Tip #8: Identify The Challenge To Your Weekly Sobriety | Pure Desire Ministries

Well, this is so good. We've got one more tip. So our final one for today, how to make your commitment to change better, is to identify the challenge to your weekly sobriety. Ashley, what do we mean by that?

Yeah, looking ahead at what your week's gonna look like and being able to be proactive about your recovery is huge. So for this week, I, you know, I'll be down in Portland at the women's conference. And that means, you know, my husband has my crazy driving the kids around schedule and he'll be home alone. So, you know, he's going to be looking at his week going forward and saying, okay, I'm home alone. I'm on full time parent duty. I'm going to have the TV access, my wife's gone. So he may want to look at his commitments, change, and make his commitment to change so that he prevents falling into relapse. And then same with me, when I'm going out of town for the week, I can tend to get really consumed with forgetting priorities and overworking and end up snuggling with my computer in bed instead of my husband. And then I'm feeling detached from him. And so you can just let your week get out of control. So when you can take the time to look at the week going forward and realizing, do I have in laws coming into town, Is that going to be a trigger? Is my spouse going out of town? Will I be out of town? Am I home alone? Anything that could potentially send you down the faster scale, you can look at that ahead and make proactive steps.

And that's the thing too is because putting together a plan is always so much better than living like a reactive week where depending on what happens, I will respond in the moment and being intentional. And man, I mean, this is just my personality. I really, I like to know what's coming. But I also like that spontaneity. And so sometimes I talk myself out of planning. I want to almost be surprised that I have meetings or different things that come up, which is foolish and I need to work on it. But I think that one of the things with that is it makes me more reactive. And if I can look at my week, um, and my wife does a great job of this is on Sunday night, she just looks at the week ahead and starts to make some mental checklists and some plans. And I think that that can be super, super helpful when you're doing your commitment to change. Because if, you know, you've got a really challenging meeting on Wednesday or you're gonna be with your in laws on Friday. And you know that's gonna be tough. You can make plans or cater that commitment to change to those specific places you'll be, you'll find yourself in and be able to walk out feeling like you were successful in those because you already did the prep and put in the work beforehand.

Yeah, this is really all about self awareness. You know, that's the great thing about being in a group is you become aware of your patterns. And so sometimes I'll ask the question this way. I'll say, if I was going to relapse this week, when is it most likely to happen? Yeah, that doesn't mean you're going to relapse or you need to, but you've got enough self awareness that just like you guys have been sharing, you can look ahead and see. You know, it would probably happen on Friday because Thursday is a crazy busy day and there's that letdown of emotion and energy. Probably would be Friday or I've got to see my in laws and it's usually the next day or we see our pattern. If we know, oh, that's the place I'm most vulnerable, then that's where I can make a commitment to change. So I go into that with a lot more forethought and preparation, which becomes the very thing that really keeps me healthy and avoids relapse. So that may be a question that could help some of our listeners. When you're trying to think I don't know what to do for a commitment to change is just to say, okay, let's be honest here. If I was going to relapse this week, where is it most likely to happen? And then just wrap your commitment to change around that time of your week.