Success

Success can sometimes be a terribly dangerous thing. As with any occurrence in our lives, if an unhealthy perspective is taken on a good thing then bad things can and often will result. As any recovering addict can tell you, successes were just as worthy a cause for imbibing as failures. I didn’t need a terrible or terrific day to spur me on to a bender, but they sure did help me have a ready-made excuse. In this narrative I want to discuss the danger of success in the life of a recovering addict.

You see, the most dangerous part of success is that it often enables complacency. There’s the requisite patting yourself on the back, typically followed by resting on your accomplishment while you tell everyone about what you’ve done.  Before you know it you are paying today’s debts with yesterday’s successes and that account will go bankrupt far quicker than most realize. The point is that if you aren’t moving forward you are moving backward. You don’t get to coast in neutral in this life.

 Complacency is ultimately a death sentence for a person in recovery. If you truly think you’ve permanently defeated the beast within, you are in a seriously dangerous place. The sizeable dimensions of the addict’s ego are staggering.

Couple that with the fact that addicts are typified by the description of being an “egomaniac with an inferiority complex,” and you have a recipe for disaster. That’s exactly what our active addiction brings us until we get to a point where even we cannot keep up in with the chaos we claim to embrace.

 Ego is a tremendous threat to anyone’s happiness and success. Ego says, “Look at what I’ve done!” Humility simply asks, “What can I do now?” Ego is a falsely inflated sense of oneself. It breeds laziness and bitterness with the illusion of achievement. No person can ever know everything about anything, and the sooner in life one can come to that conclusion the more they have put themselves in a position to truly succeed. The person who humbly embraces a beginner’s mind in all things will walk the path of lifelong learning and constant growth.

Are you mentally dwelling on past successes (or failures) when you should be climbing the next mountain? It may be time to step back, step down and start over. All any of us have is today; this fleeting moment in which we are breathing is our only guarantee. If you ask a room full of old timers who has the most sobriety, you’ll be answered with a question: “Well, who woke up the earliest today?”

 If you live today rightly, it’s all you’ll ever need anyway.