5 Life-Changing Skills NEVER Taught at 12-Step Meetings!

But part of the problem with the 12 steps is that they, even though they do teach a lot of things really well, they do it in a real, like, indirect way. And they're sort of, like, hoping you pick up on the vibe and you learn the lesson. But sometimes if you're like me, you can be a little dense and you can totally miss it. You know what it reminds me of? The karate kid. So Mr. Miyagi has that kid out there, you know, washing the windows and waxing the cars, and he's doing all this stuff. And eventually the kid gets mad and he says, well, why the heck am I doing all this? When am I going to learn to fight? And Mr. Miyagi says, you know, like, wipe on, wipe off. And he blocks all the punches. And then the kid realizes, oh, I have been learning how to fight or whatever, and it's just like this big light bulb moment or whatever, which is a pretty awesome moment in the movie, by the way. Gotta love the Karate Kid.

Just wash all the car, then wax.

Wax. What? Do I have to wash all the car?

Remember, dear, no question. Wax on, right hand, wax off left hand, wax on, wax off. Breathe in through nose, out the mouth.

But 12 step works kind of the same way. They're having you practice and do these things, these 12 steps, and calling your sponsor and stuff, but they don't do the greatest job of connecting the dots. Can you imagine how the Karate Kid would have turned out if Mr. Miyagi wouldn't have directly connected those dots between the wiping on and the wiping off to the actual fighting skills? That's exactly right. He would have probably had the skills, but not known he had them and definitely not known when to use them. Now, if you follow the plan, you probably will figure out most of the skills, but I want to make sure and call your attention to these five skills, because not only are they not talked about directly, they're just not talked about, and you really, really need them if you want to stay sober after you get past the first month or so of recovery. I think the rest is mostly about sanity management. How do you stay sober? Well, you keep your sanity int. So in my mind, a lot of recovery skills don't even have anything to do with the substances. It's just, how do I keep myself in a place to not need those substances? You got to keep yourself in a healthy place, which means you need to keep your life in a somewhat orderly fashion. I was talking to this young girl just today who's in early recovery, and she was telling me about, like, a work situation she had run into. And we were kind of, like, brainstorming ways she could handle it and. And figuring out how to solve the problem. And she was telling me some things that she's already done. And I said to her, I was like, man, I'm really impressed with you doing that, because I know you don't really even know that that's connected to your recovery, but it really is, because if you didn't deal with that, you were either gonna build up resentment, get really upset with that person, and then get mad one night and go out and drink, or totally quit this job that you actually really like. I quit quitting. So let's talk about what those skills are. The first really important, crucial recovery skill that I think everyone should learn is I think everyone should work on their assert skills. Now, you might be sitting here thinking, oh, I'm assertive. I tell it like it is. I tell you what I want. Well, if you tell it like it is and you always say exactly what you want, then you might not have good assertiveness skills. Because in my mind, assertiveness is sort of on a continuum. You have, like, passive way down here, and you have aggressive way down here, and in the middle, you have assertiveness. Passive means you're too scared of upsetting someone else, therefore, you don't get your needs met. Aggressive means you're so focused on getting your needs met that maybe you run over other people's needs in the process. And assertiveness is right there in the middle. I get my needs met, you get your needs met, and it is a win, win situation, and we could all get better at this. Give me a little hand emoji in the comments if you think you could get better at assertiveness. The assertive. Right. Now, the second recovery skill that I think everyone needs to have is. Is emotional management, anxiety management. Because probably if you've gotten yourself to the point of having an addiction, then you've somewhere along the way, become very, very reliant on some source to make everything better for you, which means you probably haven't been using your coping skills very much.

We're all very upset.

And I like to say coping skills are kind of like muscles. If you don't use them, they atrophy, which is why very early in recovery, it feels like everything is the end of the world. You feel an emotional wreck. You feel like you have super thin skin, and you have difficulty dealing with almost any kind of stress.

No more. I can't take it anymore.

