Habili-blog 5/8/18
“Raise the bar”
by Jared Mayes
I once had a counselor that told me “I wish you could see yourself the way I see you.” The thought alone made my hair stand on end thinking that anyone could see me as anything other than my self-projected monstrous image. I have always had an issue with people giving me a compliment or commenting on my potential while getting sober. Instead I chose to melt into a pool of guilt and shame only relinquished by the introduction of drugs into my body. It was a system that worked for me. Fuel myself with all the reasons why I should want to escape, flush all the pain away, and then do it again. Lather, rinse, repeat. A meticulous process to ensure that no emotions ever emerged from my quickly eroding heart. Any mistake or unfortunate event life threw at me was just ammo to my arsenal of self-destruction. That was the hardest part about getting sober was the idea that I might just have to look inter-personally at who I was and decide who I wanted to be. So, who did I want to be? All my life I had blended into any situation or group of friends that was conducive to me gaining some sort of acceptance. I had to begin a process of self-exploration and define what it was I wanted out of life and how I was going to get it. I set aside all the things I thought people were labeling me as and I started to live for myself. When we come to a point where enough is enough and we are ready to change, our bar is set so low that to raise it we have to pick it up off the ground. Once that bar is off the ground our standards are set at a certain level. This next step in the process is very detrimental to the process. Something happens, and you’re forced to react. You make a mistake, you stumble, you fall in the dirt. Do you brush yourself off raise the bar a little bit and reach higher or do you validate that voice in the back of your mind telling you “See I knew you were a failure.” We are professionals at convincing ourselves to give up, but I’m here to blow your mind right now. Mistakes are a good thing. Mistakes are exactly what we need to raise the expectations of ourselves so that we can grow. Sir Isaac Newton said, “For every action there is an equal or opposite reaction.” Everything we do in this world will produce some kind of result. Some positive and some negative. Regardless of the outcome the ball is in our court to decide where to go next. Today when I look at myself in the mirror I don’t see the monster I once saw staring back at me. I see me. I see a capable individual. We are the dictators of our lives. Friends, family, significant others, none of these people can define who we are. We tip toe into the world of recovery a block of marble. Scared and unsure of what it is that we want. Every step in the right direction chisels that block a little more till it becomes a statue that reflects our hopes, our dreams, and our goals that can march through this journey all the way to the top. Go look at yourself in the mirror right now and look past the guilty, shameful drug addict and see yourself. Look deep into your own eyes and tell yourself “I am me. I can and will do hard things. I will not surrender”