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.
One of the biggest challenges we have to face when we get sober is cleaning up the mess that many of us have left behind from the damages we have caused by a life of addiction.
I have never met a person yet who was getting sober that didn’t have parts of their life that didn’t need rebuilding. For some, it might be rebuilding relationships and trust with the people they love. For others of us, we pretty much burned everything down and are in need of rebuilding from the ground up.
This process can be very overwhelming but is one of the most rewarding things you can do in your recovery.
Today we are going to talk about how to get started, methods to help us not get too overwhelmed, and how to push through when we hit roadblocks.
So buckle up, this is going to be a great episode.
Welcome back. A few quick reminders before getting back to the episode. Our private Facebook group in less than two months has grown to over 3000 members and the members in the group are absolutely amazing. I couldn’t be more proud of the community that is growing in there. If you are looking for a great community to help support you in this journey, please go check it out. You can find it by going over to facebook.com/groups/soberandhappy. I will also leave a link in the show notes for you.
OK, now back to the episode.
I remember the day I returned from rehab. I was 34 years old, living on my mom's couch, with a job history that would not attract many employers including a three-year gap at the end, a mountain of debt both to creditors and people I borrowed money from, I hadn’t filed taxes in over a decade, I had a failure to appear in a state I didn’t even live in anymore, a suspended license in two states, a truck in my mom's driveway with no insurance and two-year-old tags, and everything that I owned fit in that truck.
To say that my life was in shambles would be an understatement, and this doesn’t even include all the relationships that needed to be repaired from years of me living the toxic lifestyle that went along with my addictions, or facing the demons that I had been trying to avoid for so many years with alcohol and drugs.
I knew there was so much that I needed to fix, but every time I would think about it, I would get completely overwhelmed and couldn’t get started. Fixing everything seemed like an impossible task and the anxiety from that would absolutely paralyze me.
People would tell me things like “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time”. I think that is a very accurate statement, but I didn’t even know what part of the elephant to start on, and the thought of eating a whole elephant still seemed way too overwhelming. I didn’t need a catchy saying, I needed a game plan I could take action on.
Finally, I was talking to a friend of mine who built custom homes about how everything seemed so overwhelming.
He shared with me something that helped me immensely.
He said, “When I am building a new house, I don’t just order a bunch of supplies to be delivered and show up on the property and start building from scratch because that would be too much for anyone to handle.”
“We meet with the homeowners and figure out everything they want and need. Then we draw up blueprints and review them. Next, we break down everything that needs to be done from start to finish, from breaking ground to handing them the keys to their new house. After that, we come up with a project plan that breaks down each of the bigger projects into smaller tasks, and then we start from the beginning. We don’t worry about installing cabinets when we are pouring the foundation. We focus on the task at hand. There will be challenges, delays, and setbacks and we deal with them when they come up. And because we stay focused on what we need to do each day, we are able to take a bare piece of land and build something beautiful on it.”
He suggested that I approach rebuilding my life the same way and that is exactly what I did.
The first step which I found to be one of the most challenging was putting down on paper everything that needed to be fixed. This was especially difficult because this required acknowledging my past. I felt so much shame for the way I lived my life for so many years. My drinking escalated so much at the end as a desperate attempt to avoid all these feelings, so I was scared to face them worried that it might lead me back to drinking.
As difficult as this is, we can not avoid this step. Trying to avoid difficult feelings and emotions is what got many of us into the mess we found ourselves in. And we can not move on unless we address these things. The people I find that attempt to do this at best remain stuck in a state of depression and anxiety desperately looking for things outside of themselves to mask those feelings. Most people though, end up back into the world we are trying to get out of.
One of my favorite sayings is “The only way is through and not around” and that is exactly what I had to do, so I grabbed some pen and paper and started making my list.
The key to this part of the process for me, was acknowledging my past without dwelling on it. Whenever I would be facing a part of my past that would instantly send me into a state of emotions that seemed too overwhelming, I would tell myself the following mantra “This is not who you are anymore and you are fixing it”.
My list ended up longer than I even imagined. Throughout the process, I would think of something, and then would realize “I can’t do that until I do this first” and another item ended up on the list.
But after I was done, it didn’t bother me too much that my list was longer than I anticipated when I started. The sense of accomplishment from actually making the list and knowing that I was going to start rebuilding my life was much stronger than the feeling of stress that was also present just from looking at such a long list.
Plus, there is an amazing thing that happens when you put things on a list that you need to do. Your brain acknowledges that you heard it, and it stops feeling the need to remind you every moment of the day.
But, now that we have our list, what do we do with it though?
One of the biggest keys to completing a list is not to do things that add to that list.
