WEEKLY MEDITATION
While we may not be able to control all that happens to us, we can control what happens inside of us.
-Benjamin Franklin
One of the most vital psychological transformations that will help to ensure healthy recovery form addiction is that from passive to assertive. One of the ways that we can help this process occur is to learn to concentrate our control where it is appropriate. It only bolsters feelings of helplessness if we attempt to assert control where it doesn’t naturally have any affect. Applied where it can have affect, however, can lead to feelings of competence and confidence, states of being that both greatly reduce the need for addictive behaviors. Of all the areas where control can be affectively used, learning to control our emotional reactions to what happens in life is by far the most important. We story and experience our lives through what we tell ourselves about what happens to us, not simply by what does happens to us. Often there is no conscious understanding that a difference lies between what happens to us and what we tell ourselves about what happens to us. With practice, though, we can learn to make this important distinction and our very experience of life will become more within our control. Just as important, with the ability to gain mastery over our inner experience, events that may have been otherwise traumatic can be taken in differently, thus softening the psychological impact they may have otherwise carried. This will always lead to a lesser need for addictive behaviors.
