Let Your Feelings Fuel You

by Recoverytreatment

Let Your Feelings Fuel You

Ever notice how fierce competitors like to get slapped before the start of an intense fight? It’s not because they like the pain. It’s because the pain fuels them.

Sober living is a lot like that slap in the face. It’s gonna hurt like heck, but if we let it, it can make us even more amped up to go out and take control of our lives when we graduate. If we end up liking it, we’ll see gains in our lives like never before.

The Big Book is very direct about the importance of pain in recovery. “Pain is the admission price to a new life,” it says. It also says that eventually, we “begin to fear pain less, and desire humility more than ever.” Couldn’t get much clearer than that.

Sober living isn’t designed to hurt us, but it is designed to help us work out those kinks in our lives that we either thought no one knew about, or genuinely forgot about ourselves. Once we recover from addiction, we learn very quickly that there are things and people in this world that will stop at nothing to see us back where we were– helpless and on our backsides. If we don’t learn to trim ourselves of all of the extra mental and spiritual fat we put on in the years leading up to our substance use, it’s going to be quite difficult to get through some of the tough times we might face after graduation.

We do that by being real with each other in sober living. We’re accountable. We work as a unit. We learn respect, punctuality, and how to build the right kind of pride. We may feel picked on or like we can’t keep up with the demands and rigor that sober living requires, but we’ll never feel alone. Using these feelings to push ourselves to work harder, make smarter decisions, and step outside of our comfort zones is the only way to do things here. If our feelings aren’t fueling us, we’re doing something wrong.

Sober living is like P90X for our feelings. Ready. Set. Go.

The Last House is a premier men’s sober living facility based in West Los Angeles. We turn men into gentlemen by helping them build the skills and confidence they need to demolish the competition: the real world. Call 1-866-677-0090 to see how we can help you, your son, or your husband today!

Making Lessons out of “Losses”

by Recoverytreatment

Making Lessons out of “Losses”

Sober living wouldn’t be very effective if we didn’t feel comfortable screwing something up every once in a while. In fact, though sober living communities like The Last House are here to help us plot the right path to the real world, they also function as a great place to make the mistakes we simply couldn’t afford to make out there.

Why?

 

Because mistakes make us stronger, smarter, and better. The Big Book mentions mistakes eight times, and almost every time, it’s in encouraging us to do one thing: learn from them. Think about it- in just about everything we learn, mistakes are par for the course. Baby’s going to walk? He’s going to fall down first. Making the transition from a tricycle to a bicycle? Prepare for some scuffed knees. Driver’s permit time? More like time for some bumped orange cones.

 

If even the most fundamental lessons we learn in life are meant to be accompanied by mistakes, then why should sober living be different? It shouldn’t, and it isn’t. It’s okay to make mistakes in sober living. The important concept is learning from them.

 

The Big Book suggests we learn from our mistakes by analyzing them (“we [should] continue to take personal inventory and continue to set right any new mistakes as we go along.”) Here at The Last House, we add to that by making sure that we hold ourselves accountable to our brothers. We live in unity, and, as such, any mistake one man makes affects the team. This teaches us that every action we take affects more than just us, and that, no matter what, even in the wrong, we’ll always have someone to support us and lift us back up.

 

We can make lessons out of everything we do, but learning to make lessons out of mistakes in particular teaches us that our battles aren’t lost when we mess up, and that forward progress can be made even when we think we’re screwed.

Sober living doesn’t just teach us how to live as recovered men. It teaches us how to live as conquerors. Let’s slap a band-aid on and learn from our mistakes. When we put our minds to it, our forward progress can’t be stopped!

The Last House is a men’s sober living facility based in West Los Angeles. We know the tools men need to become recovery warriors, and we equip them everyday to take control of their lives and make gold where others said was bronze.

Call us at 1-866-677-0090 to get started today!