meaningfulness Archives | Genius Recovery

READ IT TO ME: Click Play To Listen To This Post

“Two Roads diverged in a wood,

I took the one less traveled,

And that has made all the difference.”

– Robert Frost

An addict contemplating recovery sees only two options. It is either use or die with craving. Addicts don’t usually die with cravings but they habitually succumb to acting out. In the beginning days of recovery, addicts are poor at creating options. They come from an either/or, black/white world. They either use or obsess about using until the craving has subsided.

People live with shame and pain. They live disconnected from their inner self. Most of us long for connection. Mindlessly, we listen to the radio or to a podcast when driving. Aimlessly, we scroll texts, emails, and a host of social media platforms disengaged and lost in the spectacle of it all. For an addict, any reason is a good reason to use. In recovery, creating options to using requires that you take the road less traveled. There are no shortcuts. There is no room for perfection. It requires a willingness to endure painful moments, relentless perseverance, and a commitment to being a little better today than you were yesterday.

Along the road, there will be a dawning that you are a spiritual being having a human experience. This will transform your struggle into sacred meaningfulness. This awareness is hallowed throughout 12-step rooms across the world. Carl Jung once concluded that what chronic addicts needed was a spiritual experience and ongoing communal support.

Most addicts in recovery settle for sobriety. Certainly, it beats the hell out of wallowing in the pain and distortion from a life lived in the agony of addictive behavior. Yet, few engage the worn road less traveled. Once you have put the cork in the bottle, what is next? Are you willing to go deeper? Are you willing to explore what is missing? Are you curious to understand why the addiction? Why the pain? Do you want to address that feeling in your gut that you are not good enough? These questions and more represent the gateway to a worn road less traveled. To those who have committed to sobriety and who are no longer content to rotate the object of addiction, I offer the following road markers on the worn road less traveled.

1. Adopt a mindset for recovery: Practice brainstorming more than one option for every challenge you face. Breakthrough the either/or mentality. Change your language about how you see yourself and the world around you. Dare to dream about creating the kind of person you want to be. Figure out what your song is and sing it. The expedition in recovery truly begins when you earnestly are willing to truly change your mindset about addiction, yourself, and the world around you.

2. Become a Sponge: What has helped me to be successful in my world of endeavor is that I became a sponge to learn everything I could to be the best I could be. I was a minister in a church for over 25 years. During the beginning days of my training, I worked for three years for free, with whom I thought was the very best. I asked so many questions that the lead pastor asked me to stop asking so many questions. Today I am proud that I learned to be a sponge in ministry and as a professional counselor. That said, it saved my life in recovery. Early in recovery, I adopted the mindset of learning everything I could about recovery. It is one of the fundamentals that has projected my personal growth during the past 33 years in recovery. Be a sponge!

3. Learn to fail forward: People who embrace a healthy recovery mindset create a paradigm shift in their thinking about failed behavior. They make it exciting. They realize that within their failure are lessons to learn that will help them become a little better today than they were yesterday. Rather than wallow in the mud of shame and negative thinking, they practice conditioning themselves to pursue a better way to live. They learn to transform the word excitement from a necessary feeling to a committed action of exploring what went wrong and doing something different.

4. Practice Playback: This road marker is related to the previous one. When an addict relapses, it is common to admit the destructive behavior and then get back on the horse and try again. It is often brushed off with the idea that “I’m an addict” and what needs to happen is that I just need to bear down with my recovery skills. Sometimes, they commit to going to 90 meetings in 90 days or start again doing the 12 steps. What often is overlooked is the importance of playback. When addicts admit their failure to their support community, what is left out is why they relapsed and what happened. What often is overlooked is the importance of playback. It is crucial to go back and unpack what happened and where the breakdown was. A golfer will learn to improve his/her swing by watching videos of past swings. A basketball player will learn where they were out of position and how to correct other mistakes by watching past videos of performances. A recovering addict needs to do the same. Go back and fastidiously review triggers, build-up behaviors, and mistaken beliefs that dominated and then practice over and again replacement behavior that corrects what broke down. We never become perfect. But playback will help you become incrementally better than before. So, practice playback and pay it forward with an incremental positive change that over time will make a profound difference.

5. Protect your imagination and get outside your comfort zone: It is counterintuitive for an addict to embrace discomfort. Running from emotional and physical pain is at the root of why addiction grows in the first place. Though contraindicated, in recovery an addict learns to lean into the pain and sit with it. Recovery requires that you get outside your comfort zone. Only when you do this, are you able to give birth to the person that your destiny is pulling you toward. The worn road less traveled demands that you live outside your comfort zone. This is where the problem is. Once sober from the hectic helter-skelter life of addiction and within the warm and friendly confines of a 12-step community, an addict is asked to push toward living outside of his/her comfort zone. It requires sensitivity to the support of the community while pushing forward to dream and realize your destiny. In doing so you must protect your imagination from the negative messages of “you can’t” or “who do you think you are.” You must protect your imagination from the impact of your personal failures or others who subtly want to pull you back into an old mindset. It is a road less traveled for those who live outside their comfort zone. Laying it on the line and pushing the boundaries of your comfort zone will require a commitment to being the best person you can be one day at a time. Sometimes you will take 2 steps forward and then 3 steps backward. Everyone slips even as they soar. Overcome your setbacks by doing the next right thing regardless of how you feel. You won’t think your way into acting differently. You will act your way into a different way of thinking. Don’t abandon your quest to fulfill your imagination. Stop flogging yourself with negative messages. Every positive thought and action will move you closer to your desired transformation. The worn road less traveled requires that you protect your imagination and live outside your comfort zone.

