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Speaker 2You know when you're having one of those weeks where just nothing seems to be going in your direction? That's happening to me. I'm in the middle of it right now. Things are not going my way. And guess what? I don't need to drink over it and neither do you. This is part of the process. Life is happening and I'm accepting life on life's terms. I am doing the next right thing despite the circumstances in my life. Showing up, continuing to do this podcast, posting on social media when the results aren't what I think they should be. Same with this podcast. We've got a lot of new listeners that are checking in these days and I appreciate every single one of you. I just want to say that. Thank you for showing up, continuing to show up, sending me messages, commenting. I appreciate every and I read every single one of them. Today I want to talk about resistance and what is resistance? Essentially to me resistance is anything that is in my way of getting to my goal. It's from a high level. It's that simple. I'm going to talk about the different forms of resistance today and there's about four of them that I'm going to talk about. No, five of them I'm going to talk about. But essentially resistance is usually self-imposed but it's anything that is blocking me from getting to my destination, my goal, blocking me from recovery. Blocking me from growth. Usually self-imposed like I said but there can be external resistance for health reasons. There can be external resistance from circumstances that are out of our control that are blocking us from getting to that goal. But I'm going to talk about all of them. I'm going to talk about how to get through it. What does resistance look like? Why does it matter in the frame and context of recovery and how to push through? We're not going around things in recovery. We're not going over. We're going through them. We're pushing through them despite our feelings, despite how I feel about the CRA not giving me my refund and telling me I actually owe them money, not accepting my medical receipts. Out of my control. I can do the next right thing. I can try to move through it and look for other ways to get through it like I said but there's a lot of things out of my control. There's a lot of things out of your control in your life today. So what can I do instead? How can I shift perspective, perception to get the things done that I need to and acceptance is the answer to all my problems. That's a tough one to swallow but it's true. I don't need to be okay with it. I don't need to agree with it but the quicker I move into acceptance, the better my life gets, the quieter my head gets and at the end of the day, I just want peace, man. That's it. I want peace. I want peace of mind. I want quiet. I don't want circumstances to go my way although I do but at the end of the day, how can I just let the things roll off my shoulders? How can I be in that state where things aren't bothering me, where I'm not reacting? I'm responding. So let's get into it. Welcome back to Recovering Out Loud. I'm Anthony. I'm an alcoholic and an addict. If you don't know who I am, I am studying to be an addictions counselor halfway through. Been in recovery since 2015. I relapsed after seven and a half years. Now I'm back almost a year and a half sober, clean again and I'm grateful that I didn't die. I'm grateful that I made it back here. I'm grateful that I'm able to show up and do this podcast. So I want to talk about a specific moment with regards to resistance where I sort of noticed these things happening. I'm going to talk about a specific moment where I sort of noticed these things happening. I'm going to talk about a specific moment with regards to resistance where I sort of noticed these things happening in my life. You're at a meeting or you're listening to a recovery podcast or you're listening to a recovery speaker or you're online on Instagram researching recovery, how to get through this or how to get sober or whatever. And you find yourself in research mode instead of recovery mode where you're sort of just looking for information and you're not changing anything. You're not taking any action. I've been here many times. I'm I've been here many times. I've been here many times. I've been here many times. I've been here many times. I've been here many times. I've been here many times. I've been here many times. I've been here many times. I'm going out with people instead of going to that meeting or I am putting other things above. I'm prioritizing other things above my recovery. Resistance can look like that too. And if you've ever done that, don't worry. I'm not here to shame you. You're not a bad recovery person. You're not failing. This is just a reminder that resistance can take many forms and I'm going to talk about them. So five forms of resistance that hide in place. The ones that don't get caught because they don't look like resistance. They can disguise themselves like I said. Resistance one, the unsexy work. You're wanting transformation without the boring inputs. Sleep, water, calls returned, answering the phone, calling the newcomer, going to that meeting, eating before noon. The stuff nobody puts in a reel or a video on YouTube. It's just the boring, unwatched, quiet stuff. The do things, the