Lean In--Go Toward

Has this happened to you: You learn a "trick", or an approach or a life strategy in early recovery that then, over time, slips away and later you get to revive it?

It happened to me this week. I began to remind myself of a favored strategy I learned from one of my early sponsors.  Whenever I told her about a person or a situation that I was fearing or resenting or trying to avoid she would say, "Go toward her" or "Go toward them". It wasn't easy but it aways worked. It's a quite brilliant technique.

But then, probably, I thought I knew it and it slipped from memory. But this week finding myself --more than once--dreading a meeting and then a person and then a project--I thought, "Hey, go toward it." And it worked.

I think this is also why I want to always go to meetings and I want to remember my early recovery--not just for how painful it was back then--and Oh Boy--it was painful!--But also to remember how carefully I listened to sponsors and other recovering people. Pain is a great motivator to learn. And wanting to get out of pain was a great motivator to try new things even if they sounded a bit wacky--like going toward something that I wanted to get very far away from.

So give this a try--Go Toward something scary or uncomfortable or hard. And also tell us the other lessons of your early recovery that you want to revive and use today.