Focus on ME!

“Live always gets better when you treat yourself better.”

Robert Holden, Be Happy

   Focus is important to recovery. We must learn to turn our focus from outside ourselves to inside ourselves. Our focus must be on us: on caring for ourselves, on meeting our own needs and on being responsible for our own happiness.

   This is a rough adjustment for most addictive persons because we have used our addictions— to other people, places and things— as a means of escaping ourselves. Every time we “act-out” we are refusing to face ourselves and to care for our own needs.

   We are very comfortable with the idea that someone or something else should meet our needs, even though we now know that this very idea is insanity. No one can fix or rescue us. We must become willing to do that. And we can do it. First, We can learn to focus on our feelings. Emotions are the internal barometer of a human being. They tells us what we need to know about ourselves and what we need to do to fix our inner-problems.

   For example, if we are feeling anxious at work we need to first be aware of the feeling. We need to identify it by saying to ourselves “I feel anxious right now.” Then we need to tell ourselves “And that’s OK.” We need to accept what we are feeling and ask it what it is trying to tell us. Our anxious feeling is most likely an internal cry for help, and it’s probably trying to tell us we need to be open to accepting more help from others. We may then realize that we are working on a project that’s too big for us and that we do need to ask a coworker to assist us.

   The addictive alternative is to reach for an addictive fix, while remaining consciously unaware of what it is we are actually feeling. In this state, all we know is we don’t like how we feel and we want to be rid of the feeling. So we REACT to the feeling by hitting the vending machine, getting on the internet, going shopping on our lunch break, or downing a quick snort of liquor.

   Aside from focusing on our emotional health, in recovery we also need to focus on our physical, mental  and spiritual health.

   We need to make sure that we are keeping track of our self-talk and replacing bad self-talk with positive life affirming self-talk. We also need to be responsible for eating well and getting enough exercise, as well as visiting medical professionals when we need to do so. And we need to maintain a regular spiritual practice that keeps us connected with others and a Higher Power of our choosing.

   The more we focus on  caring for ourselves, the better our relationship with ourselves will be. And the better our relationship with ourselves is, the better our relationships with others will be.

   Good relationships with others flow naturally from a good relationship with self. So let’s start nurturing ourselves right NOW!