Much like anything else that we may try to do, success in our recovery depends on the work that we put into it. Also like many other areas in life, whether trying to learn something new or develop a new health habit, we have to take an active role in our own recovery and work towards our recovery, at least in some way, every single day.
This doesn’t mean we have to toil over literature for hours every day. Developing a habit or routine and working a certain amount of recovery into our daily schedules is vital to our ongoing recovery. I wanted to briefly describe my morning ritual (which does indeed require me to set my alarm clock an hour earlier than I would otherwise, but it is very much worth it) that has seemed to help me tremendously over the past five months that I have been in recovery.
I am an active member of NA, as I have mentioned in just about all of my previous posts, so the program I am working is largely (but not entirely) based upon the literature of Narcotic’s Anonymous. However, the same idea can be applied to any program, 12-step or otherwise, that you may be working.
When my alarm clock goes off in the morning I get up and let the dog out while I start heating water in the kettle for coffee, and in the meantime I read that particular day’s reading in NA’s Just for Today daily meditation.
This is a short reading, never more than a single page long, but often has shockingly accurate (and often so very appropriate for how I am feeling at that exact moment) insights into our nature as addicts and important concepts of recovery. The daily mediation always ends with a statement starting with, “Just for today, I will…..” It gives me something recovery related to focus on throughout the day.
In this way, I stay grounded in my recovery from nearly the moment I wake up. A screen capture of today’s reading is below. The link I included above will take you to a new meditation for each day of the year, but you’ll notice today’s reading is from page 120, and this referring to the print edition of the collection of daily meditations. If you are working the NA program, I highly suggest you at least do this simple ritual every day. If you do nothing else all day towards your recovery, at least you have started your day on the right foot.
I don’t stop there, though. You’ll notice that the first line(s) of the reading are a quotation. In this case the line is from IP (information pamphlet) No. 19 called Self-Acceptance. On other days they may grab a line or two from NA’s Basic Text or other approved literature. It was suggested to me early on to not only read this meditation, but also the accompanying passage that the daily meditation pulls its quotation from. So today I read the IP No. 19, Self-Acceptance. The website that the link in the sentence prior to this has all of the official NA IPs.
I also keep a journal in which, in addition to a daily entry, I copy down the ‘Just For Today’ statement at the very end of the daily meditation. For example, today I wrote:
Just for Today: Self acceptance is a process set in motion by the Twelve Steps. Today, I will trust the process, practice the steps, and learn to better accept myself.”
At the top of today’s journal entry.
Recovery requires daily work. By starting every day with this simple routine, I am able to ground my day within the principles of my recovery and start off on the right foot. Your routine doesn’t have to be the same as mine, but I wanted to share this with anyone who may benefit from seeing an example of how to develop a daily recovery ritual and how to work it into your day.
In my next post, I am going to share another daily habit that I have gotten into recently: meditation. I have been doing a lot of reading on the subject and have developed a daily meditation practice that I perform every single morning after my reading. The benefits are subtle, yet substantial at the same time.
G.M.C., 4.26.2020, Day 158,
Daily Recovery 