test it out for yourself. Don’t just dismiss ideas, instead, test them for yourself and see if they work for you or not. One person may thrive on seated meditation while another person may thrive with distance running. Both of those people could be successful recovering alcoholics, but neither of them will find the path that works for them unless they are humble and open to new suggestions.

Your ideas did not work. Even if you had some clean time in the past, your ideas proved to lead you to relapse. You need new ideas and new suggestions, and you need to put those new ideas into action. Good luck with your new path in recovery!

The post Overcoming Failure and Relapse in Addiction Recovery appeared first on Spiritual River Addiction Help.

[emlydunstan]

Overcoming Failure and Relapse in Addiction Recovery

What is the key to overcoming failure or relapse in alcoholism or addiction recovery?

The most important concept to understand about relapse is that you must make a quick decision to jump right back into recovery. The longer you entertain the idea of relapse, the longer you let yourself go in terms of drinking or drug use, the harsher the consequences of this are going to be. Also, due to shame and guilt, it becomes more and more difficult over time to bring yourself back into recovery.

This can be especially true if you had any sort of support community that was helping you in recovery, which most all of us had in some form or another. So maybe you went to AA or NA meetings, or perhaps you had a religious community that was supporting your recovery efforts. Whoever it was, you have to bring yourself to face those people and admit that you screwed up and that you need help.

The best way to do this is with simple, direct, honest communication. It doesn’t help you or serve you to try to keep any of it secret in any way. The best approach is to come clean, to be honest, and to ask for help. If you are humble and genuine in doing this then you will be met with nothing but the utmost of respect. Nobody is going to look down on you if you are sincere and humble when you admit to your faults. We always build such things up in our minds and imagine that people will react so negatively to us, but in reality we just need to be honest with people and admit that we screwed up.

In my opinion the most important thing that you could do after you have relapsed is to admit that you screwed up and then ask for help again. At one time you likely asked for help and got started in recovery, but somewhere along the line you lost your way and things did not work out. The only solution at this point that makes any kind of sense is to try again. Ask for help again, go to treatment or rehab or meetings again, talk with therapists and counselors again, and start working a recovery program…..again. This is the only possible solution that makes sense. This is the only possible solution that could lead you back to happiness, peace, serenity, and joy one day.

The alternative to this is to avoid, to hide, to run from your problems. It is easy to run away from your problems, to continue to self medicate, to just keep going back to your drug of choice and hope that everything somehow works out for the best.

But it won’t. Addiction is a downward spiral into misery and chaos. Those are the outcomes and there is no alternative to this. In the end, addiction ruins lives. Every time. The only solution that makes any sense at all is to overcome the addiction by asking for help and getting into recovery.

You have to realize that many people who are in recovery programs have gone through similar experiences. If you go to a random AA or NA meeting and ask the people at the table if anyone has ever relapsed in the past, if anyone had to struggle at all in the beginning in order to “get” recovery, you are going to hear a number of experiences that you can relate to. In fact, nearly every single person at the table is going to share something that you can relate to, that coincides with the kind of things you are going through yourself right now. Everyone struggles with addiction at some point, everyone had to fight in order to finally find real recovery. It doesn’t come super easy for anyone, ever. If it did then we would not call it addiction, there would be no label at all, because there would be no problem at all. The whole reason that someone claims the label of “addict” or “alcoholic” is because they have struggled and struggled over the years to try to conquer and control their disease. Without this intense struggle there is no need for a label. The people who do not struggle are “normal” and they don’t have an addiction at all, there is no problem.

So don’t beat yourself up because you screwed up. Don’t beat yourself up over a relapse. This is an opportunity to enhance your story, to make it stronger. Now you can proceed in your recovery and after a few months or a few years you can look back and see exactly where you went wrong before you relapsed, and also what you did right the next time in order to remain sober. Your story becomes more powerful and more illustrative to the newcomer because now you have examples of both how it works as well as how it can go wrong. Your “misfortune” in having relapsed can become an asset in the future, something that becomes a teachable moment for others who are new in recovery. Take this seemingly “negative” experience of relapse and turn it into a positive, by using it as an illustrative example of how NOT to work a recovery program.

