Speaker 1What a lot of people don't realize about recovery is that anyone can use these recovery skills, these recovery tools. This stuff translates into life skills, business skills, financial skills, relationship skills. I can take all of this stuff that I've learned in recovery, got in rehab, the tools that I learned in my recovery program, and translate them directly to achieving goals in my life, to being a better person, a better business partner, a better contributor to society. I've applied so many of these tools to my daily life problems and succeeded. And so today I want to go through all the skills that followed me out the door of rehab, out of the recovery, and translated directly into success in my life. And success, I mean, I don't just mean financial success or business success or material things. I mean, life skills, skills that have helped me in my relationships and helped me grow as a human, personal development skills. The thing that kept me sober turned out to be a thing that made me better at being a person. Welcome back or welcome to Recovering Out Loud podcast. My name is Anthony. I'm an alcoholic and an addict. I have about a year and a half sober after relapsing at around seven and a half years on steroids, secrets, and ADHD medication. And I'm grateful that I'm back alive to you. If you're not following the podcast, please follow. It helps me a lot. Recovery isn't just about not using. It's a full retraining in how to be a human being. And most of us don't notice how many of those skills transfer until we're using them on a Tuesday at work. So I'm going to go through all the transferable skills and how they've impacted my life positively. First up, we have the pause. So in recovery, the pause is when you're not able to breathe. You're not able to breathe. You're not able to between the craving and the drink. Learning that a feeling is not a command. Urge surfing. It crests and passes. If you don't act on it, it always passes. This skill helps me stay sober. It also transfers to every impulse that isn't a substance. The reply all you shouldn't send on an email. The impulse purchase to drain your bank account and get that new car or that new suit or those new Jordan shoes. The thing you want to say in an argument that you can't take back that you don't really mean. So the reframe here is I didn't learn to not feel the urge. I learned that there's a gap between the urge and my action. And I'm allowed to live in that gap for a second. So yeah, the longer I stay sober, the longer I practice these tools that I've gotten in recovery, the bigger that gap gets between the urge and my action. And I'm allowed to live in my thought, my impulse, my feeling and my action. I don't need to act on every impulse today. I used to in my addiction. I used to act right away. There was no space whatsoever. There is always a space in your life between stimulation, thing that happens, circumstance, outcome, whatever that you don't like, that you don't agree with, that you wish wasn't happening and your response to it, your reaction, your next action. That space gets bigger. The longer you stay sober and practice the tools of recovery, the principles of recovery.
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Speaker 1Second, we have HALT. So hungry, angry, lonely, tired. The self check-in. The recovery version is hungry, angry, lonely, and tired. The early recovery habit of scanning your own state before you make a decision. Because those four states are where relapse hides. So yeah, you're hungry. Am I hungry? Am I angry? Am I lonely? Am I tired? Why am I disturbed about this? Why am I diseased? Why am I uncomfortable? Restless, irritable, discontent. Does it fall into one of those four categories? This transfers to parenting, work stress, relationships. Half the bad decisions and blowups people beat themselves up over are just an unmet basic need. Wearing a costume. All actions, behaviors are a result of an unmet need. What is that unmet need today? This applies to all areas of my life. Before I decide the problem is my marriage or my job, I ask if the problem is that I haven't eaten since 9am. It's really that simple. Three, one day at a time. Breaking the impossible into the doable. The recovery version is you can't do forever. How am I not going to drink on my wedding day? How am I not going to drink on my vacation? How am I not going to drink for the rest of my life? You can't do forever. But you can do today. The next hour. The next five minutes. This transfers to any goal big enough to be paralyzing. A degree at school. A debt. A fitness change. Grief. The skill isn't lowering ambition. It's shrinking the unit of time you're responsible for right now. Break it up into chunks. One thing at a time. I love one step at a time. I love using this in all areas of my life. Just get through today one step at a time. One decision at a time. Do the next right thing. One thing at a time. Humans aren't made to conceptualize doing 30 things in a day. We are designed to do one thing at a time. We can't multitask. I don't care who you are. The science is out. You can't efficiently multitask. Focus on one thing. Do that thing to the best of your ability. When you're done that thing, Move on to the next thing. Write it out if you have to. This helps me. I do this all the time. There's a lot of things in my life today that I'm loafing on. I am in fear of. I am procrastinating. Procrastination is not laziness, by the way. It's fear. Fear of losing something you have or not getting something you want, usually. Recovery taught me to stop trying to solve a lifetime before lunch. Yeah, you're not going to solve your debt problem in one day. You can make steps toward it. I'm not going to solve my debt problem in one day. And the minute I stopped trying to solve the whole problem today was the minute I finally started to get relief and peace and ease and comfort and quiet. The problem is still there, but I don't need to fix it all in this moment. And I can't. It's impossible. So why even worry about it? Easier said than done, obviously. And this takes work and practice and repetition. But it does get better. Four, rigorous honesty. In recovery, you can't stay sober on a foundation of secrets. Getting honest, especially about the unflattering, uncomfortable stuff, is survival, not virtue signaling. I always say this, but anytime I've relapsed, it's because I've had secrets. I've had a double life. I've been dishonest in some area. I go and tell people 90% of the truth, and I keep the 10% back here. You will relapse if you have secrets. It's only a matter of time. Get honest with one person. I had somebody tell me this once in recovery. Make sure, Anthony, one person on this earth, one human knows everything. Knows all of it. All of your secrets. Get current. What are you planning and prodding in your head? What are you premeditating? What is your plan? Get honest with your plans and designs with people. And then let them give you the feedback of, hey, I don't think that's a really good. Idea to go back to work at a bar at two months sober. Maybe you should take a break. Maybe you should take some time off work before jumping back in. Maybe you should get your recovery program settled before getting a job. I stopped editing myself to be liked, and it turned out the honest version was