Back to: KCB Recovery MasterClass
Transcript:
I know that this might not be your first time. You may have tried this before, going to therapy, appointments, rehab, 12 step meetings to try to address this problem. Sometimes you even try on your own, looking up stuff online and making a plan of what you’re gonna do today and what you’re gonna do tomorrow, trying to do things differently tomorrow. How do you feel about that? How do you feel about trying to do this several times? What feelings does this leave you with? I know the feeling. That feeling of ‘why can’t I get this right?’, ‘what is wrong with me?’ We had some sessions talking about what you think about yourself and what you believe about yourself.
There is this common belief that successful people just get it right all the time, they know what to do. The problem is that we look at it all wrong. We look at it as relapse is failure. But success is nothing like we’ve been looking at it as.
Before the book, Harry Potter was published, the author, J.K. Rowlings had submitted her book to 12 different publishers who all rejected her book. Imagine if she had given up after the 10th rejection, Harry Potter would not have been released and it wouldn’t have been the powerhouse that it is today. We all need to do the same thing, don’t give up!
You may have negative thoughts like you’re stupid, or your fat, or you’re weak, or you will never get it to be consistent enough for it to work, you’re a terrible parent, whatever thoughts it is, you need to understand that those can be changed, and we’ve given you a bunch of tools for those. You can use them at any moment! So if you are having those negative thoughts again go back to those tools that we looked at in the previous section! The opposite of success is not failure, the opposite of Success is Giving up. If you give up, there is absolutely no chance of success.
Failures are simply lessons on the way to success! I want to let you know that your motivation will go up and down. You might get inspired and you feel good, then the next day you feel discouraged again, you might think to yourself, ‘I knew it, I knew this would never work, I was lying to myself when I thought I had figured this out. Here I am 2 years later and I hit a dead end again’ and you’re feeling like crap.
We are so quick to beat ourselves up when we don’t do well, but do we credit ourselves when we do well? Do you tell yourself, ‘Oh I feel good today, I’m so proud of myself that I did it today, I did a great Job’ Do you credit yourself enough? Start giving yourself credit! Sometimes you have people who are beating you up about it, they say things like, ‘I knew you weren’t gonna do it! you know how this is supposed to work, Just go to AA, just go to rehab, stop looking for an easier way’. These are some of the barriers that are going to come up for you.
Barriers will always come up in life. Imagine you’re on a road that no one gave you a map for, on this road, there will be smooth sailing but there will also come points where you have to go over a hill, or there may be potholes in the road that you have to navigate. You may even miss the sign, or maybe you drive off the road onto a dirt road, but if you get to that dirt road, what will you do, stay on the dirt road? No! You’re gonna go back onto the main road and keep going on your journey to get to your destination. For you, your destination would be to control your drinking or to stop using. If the road to success was simple, no one would ever struggle.
Your roadmap is specifically for you because your journey to success is different from someone else’s journey. Your journey will be unique to you and will have bumps in the road and dead ends, so while on this journey why not learn from every bump, learn from every dead end, learn from every mistake and everything you do. Remember failures are simply lessons on the way to success!