honesty, the first step

The first thing in any change effort is honesty. We have to admit to ourselves our situation, our resistance, our doubts, fears, and self-lies. When we resist change its often because we don’t want to admit that we need it in the first place. Most of us become very comfortable with the way we think and view the world. To change our perspective means we have to acknowledge that our current perspective doesn’t work anymore. And that is never an easy thing to do.

“We learned that we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholics. This is the first step in recovery.”

Alcoholics Anonymous (Big Book), p. 30.

You can take the word alcoholics and replace it with anything—angry, resentful, jealous, hateful, fearful, etc.—and you’ll find the first step to recovery is always admitting, i.e. honesty. You have to be brutally honest with yourself. It’s the foundation to change. You must first acknowledge what and who you are that’s preventing you from living the life you want to live.

No one ever sets a goal to become an addict/alcoholic. No one sets a goal to become more hateful, resentful, angry, jealous, or fearful. We become these things because of the choices we make over and over, then we find ourselves in a place we didn’t plan on being. So to turn things around we must make different choices over and over again, but it always begins with truth. What is the truth of your situation? What are you doing right now that you don’t want to do anymore? When you can admit that, your path to healing can begin.

#honesty #step1work