“I’LL DO IT TOMORROW”

Some of us are very good at putting things off – I became a pro at this.  I convinced myself that I worked better under pressure and would wait until the very last minute to start something that needed to be done.

It was so much easier to focus on the things I wanted to do rather than tackling something that should be done.  And if I missed a deadline or avoided doing something completely, I could easily blame others or minimize its importance.

A lot of us have learned the hard way that recovery is a process and it is dangerous to stand still, rather than taking action.  But I now know that if I’m not moving forward in my recovery, I will revert back to my old ways of thinking and behaving, making relapse almost inevitable.

To be successful at anything, including recovery, we need to face what has to be done and take the action needed to accomplish it.

I myself had work to do to clean up the past and I had a lot of fear around it.  But I knew that moving forward in recovery meant change and part of that change was facing my fears.  It would have been easy to wait until I was backed into a corner, but that would be the very behavior I wanted to change.

By accomplishing some of the work slowly and not overwhelming myself, my self-esteem began to improve – I started to feel like a person again.  I also discovered that many of my fears around the issues were unfounded.

Experience has taught me that procrastinating is not a healthy behavior.  If I avoid or delay doing the necessary work, it will only create new problems and that is something I don’t need or want in my life.  My motto is “do it now” because it will improve my life in the long run.

SC