There’s no such thing as failure. If you are not getting the results you want with your sobriety, recovery, relationships or work you are receiving feedback. What you are doing is not working. Maybe you should try something else: Anything Else.

As you learned in the last post, perspective is everything. When you moved an unpleasant image farther away it did not feel as bad. You were desensitized. When you moved the pleasant image closer you felt better.

You can use your five senses to help you get the outcomes you desire. Especially the visual, auditory and kinesthetic (the see, hear and feel) senses.

Make a picture of you ‘over there’, maybe across the room or even across the street. Analyze that person just like he/she were someone else. What is he trying  to do? What do you see going wrong? Correct the error. Maybe it is just adding a resource like confidence, just being able to ‘say no’ to slippery people, places and things. This is called a refusal skill.

When you can strengthen or add refusal skills you increase your chances of staying clean and sober, staying out of trouble or just being more successful in general.

Try this. Give that person over there the strength of confidence. See that person chin up with his head held high, feeling great that he could finally say No! to those people who have always dragged him down. You know – some people just don’t want you to get better or healthy. They will enable your drinking or using.

They’re called enablers and they are not your friends even if they are family or other loved ones. Sometimes your marital partner or significant other does not want you to heal. You are too much of a threat. It would mean they too may have to clean up, get sober or whatever term you choose.

Look at that person over there again. Ask him, how does it feel being able to ‘just say No? You can see how it looks. You can hear how great it sounds. How does that feel to you? If you like that person and that feeling just step into that image now. Because, it’s you isn’t it?

Put your arms around the New You. Pull him in. Own it. If you need to make the image even more effective try making it bigger, brighter, warmer and hear a soothing sigh of relief. You see, hear and feel the New You.

So you see, there is no such thing as failure. It’s feedback. And, you do have the resources within you already, don’t you? They are your five senses. And you can use them to give you great power. The power that is already locked up inside you. Set it free. Awaken the strengths and resources you already have as Carl Rogers mentioned. This has been Recovery Theme 11.

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