Now here’s a novel way of looking at the past and putting it into perspective. And, let’s face it, having any sort of perspective is something that many of us in recovery have a pretty difficult time doing, isn’t it?

But when we come right down to it, every journey has a beginning. We can’t arrive at a destination until we take the first step, right? When we get to a fork in the road, that’s a choice we make, and we can look back and possibly see the origin point of our journey. But, then again, maybe not. We may have made so much progress, traveled so far down the road, that where we started from is just a distant memory.

Still, it was a beginning. Starting where we did in the past, wherever that was, led us forward to the point where we are today.

What about a terribly painful past, filled with horrific memories and traumatic experiences? What about a past where we caused a great deal of harm to others, willingly or unconsciously, as we were mired in the self-destructive behavior patterns of our addiction? Even then, the past proved to be a beginning. If we hadn’t gone down that road long ago, we might never have chosen to go into rehab, might never have given ourselves the gift of life by choosing sobriety.

Yet we did. The past, once again, was but a starting point to our journey.

Getting creative about it is a good way to think about beginning something new. We may not know yet exactly where we want to go or precisely how we’re going to get where we think we want to head, but we do know that we want something good and positive for ourselves. Even those of us who’ve never had much success in life, are low in self-esteem or have accumulated a whole litany of bad habits we’re trying to change have some sort of hope for change.

The truth is that as long as we can conceive of a different life, even opening ourselves up to the possibility of a new life for ourselves in sobriety, we can achieve it.

It will take dedication and a whole lot of work, though. Nothing will happen just because we want it to. That’s the stuff of magic, and recovery, while it may seem miraculous, isn’t magic. There are steps to take and crises to weather and strategies to learn. We need experience learning how to live sober as well as how to begin to enjoy life without the use of drugs and alcohol to numb our pain.

We need to learn how to be with people, to make new friends, to find life worth living and living well.

None of these are just going to happen automatically. The knowledge that we will gain is something that we will need to work hard to acquire. Some things will come easily, while other lessons will be tough ones to learn, as in how to right a fractured or damaged relationship with loved ones or family members. Some reparations may be particularly tough to do, as we may need to do substitute amends due to the death of the person whom we’ve harmed or for another reason. We cannot find ourselves a failure in what we attempt to do even if we don’t succeed the first time out.

One secret of recovery that others share in the 12-step rooms is that we help ourselves when we learn from our mistakes. It isn’t a failure as long as we do find knowledge as a result. That doesn’t mean that we have to like not achieving our goals. It should help motivate us to continue our pursuit of them, or to change them if what we’ve learned points us in a direction that may be more workable or desirable, given our new-found knowledge.

Here’s another little secret. Today is tomorrow’s past and helps pave the way for yet another beginning. Think about that for a minute. We will always have a past behind us. Every day we go to sleep and awake the next morning means we’ve experienced another past. And we’re about to experience a new beginning.

If today didn’t turn out the way we’d planned, or we found that we needed to do things a little differently, we have a ready-made plan of sorts for how to approach it tomorrow. Recovery is a step-by-step process, lived day to day, every day for the rest of our lives.

Whenever we find ourselves lamenting that we’re jammed up and not able to get past our past, we would be wise to keep in mind that we don’t live there. We live in the here and now. While this would seem to be self-evident, so many of us in recovery, especially if we’re new to the state of sobriety, it is quite often something that we overlook entirely. We’re so caught up in all our past misdeeds, the trauma and consequences and problems we encountered, largely as a result of our addiction, that we have a tendency to stall our recovery with our fixation on the past.

Here’s a quick tip: Get over it. The past is just that. It is dead and gone and cannot hurt us unless we continue to stay focused on it. With a rearward view constantly on our mind, how can we hope to make any progress moving forward? It is simply impossible. But the remedy is also fairly straightforward. We have to train ourselves to make new choices, benefitting from our growing knowledge of what’s good and right for us in recovery.

This isn’t something that we’re automatically going to hone in on. We need some practice in doing so. After all, who among us doesn’t have many an item that we’re loathe to reveal, something from our past that causes us shame, some action or comment that has brought harm to others? It’s tough to just tell ourselves we’re going to get past the past and move on. It doesn’t work that way.

What we need most to help us along is to talk with others who have successfully been able to surmount their past. Chief among our advisors should be our 12-step sponsor. This is a person who knows how easily the past can trip us up in recovery. He or she can offer some practical advice on how we can take steps now to start living in the present.

It all begins with the amazing power of choice. We each have it, although we must learn how to develop it to our best advantage. Think of our lives in recovery this way. We are like seedlings, newly exposed to sunlight and warmth, fed nourishing water and clothed by protective soil. We can choose to flourish and grow, nourished by the available goodness, or we can decide that we’d rather remain stuck in the past. Not much of a choice, right? The logical answer is to choose to grow.