Of course in order to be able to do that you have to get back into recovery, you have to dive back into it head first and try harder than you have ever tried at anything in your entire life. That means you need to look back at what you were doing the first time around in recovery, see what your mistakes were, and then correct your course so that you do not fall into the same traps this time around. One way to do that is to sit down with a therapist or a counselor and figure out what went wrong and where you did not commit yourself fully to sobriety. Sometimes it is a resentment, sometimes you became complacent, and in some cases it may have been a lack of surrender. Or maybe you started working through the steps of AA or NA and then you just stopped and gave up on them. Or perhaps you were attending meetings and then suddenly you had lots of excuses to drift away from them and you started focusing on other things.

Whatever the case may be, you need to look back and analyze where you went wrong so that you can fix it.

My best suggestion to you is to go back to rehab, listen and learn, and then start applying the suggestions right away. Take every suggestion as seriously as you can and put everything into action as earnestly as you can. Instead of just dismissing ideas that sound like hard work or big commitments, you should engage with the idea for a trial period and test it out first. For example, going to 90 meetings in the first 90 days is not something that you can just dismiss with a thought experiment and declare “oh, that won’t work for me, so I won’t do it.” That is ridiculous. No one has any idea how those 90 meetings would impact their life unless they followed through with the commitment and actually went to all of them.

In other words, be humble enough so that you can actually take some advice from other people and test it out for yourself. Don’t just dismiss ideas, instead, test them for yourself and see if they work for you or not. One person may thrive on seated meditation while another person may thrive with distance running. Both of those people could be successful recovering alcoholics, but neither of them will find the path that works for them unless they are humble and open to new suggestions.

Your ideas did not work. Even if you had some clean time in the past, your ideas proved to lead you to relapse. You need new ideas and new suggestions, and you need to put those new ideas into action. Good luck with your new path in recovery!

The post Overcoming Failure and Relapse in Addiction Recovery appeared first on Spiritual River Addiction Help.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8241841 http://www.spiritualriver.com/addiction-treatment/overcoming-failure-relapse-addiction-recovery/

[alexdmorgan30]

Overcoming Failure and Relapse in Addiction Recovery

What is the key to overcoming failure or relapse in alcoholism or addiction recovery?

The most important concept to understand about relapse is that you must make a quick decision to jump right back into recovery. The longer you entertain the idea of relapse, the longer you let yourself go in terms of drinking or drug use, the harsher the consequences of this are going to be. Also, due to shame and guilt, it becomes more and more difficult over time to bring yourself back into recovery.

This can be especially true if you had any sort of support community that was helping you in recovery, which most all of us had in some form or another. So maybe you went to AA or NA meetings, or perhaps you had a religious community that was supporting your recovery efforts. Whoever it was, you have to bring yourself to face those people and admit that you screwed up and that you need help.

The best way to do this is with simple, direct, honest communication. It doesn’t help you or serve you to try to keep any of it secret in any way. The best approach is to come clean, to be honest, and to ask for help. If you are humble and genuine in doing this then you will be met with nothing but the utmost of respect. Nobody is going to look down on you if you are sincere and humble when you admit to your faults. We always build such things up in our minds and imagine that people will react so negatively to us, but in reality we just need to be honest with people and admit that we screwed up.

In my opinion the most important thing that you could do after you have relapsed is to admit that you screwed up and then ask for help again. At one time you likely asked for help and got started in recovery, but somewhere along the line you lost your way and things did not work out. The only solution at this point that makes any kind of sense is to try again. Ask for help again, go to treatment or rehab or meetings again, talk with therapists and counselors again, and start working a recovery program…..again. This is the only possible solution that makes sense. This is the only possible solution that could lead you back to happiness, peace, serenity, and joy one day.

The alternative to this is to avoid, to hide, to run from your problems. It is easy to run away from your problems, to continue to self medicate, to just keep going back to your drug of choice and hope that everything somehow works out for the best.

But it won’t. Addiction is a downward spiral into misery and chaos. Those are the outcomes and there is no alternative to this. In the end, addiction ruins lives. Every time. The only solution that makes any sense at all is to overcome the addiction by asking for help and getting into recovery.

