Speaker 1I think everybody gets to this place, but it might just be me. I came to a place in my addiction, even in my recovery as well, where I had been saying sorry so many times that it got exhausting. It got uncomfortable. All I could do was constantly mess up, it felt. And all I was doing was constantly saying sorry. All words, no action. I'm sorry. I screwed up. Nothing changed. That's not an amends. That's just guilt with a better vocabulary. So today I'm going to talk about amends and how to clean up our side of the street, how to make amends for the things we have put our family through and put ourselves through. How to make amends to yourself, forgive yourself. I talk about that at length in my forgiving yourself episode. But more importantly, I want to go through what living amends looks like and how to not just say sorry. But to actually mend the past, to actually clean your side of the street, to actually make change, to actually get trust again, to pay people back. How can I, I hear this all the time. How can I pay my parents back? I used to think this too, all the time. My parents helped me so much. My wife helped me so much. How do I pay them back? By staying sober and changing your behavior. It's really that simple. And I'm going to get into it. So welcome to Recovering Out Loud. My name is Anthony. I'm an addict and an alcoholic in recovery. I have a year and a half sober. I relapsed after seven and a half years on secrets and steroids and ADHD medication. I'm grateful to be alive today. I'm grateful to be back in recovery. If you're relapsed, I know how hard it is to come back. So I just want to say welcome back. Welcome. I'm glad you're here. Every single one of you. Thank you for listening. Thank you for being here. I started this podcast in my third treatment center. When I was sick and tired of relapsing and sick and tired of hurting the people around me and myself, I decided to start a podcast to stay sober and to help one person. Hopefully help carry the message of recovery. Those two things. That's it. What a living amends actually is. It's not a conversation. It's a commitment to behave differently. I am committing to a new way of life. I am committing to changing my actions. I'm committing to changing my perspective, my perception. So that I can be of service to the people around me, the people that I love and the people that I don't even know. I can just be a good human. Recovery is about changing my perception. It's about rewiring the way I look at the world and the way I act in the world and putting others before myself service. So the distinction here is verbal amends cleans up a specific harm. Living amends changes the pattern that caused it. I am starting to change. I'm starting over again. With a fresh slate. I am not repeating the behavior for one. Most importantly, I'm not going to repeat the behavior I exhibited in addiction. And I'm going to add other things to be of usefulness. To be returned to usefulness, to society, to my family, to myself. I am moving from taker to giver. I am done. I come into recovery. I'm done being a taker. What can I get from you? What can I get from this situation? Take, take, take, take, take. I am now moving into a giver. What can I bring to this event? What can I bring to this recovery meeting? What can I bring to this coffee date? This dinner? This outing? Whatever. What can I bring instead of what can I get out of this? That simple mindset shift alone will help you so much. I am sorry I lied to you is an amends. Becoming someone who doesn't lie is a living amends. We're changing our identity into the people. We ought to be, we're becoming ourselves. And to me, my purpose today is to be of service. That's it. It starts with that. My purpose, my direction, my calling is to help others because when I'm doing that, I am at peace with myself. I am calm, contented. I feel good. I feel a part of, I feel useful. So when is living amends the right path to take someone's someone who's died, someone where contact would cause more harm. Then good. This is when to avoid, you know, you hear a lot, if you can't make the amends directly to the person, I, to I, some people say phone calls, not enough. I don't know. I don't really have an opinion on it. I think an amends is an amends. If you can meet with somebody to make an amends, highly recommend it. Consult somebody with more sobriety time before you get into this, a sponsor or mentor. This is a powerful approach to recovery is to clean up your past, to clean up the mistakes, clean up your side of the street, leave the outcomes, their response up to the universe. It's not up to me how that person responds to my amends. Living amends is when someone, so someone's died that you've harmed someone where contact would cause more harm than good. Someone who lives in another country, maybe someone who doesn't want to hear from you actually scrapped that one. We think nobody wants to hear from us. So it's up to them. Leave it and put the ball in their court, reach out to them. Again, we're cleaning our side of the street. Amends is not for the other person. Amends is for me. Amends is for you. Clear your side of the street. Now, if somebody has a restraining order on you or an ex doesn't want to see you and has made it clear that they don't want to see you, maybe you should avoid that one, but don't use it as an excuse to skirt by responsibility here, take responsibility, make the amends. So here's the trap living amends as an escape hatch, it can become a way to avoid accountability. I'll just live differently