Achieving Your Goals
You might not realize it, but being an addict in recovery makes you the ultimate goal-achiever. Many people who develop an addiction in their lifetime lose sight of their goals. Addiction has a way of skewing the perception of time. Too many moments are wasted by saying it will happen later, it will happen one day, it will happen eventually. Paralyzed by drugs and alcohol and the never ending search for the next hit, and being intoxicated, there is little room for achieving and accomplishing goals.
On the other hand, some people are incredibly high functioning in their addiction or alcoholism. Despite their chronic and problematic using, they are highly successful and are able to maintain an air of normalcy as they regularly set and obtain their goals.
Addiction comes with low self-esteem, even for those who are finding success while struggling with addiction. Trying and failing to stop using drugs, stop using alcohol, stop letting yourself down over and over again, whittles away at your ability to believe in yourself. What you might not realize is that you can achieve your goals if you’re an addict because you learn to achieve your goals one day at a time. and develop a lifestyle of recovery you are achieving a tremendous goal.
You Are Capable Of Making Life Changes
You can achieve your goals if you’re an addict because you learn to achieve your goals one day at a time. Every day that you stay sober from midnight to midnight, you are sober another day. Eventually, staying sober on a daily basis becomes so routine, it’s a normal part of your life, and you forget how at one point it felt like accomplishing a major goal.
The longer you stay sober, the more you will realize what you’re truly capable. One thing at a time, you are accomplishing life changes not just goals. Some days it’s the little things, like remembering to make your bed. Other days it’s bigger things, like stopping to breathe when you’re feeling overwhelmed. You develop a discipline in recovery unlike any others.
You are an addict, you struggle with the disease of addiction, which is relapsing and remitting and you act against it. The brain which is affected by addiction is not rational or normal. You experience cravings at the deepest psychological and physical level, obsessive thoughts about using, and a compulsive urge to pick up drugs or alcohol. Yet you don’t. Every day you refrain from picking up and enabling your disease. That is ultimate discipline.
You Have Gained Character Traits
You also have character traits from your addiction which you might not realize are going to support you in setting and achieving goals in recovery, even as an addict. Addicts are smart, strategic, and goal-oriented. The need to find drugs, obtain drugs, and use drugs is a goal for them and they go to great lengths to achieve. Though the intention and behaviors are in the wrong place, the momentum of that process is a life skill that can be used to good.
Addiction is not debilitating once you learn how to live with it in recovery. The hard work you will do in treatment and every day of your life in recovery is an empowering experience that will set you up for success.
Lakehouse Recovery Center wants to help you realize your potential in recovery. Our residential treatment programs help men and women find healing in their minds through therapy, their bodies through healing modalities, and their spirits by learning how to have fun again without drugs and alcohol. For information or to schedule a tour, call us today: 877.762.3707