You have to realize that many people who are in recovery programs have gone through similar experiences. If you go to a random AA or NA meeting and ask the people at the table if anyone has ever relapsed in the past, if anyone had to struggle at all in the beginning in order to “get” recovery, you are going to hear a number of experiences that you can relate to. In fact, nearly every single person at the table is going to share something that you can relate to, that coincides with the kind of things you are going through yourself right now. Everyone struggles with addiction at some point, everyone had to fight in order to finally find real recovery. It doesn’t come super easy for anyone, ever. If it did then we would not call it addiction, there would be no label at all, because there would be no problem at all. The whole reason that someone claims the label of “addict” or “alcoholic” is because they have struggled and struggled over the years to try to conquer and control their disease. Without this intense struggle there is no need for a label. The people who do not struggle are “normal” and they don’t have an addiction at all, there is no problem.

So don’t beat yourself up because you screwed up. Don’t beat yourself up over a relapse. This is an opportunity to enhance your story, to make it stronger. Now you can proceed in your recovery and after a few months or a few years you can look back and see exactly where you went wrong before you relapsed, and also what you did right the next time in order to remain sober. Your story becomes more powerful and more illustrative to the newcomer because now you have examples of both how it works as well as how it can go wrong. Your “misfortune” in having relapsed can become an asset in the future, something that becomes a teachable moment for others who are new in recovery. Take this seemingly “negative” experience of relapse and turn it into a positive, by using it as an illustrative example of how NOT to work a recovery program.

Of course in order to be able to do that you have to get back into recovery, you have to dive back into it head first and try harder than you have ever tried at anything in your entire life. That means you need to look back at what you were doing the first time around in recovery, see what your mistakes were, and then correct your course so that you do not fall into the same traps this time around. One way to do that is to sit down with a therapist or a counselor and figure out what went wrong and where you did not commit yourself fully to sobriety. Sometimes it is a resentment, sometimes you became complacent, and in some cases it may have been a lack of surrender. Or maybe you started working through the steps of AA or NA and then you just stopped and gave up on them. Or perhaps you were attending meetings and then suddenly you had lots of excuses to drift away from them and you started focusing on other things.

Whatever the case may be, you need to look back and analyze where you went wrong so that you can fix it.

My best suggestion to you is to go back to rehab, listen and learn, and then start applying the suggestions right away. Take every suggestion as seriously as you can and put everything into action as earnestly as you can. Instead of just dismissing ideas that sound like hard work or big commitments, you should engage with the idea for a trial period and test it out first. For example, going to 90 meetings in the first 90 days is not something that you can just dismiss with a thought experiment and declare “oh, that won’t work for me, so I won’t do it.” That is ridiculous. No one has any idea how those 90 meetings would impact their life unless they followed through with the commitment and actually went to all of them.

In other words, be humble enough so that you can actually take some advice from other people and test it out for yourself. Don’t just dismiss ideas, instead, test them for yourself and see if they work for you or not. One person may thrive on seated meditation while another person may thrive with distance running. Both of those people could be successful recovering alcoholics, but neither of them will find the path that works for them unless they are humble and open to new suggestions.

Your ideas did not work. Even if you had some clean time in the past, your ideas proved to lead you to relapse. You need new ideas and new suggestions, and you need to put those new ideas into action. Good luck with your new path in recovery!

The post Overcoming Failure and Relapse in Addiction Recovery appeared first on Spiritual River Addiction Help.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8241841 http://ift.tt/2thqGDK

[pitz182]

Overcoming Failure and Relapse in Addiction Recovery

What is the key to overcoming failure or relapse in alcoholism or addiction recovery?

The most important concept to understand about relapse is that you must make a quick decision to jump right back into recovery. The longer you entertain the idea of relapse, the longer you let yourself go in terms of drinking or drug use, the harsher the consequences of this are going to be. Also, due to shame and guilt, it becomes more and more difficult over time to bring yourself back into recovery.

This can be especially true if you had any sort of support community that was helping you in recovery, which most all of us had in some form or another. So maybe you went to AA or NA meetings, or perhaps you had a religious community that was supporting your recovery efforts. Whoever it was, you have to bring yourself to face those people and admit that you screwed up and that you need help.

The best way to do this is with simple, direct, honest communication. It doesn’t help you or serve you to try to keep any of it secret in any way. The best approach is to come clean, to be honest, and to ask for help. If you are humble and genuine in doing this then you will be met with nothing but the utmost of respect. Nobody is going to look down on you if you are sincere and humble when you admit to your faults. We always build such things up in our minds and imagine that people will react so negatively to us, but in reality we just need to be honest with people and admit that we screwed up.

