Welcome to the sober and happy podcast where we talk about all things recovery related, how to navigate the challenges that we will face along the way on our journey towards our best lives, and how we can go from living a life of simply just being sober to a life where we are both sober and happy.
Throughout my almost 12 years in recovery, I have watched the people who have gone from the lowest of rock bottoms and created amazing lives. I have seen others who have struggled for years, putting together sobriety time here and there, but always ending in a relapse only to try again later. I sadly have also known more people than I can count that have lost the battle of addiction.
Although individual circumstances are different, I have seen one common pattern among the people that struggle and the ones that thrive, and that is being intentional and purposeful in their recovery and their lives.
So today, I want to discuss the importance of being intentional and discuss ways that you can begin to do that so that you can create a life so amazing, that relapse will be the last thing on your mind.
So buckle up, this is going to be a great episode.
Before getting started, I wanted to talk about some of the other things we have going on in the Sober and Happy world.
We have launched a private Facebook group where people can go to get support on their recovery journey. You can find it by going over to facebook.com/groups/soberandhappy.
Also, I am posting daily content on both Facebook and Instagram, so if you would like to check that out, just search for @iamsoberandhappy in either of those socials and make sure to follow me so that you can get that daily content. I will also put links in the show notes for you.
Now let's get back to the episode.
I was listening to a podcast this last week where the guest said the following: A life of complete randomness becomes devoid of personal growth.
That got me thinking of my own recovery journey and the times that I felt really good early, the times that I struggled in the middle, and the point now where I am thriving more than I have at any point in my life.
During the times that I was thriving, I was intentional in my own personal growth, and during the times that I struggled, I was just kind of wandering through life aimlessly, just hoping things would work themselves out.
My recovery journey started in rehab. We had classes all day, homework to work on at night, and there was a very intentionally laid-out plan for what we were doing.
Then when I left rehab, I started going to meetings, got a sponsor, and worked the steps. Once again, a very structured plan. I was following instructions, getting positive results, and feeling good about myself, and as a result, was motivated to work on continued growth.
But then I got to the point where it got stagnant. I was in what often is referred to as the maintenance stage of recovery. Go to meetings, sponsor other guys, and be of service. All of which, I did consistently.
But the problem with maintenance is it is not an improvement.
Think if you owned a home. If you are just doing maintenance on it, you are either doing preventative maintenance to try to avoid things from breaking or fixing things when they do break. For most people that is not enjoyable, in fact, it feels like a chore most of the time.
That is what I was doing in the maintenance stage of my recovery. When I would feel anxious, depressed, or as the big book says “restless, irritable, and discontented”, the solution I would be given would be “go to a meeting”. So I would go, and for a moment, I would feel better. That might last a few hours or even a few days. Then the emotions would come back.
Working with others also provided a boost in how I felt, because I love helping other people. But then, I would see that I would simply help them get to the maintenance stage, and they too would seem to start to struggle.
I realized that in that environment, most people were simply trying to fix things when they broke or do preventative maintenance to simply stay sober.
Now back to the homeownership analogy, what is the enjoyable part of it? I remember when I owned a house, it was repainting the walls, putting in new floors, making planter boxes in the back so I can have a garden, building a firepit to have my friends sit around. It was the time I was doing home improvement and not home maintenance.
If we think about the pattern of relapses I talked about in the intro, I found that people tended to relapse from patterns that started during the maintenance stage. We often hear about the pink cloud of recovery. This is when we are at the beginning of recovery when we are feeling amazing about our newly sober lives because the changes in us and the progress we are making are rapid.
But then the pink cloud wears off, which we are told is normal. We feel dull and unmotivated. And all of a sudden, the prospect of simply maintaining sobriety one day at a time does not seem exciting.
What do most people do then? They start looking for other things to make them feel better. Most of the time, these are not things like continued personal growth, but quick fixes because that has been our pattern for so long. Most people in this stage don’t head straight back to the bottle, so they look for other unhealthy habits. Maybe it is a text to a toxic ex when you feel lonely. Maybe it is things that simply numb us like hours in front of the TV, scrolling social media, or buying things we don’t need and can’t afford.
Then once we head down that path, we start feeling worse and typically will double down on those temporary fixes. That text to the toxic ex leads to hanging out, and then we find ourselves back into a relationship that is certain to end badly, and when it does, the pain is too much, and then often a relapse.
When I talk with people who relapse, the first question I ask is “What happened?”.
Most people will point to that final pain point that was too much to bear, and that is why they drank or used. However, if you start walking back the actions that led to that, you can see it started much earlier than that. It started with settling into the maintenance stage, feeling stagnant, and then dabbling in unhealthy behaviors to feel better, which then led to the event that eventually caused the relapse.
Relapse in every case is when your reasons to drink become stronger than your reasons not to drink.
You often hear people in AA say we must keep going to meetings and working with newcomers to “remember what it was like”. The theory is that we must stay close to the pain of addiction so that we will be too afraid to return there ourselves.
Pain is often the greatest motivator for change, however, it is not something that can be counted on for long-term recovery. It doesn’t fulfill us, it doesn’t make us excited about life, and it doesn’t promote growth, which is the key to living a sober and happy life.
If we look at the reasons to drink and the reasons to not drink as two buckets. Focusing only on not returning to the pain is only trying to desperately empty the “reasons to drink” bucket rather than focusing on filling the “reasons not to drink bucket”.
What I found is when I started intentionally filling the “reasons not to drink bucket”, the water in the other bucket simply evaporated until one day I realized that bucket was completely empty.
There was no longer a need to empty it anymore. I don’t need anyone to remember how bad life is drunk to keep me sober, because I know how amazing life can be sober so I have no desire to get drunk anymore.
