Day 4221 (Share your enthusiasm)

Being positive. Being optimistic. Being full of joy. It can be difficult at times, but it doesn’t mean that life is always going to go the way we had hoped, but we can still carry a positive perspective on things. For me, life experiences have given me a lot of eyes wide open moments, and with that I have been able to gain more and more appreciation for life in general. It can be easy to look at our past and carry a lot of regret with those moments but the truth is, without those moments of weakness we wouldn’t have been able to get to where we are today. Recovery has and continues to teach me so much, and as I continue to work through it I am reminded of the progress that I’ve made and the positive impact it continues to make in my life. Choosing to take on addiction day in and day out is something that fills the enthusiasm cup, and I always remind myself that choosing sobriety each day is always going to carry with it that sense of enthusiasm, and it is something that I make sure to mirror in my day to day life. It wasn’t always this way. As someone who made it a point to always carry a victim card around, the last thing I wanted to do was be enthusiastic about anything. It was always poor me, look at me and what are you going to do for me to fix it. It’s amazing once we start to put in the work and make our very own progress how our drastically our mindset can change.

It’s not just recovery that started this shift. Choosing to surrender my life to Jesus Christ has brought with it an enthusiasm that I could never put into words. My faith continues to be my foundation. There is a common expression and one that it heard in plenty of worship songs and that it “the Rock on which I stand” which I think about often, and I am constantly reminded of how true it is. When I am strong in my faith that firm foundation is obvious, and when I find myself wandering off of that path, the sinking sand makes itself known. Sharing my enthusiasm about both my faith as well as my recovery wasn’t easy at first because of the stigmas that both things carry with them. Eventually I remembered that it’s not about anyone else. It’s about my commitment to Jesus, as well as my commitment to my recovery and that’s what my focus has become, and that’s where my focus will remain.

God bless,

Brian 👐🏻

Day 4220 (Promise Yourself)

I spent a lot of my life looking elsewhere for validation and acceptance. I looked to others to do things for me, to make sure I was happy and fulfilled. This wasn’t because I didn’t think I was capable of doing those things, it was simply because I didn’t want to. I remember so many different times where I’d take a step back and observe the chaos, and instead of cleaning up the messes, I just used the “don’t care” mindset as positive. There was a time when my only mindset was “I don’t give a shit” and my life reflected that day in and day out. I would ramble on about how I struggled with consistency and commitment but I was showing those skills in those moments based on the life I was living. Even if we are doing all the wrong things, we are still showing up each and every day to do so. It became more about shifting that mindset to the good, and letting those qualities improve my life opposed to continuing to ruin it.

Surrendering my life to Jesus Christ and getting into recovery our two promises that I make myself day in and day out that I will continue to live by. I remember the first day I went to church as an adult in ‘13, and was very skeptical about it all, walking out I was intrigued and drawn to it, and all these years later I am still attending the same church, and also go to a recovery meeting there on Tuesday nights again which is something that I had been missing in my life based on how it filled my cup last night. Recovery is something that I stayed in denial about a lot, and refused to say I was one of those people, but I remember my first meeting in Iowa, and my first time saying I was an alcoholic in front of people and it was as freeing as any experience in my life outside of getting baptized in ‘17, which will always be at the top of my list. These promises continue to keep me grounded and keep me going. I am truly thankful for them, and will continue to lean on them and make them daily priorities.

God bless,

Brian 👐🏻

Day 4219 (Time is an illusion)

I don’t have time. There’s never any time. If I have time … this is something that I put far too much TIME into because I was always worried about running out of it. We can always find the time, we can always make time, it will always come back to what our priorities are. Time shows up in other parts of our lives as well, and often acts as a road block. We often hear it in the context of “I’ve only been doing this for …” as if that’s supposed to dictate what we do next. The same can be said in relationships when we hear “we’ve only been together for …” which again is apparently universal to what everyone else is doing and has experienced. This is something that I have learned to focus on, work through and it continues to allow me to see things through a completely different lens of life. There has been and a continued sense and feeling of freedom because there are no longer any time restrictions. When we shed ourselves of those restrictions it is quite the change in how much we are able to accomplish, and how much less stress we create for ourselves because we aren’t constantly thinking about time, time and more time. It became a shift from a focus on time to a focus on life and it continues to make life so much more enjoyable and so much more full. Truly a blessing in itself.

God bless,

Brian 👐🏻

Day 4218 (Don’t waste your time with explanations)

People often hear what they want to hear. Although I have improved a lot in this area, I still find myself explaining things when I don’t have to. I love to talk, I love to listen, and I truly believe there is a time and a place for giving an explanation and it isn’t something just anyone in our lives should be entitled to. I’ve done a lot of reflecting to see where this bad habit comes from and I think about being a kid and always getting into trouble and being asked what I was doing, so I’d made sure to do my very best to explain myself regardless of how ridiculous it sounded. The other place it comes from is from a validation perspective. I would find myself giving explanations to everyone to see how they would react, what they would say, and usually act accordingly based on those responses. This was me giving far too much control to others over myself and allowing their thoughts and opinions dictate mine. I became hyper focused on simply fitting in, and I gave up a big chunk of myself to do so. This led to a lot of disappointment because I was in my head, and I always felt like I wasn’t doing enough to satisfy others and at the same time I was always leaving myself and my needs out in the cold.