can mean I don't want to have that hard conversation. I don't want to do this hard thing. I don't want to. I don't want to make amends. It's hard. It's uncomfortable. That person doesn't want to see me. They don't care. They don't, they blah, blah, blah. All of these stories we make up in our head, just reach out to them. It's important just to be honest with yourself. Am I avoiding this amends because it's hard work and I'm afraid of the outcome. I'm, I'm in fear of how I'll be received, or can I honestly not physically make this amends? Is this a required a living amends? Ask somebody don't just come up with the idea yourself, get a recovery. Ask every mentor, ask God, pray about it, but ask somebody, ask a human that you trust amends to yourself. So this is an underrated part of the conversation. What does it look like to stop treating yourself the way you did an active addiction? What does that look like? It's different for everybody. Maybe it's that conversation you have in your head. Maybe it's that narrative that you keep telling yourself that you're not good enough, or I'm a piece of shit, or I don't deserve nice things. What does that look like? How do you stop treating yourself the way you did an addiction? How do you treat yourself? You would your best friend. How do you treat yourself? Like you would a little kid, your little brother, your nephew, you wouldn't talk to your little kid the way you talk to yourself. So why do you talk to yourself like that? Think about it. The long game living amends has no finish line. There's no goal. There's no point to reach. You don't complete them. It's a daily thing that is done by changing your actions, by being a better person, by acting on spiritual principles. Hope, honesty, faith, humility, brotherly, love, tolerance, patience, forgiveness. How do I add these to my repertoire in the day? How do I practice these spiritual principles in all of my affairs? You're not going to be perfect at it. We are not saints. It's about progress, not perfection. So what it feels like to be in a living amends with someone, you know, I have a good example of this with my family, but especially with my wife is that person might never forgive you for what you've done to them. I mean, I'm not going to be perfect, but I'm going to be perfect for what you've done to them. I'm going to be perfect for what you've done to them in an act of addiction, but however, if you continue to show up, if you continue not to drink, if you continue to do the next right thing and work on yourself, your actions over time will speak louder than your words, your partner, your loved one, your family will see you putting in the work and they will start to trust you slowly, but surely trust is built in small moments. It doesn't happen overnight. It's built over time in small, seemingly insignificant moments. You cannot heal anyone. You have no power to heal anybody. I can't speed up the grieving process for my wife, grieving my old recovery self or grieving all the things that I did to her and the same with my family. I can't go back and change. It's already happened. What are you doing today to make sure, ensure to set the foundation so that that. Process doesn't repeat itself. It doesn't happen again. You don't have to drag them through the mud again. And don't get me wrong. You can do this in recovery too. You can drag somebody through the mud sober. I've treated people like complete garbage. Have you ever noticed that your defects of character usually come out the worst, the loudest at the people you love, because that's when your guard is down. That's when you're not, you're just completely yourself. You don't have to put on a show around your family. Hopefully you don't have to put on a show. You don't have to put on a show around your family. That's when you'll treat those people. The worst you'll snap at those people. The quickest. I always say this, but don't just judge a man or a woman based on how they are in the world, how they, how they help homeless people or how they help others, strangers judge somebody on how they are at home. How are you at home? Are you a good dad? Are you a good husband? Are you a good wife? Are you showing up and doing your best for your partner? Are you being of service to them? This is something I actively work on every day. and I fail a lot. I make mistakes all the time. wife all the time by doing things that I think would better her life or fix her pain. It doesn't work. Let it go. Focus on yourself. Be of service. Control what you can control and change the things in your daily life to be a better person, to show up. Stop looking at my phone when I'm talking to my wife, when I'm having dinner with her. Be present. Simple things that build up over time. Your family does not owe you forgiveness. Nobody owes you forgiveness. You caused a lot of pain. I caused a lot of pain in my addiction. I can never repay anybody back for that, what I did to them. What I can do is not repeat the behavior, as I said already, and live as a principled man by doing the next right thing, being of service and working on myself, changing my perception of the world. Don't confuse proximity with amends. Just showing up and being around someone isn't making amends. How are you living? Ask yourself that today. How am I living? Do I like the version of myself right now? Do other people like to be around me? Are other people complimenting how I'm acting in the world? And it's not about that. Don't get me wrong. It's not about the vanity metrics here. Ultra running shoes are all about space.
