Moving Mountains

            When I was active in my alcoholic destruction, I spent all of my time focusing on what happened in the past and what was going to happen in the future. I could never seem to just live in the moment. To other people it may have appeared that all I did was live in the moment without any thought of working for the future, but that couldn’t have been further from the truth. I would always wake up with thoughts of what I had done yesterday and what I was going to do tomorrow. I would always think of how life was going to somehow be better in the future, but the problem was that I was not able to focus on today because I couldn’t seem to escape the thoughts of my past. I never seemed to attain what I wanted because I could never wrap my head around the concept of living in the day. Those mental obsessions of yesterday and tomorrow kept me trapped in my alcoholic prison, but since getting sober I have been learning how to live for today.

 I am getting better at, simply, focusing on the day at hand. I try to remember that, no matter what, yesterday is gone, and tomorrow isn’t promised. So, living for the day is all that I can do. I do not live like there is not a tomorrow, but I don’t live like there is either. I work on doing the next thing in front of me for the moment, and if I am granted another day, everything that God gives me the strength to endure will be what allows me to progress into tomorrow. Everything that I have done yesterday is what has brought me to the place that I am in today, and no matter how hard I try, there is nothing I can do to change what has already been done. This type of mentality is how I began my journey into my sobertastic recovery.

When I first started my trek through the valley of early recovery, I was instructed to attempt living one moment at a time because I wasn’t able to even live one day at a time. In the beginning, I could barely handle five minutes without going nuts. I was glad to hear that so many other people began this very same way, and it was working. I have been able to see how my life used to be extremely complicated and chaotic, but today, I am able to keep it simple. I still have a lot of the same issues facing me each day, but with this simple one moment at a time approach, I am able to handle things with a new attitude. I have found out that the stuff that used to scare me no longer scares me because I have been shown how my own mind is what causes me to fear life’s challenges.

When I take one step at a time and concentrate on the effort and not the outcome, then I am able to work through life’s little bumps. By moving one rock at a time, I am able to move any mountain that may be put in my path. I look forward to hearing how other people face these challenges of living without turning to alcohol. We need to stick together in recovery because it is how we continue to grow. We are good at isolating, so I challenge others to break free from their isolation and give feedback on how they are staying sober and learning to live.