As I continue on in my recovery I can see progress, and I continue to use that as a source of motivation when it comes to improving. Life happens, I get that, but once we are able to identify this parts of our lives we are able to take action and change them. This is one of those instances where I can use one of my favorite expressions and that is “Rome wasn’t built in a day, but they put in the work every day” — I added the last part awhile back because it’s not as if they just willed it to being built, it’s about getting our hands dirty, and being right in the middle of it so we can continue to build and live our lives to the fullest.

God bless,

Brian 👐🏻

Day 4217 (sobriety has given me everything I have ever wanted)

I had this idea in my head for so long of what I thought a full life looked like. It’s truly amazing what we see when we cloud our minds with drugs and alcohol. During that time I was able to find any and every excuse as to why I was doing what I was doing. It wasn’t just that, it was also something that I continued to push on myself and others. I remember so many nights telling myself that was what I wanted, and the justification became easier and easier being the son of an alcoholic/addict so I just did my best to lean into the biology and use that as the reason why I was on the path that I was. There were moments of sobriety and moments of clarity through those 9 years of drinking and using and those moments were always when I felt best. I knew that. It wasn’t about not wanting to feel good, it was more about knowing that choosing that life permanently meant a lot more personal responsibility which I didn’t want any part of. If I stayed on the path I was on, I felt like I could get away with anything because I just didn’t care. Throughout my recovery I have learned a lot and will continue to. One thing that will always stand out is that caring is cool. We should always care about our well being, and what we are doing to help ourselves in those all important areas.

God bless,

Brian 👐🏻

Day 4216 (life changing)

There is an expression that has been on my mind lately and it’s “the days are long but the years are short” which had me thinking of my perspective on what that quote means to me. During my times of reflection I look back at the times when it felt like days took forever, and in the same thought think of how crazy it is those long days were already 11.5+ years ago when I was in active addiction. Hindsight is always 20/20, but those moments of not doing anything with my life consistently motivate me to make sure I am pushing myself to have and experience life changing moments in my recovery and in my life overall. Throughout my recovery I’ve struggled with feeling inadequate and undeserving of good simply because of the way I treated others as well as myself. That thought has definitely improved and increased as I’ve gotten further along in my recovery but old habits die hard. I’ve talked a lot recently about language and how we talk to ourselves and about ourselves and that has and continues to play a big role in the progress I am making in that area of my life.

There is a lot of GOOD right now, and I am finding myself embracing it which is something that is a result of the way I am talking to myself in all of those daily internal conversations. The big things are moving in with the girl of my dreams, and there is so much I love about her, and the one thing that stands out the most to me is the fact that she genuinely cares for me. It means the world to me as she does. Secondly, I interviewed last week for an internship and was offered the job during the interview. Working in the field of Addiction Counseling is something that I know is my calling and what I am supposed to be doing so this moment for me was a huge next step in getting to serve others and offer my experiences to hopefully let others see that life changing moments are possible and that we are all capable of them … if we choose to commit to them, do them and follow through with everything we have to we will ultimately see those results show up in our lives.

God bless,

Brian 👐🏻

Day 4215 (Unless we change our values and ideas, we will continue to experience discontentment)

One of the things I reflect on the most in my recovery has to be values and ideas. It’s funny in a way to look back and see who and what I valued so much and it always leaves me asking why. This is the big part of why I continue to write, and continue to make sure I investigate my past. Going back to those places in reflection has given me such a wonderful sense of understanding that it has allowed me to learn and to grow from those moments. Being able to pinpoint certain bad behaviors and use that knowledge in the present moment continues to work wonders for me and my life. It has been essential that I continue to ask myself questions, and to see my views through the eyes and mind I had back then. As blurry as it was, as many substances as I was on, at the end of the day it was what I wanted and it was me making all of those choices and decisions. That was a hard truth for me because I really didn’t like taking personal responsibility or accountability for anything that I said or did. By finally holding myself responsible and accountable I was able to see how different life could be. In those times it was easy to blame everyone and everything else. It was a lot of “how could they do that” and “what did I do to deserve this” as if I played no role in it at all. I’ve talked about this a lot but it rings true … until we admit that we are the villain in our story nothing will change. The moment I finally looked in the mirror and pointed the finger at me, the shift began.

Old habits die hard. This isn’t something that changes overnight. We can want to do something but also have to realize and accept just how much work it’s going to take to get there. I don’t know if I was aware of the amount of work it was going to be but I knew that was going to have to make it work because of the path my life was headed down. As I continue to make progress in my recovery I continue to lean into my past and learn from it. There is an old expression that says the only reason we should look back is to see how far we’ve come. I couldn’t agree more, and making those comparisons when it comes to progress can give us quite the sense of accomplishment. It’s a reminder that we can overcome and we are capable of so much more. Sometimes that’s all it takes, and that feeling will allow us to apply it to all different parts of our lives.

