November 10 (84)

”The three great essentials to achieving anything worthwhile are; first, hard-work, second stick-to-it-iveness, and third, common sense.” Thomas A. Edison

My recovery is a gift, but only continues to be one so long as I work at it. It’s not something that will simply be handed to me on a silver platter because I ask for it. It will take dedication, hard work, and blood, sweat and tears to continue to have recovery. Like most things in life that are truly worth something, my sobriety works only when I work it. And it’s similar to any good relationship in that it takes a degree of constant attention to be kept in a good place. If I neglect it things will deteriorate, if I keep at it then things will stay more or less the same, and when I put a lot of focus on it things tend to improve. The great thing that I enjoy about the program as I know it is that nothing in it is complicated. The Steps are based on the simple and practical. Although they can seem daunting and unachievable at first, in working through them one at a time, in order, I think one finds they build upon one another, to support you in tackling the more challenging tasks. There is a fair bit of good common sense in this approach and lots of room for interpretation of how to implement the Steps in one’s own way.

Affirmation Recovery is not just something external to me, but a part of my new life. It needs to be that way to keep me sober.