Feeling stuck? Ask Yourself These 3 Transformational Questions Daily

Way too often we go through our days on autopilot, never stopping to examine the motivations behind our thoughts, feelings and behaviors. But if you'll take the time to pause daily and ask yourself these three transformational questions, you'll gain invaluable self awareness and unlock profound personal growth. For those of you who are new here, my name is Amber Hollingsworth and you're watching Put the Shovel down. This is a YouTube channel all about helping you understand the science and psychology of addiction and recovery. My goal is to make sure that you are always five steps ahead of addiction, whether for yourself or for a loved one. And today's lesson speaks directly to recovery. Whether you're in personal recovery or in family recovery, self awareness and self honesty is the key to recovery. So I want to challenge you to get honest with yourself. Ask yourself these three questions every night and over time you'll see that honesty and self awareness becomes more natural to you, almost like a habit which is going to increase your integrity and your self esteem along with your relationships. The first question I want you to ask yourself each night is, was I resentful today? Resentment typically leads to self pity, which almost always leads to some sort of bad decision making. So uncovering hidden resentments is critical for your own personal recovery. Now, resentment is kind of like a low level anger that we hold inside and builds and builds. If we don't deal with it, we can begin to ruminate on it. It can start to consume our thoughts. Here are some signs to let you know if you're struggling with the resentment. Do you find that you're struggling with persist hostility and bitterness. Do you find that you're dwelling on past perceived wrongdoings? Do you find that you're defensive or overly sensitive to certain topics? Do you get overly reactive when certain things get brought up? Are you avoiding a certain situation or a person? Like do you go out of your way to avoid a situation? Do you notice any kind of passive aggressive behavior, like little hostile comments? I call them digs. Sometimes we say them in passing or under our breath. This is sort of an acting out or retaliation towards someone else. Do you have any of the physical symptoms of resentment like headache, stomach ache or muscle tension? Are you finding it extremely hard to forgive someone? Do you notice that you're becoming more and more cynical or bitter? Are you having a hard time enjoying the present? All of these are symptoms that you could be holding on to a resentment. Uncovering and dealing with these resentments will help you find more contentment and joy in your everyday life. Now, the next big question I want you to ask yourself daily is, was I dishonest today? Now, this is tricky. Or because it requires us to be honest with ourselves about our honesty. Most of us can recognize when we outright lie about something, and obviously that counts in this question. But I want you to dig a little bit deeper because there are other ways of being dishonest, like lying by omission, leaving out certain important parts, parts that you know are relevant to the situation or that you know the other person would want to know. Are you giving information in a misleading way, like only telling the parts of the story that put you in a favorable light? Are you misrepresenting your intentions? A lot of times we'll maybe tell the truth, but we'll be dishonest behind what our intentions in the situation were. Am I manipulating a situation by playing on someone else's emotions or empathy? Am I exaggerating a situation or minimizing a situation? Am I being purposefully evasive about something? Am I presenting information in a way that distorts the reality of the situation? Am I denying responsibility by blaming others or making excuses? Am I hiding my true emotions and motivations? These are all questions that go under the honesty category. As you can see, these big questions can be broken down into smaller questions. In recovery, we call this taking an inventory. And the purpose of taking a nightly inventory is to keep your integrity in check, to keep your relationships healthy. The way I like to think about it is it's like making sure all the dishes are out of the sink at the end of the night. Everything is either in the dishwasher or dried and put away. That way, when you wake up the next day, you're starting with a clean slate instead of just avoiding and piling on a bigger and bigger mess that you will eventually have to deal with. Now, the last big question that I want you to ask yourself is, do I owe an apology or a thank you? This question goes directly to relationship maintenance. It's especially easy for our relationships that are closest to us, for us to take those for granted and not put in the daily maintenance or work required to keep those relationships healthy and happy and moving forward. Asking yourself these three questions every night is going to make life a whole lot more bearable because you're not going to be running from things anymore. You're going to be solving problems and handling issues as they happen. No more letting things pile up and pile up until you have a giant crisis on your hands. Now, I noticed that those were three questions, but there were like a bunch of little questions under the three questions, and I know that was a lot of information to throw at you, so I've put all this for you into a downloadable journal entries to help remind you how to ask yourself these questions and go through the checklist to make sure you're really thinking through each and every one of these things thoroughly. Before long, you won't need the checklist, it'll just become automatic. But to begin with, it can really help you to flesh out to really think through these situations. I'll put the link to that download in the description below. Up next, I want you to watch this video on managing your anger, which is another crucial recovery skill.