6. Choose your support community carefully and elevate those around you: One of the biggest challenges for an addict is to create an environment that fosters sobriety and personal growth. Most addicts have not surrendered to recovery behavior and hang around old friends who either influence them to return to addictive behavior or who thwart their vision of fulfilling their destiny. Like the old saying, “Hang around the barbershop long enough and you will get a haircut”, many addicts can testify to the reality of this powerful truth! The worn road less traveled in recovery will require that you weed out those who bring you down. You will need to distance yourself from the dream crushers around you. Don’t let them rent premium space in your mind. Foster a web of influence that will inspire you to achieve and transform yourself and hold you accountable to your imagination. Build an environment where half-assed efforts are unacceptable. Cultivate your brilliance by choosing a support community that expects greatness within. Create a support system that you can solicit counsel from those who will inspire you. Always know that on the worn road less traveled, life transformation is a team sport.

When I wrote the book Dare to Be Average, Cultivating Brilliance in the Commonplace the emphasis was the opposite of half-hearted living. Rather, it is about taking the worn road less traveled and embracing the common everyday moment—even those that provide emotional discomfort—and mining meaningfulness from each one. This pursuit of meaningfulness is required in recovery for those who choose the worn road less traveled.

“We are less than a speck in the vast universe and beyond, and yet an unrepeatable miracle in the universe–If you cannot connect to this reality you will live a disillusioned life.”— KW

Once I toured a home owned by a friend that was massive. It had several thousand square feet of almost anything you could imagine. As the owner gave me his personal tour, we came to a large bedroom that was in a remote area of the house. I said to him “I bet you have never been in this room before.” He said “You’re right”. He essentially spent his time in three rooms: his massive master bedroom, his bathroom, and the kitchen where his chef made his food.

There is just so much space you can occupy as a human being. Even when you want a large footprint, you cannot be everywhere at once. It has been my experience that the older you get, your world begins to shrink and you need less space. You stop wanting to manage the demands of upkeep. The idea of living in multiple homes becomes a hassle. It is no longer peaceful but triggers inner discord and disharmony. So you downsize–or maybe the better description would be right size.

Possessions and ownership are interesting concepts about life. We think we own the land that we took from Native Americans. We think we have proprietary rights to property and own the possessions we have. Technically and legally we do in the here and now. Yet, in reality, we don’t own anything. Someday, sooner or later, we will give it all back. Some entity will take over assets, property, investments, and positions of power that you once thought were yours. You and I will fade into the annals of time, never to be remembered. Some day the land our forefathers fought for will be occupied by other people. It could be a new generation of Native Americans who retake possession of our land! Possessions are transitory. Someday the Grim Reaper will unceremoniously call your name and announce you are done on this earth. Your body will become the vegetative fungus that feeds the plant life and your spirit will be a part of the uncertainty of afterlife. In the end, you will not own anything.

Here are some observations that recovery living offers about possessions:

1. Relinquish, release, and refocus: Letting go of the treasures of life is its own treasury. The dearest things in life cannot be owned, but only shared. You might own your car, your vacation property, and your electronic devices. Yet, you cannot own the love or the energy of life that flows through your heart and makes life meaningful. Relinquish your grip on making things “mine” and the secret desire to get what others have. Release your clasp to fame and fortune that will fade and rust. Refocus and make good use of the possessions you have. Prioritize giving yourself as a benefit for the next generation.

2. The here and now is all you have: Gurus and philosophers have reflected for centuries on the importance of the present moment. Current guru Eckhart Tolle emphasizes this in his best-selling book, The Power of Now. The capacity to reflect upon the past and to plan for the future is unique to our species. Soren Kierkegaard wrote that “Life is meant to be lived forward but can only be understood backward”. While true, all we can be is in the here and now. Storing possessions for future pleasure or living in the memory of past glories only creates an illusion of detachment from the present moment.

3. Connecting to everyday experiences in life transforms your perspective about your possessions. To live relentlessly in the small everyday experiences creates great strength. It won’t be all of your possessions that inspire but the everyday acts of love that create meaningfulness in life. Mother Teresa framed everyday acts of love in this way, “Sometimes you think that what you are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.” Possessions shrink in importance in the presence of practicing acts of love. The changes in your life that you aspire will not be manifested by prioritizing your possessions. They will become visible in obscure places where you practice acts of kindness. They will likely become transformative and evidenced in the generations that follow. Like an old Native American reflection, “You must teach your children that the ground beneath their feet is the ashes of your grandfathers, so that they will respect the land. Tell your children that the earth is rich with the lives of our kin. Teach your children what we have taught our children, that the earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. If men spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves.” The power of perspective about things we possess come from reflections about the past. Future aspirations toward love and peace germinate from the common experiences of everyday living.

Connect To The Conversation

Are you making the most of your recovery?

Take our short quiz and find out.