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“Problems cannot be solved with the same mindset that created them.” ― Albert Einstein
Trying harder to do something with the same mindset that failed usually yields the same results. Addicts are not the only people who get stuck in this dilemma. Life continues to evolve. What worked yesterday may not work today. Eventually, everything changes. If you are not willing to evolve, you will get stuck in a mindset that is outdated and will contribute to why things don’t work today.
Here are a few observations that I have noticed in and around ongoing recovery.
1. Growth in any area of life requires a certain desperate recklessness. The truth is that personal growth requires a terrifying struggle at some level. Growth is not a given just because you are in recovery. In his book, The Book of Awakening, Mark Nepo described the chick inside the egg growing to a point that it has eaten all its food in its cramped quarters. It has grown to a moment in time when its growth begins to crack the shell. What once was a safe haven no longer is. What used to be will never be again. Once everything the chick has relied upon falls away, the chick claws its way through the shell and wriggles through the cracks, fragile, starving, and cramped. Once the shell falls away, the chick is born into the reality of a new world. Recovery growth is this way. Like the chick, recovery engages new principles of living and an ongoing exposure of new experiences and truths that transform life. Like the chick who struggles to burst out of its shell, recovery requires a certain desperation for you to let go and leave the only world you ever knew. This dynamic is not true just when you give up your drug of choice, but must be embraced throughout all of life, or personal growth will stagnate. Without this quiet, desperate determination, you will come to a place in your recovery where what used to be healing no longer works.
2. There is no growth without sacrifice. When I was young, surrounded by a huge family, I used to lie awake at night and wonder how I could ever survive if any of my brothers or sisters or God forbid my parents died? Now, many decades later, only a few have survived. The home I grew up in is a shambles. I had to sacrifice my dependence upon my family of origin many years ago. Countless thoughts, habits, behaviors, and beliefs had to be sacrificed for me to continue growing. There was such a pull to the past familiar conditions that had to be sacrificed in order for the magnetic draw toward destiny to be fulfilled. The truth is that yesterday’s sacred experiences are memories that cannot fulfill the need for today’s growth. They must be sacrificed in order for you to experience today’s presence of sacred growth in recovery.
3. The only way you grow in recovery is to let go. Free fall from every past experience, both the spectacular success and disappointing failure. Growth requires a certain free fall into the unknown. Easy to say, but difficult and scary to engage. Leave it all behind. Every day is a secret to personal growth. When you fail, you want to wallow in it. When you succeed, you want to hover around the aura of success. But every day is a new day—an exploration of new growth. Recovery presents an amazing balance between reckless desperation for growth experience and serenity and peace.
