Progress Check
By Pat Akery, TCF, Medford, OR

It’s usually around this time of year, when summer is nearly over and fall is around the corner, that I like to take a close look at the progress of my recovery. Maybe it’s the seemingly endless “back-to-school”; sales that suddenly end, or the return of the yellow school busses with children carrying lunch boxes that causes me to feel a need to take a look. This is one of those times of year that some of us find difficult to deal with, and checking where we stand during rough times is always a good idea, especially if it helps us find areas in which we can improve. As a possible bonus we may even find areas of real progress that may boost our awareness of the positive steps we have made. It usually is difficult to notice the steps we make, particularly early in recovery, unless we make a concerted effort to notice them.

So the first step should be to look closely at your beliefs concerning what you will find. If you believe your recovery is going poorly, it probably is or it’s likely not going as well as it could. We tend to see what we believe we will see and we tend to miss what we believe is not there. Dr. Wayne Dyer’s book, You’ll See it When You Believe it, covers this topic very well and I recommend it along with any of his other books as excellent recovery reading material. The quality of our recoveries, as well as our lives, is determined by what we believe.

If you develop an attitude of positive expectation about your recovery you will begin to see your progress more easily. What you need to do is adopt a belief that you can find something positive about your recovery no matter how small the positive may be if you look closely enough. The trick is to convince yourself that noticing the smallest of positives is worth the trouble. It is worth the trouble¾your life depends on it. Noticing the smallest of positives can enable you to make a necessary positive mental attitude shift that is required for good recovery. Having a positive mental attitude is not the same thing as positive thinking. It doesn’t mean that you pretend that everything is okay when it isn’t. Positive mental attitude means that no matter how bad things are we can at least learn something of value from even the most horrible things that happen to us.

I’ll use an extreme example to make my point. Early in recovery the very best positive we may be able to come up with is, “well, at least I believe there is hope that someday I will feel better than I do now.” Admittedly, when our child has died, even this small positive may be difficult to believe, but let’s say you do believe it, or you’re willing to believe that you will someday believe it. As weak as this positive may seem to you it still is strong enough to begin the process of causing a positive mental attitude shift.

The shift will be small and probably not noticeable to you, but it will nevertheless occur. With this shift you will be more likely to notice other positives, for example, you are reading this newsletter and are therefore obviously taking a positive step to see if this article has some value to you in your recovery. Even if it didn’t, the fact that you are reading it alone is a positive recovery step if you choose to see it as such.

We often choose to see our small steps as insignificant. This judgment alone is enough to slow our recoveries to a crawl. Each step no matter how small is required to complete the journey. The sooner you accept even the smallest recovery step and celebrate each and every one as it occurs, the sooner you will benefit to the greatest extent each step offers.

So how do you do this? There are several ways. My favorite is to ask three questions. Early tomorrow morning, as soon after awaking as you remember, ask yourself the question, “What can I do today to improve the quality of my life?” It doesn’t matter what you come up with, but be sure you keep it simple - make sure it’s something you can easily do. Tomorrow evening ask yourself, “How did I do?” Write your answer in a notebook or journal. Then answer the question, “No matter how small, what positive recovery steps have I taken today?” Do this everyday for at least ten days. Each day come up with different answers. At the end of ten days you will know if it is beneficial to your recovery to continue. If so, by all means do so. If not, you may find it helpful to do a progress check on your recovery by asking yourself these questions for a few days every month or so. Give it a try, you’ll only know if it’s a positive for you if you do.