I still love helping people which is why I do this podcast weekly and post daily on social media, but the motivation now is the joy I get from seeing other people thrive in their lives beyond their addictions.
So, ask yourself “How are you feeling about your life right now?” Are you excited about the day when you wake up? Are you exhilarated about your future? Are you thriving, or are you simply just trying to get by one more day?
Now, if your life and recovery were a house, are you just doing preventative maintenance and trying to keep up with everything that is breaking, or are you doing home improvement?
If you are simply getting by in the maintenance stage, I want you to be intentional about growing. I want you to thrive, and I will share with you some of the ways I have learned over the last several years how to do that.
The first thing I had to do is establish purpose and meaning in my life. Purpose refers to having a clear sense of direction, a reason for living, and a vision for the kind of life we want to lead. This is your why for getting and staying sober. For me, I needed to reconnect with my purpose. If you do not have a strong connection with your why, I suggest going and listening to episode #2 of this podcast.
Once we have established or re-established our connection to our why, we must be intentional about achieving the vision of our life that we want to lead.
Intention involves actively and consciously aligning our thoughts, actions, and choices with our purpose. It is making deliberate choices, seeking growth opportunities, and staying focused.
When we are intentional about our growth it helps us avoid falling into old patterns and mindless behaviors that may jeopardize our progress. By being intentional, we actively shape our recovery journey, take ownership of our actions, and become accountable for achieving our dreams.
If we only establish a purpose for our life, but don’t take intentional actions towards achieving it, we will remain stuck in the dreaming phase and never actually realize our dreams. That my friend, is the ultimate regret.
Take for example this podcast. I have wanted to do something like this for years. I knew the things I learned about recovery along the way absolutely changed my life and others that I have helped along the way. I saw so much suffering in people who were in the same place I was before and I wanted to share what I had learned so hopefully their lives could change too.
But I never put intention behind my dreams. I dabbled in the thought of doing something. I consumed content about how to do it. I listened to podcasts about creating podcasts. But I never took any of the actions suggested. I would get motivated, say I would start tomorrow, the next day the motivation would wear off, and all those tomorrows turned into weeks, months, and eventually years of unrealized dreams.
Until I finally got intentional. To do this, you must first set clear goals and milestones. For me, I picked a date that my first podcast episode would be published. I picked October 21st since my birthday was the 19th and I decided achieving a dream of mine would be a great birthday present to myself.
Once you have a clear goal set, you must become accountable for that goal. In an ideal world, being accountable to myself would be easy, but it is still something I struggle with, so I decided to add a level of accountability which meant telling several other people my dream and telling them the date that my first podcast episode will be published.
Now that we have a clear goal and a level of accountability, the only choice is to be intentional about how we are going to achieve it. If we wander toward our goals, we almost certainly will get lost.
There is a lot to learn about doing a podcast, all of which, I had no idea how to do. I figured the quickest point to achieve this was by hiring someone who already had experience in launching a successful podcast.
I already had my bigger milestone which was launching a podcast on October 21st, but there are several smaller milestones that needed to be achieved first. Working with this coach she was able to break down everything I needed to do. Create artwork for the podcast cover, pick intro and outro music, buy the equipment and software for recording and editing, learn how to edit audio, sign up for accounts to host the podcast, and finally press the record button.
Here is the thing. Without intention, I simply dreamed about doing this podcast for years. With intention, we launched in less than a month.
And the last step is often the hardest and that is remaining accountable to our dreams. It is easy to be motivated in the early stages, but often life starts bogging you down, and the thought of “I am just going to take a short break” can easily creep into your head. It is much easier to keep momentum than it is to regain it after stopping.
I remain accountable at the end of each podcast episode when I say “New episodes come out each Friday, so I look forward to connecting with you next week.”
I love doing this podcast, but there are weeks when life gets really busy, I am exhausted, and sitting on the couch and turning on the TV sounds better than recording, editing, and producing a podcast episode.
Right now we are short a person on my team at work and the days have been long as we all pitch in to make up for having one less teammate. It is 10:45 Thursday night right now as I say these words. I still need to edit and publish this tonight. The couch and TV are only one room away from me but I am sitting in my office.
I do this because I recommit every week, am accountable to you and myself, and most importantly, I have now done this consistently long enough, that I know how great it feels when I hit that publish button every week. Because that takes me one step closer to my dreams, my goals, and my purpose.
Now I want you to think about your own big dreams. Are they still sitting in your head turning into the future regret that comes with unachieved dreams, or are you chasing them? Imagine what it would feel like to start doing all those things you keep putting off until tomorrow, today? Imagine your life in the place where you are the person that you have always wanted to be.
Being purposeful and intentional in our recovery journey allows us to live a truly fulfilling life. When we align our actions with our purpose and values, we experience a greater sense of fulfillment, satisfaction, and meaning in all aspects of our lives.
It means pursuing personal growth, building healthy relationships, and engaging in activities that bring us joy and fulfillment. It means embracing opportunities for self-discovery and constantly striving to become the best version of ourselves.
You are only one decision away from that, and that is to decide to be intentional and accountable for your own dreams. Make the choice to focus on filling the “reasons not to drink” bucket instead of constantly trying to empty the “reasons to drink” bucket. Once you do that, you will find that like me, the water will simply evaporate from the drink bucket, recovery will no longer feel like a chore, and the life you think you can only dream about will become your reality. That is my promise to you.
Thank you for listening and I am hoping you are enjoying my podcast. Every episode you listen to, share with a friend, or message you send to me is all part of me achieving my dreams, and for that, I am extremely grateful to you.
New episodes come out each Friday, so I look forward to connecting with you next week. And as always, thank you so much for listening, and keep living sober and happy.