As much as we want to, we do not recover in big leaps. Recovery is not a big project. Recovery is the agglomeration of thousands of tiny projects that all add up and get strung together into a meaningful change in the way you react and relate to anxiety and fear.
Each of these tiny projects and activities originates with a choice and like those projects and activities, those choices are often also tiny. But they are choices nonetheless and they matter. You may wonder how you will get through today feeling the way you do. You will “get through it”. - as you always have - by making a series of small choices that lead to productive activities throughout the day.
We’re never solving the anxiety problem with a giant swipe or momentous mindset change. It never works that way. We solve it by accepting that we do have choice and therefore power. Then we practice the act of making good choices at the micro level each day whenever we need to, which in some cases is all day long. That’s OK. Everyone starts there.
When you have a choice between picking your chin up, and putting your head in your phone to distract yourself for another 5 minutes, pick your chin up and look at the world.
When you have a choice between speaking your fear out loud again, and remaining silent while you ACT toward what matters to you even while afraid, choose the latter.
When you have a choice between laying in bed for another 30 minutes examining your self or putting your feet on the floor to go brush your teeth, put your feet on the floor. Then choose to walk toward your toothbrush rather than getting back under the covers.
These are just a few small examples of small choices that confront us every day along the path to recovery. None of them is recovery by itself, but when we add them all up over time, we wake up one day and notice that life is starting to look more “normal” than it did five weeks ago. Then we use that to fuel more good choices and the continue on our march toward getting better.
No, this is not perfect. Mistakes will happen. Bad choices will happen. This is OK. The overall trend is in the right direction when we can make recovery-focused choices more than we make fear-focused choices, on a consistent basis. So if you ask me how I recovered, I would have to tell you that I made 100,000 tiny choices that got me there.
I might also tell you that in this context, the idea of “there” was not at all what I was expecting it would be, but that’s a story for another time.
“People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them.” - George Bernard Shaw
Every Friday I’ll share one of my favorite quotes. They’ll often have direct application in recovery, but sometimes they’re just generally funny, inspiring, or thought-provoking. I hope you enjoy them.
75. A Series Of Tiny Choices