In my opinion the most important thing that you could do after you have relapsed is to admit that you screwed up and then ask for help again. At one time you likely asked for help and got started in recovery, but somewhere along the line you lost your way and things did not work out. The only solution at this point that makes any kind of sense is to try again. Ask for help again, go to treatment or rehab or meetings again, talk with therapists and counselors again, and start working a recovery program…..again. This is the only possible solution that makes sense. This is the only possible solution that could lead you back to happiness, peace, serenity, and joy one day.

The alternative to this is to avoid, to hide, to run from your problems. It is easy to run away from your problems, to continue to self medicate, to just keep going back to your drug of choice and hope that everything somehow works out for the best.

But it won’t. Addiction is a downward spiral into misery and chaos. Those are the outcomes and there is no alternative to this. In the end, addiction ruins lives. Every time. The only solution that makes any sense at all is to overcome the addiction by asking for help and getting into recovery.

You have to realize that many people who are in recovery programs have gone through similar experiences. If you go to a random AA or NA meeting and ask the people at the table if anyone has ever relapsed in the past, if anyone had to struggle at all in the beginning in order to “get” recovery, you are going to hear a number of experiences that you can relate to. In fact, nearly every single person at the table is going to share something that you can relate to, that coincides with the kind of things you are going through yourself right now. Everyone struggles with addiction at some point, everyone had to fight in order to finally find real recovery. It doesn’t come super easy for anyone, ever. If it did then we would not call it addiction, there would be no label at all, because there would be no problem at all. The whole reason that someone claims the label of “addict” or “alcoholic” is because they have struggled and struggled over the years to try to conquer and control their disease. Without this intense struggle there is no need for a label. The people who do not struggle are “normal” and they don’t have an addiction at all, there is no problem.

So don’t beat yourself up because you screwed up. Don’t beat yourself up over a relapse. This is an opportunity to enhance your story, to make it stronger. Now you can proceed in your recovery and after a few months or a few years you can look back and see exactly where you went wrong before you relapsed, and also what you did right the next time in order to remain sober. Your story becomes more powerful and more illustrative to the newcomer because now you have examples of both how it works as well as how it can go wrong. Your “misfortune” in having relapsed can become an asset in the future, something that becomes a teachable moment for others who are new in recovery. Take this seemingly “negative” experience of relapse and turn it into a positive, by using it as an illustrative example of how NOT to work a recovery program.

Of course in order to be able to do that you have to get back into recovery, you have to dive back into it head first and try harder than you have ever tried at anything in your entire life. That means you need to look back at what you were doing the first time around in recovery, see what your mistakes were, and then correct your course so that you do not fall into the same traps this time around. One way to do that is to sit down with a therapist or a counselor and figure out what went wrong and where you did not commit yourself fully to sobriety. Sometimes it is a resentment, sometimes you became complacent, and in some cases it may have been a lack of surrender. Or maybe you started working through the steps of AA or NA and then you just stopped and gave up on them. Or perhaps you were attending meetings and then suddenly you had lots of excuses to drift away from them and you started focusing on other things.

Whatever the case may be, you need to look back and analyze where you went wrong so that you can fix it.

My best suggestion to you is to go back to rehab, listen and learn, and then start applying the suggestions right away. Take every suggestion as seriously as you can and put everything into action as earnestly as you can. Instead of just dismissing ideas that sound like hard work or big commitments, you should engage with the idea for a trial period and test it out first. For example, going to 90 meetings in the first 90 days is not something that you can just dismiss with a thought experiment and declare “oh, that won’t work for me, so I won’t do it.” That is ridiculous. No one has any idea how those 90 meetings would impact their life unless they followed through with the commitment and actually went to all of them.

In other words, be humble enough so that you can actually take some advice from other people and test it out for yourself. Don’t just dismiss ideas, instead, test them for yourself and see if they work for you or not. One person may thrive on seated meditation while another person may thrive with distance running. Both of those people could be successful recovering alcoholics, but neither of them will find the path that works for them unless they are humble and open to new suggestions.

