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I want to share an important quote today -- something I’ve often thought about in connection with recovery from addiction, but have had a hard time articulating. Let me try to explain my perspective, and then share the actual quote at the end: So many people focus their recovery simply — and sometimes exclusively — on whether or not they do X or Y behavior. And they measure progress with that as their sole metric: “I have been sober for 6 months,” or whatever. My problem with this way of thinking is that life and recovery is more complicated than that. I have known people who made big progress in their emotional, spiritual, and relational lives … and while doing so, have had good stretches of sobriety. But they also had slips along the way. Then I’ve also known people who built a long period of 100% sobriety, but their emotional, spiritual, and relational life was a mess. In AA they talk about this too. They make a distinction between “emotional sobriety” and the traditional metric of sobriety — sobriety from alcohol. The point here is not that sobriety
from your bottom line is not important. The point is that it’s not enough. You need to do the inner work. If you don't, your recovery will eventually fall apart, and you'll be back into whatever compulsion / addiction you were "getting sober from." You need to become a different person — a person who’s happy and content, a person who’s not stressed out all the time, a person with a purpose in life, a person with a deep connection to God and some key friends.
Without doing that work, the other work of “sobriety” will either (a) not last, or (b)
become a form of unhealthy OCD, where you have to spend almost all your time and energy to keep the sobriety, while your life and relationships deteriorate. With this in mind, the focus of recovery changes. Most recovering addicts are asking "How can I refrain from doing X (this thing that I really like doing, but is bad for
me)." Instead, we should be asking, "What can I do to become a different person?" What can I do to build joy, contentment, a sense of calm and peace in the midst of my busy-ness? How can I build my connections to the important people in my life? That line of questioning will open up many possible actions -- small actions -- that you can implement. This is REALLY helpful, because it gives you a positive focus -- a place to start -- rather that focusing on something you need to NOT DO. Another
way of saying this: "Lasting recovery is not about subtraction. It's about addition." It's not just about living your life more or less the way you used to, minus a certain problematic behavior. It's not simply about taking something away. It's about ADDING something -- ideally multiple things. It's about making positive changes, bringing more good things into your life. James Clear focuses on making changes in life by building small new habits. His book title indicates this mindset: “Atomic Habits.” Below you'll what he says about this. As you read the quote, think of “goals” and “results” as the intentions
we have to “never watch porn again,” or whatever behavior you’re trying to change. Clear suggests that, in order to get these results, we should focus on a PROCESS … the small changes we want to make.
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