Reframing - Full Description Page 1

Life Has Guarantees?

It's said that during our lifetime, "the only guarantees are death and taxes." And while that may be true, there's another guarantee in life and it's something that's really important for people in recovery. And it's this: No matter what you do, no matter how "good" you are, no matter who you surround yourself with, and no matter how hard you try to make it different, when all is said and done, you have limited control over what happens in your life.

And it's true. You can have all the money in the world, or you can be so pure and good-hearted that they want to make you a Saint - but it doesn't matter, you're still going to experience events in your life that are negative, things that are unfair and outcomes that you don't deserve. And unless you hide under the covers of your bed for the rest of your life, you're going see injustice, you're going witness tragedy and you're going to see lousy things happen to other people that don't deserve it either.

To put it bluntly, some days on the road ahead are going to absolutely suck, and the reality is that there's a limited amount you can do to control what that. You have to accept the good and the bad, and that's called "living life on life's terms." And no matter what philosophy of recovery you embrace, if you expect to maintain your recovery, and for that matter, your sanity, “living life on life's terms” is not optional, or a friendly "suggestion," it's mandatory.

In fact, trying to change the world to suit us is what drove most of us into addiction in the first place. Our lives and existence started to look ugly and hopeless and that made us feel both anxiety at certain times, and depression at other times. And because we couldn't change what was happening or had happened, we decided to use alcohol, drugs, or some compulsive behavior to avoid it, escape it, or change the way we felt about it. Simply stated, since we couldn't change life, we started using something that changed the way we felt about life, even if it was only for a few hours. And let's be perfectly honest - for a while it worked just fine. For a while.

So now we're in recovery and one thing has changed, which is that we know we can no longer use artificial ways to change our mood and how we feel about life because eventually, it takes over. What starts out as the solution to the problem, eventually becomes the problem. And we've learned that we have to "live life on life's terms," and there's just no way around that. And living life on life's terms is what "re-framing" is all about. That’s because while you have limited control over what life throws at you, if you have the right tools, you have almost unlimited control over how you can make yourself feel about it.

Knowing how to "re-frame" things is the enormous difference between being in a positive, and empowered state of mind most of the time, and being in a negative and weakened state of mind almost all the time. It's about taking greater control in the area of your existence and life where you actually have some control, and that's your thinking.