Your ideas did not work. Even if you had some clean time in the past, your ideas proved to lead you to relapse. You need new ideas and new suggestions, and you need to put those new ideas into action. Good luck with your new path in recovery!

The post Overcoming Failure and Relapse in Addiction Recovery appeared first on Spiritual River Addiction Help.

[violetsgallant]

Overcoming Failure and Relapse in Addiction Recovery

What is the key to overcoming failure or relapse in alcoholism or addiction recovery?

The most important concept to understand about relapse is that you must make a quick decision to jump right back into recovery. The longer you entertain the idea of relapse, the longer you let yourself go in terms of drinking or drug use, the harsher the consequences of this are going to be. Also, due to shame and guilt, it becomes more and more difficult over time to bring yourself back into recovery.

This can be especially true if you had any sort of support community that was helping you in recovery, which most all of us had in some form or another. So maybe you went to AA or NA meetings, or perhaps you had a religious community that was supporting your recovery efforts. Whoever it was, you have to bring yourself to face those people and admit that you screwed up and that you need help.

The best way to do this is with simple, direct, honest communication. It doesn’t help you or serve you to try to keep any of it secret in any way. The best approach is to come clean, to be honest, and to ask for help. If you are humble and genuine in doing this then you will be met with nothing but the utmost of respect. Nobody is going to look down on you if you are sincere and humble when you admit to your faults. We always build such things up in our minds and imagine that people will react so negatively to us, but in reality we just need to be honest with people and admit that we screwed up.

In my opinion the most important thing that you could do after you have relapsed is to admit that you screwed up and then ask for help again. At one time you likely asked for help and got started in recovery, but somewhere along the line you lost your way and things did not work out. The only solution at this point that makes any kind of sense is to try again. Ask for help again, go to treatment or rehab or meetings again, talk with therapists and counselors again, and start working a recovery program…..again. This is the only possible solution that makes sense. This is the only possible solution that could lead you back to happiness, peace, serenity, and joy one day.

The alternative to this is to avoid, to hide, to run from your problems. It is easy to run away from your problems, to continue to self medicate, to just keep going back to your drug of choice and hope that everything somehow works out for the best.

But it won’t. Addiction is a downward spiral into misery and chaos. Those are the outcomes and there is no alternative to this. In the end, addiction ruins lives. Every time. The only solution that makes any sense at all is to overcome the addiction by asking for help and getting into recovery.

You have to realize that many people who are in recovery programs have gone through similar experiences. If you go to a random AA or NA meeting and ask the people at the table if anyone has ever relapsed in the past, if anyone had to struggle at all in the beginning in order to “get” recovery, you are going to hear a number of experiences that you can relate to. In fact, nearly every single person at the table is going to share something that you can relate to, that coincides with the kind of things you are going through yourself right now. Everyone struggles with addiction at some point, everyone had to fight in order to finally find real recovery. It doesn’t come super easy for anyone, ever. If it did then we would not call it addiction, there would be no label at all, because there would be no problem at all. The whole reason that someone claims the label of “addict” or “alcoholic” is because they have struggled and struggled over the years to try to conquer and control their disease. Without this intense struggle there is no need for a label. The people who do not struggle are “normal” and they don’t have an addiction at all, there is no problem.

So don’t beat yourself up because you screwed up. Don’t beat yourself up over a relapse. This is an opportunity to enhance your story, to make it stronger. Now you can proceed in your recovery and after a few months or a few years you can look back and see exactly where you went wrong before you relapsed, and also what you did right the next time in order to remain sober. Your story becomes more powerful and more illustrative to the newcomer because now you have examples of both how it works as well as how it can go wrong. Your “misfortune” in having relapsed can become an asset in the future, something that becomes a teachable moment for others who are new in recovery. Take this seemingly “negative” experience of relapse and turn it into a positive, by using it as an illustrative example of how NOT to work a recovery program.

Of course in order to be able to do that you have to get back into recovery, you have to dive back into it head first and try harder than you have ever tried at anything in your entire life. That means you need to look back at what you were doing the first time around in recovery, see what your mistakes were, and then correct your course so that you do not fall into the same traps this time around. One way to do that is to sit down with a therapist or a counselor and figure out what went wrong and where you did not commit yourself fully to sobriety. Sometimes it is a resentment, sometimes you became complacent, and in some cases it may have been a lack of surrender. Or maybe you started working through the steps of AA or NA and then you just stopped and gave up on them. Or perhaps you were attending meetings and then suddenly you had lots of excuses to drift away from them and you started focusing on other things.

