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 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 washing the windows and waxing the cars and he is doing all this stuff
and eventually the kid gets mad and he why the heck am I doing all this
when am I going to learn to fight and Mr miyagi says 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 got to love the
karate kids I to watch all the car then the rocks wax but what do I have forgot
remember dear no question
yeah but wax on right hand wax off left hand wax on wax off breathe into nose out the mouth but
12 Step Works 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've 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've probably had
the skills but not known he had 'em and definitely not known when to use
now if you follow the plan you probably will figure out most of the 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 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 you keep your sanity intact
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 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 a work situation she had run into and we were like brainstorming ways she could handle
it 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
cause I know you don't really even know that's connected to your recovery but it
really is because if you didn't deal with that you were either going to build a 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 I quit 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 assertiveness skills now you might be
sitting here thinking oh I'm assertive I tell it like it is I tell you what I want
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 on a continuum you have like
passive way down here and you 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 knee met
aggressive means you're so focused on getting your knee met that maybe you'll run over other
people's knees in the process and assertiveness is right there in the middle I get my knees met you
get your needs met and it is a 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
be assertive right now the second recovery skill that I think everyone
needs to have Is it emotional management slash 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 reliant on some external source to make everything better
for you which means you probably haven't been using your coping skills very much
we're all very and I like to say coping skills are kinda like muscles if you
don't use 'em 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 is really important in recovery to
learn what to do with those really uncomfortable situations and emotions
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've probably
lost our problem solving skills because addiction gets us to this point where
we're just 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 when we put off our problems they get 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 Immediate 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 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
no you might be thinking to yourself how am I supposed to learn all that stuff
now sometimes people feel 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 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 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 in order
so there is 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 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 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