Here are some tips that may be useful.

• Try to learn something new each day, something that pertains to our recovery and helps us grow stronger in sobriety.
• Apply what we’ve learned to our lives today, rather than putting the action off for tomorrow. What we learn and do today will help solidify our recovery foundation and boost our self-confidence.
• When reminders of our past surface, recognize them for what they are and tell ourselves that we take responsibility for what we’ve done, and we are committed to our new life of sobriety. This acknowledges the past but doesn’t permit it to take control of our present.
• When we’re having difficulty sorting things out, talk with our sponsor, our loved ones or family members, our therapist, doctor or member of the clergy. We may be in need of some spiritual guidance or just need to have a candid conversation with those who know and care for us most.
• Try to alleviate pressure to perform. There’s no need to feel like we have to accomplish everything on our recovery to-do list today. But we do need to make some effort to tackle the most important items on our agenda. Having a schedule, keeping lists, writing in our journal, and taking proper care of ourselves will help us to keep firmly focused on the present, doing the best we can today to grow in recovery.
• Give it time. We will become more practiced in learning how to overcome intrusions from our past. Just as we are getting stronger in our ability to withstand and cope with cravings and urges, we can similarly become more accomplished in putting the past behind us and focusing on today.

We often hear about change in recovery. What a difference our lives will be like because of all the changes, the opportunity to make literally life-changing alterations of course, changing our outlook, making great changes, and things like that. Frankly, for many of us in recovery, especially during our early days of being clean and sober, the very idea of change scares the living daylights out of us.

What’s at play here is simply that we don’t feel we are ready. We may be frightened of what may lie ahead, since we have no control over it, we tell ourselves, and we’re not yet ready to venture into that great unknown. And it is the unknown that most bothers us, isn’t it? What we don’t know about, we fear. That’s human nature. But fear doesn’t have to rule our lives. We can learn to take things slowly and at our own pace and gradually learn to not only appreciate change, but learn how to best manage it.

In short, change is multifaceted. There is no single change. We are always changing, each second that we breathe, every step that we take, literally and figuratively. We are not the same person as we were yesterday. We have metamorphosed into something different, someone new.

This has occurred, and continues to occur, because we have made decisions that affect our lives in simple and profound ways. Some are little, almost imperceptible changes, such as offering a smile to a stranger we pass by on the street, whereas we never before may have looked up from the ground or kept our eyes averted, as if we had something to hide.

Some changes make a big impact on our lives, as the decision we made to go into rehab and get clean and sober. That was no doubt a long and laborious decision that didn’t come easily to us, but we did make it. We did enter treatment. We did stick with the program. We did come out cleansed of the substances that had laid claim to our lives.

Still, we’re not sure what to do all the time. Make that most of the time, when we’re first into recovery. It’s all too new. We aren’t sure what to say, what to do, where to go. We need a guide. We need help. We need someone to show us the path.

That’s where our 12-step sponsor comes in. Not that our sponsor is a God or even a therapist. He or she is neither. But what our sponsor does for us is universally the same, to a more or less degree, depending on the individual personalities and our willingness to embrace change. Our sponsor helps us navigate those early days in recovery when we’re most vulnerable, when we’re fearful of making mistakes that could land us in relapse, and when we’re so at a loss that we don’t trust any of our decisions.

One of the things we’ll learn from our sponsor is to take it easy, to be gentle with ourselves, and to approach each day in recovery doing the best we can. In other words, live in the present. Experience the moment. Given the circumstances, weigh and balance our actions before we act. Keep our sobriety commitment at the forefront, helping to guide our daily actions, but also keep goals in mind and strive to craft plans of action that will bring us closer to achievement of those goals.

We may not like some of the changes. What do we do about that? We may not like having to go to 12-step meetings so often, feeling them an intrusion into our lives, forcing us to be with people when we’d rather be off by ourselves. This is just one example of a change that we may not like, but since so many in recovery have said this was an issue for them, it’s a good one to consider. What we do in this instance is to change our attitude toward the change. By changing our attitude, we change our outlook, our hopes for the future. Look on the meetings as a building-block process. We need to begin to build the foundation for our recovery, and meetings are a good way to start.

Remember, little steps forward result in changes that we can begin to realize is of our own doing. This is multifaceted change, and it is a hallmark of effective recovery.

Thinking of ourselves as gentle isn’t a thought that comes easily to most of us. To some, a gentle person may be regarded as somewhat of a simple being, someone without sophistication or education or a person who is naïve about the world. But all we have to do is look at the example of some of the great philosophers and teachers, religious and otherwise, to know that this is absolutely not the case. In fact, looking at Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa, for example, we can see that a gentle person can not only influence the world, but profoundly shake it as well.

