I’d recommend taking 30 mins a week where you can sit and have some quiet reflecting time. Nothing that can distract you from this time. It’s where you can read your journal, pray, sit down and evaluate where you are at in life. See where you have made progress, and then look at things that you would like to improve about yourself.
If you are disturbed/upset/frustrated, why are you feeling that way? What is causing you to feel that way? We can’t control the way anyone else thinks or acts, but we can choose how to respond to people who trigger us into resentment, anger, etc.
Time evaluation and Reflect on your progress.
Where are you spending all your time? I’m an analytical thinker. So when I can see the amount of time that I am spending on all things in my life, it helps me to understand where I am at. When I was living in my addiction-it was 90% spent lusting or thinking about Lust. Always wanting more and never being satisfied or grateful for what I had.
Reflection is huge, you need quiet time to sit back and review your life. The changes, the differences, the growth. What happens in recovery is once you start to get into it, you view the world in a different light. Prior to recovery you get so clouded in yourself and judging how everyone else needs to be, that you never take a look in the mirror and fix the one thing you have a chance to fix.
It starts with you, you can’t change another person, company, country, or the world without first taking care of what’s going on within. Finding out when is the best time to write and reflect and staying consistent is the process for this step.
There have been times in my recovery where I have thought, oh that sounds fun, or yeah I would enjoy that, or I wonder what life would be like if I had got divorced. One of my favorite quotes is when I start to think that: if the grass looks greener on the other side, I better start mowing my own lawn. That is so applicable in so many of life’s situations. I for one had “fun” for 12 years doing everything that I wanted to do, it left me feeling empty, always looking for fulfillment that I could never find. And yes, I found moments where I felt on top of the world, but it was only temporary, Life was always a roller coaster of highs and lows. There was never any consistency. When I think about oh yeah that sounds fun or I would enjoy that, I think back about how I did, and it didn’t last long. I threw in a few seconds of pleasure and selfish enjoyment at the expense of my marriage and life. Life in recovery is so much better, where each and every day no longer has the highs and the lows, instead more consistent fulfillment.
The other thing that I can say is I no longer have to wonder what my life would have been like. With lust you always keep drawing lines that will never get crossed. Yet they will all get crossed eventually if you don’t stop. If I wasn’t blessed by god that day, I would most likely be divorced and still out there searching for what I have now. I don’t have to wonder anymore, I don’t have to guess where I would be. I am here now and need to be thankful for what I have and where I am at this moment in time.
Life can move so fast and when we jump on that train it is so hard to slow down at times. When we slow down, take a moment to reflect on our day, the things we have done, connect with God, and see what we need to change. It makes a huge difference in life. When I was in my addiction it was always go go go, never time to slow down and evaluate life, when I did it was far and few between and it helped. Now I take a daily and weekly inventory of my life to change and evaluate where I am at, and what I can do to improve my connection with god and others.
God Bless!