Whatever the case may be, you need to look back and analyze where you went wrong so that you can fix it.

My best suggestion to you is to go back to rehab, listen and learn, and then start applying the suggestions right away. Take every suggestion as seriously as you can and put everything into action as earnestly as you can. Instead of just dismissing ideas that sound like hard work or big commitments, you should engage with the idea for a trial period and test it out first. For example, going to 90 meetings in the first 90 days is not something that you can just dismiss with a thought experiment and declare “oh, that won’t work for me, so I won’t do it.” That is ridiculous. No one has any idea how those 90 meetings would impact their life unless they followed through with the commitment and actually went to all of them.

In other words, be humble enough so that you can actually take some advice from other people and test it out for yourself. Don’t just dismiss ideas, instead, test them for yourself and see if they work for you or not. One person may thrive on seated meditation while another person may thrive with distance running. Both of those people could be successful recovering alcoholics, but neither of them will find the path that works for them unless they are humble and open to new suggestions.

Your ideas did not work. Even if you had some clean time in the past, your ideas proved to lead you to relapse. You need new ideas and new suggestions, and you need to put those new ideas into action. Good luck with your new path in recovery!

The post Overcoming Failure and Relapse in Addiction Recovery appeared first on Spiritual River Addiction Help.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8241844 http://ift.tt/2thqGDK

[jaylazoey]

Overcoming Failure and Relapse in Addiction Recovery

What is the key to overcoming failure or relapse in alcoholism or addiction recovery?

The most important concept to understand about relapse is that you must make a quick decision to jump right back into recovery. The longer you entertain the idea of relapse, the longer you let yourself go in terms of drinking or drug use, the harsher the consequences of this are going to be. Also, due to shame and guilt, it becomes more and more difficult over time to bring yourself back into recovery.

This can be especially true if you had any sort of support community that was helping you in recovery, which most all of us had in some form or another. So maybe you went to AA or NA meetings, or perhaps you had a religious community that was supporting your recovery efforts. Whoever it was, you have to bring yourself to face those people and admit that you screwed up and that you need help.

The best way to do this is with simple, direct, honest communication. It doesn’t help you or serve you to try to keep any of it secret in any way. The best approach is to come clean, to be honest, and to ask for help. If you are humble and genuine in doing this then you will be met with nothing but the utmost of respect. Nobody is going to look down on you if you are sincere and humble when you admit to your faults. We always build such things up in our minds and imagine that people will react so negatively to us, but in reality we just need to be honest with people and admit that we screwed up.

In my opinion the most important thing that you could do after you have relapsed is to admit that you screwed up and then ask for help again. At one time you likely asked for help and got started in recovery, but somewhere along the line you lost your way and things did not work out. The only solution at this point that makes any kind of sense is to try again. Ask for help again, go to treatment or rehab or meetings again, talk with therapists and counselors again, and start working a recovery program…..again. This is the only possible solution that makes sense. This is the only possible solution that could lead you back to happiness, peace, serenity, and joy one day.

The alternative to this is to avoid, to hide, to run from your problems. It is easy to run away from your problems, to continue to self medicate, to just keep going back to your drug of choice and hope that everything somehow works out for the best.

But it won’t. Addiction is a downward spiral into misery and chaos. Those are the outcomes and there is no alternative to this. In the end, addiction ruins lives. Every time. The only solution that makes any sense at all is to overcome the addiction by asking for help and getting into recovery.

You have to realize that many people who are in recovery programs have gone through similar experiences. If you go to a random AA or NA meeting and ask the people at the table if anyone has ever relapsed in the past, if anyone had to struggle at all in the beginning in order to “get” recovery, you are going to hear a number of experiences that you can relate to. In fact, nearly every single person at the table is going to share something that you can relate to, that coincides with the kind of things you are going through yourself right now. Everyone struggles with addiction at some point, everyone had to fight in order to finally find real recovery. It doesn’t come super easy for anyone, ever. If it did then we would not call it addiction, there would be no label at all, because there would be no problem at all. The whole reason that someone claims the label of “addict” or “alcoholic” is because they have struggled and struggled over the years to try to conquer and control their disease. Without this intense struggle there is no need for a label. The people who do not struggle are “normal” and they don’t have an addiction at all, there is no problem.