Applying this to recovery, it may mean that our gentle way of going about things may prove to be a strong influence on others who are just now finding their way in sobriety. If we show by what we do, and it helps another to find the light of recovery in the company of men and women committed to this sober lifestyle, then we are providing not only an example but a way to help motivate others to do so as well.

This doesn’t mean that we should fashion our lives as if we are teachers. It does mean, however, that we should strive to do the best we can in everything that we do. If we encounter problems or issues that seem difficult or insurmountable, we should do as we have done before: Ask for the advice and counsel of our sponsor, talk with our therapist, gather information and engage our family and loved ones in creating a constructive solution. Do so gently, humbly, and with a sense of purpose. This will likely lead to not only a satisfactory resolution of the problem or issue, but also serve as a self-motivator to continue living in this way of self-discovery.

And such self-discovery can help inspire and motivate others in their own recovery journey.

Let’s say, however, that we’re early to recovery. It’s all just so new. We’re frightened and uncertain and don’t much like the fact that we can’t do things the way we used to. Think about the fact that we are beginning to see things a little more clearly than we did when we were stoned or drunk all the time, or hanging out at the casino or cruising the bars looking for a one-night stand or whatever our "drug of choice" was. Sure, it’s a little scary here in the sober light of day. We don’t really know what to expect, especially if this is our first time in recovery.

We certainly don’t feel much like being gentle. In fact, we may want to shout or cry or hole up at home under the covers. Our way of life has been turned upside down. Yes, we are now free of the hangovers and DTs and withdrawal symptoms, at least, most of them, but we aren’t altogether sure about what to do next.

At this point, the only recommendation is to keep going to meetings, secure a sponsor and dive into the work of the Twelve Steps. Keep any appointments with our therapist, medical doctors, and continue taking any medication that may have been prescribed for us. Adhering to our schedule, taking proper care of ourselves, and learning as much as we can about recovery can all help bring stability to our lives. With that stability comes a gradual increase in our self-confidence, trust in our abilities, and hope for the future.

This gentle path to recovery has another upside as well. Whether we recognize it or not, we are proving to ourselves that we can do it. We can live a life in sobriety and realize our goals at the same time. We can be happy and productive. We can inspire others. We can, in fact, shake the world – the environs and the people around us with whom we interact on a daily basis.

Just when we think that there is no more to learn, there is more to learn. If we look at our lives in recovery as an unfolding gift of knowledge, we will begin to see that what we do today, right now, is going to pay off immeasurably. In other words, there is no better time than today to put a new spark into our recovery efforts. In fact, there is only now, since we act in the present – not the past or the future.

Maybe things have gotten a little stale in our recovery efforts. We’ve been doing the same things, perhaps, for many weeks and months. Maybe we’ve not seen the progress we had hoped to make. Have we thought that perhaps we are a little too hard on ourselves? Have we given ourselves credit for what we have accomplished? If not, it’s time to begin to acknowledge ourselves and the hard work we’ve been doing.

Having given ourselves a little pat on the back, now it’s time to step up our efforts in recovery. When we get motivated again after a little breather, we feel refreshed and renewed, full of anticipation at what’s next on our list of things to do. It helps if we put things on our list that bring us joy. When we look forward to something, perhaps a meal with our family or time spent playing with our children, it makes whatever else we have to do today seem to go by faster. There’s nothing like anticipation to make time speed by.

But, let’s be honest about it. Not everything we do in recovery brings us smiles. Perhaps it should, but it doesn’t. Sometimes we have all we can do just to make it through the day. There are challenges we face and obstacles to overcome for which we may feel ill-prepared. Exhausted from our efforts at maintaining our sobriety – especially early in our recovery – we may long for a little break from all the hard work. That’s the time to acknowledge that we have, indeed, put in a great deal of effort. That’s the time to give ourselves kudos for having the grit and determination and resolve to keep on doing our recovery efforts.

Again, balance the day out with something pleasant to look forward to. Communicating and spending time with loved ones and friends is just a important to our overall recovery efforts as just about anything else we have on our list. We do not recover alone, and we are not alone in our recovery. We are a family – even if our only family is our sponsor and fellow 12-step group members. We make progress together, even as we each embark on our own path of recovery.

Listen to the stories of others in recovery and take to heart their words of appreciation for the joy they feel each day in sobriety. Everyone’s words are different, and sometimes we have to hear what’s being said that lies underneath the words. In other words, we learn to read emotions. In this way, we can find new meaning in our own lives, and begin to appreciate the opportunities that present themselves to us each day in recovery. Come on, there are great blessings here for us today. All we need to do is embrace them.