In recovery, you will likely recognize aspects of your current lifestyle that are enabling your addiction. For example, when you are stressed, you may be tempted to use substances to escape from stress. Additionally, a life that is not in line with your values or vision can lead to boredom, depression, and relapse.
Fortunately, you have more control of your environment and your life than you may think. Building a life that you don’t want to escape from can be challenging, of course. However, it is an extremely rewarding endeavor that can improve all aspects of your well-being.
Consider the following factors to develop a life of sobriety that you are comfortable with and excited about maintaining.
#1. Your Life Environments
A person’s environment has a surprisingly large impact on their well-being. Your environment includes your living space, its orderliness, and its other occupants. It also includes the other places you frequent, whether those are indoors or outdoors.
Supports Sobriety
Consider whether your environment is directly enabling your addiction. Do you find that you are often surrounded by other users or individuals who enable your addiction? Have you found pipes or supplies that encourage use lying around your house or hidden in random drawers?
Your surroundings can heighten your desire to use substances again by reminding you of them. It is important to get rid of any environmental factors that may negatively contribute to your sobriety.
Is Orderly and Inspiring
Your environment can also affect your mental health. Ensuring your room is safe, clean, and orderly can make you feel less overwhelmed by life responsibilities.
You can also improve your enthusiasm for your sober life by making your living environment reflect your interests, personality, and values. After all, participating in fun sober activities can remind you that you don’t need substances to have a good time. Making your environment reflect yourself reminds you that your identity is not solely defined by your past substance use. There are so many other aspects of you!
Creating an environment in which you can thrive and be excited about life is important for recovery. When your environment is enjoyable, you will be less motivated to seek a mental escape through substance use.
#2. Your Life Values
Some individuals have a clear picture of their values when beginning treatment. Others have dismissed their values to the extent that they do not even know who they are anymore. Whatever your situation is, recovery can be used as a prime opportunity to redefine your values.
Understanding your values can give you an opportunity for self-enhancement. After all, if you don’t know what you want, you can’t work toward it! In recovery, as you find yourself, you can change your lifestyle to support your core values.
If you are consistently neglecting to adhere to your values, you are setting yourself up for cognitive dissonance and disappointment. By ensuring your values take priority, you can build a life that you respect and feel comfortable in. This is a key aspect of readjusting your life to suit your newfound sobriety. Don’t allow the expectations of others to hinder you from living in accordance with your personal values.
#3. Life Changes
Through your recovery journey, you will go through various stages of change. These changes can be extremely difficult to adjust to. This is especially true as you adjust your routine so that it no longer revolves around substance use.
As you work through the recovery process, you will develop new rituals and explore new activities. This can help you align your life with your goals of sobriety.
Change can be overwhelming for many people. Allowing yourself to move with the flow of change and accept the differences that arise can ease this process. To create a life you do not want to escape, change is essential.
#4. Life Vision
To work toward creating a lifestyle that you do not want to escape, it is important to understand what that lifestyle looks like. Answering the miracle question can help you to determine this.
It is helpful to have a vision for where you would ideally like to be. This ideal picture can help you to create goals that align with your dreams. You can also use this mental picture as a factor of motivation to continue your recovery. This life that you are picturing should be fulfilling all of your needs, creating a reality that you will not feel the urge to get away from.
Don’t Expect Perfection
When working toward your ideal lifestyle, it can be easy to assume that everything in your life will be near perfect once you reach this state. Realistically, that will never quite happen. Keeping realistic expectations for your lifestyle is essential.
We may all wish to live in a world where we never have to work again and can live in a constant state of vacation. This is not realistic for most individuals. However, we can build a lifestyle with less stress and more enjoyment.
Practice Flexibility
As you work toward a more comfortable lifestyle for you, make sure you can still cope with hardships that will occur. Your overall lifestyle should be engaging and allow you to feel at home. It should not be an opportunity to run from stress or conflict.
Having the skills to cope with future relapse triggers and high levels of stress can help you to retain your lifestyle in the long run. Allow yourself to mess up at times without your setbacks causing you to give up on your goals.
Many individuals begin using substances to cope with the hardships of their reality. If you are stuck in a life that consistently brings you down, you likely will feel the need to escape from your reality regularly. Substance use is a common way to do this, reinforcing the cycle of addiction. By assessing your environmental factors, adhering to your values, accepting change, picturing your ideal life, and not expecting perfection, you can work towards building a life that you no longer wish to escape from. To learn more about building a life that you do not feel the need to escape from, reach out to Dream Recovery today at (657) 216-7218.
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