Finding Empowerment In Recovery

Hey there, it's steve again and thanks for joining me, Hope you're doing well. It is Wednesday here in southern California and I hope all of you are having a great week if you find that you're not, or maybe you're struggling a little bit during a particular day or a particular time of the day and you feel yourself getting stuck and there's old, that old mindset starts to creep back in. Just remember you have the ability to pause and reset things and reset your intentions at any time during the day. I found myself doing that numerous times. I like to after I get going in the morning, do a meditation set my intentions for the day and sometimes I have to revisit it. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I think it usually means that I'm growing that there's growth and then I'm changing because my desire is to continue to evolve into something, a vision that I have in myself. So I want to be something different, continue to grow and evolve. And for me, as I've said before, if I'm not growing, I'm dying and that's a big mantra in my recovery. They say if your recovery plan is not on par with the progression of your disease, my disease of alcoholism, uh that's a big flag. So it's a big part of my focus. So on that note, what I want to talk to some of you about today, This message is crafted for those in early recovery that could be recovery from substance abuse, um mental health challenges, some other disorder, an eating disorder, um, or depression, it could be something, you know, a relationship that could be a number of things that we could consider ourselves in recovery. So what I want to share with you when I went to treatment the last time and hopefully that's my final time. I had to do it a number of times to um really start to take a hard look at it, who I wanted to be and realized that the way I was doing, it wasn't working for me anymore. So I'm gonna talk to you about my mindset when I went back to treatment and I was on my way, unfortunately to drinking myself to death and the doctors let me know that. So I came into treatment, I said yes, it started with, I said yes and based on that I became a little bit more open and willing to just consider something different. That's a big step for many of us, it was a big step for me. So I'll walk through kind of my new mindset back then and it's my same mindset today and then some of the things the baby stepping that I did, that really helped me early on in my recovery and I still consider myself early in recovery, That's a great thing. It means I'm growing, if I think I'm a veteran in recovery, that doesn't sound so good to me and I know how it was in the past and it doesn't feel so good. I start to stagnate and downward spiral. And the next thing, you know, that logic of maybe a drink isn't such a bad idea starts to try and creep back in. I have to do what I have to do on a daily basis to neutralize that. And as I've talked about before, a lot of that revolves around shame and you know, we live in a shaming society and I've I've mentioned that before. So let me talk a little bit about this today. One of the first things I had to do besides say yes and show up, which is huge showing up is a big deal, Congratulate yourself for that for honoring a commitment. We'll talk about celebrating the winds here later on in this session. So I had to get honest, I had to really start getting honest. People have considered me many of my friends and family and honest person and nobody's really gotten into my integrity, but you know what I needed to, there's honesty and there's rigorous honesty, that's the story. And then the story behind the story and that's where I had to focus on and for me, mine revolved about around shame and I carried that with me and had been conditioned by external shaming. Eventually it settled in and became internal shaming. And I just kept replaying that tape over and over again thinking I'm not enough. And then when I started to think I was enough, there was a second voices burn a brown likes to talk about who the hell do you think you are? You can't dream that big. I dreamt big early on in my career in my twenties and it skyrocketed for north of a decade. I stopped dreaming, I stopped giving myself permission to dream, so I want you to give yourself permission to dream on how you think your new life might look like in your recovery. The second thing that I needed to do was I had to really turn inward, get honest and turn inward, not easy to do. Very can be very exhausting. I mean the first two weeks of treatment, I was wiped out at night, but I still had a busy mind and and felt like it was really difficult for a while to get to sleep, but I can tell you today, it's very much worth it. So I had to start breaking things down what was working and what wasn't kind of like a pros and cons list. Well, I can tell you in the state I was in, there wasn't anything working for me at all but the mind of an addict and all those memories that have been stored in that conditioning, you've got the shame, the cycle, the vicious cycle of addiction and you have to deal with those memories. So how did I start to rewire my brain? The wiring became faulty decades of wiring, faulty wiring and the script played out, I became an alcoholic. So I had to start asking myself these kinds of questions, does this serve me anymore well for drinking it was I could continue and eventually die and the doctors proposed that that could be pretty quickly, do I find this useful anymore? So things came up about like which I see in in recovery and and I see in in our society and I've been there myself, so no judgment here is playing the victim card. We all have our story that we can tell and many of our stories are filled with pain and heartache. You've heard me say this before, The pain is inevitable, the suffering is optional. I decided, yes, there's pain, but now how am I gonna work through it and respond to it going forward because I don't want to suffer anymore. I also had to ask myself the question is my universe expanding or contracting when you're alone and isolation drinking is not much of a university, are my problems growing or shrinking. If they're shrinking, that means I'm creating opportunities or maybe I start looking at problems like I do today is an opportunity for growth. The other thing I had to start doing this time around was start talking about it and treatment, they created safe of an environment as possible. I had to start opening up again when I came came back this time, I just decided to talk about my shame. That is what's true about steve, he's carried a lot of shame for a long time. The truth about Stephen, what played out eventually in the script was he became an alcoholic, I own that. So what I want to talk about is some things that I started to do and still do to this day, to recondition, rewire my brain, it's actually possible and I'm just gonna give you a few basic things that maybe you can pick one or two of them and try it for just a little bit of time and see how it works and we can talk some more about it because at the end of the day, when I see people struggling like I was and the pain and then the ongoing suffering and that cycle repeating itself over and over again and then all we do is shame ourselves some more and there's nothing worse than that internal shaming voice that somehow becomes conditioned in us, It's a part of our society and what I have to do every day, what I get to do, I had to do it because I wanted to live. I still had enough hope. So if you have enough courage to just think about this, just to think about it, to reflect