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Speaker 1It's about, do I feel like I am acting with integrity in the moments when nobody's watching? So integrity is doing the right thing when nobody is watching. Am I following my gut, my intuition, my higher power, my God? Am I following those feelings of doing the right thing? We all know, we all know, if you've been sober a bit now, you get that intuition back. You get that feeling of, oh, this is right, or this is wrong. Are you acting on those wrong feelings? Are you acting against those right feelings? I should be doing this, but I really don't want to, so I'm going to do this instead. Are you acting with integrity? Are you being, a principled person? A men's is cleaning your side of the street. It's for you, not for the other person. I had a time, I want to tell you a quick story about this one time. So in my, I don't know, I was five years sober at the time, living with my parents still. I was at my gym near my parents' house. And I'm working out one day and all of a sudden I see somebody walk in the gym who I knew from my using days, my old drug dealer, scared the shit out of me. I hadn't seen him since I got sober. It had been five years later. This guy was jacked. He was huge. on some kind of, I don't know. Anyways, he was massive. I was shitting my pants. Here's the interesting thing. My first thought was, oh my God, I got to run, get away from this. This is scary. This is uncomfortable. I'm going to relapse, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I can't be here. My very next thought, and this isn't me. This is God. In my opinion, I know deep down in my heart, this doesn't come from my brain. The next thought is go make amends to him. You owe him money. Go ask him how much money you owe him. In that moment, I swear to God, I faced my fear. I went up to him and I said, hey man, how's it going? He was so happy to see me. Now, I don't recommend this for everybody because I don't know what your relationship was like with your drug dealer. Don't just go approach your drug dealer. It might be unsafe for you. For me in that moment, I felt safe enough to go up to him. We were in a public place. I said, dude, I'm really sorry. I think I owe you some money. I'm sober now. I told him what was happening. I got sober. I went to rehab. I think I owe you some money. I said, dude, I'm really sorry. I think I owe you some money. He was so happy. Went home that day, got his email address, asked him how much he owed me. Thank God he didn't say a thousand dollars or something like that. It was a couple hundred bucks. I just paid him back and I felt amazing. Amazing. Now, that's just my experience. I'm not going to, again, don't go approaching your drug dealers or your creditors. If it's a dangerous situation, don't put yourself in dangerous situations. I highly recommend that. I couldn't recommend that more. Don't cause harm, more harm. If the amend pops into your head, if you're after this podcast, you go home or you're driving and you think about, oh man, I kind of, I really owe that person an apology. I really screwed that up. And they pop into your head, write it down, go do it. This happens to me all the time. I get memories because I forget, we're good forgetters of people that I'd done stuff to, that I had ripped off, that I had stolen from, that I'd lied to. It pops into my head. Now I'm not perfect. I don't call them right away and make amends. I still owe lots of amends because I'm still working through that process right now with a mentor of mine. But I'm working towards it. I'm following direction. I'm doing things I don't want to do. Things that make me uncomfortable. The only difference between me and the guy that is on the street, not being able to quit drinking or drugging is that I took one action against my best thinking, against my better judgment. And I continuously take those actions against my better judgment. I don't want to do half the shit that I do. I tell, I'm very open-minded. I'm very open about that on this podcast, but I do it anyways, because I know if I don't, they will accumulate. And eventually my brain will start telling me that smoking meth is a good idea again, that taking ADHD medication is the answer to my problem. And what is my