serving2

"My' Recipe for Success
Sharing My Experience, Strength and Hope: Serving # 2

My recipe for Success has only one ingredient and that ingredient is "standing up". All I have to do to Suceed is "stand up" more times than I fall down. In my 20 year recovery journey I do not feel I have failed even once because my only criteria for Success is to "stand back up" after I fall.

Now don't get me wrong, my journey has not been easy. I have taken many falls. A lot of my journey, especially in the beginning, has been three step forward and two steps back. I have tripped many times and fallen on my face more times than I would like to admit. But I have never once felt like a failure because all that I require of myself to be a success is to "stand up" more times then I fall down.

One of my "Truths" is that; failure is not a forward moving concept for me. Hence, for my recovery journey to progress I need to make sure that I never feel like a failure. This is why my recipe for success is simply: Success = Standing up more times than I fall down. If you want the above to become your "Truth" this activity is for you.

Possible activity #1; Make a poster(s) that says one or all of the following things


As Long As I Keep
"Standing up"

I can not fail.


or


Success=
"Standing Up"
More Times Than
I Fall Down
or


To Suceed
All I Need To Do Is
Keep
"Standing Up"





Now tape it to your fridge. It usually took about 21 days for me to start to believe new "Truths". It just might work for you too.

Now that I believe it is next to impossibe for me to fail, I can put my total concentration on getting up off the ground as fast as possible when I do fall. In early recovery, I would sometimes stay on the ground for days often times until the next Monday. Then I realized it did not have to sit on the floor that long I "could" get up the next morning.

Miracles really started happening to me when I realized I "could" even get up immediately after falling down. Now many time, I'm not even all the way down before I'm back up and going again. It's exciting even writing this because I can see how far I have come from flat out, falling on my face to an occasional stumble now and then.

Another reason I believe I have been successful in losing my weight and keeping it off these 6,500+ days or 19 years is because I refuse to give up. I find that when I feel like giving up it's usually in the evening. That's the time that the food addict in me is the strongest and makes part, if not all of my decisions. Having learned this, I can then counter those thoughts, knowing I'm not really thinking them my addict is. Thus, one of the rules I have is any decisions to give up can only be made in the morning. I don't think I have even once wanted to give up in the morning.

Even after 20 years of recovery I still think twice about night time decisions, unless it's an emergency I wait until morning to make most of my decisions. In fact, just the other night I thought I needed to make a particular telephone call, I mean it really felt like it needed to be made right then. But, beings it was not an emergency I held off. The next morning the call did not seems important at all. And all I could think of was, what a mess it would have made by making that call.