As anyone who has entered into sobriety knows, there are a plethora of qualities that we need to adopt in recovery in order to reap the full benefits of a quality life in recovery. Out of all those qualities, the adoption of willingness in early sobriety is arguably one of the most important. Willingness is defined simply as the acceptance of the necessity for certain actions and the ability to engage in them. Willingness is essentially at the foundation of all good recovery programs because its adoption allows us to engage in things that we might otherwise not want to do. Making a commitment to not only be sober, but to transform ourselves into the best version of us requires hard work, dedication, and patience. Because of the sheer difficulty in training ourselves to do things we may not want to do, we have to adopt a stance of consistently saying yes; we need to become willing.
As we stated previously, recovery is a difficult journey, but it is a journey that is available to all individuals who are willing to do whatever it takes to stay sober. This could mean having to separate ourselves from toxic friends, avoid sketchy environments, participate in things we usually avoid, and engage in relationships with honesty and integrity in mind. If we remain lukewarm in our commitment to stay willing, we will end up torturing ourselves with the conundrum of choice when we come across any situation that we ought to say yes to but would rather say no to. This doesn’t mean we need to join a gym, sign up for school, work a full-time job, and volunteer in our free time, although it might mean all of these things. What willingness really entails is the ability to consistently say yes to the things that we can realistically achieve without bringing too much unnecessary stress onto ourselves. For example, we may recognize that we would feel and look better if we could lose 25 pounds. Now we can clearly understand that this isn’t an easy task for obvious reasons, and we can likely come up with a thousand legitimate excuses to ourselves as to why this isn’t necessary or possible. If we understand the benefits of losing this weight and subsequently say yes to doing what it takes to lose weight, we will feel better, look better, and will have acquired the wisdom that comes along with being willing to do what we think we don’t want to do.
Tree House Recovery of Orange County, California is a premier men’s addiction treatment facility that uses eight different modalities to help our men become the best versions of themselves they can be. We teach our men that every day of their journey is something to celebrate, and that recovery isn’t a sprint– it’s a marathon. To get started with Tree House Recovery, call us today at (855) 202-2138.
