Sometimes during recovery, especially in the early days, it can feel like you’re being bombarded with all of the things that you should do, and all of the things that you shouldn’t do. The drive to be successful can move you along your path for a while, but you’ll have a hard time maintaining it if you don’t find a way to experience some happiness at the core of everything as well. You don’t want to get so caught up in achieving goals, that you forget to find the joy in the journey.
Setting Realistic Goals
When you really strip it down, recovery is all about setting goals for yourself, and then achieving them. You’ll have long term goals for sobriety and progress, and these can really help direct you when making decisions, but it’s the small, everyday goals that really bring you the most happiness. Your long term goals are really made up of many bite-sized goals that lead you to the big prize. Setting realistic goals that you can see yourself accomplishing in the near future will set you up to enjoy your successes as they come, and this can fuel your happiness.
Keeping Confidence in Check
Every success, whether big or small, that you experience throughout your recovery will give you a boost of confidence that you’ll need to tackle the next step. This confidence is a key component in your happiness and self-worth, and you should definitely enjoy it when it comes along. Happiness can put success at risk a little bit for those who become overconfident during addiction recovery. Overconfidence can jeopardize your sobriety.
If you start feeling like you’re strong enough to engage in occasional drug or alcohol use, or that you don’t need the help of your support system anymore, your addiction may be hijacking your confidence and steering you away from success and happiness. Remind yourself that these kinds of thoughts can ruin all your progress, put your head down, and keep fighting forward.
Finding Happiness in Success
As long as you’re keeping a healthy perspective about your recovery success, it will give you great opportunities to build your happiness. Take the time to celebrate every success you achieve, no matter how small. Let yourself feel happy and proud of the work you’ve done. Don’t let what still lies ahead of you overwhelm you and throw a cloud over your happiness. You’ll even see that your relationships with others are strengthened as you share your successes and happiness with them along the way.