problem? Disease, disturbed, discontent, disconnection from God and from my community. That's my only problem today. I'm the, I'm the problem. Nobody else. Nobody can force me to be disturbed. I decide to be disturbed and to put the story on the world. If it rains, it's automatically bad because it ruined my day. That's my story. My version of the truth. Amends are a process that doesn't happen overnight. Okay. We're not trying to fix everything right away. As soon as we get sober, it takes time. If you haven't even gotten here yet, if you're not doing this, don't stress. Okay. But if somebody pops into your mind, maybe it's worth reaching out to them and saying, Hey, I'm sober now. I went through this and that I'm working on myself and I would really like to apologize to you. I did this, this, and that I'm really sorry for that. Don't make it. This is the other important thing I forgot to talk about. Don't use your drinking or drugging as an excuse. Don't say, Oh, I was really fucking high back then. Sorry. Don't use that as an excuse. It is not an excuse that you were drunk or high. You decided to pick that up. You decided to take that first one. We take accountability in recovery. Hey, I screwed up. I'm working on myself. Now I'm getting sober. I've gotten clean. I'd really like to make it up to you. Can I take you for coffee? Can I just say, I'm really sorry about that and be specific. Here's what I did, did in this. And then end with, is there anything else I forgot? Is there anything that you want to say to me? Is there anything I left out? And then just be prepared to take it. Don't take it personally. You fucking pissed off a lot of people. We drag people through the mud, own it, once you do this, you will feel like a literal weight has been lifted off of your shoulders. I guarantee you I've done many of these in my 10 years of recovery, 11 years, almost. It's very hard to do it and to get going. And it's uncomfortable to admit that you're wrong and to face people you haven't seen in a while, but man, is it worth it? This is one of those game changers in recovery. Highly recommend again, don't put yourself in harm. Don't harm others. You don't want to tell somebody something that they don't know about. And then ruin their life. If you can't forgive yourself first for the harm you've caused yourself, for the relapse, for the addiction, for the constant turmoil you've put yourself through, if you can't forgive yourself, you will never be able to make amends to other people. You will never be able to forgive other people. You will never be able to approach other people and look them in the eyes and hold your head up with confidence. It starts with forgiving yourself, having grace for yourself, having compassion, and tolerance and patience for yourself. And then you can go and look the world in the eyes and say, "Hey, I really screwed up back there. I apologize for that. Here's what I'm doing to not repeat that behavior. Here's what I'm doing to be a better person." Take responsibility for your actions, whether you were high or not. You can also do this in an inventory every night and look at all the ways you've been dishonest, in fear, in resentment, in dishonest fear, resentment, self-pity, selfishness. Where's my ego at today? Am I thinking about myself or am I thinking about other people? Write it down in your journal at the end of the night. Highly recommend it. It could change your life. Thank you everybody for listening today. Please follow the podcast on Spotify. 14% of you are following the podcast. I would really appreciate it. It means a lot to me. It helps the podcast grow. If no one's told you this yet, I love you. And remember, recovery is simple, not—
Speaker 3This episode is brought to you by TXU Energy. For the first time ever, Texans have an energy plan that combines free nights all year with daytime summer savings. It's called Free Nights in Cool Summer. You get free nights every night. night all year long plus a 25 bonus toward your daytime use all summer it's a first of its kind plan created for how texans actually use energy discover how much more you could save with free nights and cool summer txu energy energy for everything visit txu.com for more information
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