Worthiness

Addicts typically have suffered through years of mind-numbingly embarrassing behaviors, mistakes and failures. This is no great revelation. We are marked by both our amazing potential and the crippling tendency to disappoint everyone in our immediate vicinity. It is what we do and seems to become who we are. This notion doesn’t disappear when we put the bottle down; we seemingly cannot and probably will not be able to forget any of the times we came up short in our efforts.

This leads to negative and self-defeating thoughts and self-perception, and why wouldn’t it? When we were good we were pretty good, but when we were bad (which was much more often the case) it was a spectacular train wreck. Long after we’ve come to our senses we notice that we still can’t seem to escape the idea that our mistakes have lessened our worth. Our accumulated damage seems to drive our value so far down that we often don’t feel worthy of basic happiness, health and security.

I got clean and sober a shade under 44 months ago and I have long since struggled with the idea that I wasn’t worthy of happiness. I didn’t believe myself to be worthy of holding a good, rewarding job or being loved romantically. I’d run roughshod over both of those areas of my life for so long that I convinced myself I was too far gone. My best years seemed to have been spent at the bottom of a whiskey bottle and a gram bag. My time had passed and I would simply have to spend the rest of my life accepting that fact. Real happiness would lie forever beyond my grasp because I didn’t deserve it. I was not worthy of it.

This idea is completely, mercifully and absolutely wrong. You see, no matter how far off the beaten path things may have gotten, once you make the choice to live rightly all these positive things can and will be introduced to your life if you become willing to accept your worthiness of them.

I spent my first few years of sobriety in some less-than-stellar situations because I believed that they were the best for which I could hope. I subjected myself to some misery because I did not think myself worthy of anything better. I bought into that lie wholeheartedly until I came to understand that I was NOT the man I used to be inside or out and I didn't have to settle.

I am worthy of a job where I feel appreciated, valued and respected. The same goes for relationships, romantic or otherwise. I have finally found the happiness of which I felt for so long unworthy. I am not a slave to my past unless I choose to make myself one and today I choose to remain free, awake and alive. I am worthy, and so are you.

You have the power!

It’s no secret that past experiences shape who we are in the present. The person you see in the mirror is the sum total of everything you have experienced up until that precise moment.  Good or bad, happy or sad it all adds up to a hard-fired, hardwired human machine that is being constantly modified by life and intention.

Just how each and every life experience influences the shape into which you find yourself molded is entirely of your own choosing. You are just as capable of being broken as you are of growing immeasurably stronger as a result of the exact same event, depending on your choice of outlook and attitude. You can use it or allow it to use and abuse you.

The fact is that we are all operating under a status quo of free will (unless we have chosen to do something for which we must pay a consequence involving the surrender of our freedoms) and as such have the ability to determine our path in life. Each of life’s moments is comprised of a choice, and every thought, word and deed is the result of those choices.

Going left when in hindsight we may have been better advised to go right brings about a series of consequences, varying in size and effect. Another choice is made on the backside of that decision; that of how best to act as a result of those consequences. Do we ponder our misstep and curse the fates, allowing our joy to be washed away by bitterness and resentment? Do we chalk it up to life experience and glean every bit of knowledge and wisdom from our mistake that we can and leave it in the past?  I can tell you what might be the most ideal decision, but only you can decide which you will make.

For many of us, we understand this freedom of self-determination to be both the greatest gift and the biggest responsibility given us by our Higher Power. Others who may not readily subscribe to the belief in a Higher Power will still acknowledge the power and freedom of choice in our lives. You see, no addict on the road to healthy recovery will place the blame solely at the feet of the disease of addiction. Recognition of the choices we made and the subsequent consequences, reaction and possible additional consequences for the reaction are a large part of the moral, mental and spiritual house cleaning we must all undergo. We have to throw out the old junk and the old mentality and choose to forge a new way of thinking and a new way of living.

By turning the power of choice toward our past, we can reconcile with it and bring the books back square. We can change our perception of an event from that of earth-shattering destruction to an idea of mind-opening personal growth. From here on out, you have to decide: Will it break you or help make you who you were born to become?