reading, your books in the morning, the meditation practice, the prayer, the stuff that nobody sees but that moves the needle little by little. So you would rather write a two-hour journal entry about how you're stuck before you'll just go to bed at a reasonable hour. The simple things. The unsexy work feels too small to matter. It feels insignificant when you're doing it or when you're thinking about it. It feels like you're not doing enough. So you skip it and you reach for something that feels like growth. A book, a workshop, a book that you're not doing enough a deep conversation, anything but the boring four things. The boring four things being sleep, water, and calls returned, connection, going to a meeting, eating before noon, recovery stuff, meditation, prayer, or whatever your routine looks like. Those routine things that aren't fun, not sexy, but they work. They move the needle. Progress, not perfection. I like to think of it as like a rocket ship. When NASA, and I'm not smart, I'm not trying to be smarty or pretend when somebody, when NASA launches a rocket into space, they do such incremental shifts in the trajectory of the rocket that over time will benefit the rocket greatly. So one degree at launch angle changes into maybe 30 degrees down the road, 30,000 miles from here, if that makes sense. So I'm making the small changes in the beginning to get the great outputs, the great results in the end. I'm not sure what that's going to look like. I'm not sure what that's going to look like, but I'm doing the small things in the beginning. So why does this stuff matter? Why does it outlive the drink, outlive the drug? Addiction was a high intensity solution for us. Big swings, big crashes, big meaning. Recovery is mostly low intensity, boring, unsexy, on purpose, work. The wiring rebels against boring. So the boring things that I talked about, why do they matter? Well, sleep, food, water, one human contact a day, talking to a new alcoholic or addict or anyone in your life. Those aren't dialed in. Nothing else matters. If my routine isn't dialed in, for me, it's reading the book in the morning. It's prayer. It's meditation, following a guided meditation app. If I don't have those things dialed in, I can't have the rest of my recovery program working. I can't be the man I want to be. Gym is another one. Working out. I can't believe I forgot that. Running for me. Resistance too. Slowing down. So the move is you're staying busy as the new numb. Your productivity has become your new drug. If you don't stop moving, you don't have to feel anything. If I just focus on filling my calendar and moving and being active, doing things, I don't have time to think about my emotions. I don't have time to feel. I don't have time to think about how shitty it is or whatever. To deal with that underlying issue, that underlying emotion, that underlying pain. I'll just stay busy all the time because now I'm worth it. If I'm busy, I feel like I am contributing to society. I am important. I am part of society. I'm part of the community. I'm part of the community. I'm part of the community. I've had weeks of my recovery where every hour was scheduled. Work, gym, podcast content, calls, errands, and called it productive until I realized I hadn't been alone with myself in like 11 days. When was the last time you did some kind of self-care activity? For me, it's going to the movie theater by myself or watching a movie somewhere else. When was the last time I just sat with myself, went for a walk by myself? I have to schedule that in now. I have to make it a point. I have to make it intentional to include that in part of my recovery. The trick here is busy looks healthy. Busy looks like the opposite of using. Busy gets praised. Everybody gives you an attaboy and a way to go. You're productive. Two jobs? Nice. This guy's got it going on. Nobody texts you concerned because you're working too much. Why does it outlive the drink or drug? Drinking was a way to skip the uncomfortable parts of being a person. Sober, you need a new skip button. Busy is the most socially rewarded one available. So, what helps me is scheduling blank space, 30 minutes, putting it in my calendar, no phone, no agenda. If that 30 minutes feels unbearable, that's the diagnosis right there. Resistance three, resistance dressed as preparation. So, the move is consuming recovery content as a substitute for doing recovery. Reading the book about boundaries instead of implementing or having the boundary conversation, the difficult conversation. Listening to the podcast about hard talks instead of having the hard talk. So, this is to the person can name six podcasts on attachment styles, but you haven't called the person you owe a call back in three weeks. I'm guilty of this all the time, man. I'm terrible at answering calls. I'm terrible at answering texts. I got to work on it. The trick here is it feels like work. You're learning, you're growing, you're doing the work in quotations, but the work isn't the input. The work is the action the input is supposed to lead to. The work isn't the input. The work is the action the input is supposed to lead to. This is a program of action. I always say that. We can't think our way into recovery or think our way into good actions. We have to act. And if that means pretending at first, faking it till you make it, I'm all for it, man. Take action. