If you’re struggling with thoughts of suicide, PLEASE call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
Part of our recovery work is creating goals for ourselves and setting intentions. Sometimes we set those intentions without making sure we’re putting the necessary energy behind them in order to follow through with them. When this happens, our intentions are hollow, they’re superficial and without meaning. They can’t be brought to life. We aren’t putting our faith and our belief into our intentions, and we’re not putting the work into them that we need to in order to create change and make things happen for ourselves. Without the power of our energy, our intentions can feel empty and meaningless. We don’t feel as though we’re moving forward. We feel like we’re staying stuck in the same self-harming cycles and perpetuating the same toxic patterns. We don’t feel like we’re becoming a new person, or developing a new way of life. We want to put our full energy into our intentions so that we can infuse them with meaning that is purposeful and motivational for us.
To put energy into our intentions, let’s think about why it is we’re working towards recovery in the first place. What are we doing it for, and for whom? What is the greater purpose behind our recovery program? For many of us, we hit rock bottom and our lives became so unbearable and so unmanageable that we knew sobriety was the only way up and out. We grew painfully tired of all the ways in which we were hurting ourselves and the people we love. We’ve experienced relationships ending because of our addictions. We’ve accumulated financial troubles. We’ve lost our jobs. We’ve felt the heavy weight of being so disappointed in ourselves and ashamed of ourselves that we didn’t want to be alive anymore. When we’re setting our intentions, let’s remember all of the emotions driving the work we’re doing. We don’t want to forget all of our initial reasons for wanting to get clean. We want to keep those reasons in the forefront of our mind. We want to allow them to be our motivation when things feel too hard, when we want to give up, when we’ve lost faith in ourselves. We want our reasons for sobriety to be the inspiration we need when we feel our hope slipping.
Let’s infuse our intentions with our energy – the energy of our faith in ourselves, the energy of our self-love, the energy of our desire to do good for ourselves and the people around us.
Riverside Recovery is a drug and alcohol treatment center offering a full continuum of care for people suffering from addiction and co-occurring mental health disorders. Call us today for more information: (800) 871-5440.