To Thy Own Self Be True.

To Thy Own Self Be True.

We’ve all heard it mentioned, but what does it mean to you? The quote is originally from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, but how many of us know it from there? Most likely we were introduced to the phrase thru AA. I’ve always believed it meant to be true to yourself, be the person you were destined to be. Most Addicts would prob think it means they were destined to be a addict so why change? But what if it means that they were destined for something else? You don’t hear many successful addict stories, and the truth is you have 3 possible outcomes with addiction. Jails, Death or Recovery. Jails and Death if you continue down that road, or Recovery, if you sober up. To be true to yourself isn’t about addiction, it’s about finding the ‘real’ you. The best possible version of you. Its about being honest with yourself, and living the right way, each day. During early recovery we struggle to understand the importance of living the right way, we can do temporary sobriety bids but we keep stumbling. Why? Because we only embraced the abstinence, we thought we could ‘hold on’ to the lifestyle, or maybe we thought we could hold on to the old friends or old places, we didn’t change our thinking patterns. I’m not saying it’s not possible to find recovery without changing, it’s just unlikely to happen. It’s about changing the people, places, things and you. You are the constant variable in all of that, if you can’t change ‘you’ then most likely you will keep tripping yourself up. We all can find recovery, it isn’t as difficult as you think, if you really want it then you will make it happen. You just gotta show up, every day.