The biggest investment you will ever make is in yourself. What if I told you that because of your past you will be limited in how far you go in life? If you’re in active recovery then yes you are limited in how far you can go in life, and that limit isn’t set by society, or a criminal background report or God, it’s set by you. How far you go is entirely up to you, if you want to settle for a life less ordinary then that’s your choice, but if you want to run with the bulls in Pamplona or cliff dive in Monaco, or driving again or completing your education, or maybe you have a burning desire to write a book…if you want to truly live then don’t limit yourself, dream bigger but don’t let your dreams be just dreams, get off the couch and work for what you want! Invest in your future, don’t get comfortable in just surviving and accepting the bare minimum that life has to offer, invest in YOU!!!The media would have you believe differently but they got it twisted because if we don’t invest in ourselves or in our future then how can we ever accomplish any of our dreams or goals? Addiction has stripped us from our biggest asset, ourselves, and our self-belief that we could ever amount to anything or much less achieve anything. Recovery is different, it builds us up from the inside out to become what we choose to believe. One of the early pitfalls in recovery is we want to work from the outside in, we want the job, the new car or to show the world that ‘hey I’m in recovery and I’m doing better’ which is all good stuff but we fail to establish our inner foundations in preparation for real long-term recovery. What happens when things go sideways? We haven’t built enough recovery collateral to help us thru the difficult times and we often relapse. When writing my book I stumbled across a surprising statistic, 2 out of 3 newcomers fail to reach a year of sobriety. My question to you is how do we improve their chances? If we currently have 23 million people in active recovery and roughly 45 million people in active addiction, then how do we flip that? Being a person in long-term recovery means that if I want to keep what I have then I must give it away, which I do thru mentoring, writing and hopefully setting the example that we can achieve what we set our minds to, and today its about staying sober for the next 24 hours and helping the next person find their way home. We are all in this together, if each of the 23 million people in active recovery can help 1 person in active addiction, whether it’s planting the recovery seed or just talking to them then we can make a difference and turn the tide in this recovery vs addiction fight.
