WEEKLY MEDITATION
Saying that you don’t have time to improve your thoughts and your life is like saying you don’t have time to stop for gas because you are too busy driving. Eventually it will catch up with you.
-Robin Sherman
At the very root of successful recovery from addiction is self-care. Or, stated inversely, the care of self. Addiction, itself, is a misguided and unconscious attempt at self-care, one in which the pursuit for comfort and emotional soothing becomes rigid and often destructive. Proper self-care is about the installation of priorities designed to appropriately nurture all parts of the healthy self—physically, intellectually, and emotionally—ideally leading to a fulfilling experience of life. This should not require the numbing or escape that addictions promise and attempt to provide. First, though, we must develop the awareness to know when we are not taking care of ourselves. This might take the form of regular analysis. Regular self-analysis will tell us what we are truly making time for, what is actually important to us may not even be obvious until such an inventory is taken. Often, we made a lot of time to honor and feed our addictions. So, too, must we create time to regularly look at our lives and priorities, making changes when necessary, to ensure that we are supporting our changed, recovered lives. Ultimately no time is more appropriately spent.