So don’t beat yourself up because you screwed up. Don’t beat yourself up over a relapse. This is an opportunity to enhance your story, to make it stronger. Now you can proceed in your recovery and after a few months or a few years you can look back and see exactly where you went wrong before you relapsed, and also what you did right the next time in order to remain sober. Your story becomes more powerful and more illustrative to the newcomer because now you have examples of both how it works as well as how it can go wrong. Your “misfortune” in having relapsed can become an asset in the future, something that becomes a teachable moment for others who are new in recovery. Take this seemingly “negative” experience of relapse and turn it into a positive, by using it as an illustrative example of how NOT to work a recovery program.

Of course in order to be able to do that you have to get back into recovery, you have to dive back into it head first and try harder than you have ever tried at anything in your entire life. That means you need to look back at what you were doing the first time around in recovery, see what your mistakes were, and then correct your course so that you do not fall into the same traps this time around. One way to do that is to sit down with a therapist or a counselor and figure out what went wrong and where you did not commit yourself fully to sobriety. Sometimes it is a resentment, sometimes you became complacent, and in some cases it may have been a lack of surrender. Or maybe you started working through the steps of AA or NA and then you just stopped and gave up on them. Or perhaps you were attending meetings and then suddenly you had lots of excuses to drift away from them and you started focusing on other things.

Whatever the case may be, you need to look back and analyze where you went wrong so that you can fix it.

My best suggestion to you is to go back to rehab, listen and learn, and then start applying the suggestions right away. Take every suggestion as seriously as you can and put everything into action as earnestly as you can. Instead of just dismissing ideas that sound like hard work or big commitments, you should engage with the idea for a trial period and test it out first. For example, going to 90 meetings in the first 90 days is not something that you can just dismiss with a thought experiment and declare “oh, that won’t work for me, so I won’t do it.” That is ridiculous. No one has any idea how those 90 meetings would impact their life unless they followed through with the commitment and actually went to all of them.

In other words, be humble enough so that you can actually take some advice from other people and test it out for yourself. Don’t just dismiss ideas, instead, test them for yourself and see if they work for you or not. One person may thrive on seated meditation while another person may thrive with distance running. Both of those people could be successful recovering alcoholics, but neither of them will find the path that works for them unless they are humble and open to new suggestions.

Your ideas did not work. Even if you had some clean time in the past, your ideas proved to lead you to relapse. You need new ideas and new suggestions, and you need to put those new ideas into action. Good luck with your new path in recovery!

The post Overcoming Failure and Relapse in Addiction Recovery appeared first on Spiritual River Addiction Help.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8241844 http://www.spiritualriver.com/addiction-treatment/overcoming-failure-relapse-addiction-recovery/

[bobbiejwray]

Overcoming Failure and Relapse in Addiction Recovery

What is the key to overcoming failure or relapse in alcoholism or addiction recovery?

The most important concept to understand about relapse is that you must make a quick decision to jump right back into recovery. The longer you entertain the idea of relapse, the longer you let yourself go in terms of drinking or drug use, the harsher the consequences of this are going to be. Also, due to shame and guilt, it becomes more and more difficult over time to bring yourself back into recovery.

This can be especially true if you had any sort of support community that was helping you in recovery, which most all of us had in some form or another. So maybe you went to AA or NA meetings, or perhaps you had a religious community that was supporting your recovery efforts. Whoever it was, you have to bring yourself to face those people and admit that you screwed up and that you need help.

The best way to do this is with simple, direct, honest communication. It doesn’t help you or serve you to try to keep any of it secret in any way. The best approach is to come clean, to be honest, and to ask for help. If you are humble and genuine in doing this then you will be met with nothing but the utmost of respect. Nobody is going to look down on you if you are sincere and humble when you admit to your faults. We always build such things up in our minds and imagine that people will react so negatively to us, but in reality we just need to be honest with people and admit that we screwed up.

