As we’re working to recover, it is an important part of our recovery work to assess the health of our lifestyles, to examine which habits and routines are productive and which are detrimental, and to analyze our relationships and living environments for how supportive of our recovery they are. Sometimes we have a hard time looking at our lifestyles because it’s tough to be objective when we’re in the middle of something. We might not look at our behaviors and choices clearly when we’re in the midst of engaging in them. We might not be able to honestly address whether or not our relationships are healthy because we’re actively in them and committed to them. It can be a challenge to examine our lifestyles mindfully and openly so that we can make changes where necessary and create lives for ourselves that can effectively center around our recovery.
Honest Self-Assessment
Let’s try and take a step back and look at ourselves and our daily lives, our patterns, our relationships, and our choices more objectively. Can you distance yourself a bit from yourself, and look at yourself as if you were another person? Can you challenge yourself to be as honest with yourself as possible? Examining our lifestyles means confronting areas where we might need to make changes and improvements. It means acknowledging mistakes we may have made, ways in which we’ve gone wrong, things we’ve done to jeopardize sobriety. Maybe we’ve chosen to stay in a relationship with another addict who doesn’t believe in sobriety. Maybe we live with people who pressure us to use. Maybe our daily routines include engaging with people or places that might be tempting or triggering for us.
Self-Support and Self-Correcting
Let’s not beat ourselves up if we see things that we need to correct. Let’s not be harsh with ourselves if we come across mistakes we’ve made or ways in which we think we should have known or done better. Self-judgment and self-condemnation don’t help us to make adjustments to our lifestyles, they just keep us feeling bad about ourselves, which can trigger us to want to use. Let’s remember to be supportive of ourselves and patient with ourselves so that we can actually do the work to correct our lifestyles, rather than limiting ourselves further by beating up on ourselves.
Are you ready to take the first step on your journey to recovery?
Call The Guest House today! 855-823-5463.