more trustworthy than the polished one. Yeah. I struggle with this all the time. I want to perform and I want you to like me. I struggle with people pleasing and perfectionism, and the more I stop editing and performing. The, the more I take off the masks and just show up authentically, the better my life gets. I can think about countless moments where telling an uncomfortable truth cost in the cost me something in the short term. Usually it's pain of being perceived or how I think I'll be accepted. And then it pays off in the longterm. You just got to wait it out and trust the process. Five, making amends everyday accountability, the recovery version is the difference between an apology and an immense one is words. The other one is changed behavior and repair. I am living rightly today. I am not scheming and lying and cheating and stealing in recovery. I need to act, not apologize by how many times have you said, sorry, actions speak louder than words. It's simple, not easy. This skill transfers to every relationship you'll ever damage and want back owning your part without over groveling, fixing what you can and not repeating it. Most importantly, it's so easy to make amends and say, sorry, and then consistently do it over and over again. But I've apologized. I know I'm in the wrong. You got to stop doing it. You got to change the behavior to actually make the amends. Repeating it is worse than not ever apologizing at all. Most people never learned to repair a rupture cleanly. Sorry is a sentence. An amends is a pattern change. Recovery taught me the second one. Changing my behavior. Stopping repeating the patterns. Game changer. Six, asking for help. Connection over isolation. The recovery version of this, you can't do it alone. I can't, we can. The whole model is built on that. Sponsorship, meetings, phone calls, I'm not okay. And you don't need to be a part of 12 step to do this. You can have mentors in your life in recovery, in other programs. There are lots of them, I'm sure. Find someone that has what you want and get honest with them. Ask them for help. I'm not okay. I want to use today. I'm thinking about relapsing. Get honest. This transfers to the reflex most people are trained into that says needing help is weakness. Fear is weakness. Honesty is weakness. Recovery beats that reflex out of you. And it's one of the most powerful, useful things you leave with. Yeah. Asking for help is hard, especially being a man and being trained to not ask for help growing up in a tough culture where people are telling you to just get in cold plunges and work harder. Fuck your feelings. And that doesn't help anybody. Maybe it does. It doesn't help me when I'm struggling. I need to open up. I need to ask for direction and help, especially when I don't want to. And a lot of times I don't want to. I struggle with calling people. I struggle with picking up the phone. It's something I want to work on. I'm going to work on. I need to work on. Because left to my own devices all day in my own head is a circus. I'm like an unattended kid. I'm an unattended child running around touching everything and screwing things up and simulating all of the possible negative outcomes in the world. I'm like a pessimist running around. Looking at all the negative ways this is going to affect me. Ask for help. It might save your life. The I shouldn't, the I should be able to handle this myself voice is the same voice that almost killed me. I don't take its advice anymore. I should be here. I should be doing better. That's a lie. It's a crock of shit. Every time your brain is lying to you. This is very helpful in the workplace. When you don't know how to do something, asking for help without worrying about how you'll be received or judged can save you so much time and energy. If you don't know how to do something, ask someone. If you don't know where you're going, directions, ask someone. It might save you hours of suffering and pain. So if we can zoom out for a second here, these aren't recovery hacks that happen to be useful. They're just life skills that most people never get formally taught. They don't teach this stuff in schools. Emotional regulation. They don't teach it in school. Getting sober forced you to learn them under pressure and there's nothing wrong with that. I'm grateful for my addiction today because it's brought me a toolkit that I never would have gotten. It's forced me into a state of humility. What a gift. Humility is being teachable to be teachable, to accept help, to know that you don't have all the answers and that's okay. And that the answers are out there. Ask the right questions. Be curious, not judgmental. So we talked about the pause, the halt, one day at a time, honesty, amends, and asking for help. These are all skills that you need to learn in early recovery, that I needed to learn in early recovery, that my rehab taught me. But once I left the rehab, I needed to implement these skills in my life if I was to survive. They told me that and they were right. I'm here to tell you that they're right. But these also transfer into life skills because let's be honest, if you attend recovery spaces and meetings, that's what, 10% of your life? What are you doing with the other 90%? Are you bringing the skills you've learned in recovery into your daily life? And are you living according to the man or woman or person you want to be? Do your actions reflect who you want to be today? Just ask yourself that. And if they don't, change one thing at a time. Start with one behavior. Stop. Lying. I'm going to get honest when I lie. Hey, you know, I lied there. I shouldn't have done that. I'm sorry. Hey, I wasn't 100% honest with you. That sentence will change the trajectory of your day and your life. I've done it. It's hard. I don't like doing it. Nobody wants to be wrong. No one wants to look stupid. Embarrassment is one of the most underrated emotions, the underused emotions, under-experienced emotions. Be a beginner at something. It's hard, but it's so freeing and powerful to suck at something and then get better at it. Whatever your thing is, whatever your hobby, sport, whatever, business, podcast. I love looking back at my old videos on Instagram, my old podcast. They suck. What a gift. I've come so far. Don't ever discount the old beginner version of yourself. Remember how you used to get so, caught up in little problems in life, in recovery. And today you're handling them. You're handling situations with which used to baffle you. What a gift. You've come so far. Don't ever forget that. And you have so much further to go. Also a gift. There are no limits in recovery. There's no ceiling here. If you continue to show up and do the work, ask for help, get honest, follow the set of principles, help others, you will be rewarded with a life you could never have even conceived. I promise you that you just have to keep showing up and doing things when you don't want to do them, helping others, trusting in the process. You will be rewarded just not in your time and not the way you think you will be, but you will be rewarded and all will work out. If you stay sober and follow the process, do the next right thing. If no one has told you this yet today, I love you. And recovery is simple. Tammy regularly hauls stuff to her kids at college.
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