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm doing it anyways. I've done that many times. This guy told me it would work to stay sober, so I'm going to do it. Why does it outlive the drink? So addiction taught us, taught a lot of us to confuse intensity with progress. Reading hard things, feeling them deeply, sitting with them, and then doing it. And I think that's the key to success. That's the intensity. Doing the small, concrete, uncomfortable action. That's progress. It's easy to mistake one for the other. So what helps me here is the one action test. Before I consume one piece of recovery content, what's the one uncomfortable, concrete thing I'm avoiding? Let's do that first. And I'm not perfect. Let's be honest. There's a lot of stuff I'm avoiding in recovery. Calling people when I should be calling them. Going to more recovery events. Getting outside my house. Getting over my isolation and just, showing up to things. Planning things. Being social. A social aspect of my life sucks right now. And I'm working on it. Resistance for good things. So the move is sabotaging. And I have a whole episode on self-sabotage. Go check it out. Self-sabotage. Why do we self-sabotage in recovery? I go into detail in that episode. But self-sabotaging when life starts working. You pick a fight. You skip the thing you said you don't, you do. You disappear for a week. You watch Netflix for two days straight. It doesn't always look big. Sometimes it's just letting a good thing rot through neglect. The trick here is that chaos was home for a lot of us. Stability feels like wearing someone else's clothes. It's uncomfortable. I don't know stability because I'm so used to being here for so long at the top of the, at the graph. And I'm so used to being at the bottom of the graph that being in the middle, being comfortable is so uncomfortable for me. Your nervous system reads calm as wrong. Error. Why does this outlive the drink? Addiction trained you for crisis. Crisis was the baseline. Without crisis, the baseline goes quiet. And the quiet feels suspicious. Uncomfortable. So a part of that you starts manufacturing the next crisis to get back to known territory. I like crisis. This is comfortable. Chaos is comfortable. I'm going to rock the boat here. What helps for me is naming it out loud when I notice it. So I'm in a good stretch and I'm trying to find a reason to ruin it. Things are going too well. This can't, it's got to come to an end soon. This is too good to be true. You ever said that before? The minute you say it out loud, it loses some of its grip. Five, the final resistance I'm going to talk about today. Being seen. So keeping recovery surface level. Telling the story you've told a hundred times because the new, tender, fresh thing, the thing you're actually struggling with right now is too raw to put into words. You've told the rock bottom story so many times, it doesn't feel like yours anymore. Meanwhile, the thing you've been white knuckling this month, you haven't told anyone. Not your sponsor, not your sponsor, not your sponsor, not your sponsor, not your sponsor, not your sponsor, not your sponsor, the pretender in recovery that I talk about in that episode about which are you member, attender or pretender. I'm not getting current. If you find yourself in recovery places, if I find myself in recovery meetings, places with other people sharing about my past too much, and I'm not getting current, I'm not sharing about this financial insecurity that I'm going with. I'm not complaining. I'm sure it sounds like I'm complaining. I'm probably complaining. Sorry about that. If I don't share about the stuff that I'm going through, I'm never going to get through it because it's going to live in my head as, oh, this is too hard to get over. You're never going to get through this. There's a difference between complaining about my problems and talking about them to look for solutions. I want to live in the solution today. I have lived in the problem for far too long in my life. I still can live in the problem for far too long. Let's move into the solution. Put the magic magnifying glass on the solution. Stop focusing on the problem. Look at the forest instead of the tree. What do I have good going on in my life today? What can I do that is positive instead of looking at all the problems? We all have problems. We all have circumstances. My perception is the problem here. I don't have any real problems today. I have an issue with perception. I'm looking at things with the glass always being half empty. The trick with this one is because you're talking about recovery, you're saying, you're quoting the book, you're talking the talk. It feels like you're being seen, but you're not. You're performing recovery. I've done this many times. It feels like you're performing what recovery, and that's the difference. Am I performing or am I doing? Am I actually practicing integrity? When nobody is looking, am I doing the right thing? The small, little, insignificant, seemingly insignificant, right thing. Why it outlives the drink. Using was for a lot of us a way to be in the room without being in the room. Sober. The Polish story does the same job. Looks like presence, functions like absence. If I keep telling you that I overcame this terrible