THOUGHT FOR TODAY 9/29/09

Someone somewhere must have told you at least one time in your recovery to act as if. But what does this mean and how are you being honest with yourself if you are acting?

I try to act as if a lot in my life. There are certain situations that scare the heck out of me, for whatever reason. Social situations usually make me pretty nervous. I guess I have a touch of social anxiety but I act as if I don’t. I pretend to be confident and relaxed and you know what? After a while I actually feel confident and relaxed. It does work.

The saying act as if doesn’t mean to try and come off as a totally different person than what you are. It simply means to think of the behaviors that you want to change and act as if they are changed. By doing this you will begin to actually change your behavior and sooner or later you won’t have to act as if because it really will be.

I think about my early recovery. I wasn’t sure that this was for me, or if what I was being told was actually going to work. But I acted as if I was certain recovery would work for me. Little by little I truly started to believe recovery was possible.

Is this always easy? Heck no! Changing the way I react to situations is probably the hardest thing I have ever had to do in my life. When I am late on a car payment do I really want to call up the loan company and speak to them? No, for whatever reason my first instinct is to avoid their phone calls and their letters. Why? I have no idea. But that is something I truly do not like about myself and so that is something I am working to change. I don’t want to run from these types of situations anymore. Avoiding them makes me feel bad about myself and then the vicious circle of trying to numb that bad feeling starts. No thank you.

Start off simple. If there is something that you do, that you don’t like about yourself and you know that you should be doing differently try actually doing it differently. You already know that the way you do it now isn’t working out for you so what do you have to lose? Try one time this week to do one thing differently and see if you feel better about the outcome.

I’m going to cut down on my procrastination this week. I put things off like you wouldn’t believe. I constantly have things looming over my head. It no longer fits in with the person I want to be. This week I am going to try and do things when they need to be done instead of letting them snowball into huge situations. I’m going to act as if I don’t have a procrastination problem.

So what’s your thing going to be? You are going to act as if…(fill in the blank)


taken from "What Winners Do"