Addiction Treatment Centers | Focus on the Important Stuff in Early Recovery

Focus on the Important Stuff in Early Recovery

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It’s important to focus on the important stuff in early recovery.

Sometimes we can get so overwhelmed with all sorts of different suggestions, that it can be difficult to prioritize in early recovery.

For example, you might get clean and sober and attend an AA or NA meeting.  There, you will most likely hear a LOT of suggestions for how to stay clean and work a proper recovery.

Some of the suggestions seem like they are conflicting though.  Everyone is genuinely trying to help you, and give you some good direction, but it can become overwhelming.  At the same time, one of their suggestions is to “keep it simple,” and another suggestion is “Easy does it.”  These phrases seem contradictory in the face of a complex program with dozens of suggested actions for you to take.  You might hear things like:

“Get a sponsor and call them every day for the first 30 days.”

“Start writing in the steps.”

“Get some recovery literature and read it every day.”

“Go to 90 meetings in 90 days and don’t use in between.”

And so on.  These suggestions are just the tip of the iceberg, there are actually a lot more out there!  So how can we know exactly what we should be focusing on?  We need to find a way to prioritize.

<h3>The solution: focus on what is truly important</h3>

What you might want to do is sit down and figure out what is most important for YOU in YOUR recovery.

This will be a bit different for each person.  Then, write down the single most important thing for your recovery at the top of a sheet of paper.  When I did this exercise, I wrote down:

“Physical abstinence.”

That was the most important thing for my recovery today–to not pick up a drink or a drug.  That is number one for me.

Then, figure out what the second most important thing is for you.  For me, this happened to be “spiritual connection.”  So I try to do a few things each day to focus on this spiritual connection with my higher power, and thus cultivate that relationship.

You can keep going down the list and adding things in order of importance.  Some people might have “sponsorship” at the top of their list, whereas for me, that was down near the bottom (not so important).  It all depends on what you need to help YOU stay clean and sober.

For more information on this, you might want to check out how you should focus on your recovery.

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