thing, that I overcame this terrible thing, that I overcame this terrible thing, I keep telling you that this is how I got through this thing. That can be beneficial to a lot of people, but not yourself. If I'm continuing, if I'm continuing to tell the story of how I triumphed said circumstance, said hurdle, I am not actually getting current. I need to talk about what I'm going through right now, not how I got through that thing two weeks ago. That's beneficial to a lot of people. Don't get me wrong. But if I'm not getting current in my recovery, if I'm not telling you that I am just thinking about money every single day, and I'm scared, I'm going to lose my house and I'm scared. My wife's going to leave me and I'm scared of whatever that thing is. My fears. If I'm not getting current, if I'm not journaling about that every single night, which some nights I do and some nights I don't, if I'm not putting an inventory, a daily inventory together and getting open and honest with myself and looking for solutions to move through it, asking for help, I'm fucked, man. I'm fucked. That is a good barometer. To know where you're at in recovery. Are you getting current? Are you talking about what's currently going on? Or are you just letting resistance run the show? I'll do it next week. I'll do it the week after that. The best part about this is it's so easy to jump back on the horse, to get through resistance. It's a lot harder when you relapse to come back in. I always say that. Catch it while you're in the middle of it. You never know. You share openly about something that you're struggling with currently, it might save someone else's life. Somebody else might have the answer to it. If you're struggling with divorce right now or separation, you share about it at a recovery space or with someone you trust, they might have an answer for you. They might have another way through that resistance. Get open, get honest. It helps me every single time I do. And it's hard. It's uncomfortable. I don't want people to know that I'm not perfect. I don't want people to know that I have struggles. The more I share about it, the better my life gets. Today, I have a lot of resistance in my life. I have a lot of resistance specifically to plans, to going out to do things. Whenever I always talk about this, but whenever I talk about this, I always talk about this. Whenever I see something in my calendar that doesn't directly benefit me, my brain is like, oh, that's going to suck. I'm telling this story. I'm spinning this movie about how I don't want to go to that thing. And I spend so much time trying to get out or avoid or pour me self-pity, sad situations that I could just be accepting it and being present in the moment. It takes me out of the moment when I am suffering. I'm just suffering because I'm thinking about myself and how I don't want to do this thing later when I could just be accepting it and praying, asking for help to look at how I can bring something to the situation instead of what can I get from it? What can I bring to the meeting instead of what can I take from it? The more I am a giver in my life today over a taker, the better my life is. If I can show up and give, bring good conversation to the scenario, bring good vibes, good energy to whatever environment I am going to, whatever plans I have, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. That is a better way to live. And I am happier that way because I get, if I give without expectation, I receive without limitation. Think about that for a moment. What can I bring to this scenario instead of, man, this is going to suck. I have to do this. I have to go to this thing. And oh my God, poor me. I can't believe, how do I get out of this? That's suffering. That is the definition of suffering for me. Remember pain times resistance is suffering. So pain times pain is going to happen in my life. I'm going to experience pain. Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. How much suffering, how much resistance, sorry, how much resistance am I applying to this pain? That is fully in your control. Am I sitting in it and crying about it? It doesn't mean that you don't get to grieve over sad scenarios or feel sad, feel sad, but don't sit in it. Look how I can get through the resistance instead of let it control my life and run the show and take over and drive the bus. Usually how can I be of service is the best answer to all problems, but I get it. It's tough. I don't always want to help people. I'd rather sit in my shit and complain about it because don't you know, the world revolves around me and poor me and oh my God, I'm not going to be able to get through this. Nobody else has to suffer through this. Pain times resistance is suffering. Look at the resistance in your life today. Look at how I can reduce that resistance because it completely is up to you. Resistance is 100% in your control when it comes to your life. to pain and suffering, how can I practice The sooner I can practice acceptance and move into surrender, the less I'm going to suffer. If you're not following the podcast yet, please like, follow, subscribe, send this to a friend. I appreciate every single one of you. If no one's told you this yet today, I love you, man. I love you. Recovery is simple, not easy.
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