AL EXANDRA HART L EY - L EONARD
Here were “Team Tony’s- “9 Tips on Moving On From the Past- For Good”, and my quick TLDR of each step:
1.Turn letting go of the past into a “MUST”- In short- this needs to go at the top of your to-do list. Do not arbitrarily talk about how you “need to let go”. Figure out how to do this work immediately. Make it a priority.
2.Identify Your Emotional Habits- Here’s the deal- you don’t realize how negative you are. Partially because you probably feel “right”. How’s that working for you? The thing is that the more you tell this difficult story to yourself again and again, the more it continues to live and thrive in your life. Pay attention to how much thought and conversation you give to this old story. 3.Condition Your Mind- basically, stop letting life happen TO you. You are in control. In fact you are the ONLY person you can control. So figure out what kind of practice helps you take that control back and start exercising your brain like the muscle that it is. Change your thoughts, change your life. 4.Create Empowering Rituals- Ok- hear me out- this part can be FUN, or if not fun- very soothing, relaxing, helpful, powerful. You hate meditating? Don’t! You don’t like Yoga? Come sit by me. Me neither. We are weird. It’s ok. Maybe your ritual is a morning walk with a podcast and a cup of coffee. Maybe your ritual is 10 breaths of fresh air out the window first thing followed by writing down your goal for the day. Maybe you have a video you want to watch each morning of baby chickens hopping around to Beyonce. I don’t care what it is- find a ritual, and stick to it for at least 30 days and watch the weird magic it starts creating in your subconscious background operating system.
5.Shift Your Focus- Your Thoughts Create Your Reality. You Are What You Eat. What You Give Attention to Grows. And on and on. Start creating the life you want and stop dwelling on the one in the past. It is over. You cannot change it.
6.Teach Yourself to Be Present- the only thing that matters is what is happening *right now*. This is especially true for those in early sobriety, because drinking over the past or drinking over fear of the future are common triggers. Also (she says and she winces out of self knowing)......put your phone down. 7.Work On Personal Growth- Get honest with yourself- what do you want? Whatever just came to your mind- you deserve that. And I bet you can have it. So - start moving toward it. Figure out how you need to get started or who you need to get to help you and start moving forward. As I talked about last month- it’s the resistance to starting that is the hardest part. Once you get going- it feels SO much better. 8.Surround Yourself With Positive People- you know what the greatest gift of the pandemic was for me? Realizing all the people I did not miss. All the people who just want to gossip. People who have little to say when they aren’t talking about the mundane BS of their daily complaints or what they don’t like about their neighbor, or mother in law, or kid’s teacher. Your people are out there. Recovery/Discovery/Sobriety Rooms are an *amazing* place to find them. 9.Give Back- One of the things in my life that I am now finding the most meaning in is how I can contribute to these spaces. The pain I describe at the start of this article is still visceral to me. And while TimeHop or Facebook Memories might not affect you in the same way they have me, I am guessing that there is something else that you are struggling with on this path away from numbing your life with booze. As soon, as you figure out how to get past that pain, I hope you will share your experience with the rest of us. I can’t tell you how much you will help yourself along with the others that would love to know. Try some or all of these things this month if you can. You deserve to have a beautiful life *right now*, and you deserve to look forward to the beautiful life you are creating moving forward. The past is the past. You might not be able to snap your fingers and let go of whatever it is that is still plaguing you about it, but please- at least stop fanning the flames that are keeping it alive. It’s not worth it. You deserve more than that. I believe that if you want to, you can at least let it live where it belongs- in the past.
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