about it, to say yes to give it a try. That's a lot of courage, man, that's a lot of courage. If I could give anything to anybody in any kind of recovery today. If I could give you something is to make you feel empowered long enough to believe in yourself long enough to start taking some action to change. It takes a lot of courage. It's easier said than done. But you've got it, you've got this into you. Just enough belief, enough hope to give a few things to try and what I want to do today is share some of these things that I still do to this day. And um again, I started to feel empowered and started to believe in myself. Again, it started to give myself permission to dream. I'm still working on that other voice. I've got some big dreams, I've got another run in me. I've got that voices and I got some of this externally growing up and through other relationships and etcetera etcetera. And I bet many of you can relate to this and that is the who do you think you are? You know, don't get too big for your britches, don't get too cocky. Now I've never been accused of those things. I just dream. There's nothing wrong with it for me dreaming makes my life a lot more tolerable. So I choose to dream. So here's some things that I focused on because I came in beat up if you saw my intake picture, Oh wow, but you know what? I keep it in my backpack as a reminder every single day is a part of my reconditioning. That reminder of mm when that drink thought comes around and they still come, they come and go easy, come easy go. I've got that reminder there. So that's probably not a good idea. No, I think I choose to live today and to face everything and rise. That's my definition of fear. Face everything and rise. Of course I got that from somewhere else. Uh, versus forget everything and run. So here's some things that I focused on, especially early on number one simply breed just a nice, I feel so nice. I can start to come into the present and start to come down a little bit. People talk about mindfulness and meditation and I'm a big believer of that. But let's first things first. Let's just take a breath and focus on our breath. Nice inhale through the nose. Exhale out the mouth. You don't need to hyperventilate. Just a nice controlled, relaxing breath. It gives me the opportunity to pause to think before I get worked up inside and certainly think before I respond or press that sin key pausing will never hurt us. There's always time to reflect or as they say, to sleep on it. Focus on that breath. There's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing embarrassing about if someone says to you and notices it and says, are you okay? Well, you know, I just need to chill for a minute. I'm just taking a moment for myself. Most people will go, okay, that's cool. Is there anything I can do to help if they're not inclined to do that? You may want to look elsewhere to be blunt about it. A couple of other things that I still do today and these I believe go hand in hand, numbers two and three positive affirmations. These were hard for me early on. I am enough, I can I love myself, I didn't like myself. That's why I kept relapsing that shame. My biggest resentment was towards me when I love myself. I don't resent anybody else, shame level down resentments come down shame level, wants to creep back up all of a sudden those things that I thought were behind me start to kinda pop up again. So reducing that level of shame is very critical positive affirmation. Just pick a few. The hard one for me early on was to recite what I want and need is coming to. I just simply did these affirmations, five of them in the morning and at night now I find myself doing affirmations throughout the day whenever I need them, it really helps me even out and regulate my emotions. It's amazing. And instead of and I still go to what I want and need is coming to me many times when I'm feeling really good and the shame level is down, what I want and need is here, it's here and now in the present, praying for the strength and courage to see it to go look forward and to see it and it's amazing how I start to see and interpret things a little bit differently. Gratitude. I've talked about this before. Just pick 12345 things If that's too much of a list. Okay, pick a few recite those over and over again every day. I do it throughout the day, driving in the car wherever I need it, positive. Affirmations gratitude. You'll find yourself much, much happier. They say you can do this for 21 days. If you do it, You'll start to feel your happiness improve. The next thing that I focused on is a part of my early, early recovery was to not take things personal. Well doing those first three things really helped a long ways. It went a long ways for me and it still does sometimes shame levels up. Oh, I start taking things personally and I start getting out of sorts a little bit.# five, vulnerability is the key I believe, to countering the shame. What a contrary action, counter the shame. We got to be vulnerable with each other. We got to have the strength and courage to talk about our story and that means all the other crap that goes with it too. That's when we stand in the trenches together. The last couple of podcasts, I did one on five things for connection and recovery. So if you want, you could go back and listen to that start simply by initiating contact with some people saying hello to them first. Yeah, you get some people, you'll see in an elevator, you'll say hello and they're just in another place up in their head and they don't say anything to you. It happens. That's what I did, going up and down the elevators. I didn't spend my day doing that. Ha ha was just initiating contact with strangers saying Hi, have a nice day, 99% of them respond back starts to unlock the door, not open it up, we'll talk about that in a second, unlock the door to those people that are interested in you and care about you so that you can open up the door and let them in. So what I find with this in summary is I'm creating space for myself by level of awareness goes up, therefore my emotional peaks. That rollercoaster starts to go down and kind of even out a little bit, It's not a roller coaster ride. Happiness goes up. I smile more. I'm laughing more. I have the opportunity to connect with others to listen that to them. We talked about listening and over time I start to build my self worth. And the other thing I want to leave you with is celebrate these winds when I go to bed at night and I'm going to hit the pillow, I want to talk about the things I want to put my mind at ease that I did right during the day, Not I forgot this, I didn't do this. That's beating ourselves up. It'll get there, I'll get it done. I get it done. I stay focused on it. I want to put my mind at ease, get a good night's rest, Tomorrow's a new day. The sun comes up. God willing to celebrate those winds don't make them trivial. This stuff really matters. You matter. So I hope that you find that helpful. It's helped me out tremendously. And I look forward to your feedback at www dot Believe in big change dot com. I hope you get a taste of this empowerment. Start to believe and then you start to have a little bit more courage to take some action to change. And I believe we all want to do that at some point in our lives or on a daily basis. We all want to grow. We want to evolve. We dream so good luck to you with that again. You do matter. I love you. I send you positive energy, positive thoughts, good vibrations. And I look forward to speaking with you again very soon. Good luck to you with this and all of your endeavors and I'll be with you soon. Take care