In my opinion the most important thing that you could do after you have relapsed is to admit that you screwed up and then ask for help again. At one time you likely asked for help and got started in recovery, but somewhere along the line you lost your way and things did not work out. The only solution at this point that makes any kind of sense is to try again. Ask for help again, go to treatment or rehab or meetings again, talk with therapists and counselors again, and start working a recovery program…..again. This is the only possible solution that makes sense. This is the only possible solution that could lead you back to happiness, peace, serenity, and joy one day.

The alternative to this is to avoid, to hide, to run from your problems. It is easy to run away from your problems, to continue to self medicate, to just keep going back to your drug of choice and hope that everything somehow works out for the best.

But it won’t. Addiction is a downward spiral into misery and chaos. Those are the outcomes and there is no alternative to this. In the end, addiction ruins lives. Every time. The only solution that makes any sense at all is to overcome the addiction by asking for help and getting into recovery.

You have to realize that many people who are in recovery programs have gone through similar experiences. If you go to a random AA or NA meeting and ask the people at the table if anyone has ever relapsed in the past, if anyone had to struggle at all in the beginning in order to “get” recovery, you are going to hear a number of experiences that you can relate to. In fact, nearly every single person at the table is going to share something that you can relate to, that coincides with the kind of things you are going through yourself right now. Everyone struggles with addiction at some point, everyone had to fight in order to finally find real recovery. It doesn’t come super easy for anyone, ever. If it did then we would not call it addiction, there would be no label at all, because there would be no problem at all. The whole reason that someone claims the label of “addict” or “alcoholic” is because they have struggled and struggled over the years to try to conquer and control their disease. Without this intense struggle there is no need for a label. The people who do not struggle are “normal” and they don’t have an addiction at all, there is no problem.

So don’t beat yourself up because you screwed up. Don’t beat yourself up over a relapse. This is an opportunity to enhance your story, to make it stronger. Now you can proceed in your recovery and after a few months or a few years you can look back and see exactly where you went wrong before you relapsed, and also what you did right the next time in order to remain sober. Your story becomes more powerful and more illustrative to the newcomer because now you have examples of both how it works as well as how it can go wrong. Your “misfortune” in having relapsed can become an asset in the future, something that becomes a teachable moment for others who are new in recovery. Take this seemingly “negative” experience of relapse and turn it into a positive, by using it as an illustrative example of how NOT to work a recovery program.

Of course in order to be able to do that you have to get back into recovery, you have to dive back into it head first and try harder than you have ever tried at anything in your entire life. That means you need to look back at what you were doing the first time around in recovery, see what your mistakes were, and then correct your course so that you do not fall into the same traps this time around. One way to do that is to sit down with a therapist or a counselor and figure out what went wrong and where you did not commit yourself fully to sobriety. Sometimes it is a resentment, sometimes you became complacent, and in some cases it may have been a lack of surrender. Or maybe you started working through the steps of AA or NA and then you just stopped and gave up on them. Or perhaps you were attending meetings and then suddenly you had lots of excuses to drift away from them and you started focusing on other things.

Whatever the case may be, you need to look back and analyze where you went wrong so that you can fix it.

My best suggestion to you is to go back to rehab, listen and learn, and then start applying the suggestions right away. Take every suggestion as seriously as you can and put everything into action as earnestly as you can. Instead of just dismissing ideas that sound like hard work or big commitments, you should engage with the idea for a trial period and test it out first. For example, going to 90 meetings in the first 90 days is not something that you can just dismiss with a thought experiment and declare “oh, that won’t work for me, so I won’t do it.” That is ridiculous. No one has any idea how those 90 meetings would impact their life unless they followed through with the commitment and actually went to all of them.

In other words, be humble enough so that you can actually take some advice from other people and test it out for yourself. Don’t just dismiss ideas, instead, test them for yourself and see if they work for you or not. One person may thrive on seated meditation while another person may thrive with distance running. Both of those people could be successful recovering alcoholics, but neither of them will find the path that works for them unless they are humble and open to new suggestions.

Your ideas did not work. Even if you had some clean time in the past, your ideas proved to lead you to relapse. You need new ideas and new suggestions, and you need to put those new ideas into action. Good luck with your new path in recovery!

The post Overcoming Failure and Relapse in Addiction Recovery appeared first on Spiritual River Addiction Help.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8241842 http://ift.tt/2thqGDK