For example, I had a mountain of debt, so I shouldn’t be spending money on things that I didn’t need and racking up even more debt. During the first two years of my sobriety, I rented a single-wide trailer that was probably older than I was because the rent was cheap, I drove a 1985 Camry that had over a quarter million miles on it and rarely joined in on activities that cost much money. Was I having as much fun as some of the other people I saw in recovery that were going out to dinner regularly and doing things like going to concerts all the time? No, but I was making progress and not digging a deeper hole, and that was more fulfilling. And today I live a life with much more freedom only because I chose to make sacrifices then that helped build the life I have now.
This doesn’t just apply to things like debt too. In my experience, the things that I had the most trouble forgiving myself for were behaviors that I was still engaging in. It is impossible to forgive ourselves for past behaviors we are ashamed of if we are still doing the same things today.
But, back to tackling the list. We now have the blueprints that we need. Now we need to come up with the project plan.
I started organizing my list while remembering my conversation with my friend that told me that they don’t focus on installing cabinets when they are supposed to be pouring a foundation. If something on my list required me to do other things first, then I knew not to focus on that until it was time.
Once I had my list organized, I identified the most critical thing that I needed to accomplish that I can work on today.
For me, that was getting a job. So now, I can start breaking down all the tasks that are required for me to get a job. This included getting a valid ID, fixing my failure to appear so that doesn’t pop up on a background check, updating my resume, and starting to apply for jobs.
There is something critical to remember at this point. We can come up with the best game plan in the world, and it often is not going to go the way we expect it to. We need to be realistic with our expectations. Much of the pain we experience in life is when reality does not meet our expectations. I found it better to anticipate that plan A isn’t going to work and that I might have to go with plan B, C, or even all the way to Z, and be pleasantly surprised if plan A works, than expecting everything to work out the way I want and then get stuck in a state of self-pity when I hit an obstacle.
So the ideal plan was that I would be able to work out getting my license back, get my truck registered and insured, and be able to drive myself to and from whatever job I ended up getting.
However, I knew all of that required money which I did not have. My mom was able to help me out some, but she did not have a lot of disposable income, so I accepted the fact that if that ended up being too expensive, I might have to just get a state ID card and ride the bus until I started getting paychecks. This isn’t about focusing on everything that could go wrong, just simply accepting that plan A may not work out and that I need to be flexible with my plan.
And that is where my rebuild started. I had a long list, but now I had a plan on how I was going to achieve it and I can see how everything needed to line up. It was a monumental project, but by seeing the blueprint, having a project plan, and for the first time, seeing a bright future for myself that actually seemed achievable.
I got the issues with the court resolved, which allowed me to get my license back, and I updated my resume, and I spent every day searching for and applying for every job that I could find. With my spotty job history, employers were not lining up to hire me, but I persevered and kept applying, going to interviews, and then one day, I finally received a phone call where the person on the other end of the line said the most beautiful words I had heard in a long time… “Can you start on Monday?”
And that gave me one of the greatest things you can have in your recovery which is momentum. And with that momentum, I was encouraged to look at my list, and say “What can I do next?”.
Momentum is such a huge key to successful recovery. Although we should only be focusing on what we need to accomplish now, there are times we will find ourselves waiting on something. Standing still too long is one of the worst places you be when you are new in recovery. That is when our minds will start wandering and take us to bad places.
You will hear the advice to stay busy early in recovery, which I think is amazing advice. However, there are different kinds of busy. There is busy trying to find anything to distract us from our feelings by spending our days watching TV, shopping online, and spending hours on social media, or we can be busy working on doing things that move us toward the life that we want to live or focusing on things that promote self-care and growth.
So when we have times that we find ourselves waiting on one thing, we can see if there is something else on our list that we can do today. For example, many things on my list required me to get a job first. I would spend every day looking for work, but there would be a point where I had already found and applied for every job posting that day that I was qualified for so I also had a lot of downtime. So I looked at my list and there was one glaring thing on that list that didn’t require money to do, and that was starting to repair the relationships that I had damaged. It doesn’t cost money to pick up the phone or visit a friend and tell them I am sorry for the way that I treated them.
By doing this, I still was working on the project of rebuilding my life, even if the main task of getting a job was not going as fast as I hoped. This still allowed me to have momentum even when parts of the project were stalled and helped me stay motivated each day for the main task at hand because I was still moving forward.
And as long as we are moving forward, that means we are not moving back toward our old lives.
I know the process of rebuilding our lives can seem overwhelming. But if you break it down, come up with a plan, and most importantly, take that first step, you will find the motivation and momentum you need to take the next step. I never imagined on that day when I sat down and started making the list, creating the blueprint, and coming up with a plan to start rebuilding my life that 12 years later I would be where I am now. It has been an amazing journey full of ups and downs, twists and turns, and detours that I never saw coming, and I am so excited to see where it is going to take me next.
But I couldn’t have gotten here without taking that first step which is what I encourage you to do today and I can’t wait to see where your path leads you.
I want to thank you for listening to this episode and I hope you are finding value from listening to my podcast. If you are, I am asking for two huge favors from you this week that would help me. Share the episode with one person you think would find it impactful, and please subscribe to the podcast, both of which will help it grow.
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.