God bless,

Brian 👐🏻

Day 4214 (Our life is what our thoughts make it)

What I’ve learned is that we can want to do anything. We can have it all planned out, we can see what it can because but it always comes back to our thoughts. There have been plenty of times where I have talked myself out of a lot of opportunities. This took a toll on me during active addiction because I used it as an excuse to intensify my drinking and using. It played into the change of the language of enabling myself to continue to destroy both my body and my life all together. What I have come to find out is that it doesn’t matter the encouragement that comes from those who love us the most if we aren’t talking to ourselves the same way. The internal conversations we have with ourselves will always be the most important ones. For the longest time I was living in such a way that I expected everything to be done for me opposed to doing it myself. When that didn’t happen I’d slowly fade to the back of the room and eventually out the door. The example is that I started a hundred things and completed 5% of each of them opposed to focusing on one thing at a time.

In my recovery the thoughts didn’t change early on, and until that changed I knew I’d continue to walk in circles. I finally felt a shift at the end of 2019 and into 2020. I spent years of my recovery treating my sobriety like the top of the mountain opposed to the base of it. When that switch slipped everything began to change. There are still times when I doubt myself, there are still times when I feel that I am inadequate or not deserving of something but I am continuing to work on it, and continuing to focus on having those healthy internal conversations so I can continue moving forward in my life.

God bless,

Brian 👐🏻

Day 4213 (Trust your experience)

There is an old expression … “actions speak louder than words” which is something that continues to be proven over and over again. I was thinking about this and I wanted to try and change the perspective of the expression to look at our experiences over what we think we know. For as long as I can remember I’ve been very good at creating scenarios in my head and trying my best to convince myself that they are happening or going to happen. It’s funny because when we take a step back and look at our experiences, the knowledge we think we are lacking is typically right there. Obviously most situations will be different in some parts, but overall the skills we need to navigate through it will stay the same or similar. This applied to my life in active addiction as well. I knew the potential consequences from the life I was choosing to live based on my own experiences but I chose to ignore them for as long as I could. I remember saying to myself in active addiction “how could this happen” again and again even though I knew exactly why it was all happening. Until I made the choice to see the obvious, nothing was going to change in my life.

As I continue on in recovery, I’m reminded of my experiences often, and I lean on them a lot. Those experiences are a big reason I write this blog because I’m reminded in these words of who I was and what I was, and what I’ve learned along the way that continues to keep me on the right path. I have so much to be thankful for, and am really doing my best to continue to stay present, consistent and enjoy each and every moment. I know what I’ve been through, I know what I’ve lost, I know what I’ve accomplished and I know what I’ve gained. Choosing to welcome it all as part of life has been such a freeing feeling opposed to looking at the loss as a failure, I’ve decided to look at it as growth. As living.

God bless,

Brian 👐🏻

Day 4212 (begin again)

I can’t even count the number of times I’ve had to begin again. This came from trying things and failing at things, as well as trying things and walking away from them because I wanted nothing to do with the time, energy and effort that had to go into them. Looking back it was something that I was doing so I could experience the feeling of something new, and once it wore off I would go looking for the next feeling of new whether that be in something or someone. It was proof that I didn’t value anything or anyone but myself, and that led me down a very selfish path in my active use. I remember always feeling sorry for myself and wondering why things were never working out for me. It’s easy to blame everyone and everything else besides ourselves in those moments because if we blame ourselves that means we have to take on personal responsibility and accountability which takes work and work was something I was always trying to avoid. The one thing I wanted to give myself credit for during that spiral of active addiction is that I kept starting over again and again … now even though the results weren’t want I wanted, it was proof that I was able to dust myself off, stand up, and begin again. A lot of the times we are demonstrating the skills we need to do great things and make progress in life it’s just a matter of focusing that energy on the right things opposed to the wrong.

Within both my Faith and recovery begin again is something that defines it. In faith, it goes back to getting baptized in 2017, and making that decision to follow Jesus Christ on my own, and starting that relationship, one that has and continues to give me such a clear, peaceful perspective on life. When it comes to recovery, it goes back to all the times prior to this one where I made the choice to stop drinking. It doesn’t matter that it was for a few weeks or a month, it is the fact that I tried multiple times, and I kept giving it a shot. Those experiences never left my mind, and I was able to lean on them in early recovery because they were a great reminder that I can do this, and that if I put my mind to it, commit to it, I will do it. Here we are. Life will always be full of ups and downs and a wonder of what’s next. It’s important that given the opportunity we are always willing to begin again. As many times as it takes to get it right. The lessons that come along with it will be ones that we carry with us for the rest of our lives.

God bless,

Brian 👐🏻