That definitely Gets better. Literally, just stopping the addiction Will make that probably 50 to 70% better on its own after the first month or so. However, it's really important in recovery to learn what to do with those really uncomfortable situations and emotions. Sometimes it's a matter of learning to sit with it and understand that it'll pass. And sometimes it's a matter of stopping long enough to ask yourself, what does this emotion mean? Because emotions are like little messengers, and they're trying to tell you something, and you need to learn to stop and say, hey, why am I angry? Why am I sad? Why do I feel rejected? What does that mean? Because it's an important piece of information, and once you can stop and think about that, Then you can decide what to do about it. Which leads me to my third really crucial recovery skill, which is problem solving. During the process of developing an addiction, we probably kind of lost our problem solving skills, because addiction gets us to this point where we're just sort of like, in survival zone, and we're just trying to get through the next moment. And we tend to put off problems until we just absolutely have to face them. And guess what happens when we do that? We put off our problems. They get bigger and bigger and bigger until ultimately we have to face them. They're freaking huge. And so learning how to identify and solve problems as they come at us one by one Allows us to not get to that point where things build up into this giant tsunami. But your first instinct might be to put it off, avoid it, numb it out, ignore it. We got to rewire that instinct now. The fourth really important recovery skill is communication skills. Now, I definitely think the 12 steps do a lot to help us learn to more effectively navigate relationships, because it forces us to learn how to deal with resentments and make amends and all that kind of stuff. But it doesn't necessarily directly teach us really good communication skills. This one kind of connects in with assertiveness, but it's really bigger than just assertiveness. How do we communicate authentically? How do we get past that reflex? We have to avoid things and ignore things. How do we hear other people's complaints or feedback or frustrations without taking it defensively? How can we learn how to say things in a way that other people actually hear? Now, those good communication skills Are important recovery skills because they keep your relationships healthy. Communication is key, and one of the biggest triggers for relapse Is going to be when you have a big, giant relationship problem. And I don't just mean, like a romantic relationship. I'm talking about like, relationship with your kids, your family, your boss, your friends, all of those things. When someone's upset with you or you're upset with someone else, the chances of relapse start going up immediately. Now, skill number five that I think everyone in recovery is what I call mindset management. Now, if we can do those other four things, we've actually already done a lot for mindset management. But when we're in that active addiction state, we can kind of train ourselves to think negatively because so many problems build up around us, because the substance is actually making our anxiety worse. And it can become almost like a habit to think negatively, to assume the worst is going to happen, to build a resentment rather than solve a problem. So it's not just the habit of engaging in the addictive behavior. It's all those mindset habits that have built up along the way. What I do requires a certain mindset. Now, you might be thinking to yourself, well, how am I supposed to learn all that stuff? Now, sometimes people feel kind of weird about going to counseling related to a substance abuse problem, which they really shouldn't, but sometimes they do. But you might not feel so bad if you say, well, I'd like to have a counselor and work on my communication or my mindset or my problem solving skills. And maybe if you don't like that word counselor, then get yourself a coach to work on these things. It might feel less intimidating to reach out and ask for help on those things than reaching out and asking for help specifically and directly about the substance use. Although I do need to slide this in. If you don't address the substance use, you're not going to get these other things anywhere. So there is kind of an order to things. The substance use or the addiction definitely has to be dealt with. And then very soon after, these things need to come in play to keep your recovery in check. Now, we also teach these skills in our membership program. Our membership program is actually one of the big ways that we support this channel, so we can keep making all these free videos for you, but our members actually get access to these specific skills. Each month we pick one of these skills and we focus on it for the entire month. And then the next month we pick another one. And these are just good life skills. These are just good sanity management skills. So whether or not you personally have the addiction, if you're trying to be your best self, these are things that we can all work on and improve. I'll put the link to our membership in the description below. But up next, I want you to watch this video on reflective listening. Because you're going to get started right now, today, working on your communication skills.