Moving Forward with Your New Year’s Resolution
Moving Forward with Your New Year’s Resolution
It’s January 1st, and this year is it. After scarfing down your last piece of diabetes-encrusted cherry pie, you begin the trudge to the gym only to arrive and witness that everyone else had the same idea. There isn’t a single open workout machine, so you go home and vow to retry tomorrow, but you never do. A few months lapse and then you hear yourself saying, “Next year, it will really happen next year.” Sounds pretty common, right? Well, when summer rolls around and you lay eyes on a gorgeous being at the beach reaping the benefits of beginning their health journey in January and following through until now, it makes you wonder: “Could that have been me if I had stuck with it?”
The New Year is famous for failed fitness resolutions, but less commonly mentioned it is also famous for failed recovery resolutions. The difference is that a lot of the failed recovery attempts don’t make it to the next year to try it again. It’s an old running joke that all of the twelve-step clubhouses make their rent money for the year in the month of January alone, but why do people stop then? Just like with the gym, the glistening motivation of the New Year wears off, people begin to get complacent, and they skip a day or two, then five, and then they stop going altogether. Before they know it, they find themselves back to exactly where they started, or worse.
What if you’re really gung-ho about your fitness, though? In fact, you’re so gung-ho you actually invest in getting a personal trainer, to guide you and ensure that you make it to the gym every day. That’s what treatment does for people trying to recover, it fights by their side and keeps the motivation level for a better life high even when it gets hard or uncomfortable. Just like a personal trainer will teach you what exercises to do to rebuild your body, treatment teaches how to rebuild your mind. What do we do when we’re upset if it isn’t turning drugs and alcohol? What do we do when we want to celebrate something if we can’t do it without drugs and alcohol?
Treatment is the first step to getting that miraculous mind and fulfilling life without drugs and alcohol. It is your personal trainer by your side keeping you going until you get to where you can do it on your own (or at least with a gym buddy, aka a sponsor). The greatest results happen when we do it together, when we ask for help and actually accept the help. Don’t let another year go by wishing that life could be better, it’s time to do it. Every achieved goal begins with the first step, imagine where you’ll be if you accept this chance at sobriety.
