Facing the Challenges of Sobriety With Humility as a Spiritual Principle of Recovery
More than six in ten alcoholics recover if they seek help. For those who recover, finding reasons to stay sober provides a life raft amid sobriety's challenges.
Humility can help with this search for meaning. Alcohol addiction requires changing one's outlook on life, and to achieve that change in outlook, one must have humility.
If you need guidance on how to build a meaningful, happy life while sober, keep reading. We'll talk about how humility can help you as a principle of recovery.
Humility and Identifying Reasons to Stay Sober
Alcoholism distorts your priorities. To change those and find new reasons to stay sober, you must accept that you don't know everything. This acceptance forms a major principle of recovery.
This development goes both ways. Humility in recovery helps you in the same way as other virtues like patience or fortitude. Starting down that path of recovery helps build humility that will help you as the steps get harder.
Humility allows you to resist the urge to indulge an oversized ego. If you think of yourself less and the world around you more, you'll find it easier to identify ways to stay sober.
Humility and Self-Image
In addition to distorted priorities, alcoholics often have a distorted self-image. Alcoholism makes it easy to rationalize or justify behavior that harms others or the self. The early stages of recovery also lend themselves to self-loathing and self-deprecation, which encourage relapses.
When these sobriety challenges arise, humility continues to help. By getting in tune with your emotions, you can accept the painful, difficult moments on the road without thinking of yourself as worthless. You deserve a life without alcohol.
Humility and Gratitude
This acceptance helps you maintain gratitude as well. Humility and gratitude go hand in hand, as a clear view of yourself makes it easier to understand the kindness others show you during recovery. You must want to recover, but friends, family, and others on the recovery journey will provide reasons to stay that way if you show gratitude.
Humility and Radical Change
Alcoholism often intermingles with other emotional, interpersonal, and spiritual issues. Depression, anxiety, and alcoholism can present alongside each other, as depression can lead to substance abuse. Substance abuse can make all of those issues worse.
Often, alcoholics need to make drastic changes to their personality and self-concept to address other issues in their lives. People who learn to lie to hide alcoholism need to cultivate honesty, and people who lash out while abusing substances must develop self-control.
When these sobriety challenges happen, humility helps. Coming to terms with the sides of yourself that recovery exposes demands it.
After Every Step
Finding reasons to stay sober in the face of recovery's challenges takes effort. Humility helps you rely on those who love you, cultivate a healthy self-image, and find new priorities.
If you count recovery among your priorities, we'd love to help you celebrate your journey. At The Token Shop, we know the value of a dollar for alcohol recovery programs, so we offer low prices that let you keep more money in the program. Contact us with questions about our offerings, or take the time to browse our products.