How do you want your life to look? What do you envision for yourself and your family? There is a lot to be said about living intentionally, and it absolutely applies in recovery.
True, we often cannot choose the cards we have been dealt in the past, but we can choose how to play them and what to do next. While we absolutely cannot control every aspect of our lives and what happens to us, we can choose how we respond.
Or, in the words of one of the most revered psychiatrists of all time, Viktor Frankl, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
Triumph over past struggles alone often isn’t enough to lead the kind of life we want. We must be able to be in the present and live intentionally toward the future, so that any new difficulties that appear will be able to be overcome as well.
As Gretchen Rubin reiterated in her bestselling book, Better Than Before, “The most important step is the first step. All those old sayings are really true. Well begun is half done. Don’t get it perfect, get it going. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Nothing is more exhausting than the task that’s never started, and strangely, starting is often far harder than continuing.”
Recovering Intentionally
All of this is easier said than done, but the point is that it can be done, and this holds true for recovery as well. It starts with the intention to change, then setting an intention for a new life, and continuing to live intentionally with our decisions and actions going forward.
The good news is that you don’t have to do this alone. Help is available.
