Victorious In Recovery: Recent Episodes
David Reffner
How does one become Victorious in Recovery? That’s the journey we are on together as I reflect on my personal recovery from the disease of addiction. In each episode I pull together insight on topics such as daily reflections, my higher power, step work, attending meetings, rebuilding relationships and starting new ones, mental health, daily triggers and stressors and ultimately the desire to stay clean one day at a time. Special episodes include interviews with others in recovery exploring the methods that have helped them also become Victorious in Recovery.
Definition of effort
1: conscious exertion of power
2: a serious attempt
3: something produced by exertion or trying
4: effective force as distinguished from the possible resistance called into action by such a force
5: the total work done to achieve a particular end
Sickness
noun
a particular disease or malady. the state or an instance of being sick; illness. nausea; queasiness.
think
verb (used without object), thought, think·ing.
to have a conscious mind, to some extent of reasoning, remembering experiences, making rational decisions, etc. to employ one's mind rationally and objectively in evaluating or dealing with a given situation.
The truth is not always easily accepted. Today I want to talk about how I accepted things that were hard to accept as truth.
Worry is our biggest waste of time, even more so when it's about things that have nothing to do with us...
When I can be truly me is when I can fit myself to be of maximum service to others.
Definition of align
To be in or come into precise adjustment or correct relative position.
Thank you for your support!
I'm going to be taking a break from the podcast for 4-8 weeks.
Sometimes its hard after we have been sober for a while and still don't know what our purpose really is. Do I need to know?
It's important to acknowledge what is and what was as those thoughts and feelings come up. It's amazing what ten minutes of uninterrupted and purposeful feelings and thoughts can do for years of regret and shame.
Sometimes the most caring thing someone can ask me is "Have you taken your meds today?"
I don't this it's by chance the books hold so much wisdom, yet we forget what happened yesterday so easily. Taking notes or Journaling helps me not forget the lessons I learn today when I most need them in the tomorrow.
Happy 4th of July.
Some days in recovery are good and some bad, this is just simply my 1007th day. Having one day at a time thoughts in a world that asks about your future isn't always easy to juggle.
Step 3 is a choice to have faith in God no matter the extent of my understanding.
Faith is not knowledge or understanding, faith is a choice.
Make life easy on yourself, when the matter is fresh, speak up about your beliefs and boundaries and it will become super clear who needs to stay and who needs to go.
It's my 40th Birthday!
it's crazy to think that in 40 years I haven't known comfort or satisfaction or peace like I did today... It's all about perception.
What is a goal?
/ɡōl/
noun
The object of a person's ambition or effort; an aim or desired result
Episode #100
Thank you everyone for your support on this journey of mine. I hope you enjoy this episode!
There's always so much focus on what I should be doing... But theres something to be said about knowing what not to do as well.
details
noun
an individual or minute part; an item or particular. attention to or treatment of a subject in individual or minute parts.
Definition of solution an action or process of solving a problem
an answer to a problem
specifically : a set of values of the variables that satisfies an equation
The dictionary defines reproach as “shame or disgrace or that which brings rebuke or censure upon a person.
Definition of chain of command : a series of executive positions in order of authority a military chain of command.
My favorite definition of faith is:
-A firm belief in something for which there is no proof.
The little things Matters, issues, concerns, outcomes, etc., that are or seem to be of minor significance or importance.
Definition of prayer
a devout petition to God or an object of worship. a spiritual communion with God or an object of worship, as in supplication, thanksgiving, adoration, or confession. the act or practice of praying to God or an object of worship. a formula or sequence of words used in or appointed for praying:the Lord's Prayer. prayers, a religious observance, either public or private, consisting wholly or mainly of prayer. that which is prayed for.
The idea of being perfect is a trap! You'll never meet the people you need to be around by trying to be perfect so just be truly who you are.
Just a little insider look at what is usually going through my head during the making of an episode and a quick Thank You!
Feed the right things to your inner voice and your view of the world will begin to look like the promises.
Whats the meaning for pause?
a temporary stop
Definition of pause
(Entry 1 of 2) 1 : a temporary stop. 2a : a break in a verse. b : a brief suspension of the voice to indicate the limits and relations of sentences and their parts. 3 : temporary inaction especially as caused by uncertainty : hesitation.
There a place we often get stuck, its the place between where we were and where we want to be.
No one tool can tackle every job, Its important to have every tool we can find at the ready so we are not caught of guard.
Today I had the privilege to share my story live for the fist time at "Breakfast Club" in Oklahoma City. Enjoy!
Exodus 33:17 ESV And the Lord said to Moses, “This very thing that you have spoken I will do, for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.”
I absolutely must be patient with myself as well as maintain a faith in my sponsor and in God and in the process of healing, Remembering that I am not here because I know how to do this, I’m not here because I can do this by myself. I’m here exactly because I cannot do this and because I do not know and that’s the whole point of this whole thing.
Every other thing we do in life is created from something that was already existing but the creativity of the mind is pure new power that didn’t come from anywhere but us.
“There Is a Solution” suggests that this has been the common remedy for all those who have entered recovery
-Always remember that there truly is a solution. You simply must be open-minded enough to seek it.
Romans 12:2 (NIV)
Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
Value
noun
The regard that something is held to deserve; the importance, worth, or usefulness of something.
Surrender (To a higher power)
Description To surrender in spirituality and religion means that a believer completely gives up his own will and subjects his thoughts, ideas, and deeds to the will and teachings of a higher power. It may also be contrasted with Submission. Surrender is willful acceptance and yielding to a dominating force and their will.
Transcript
[Music]
thank you guys for tuning in to
victorious and recovery you know this
week has actually been really good
on
wednesday i had my friend
joshua russell share his story and it
was great i got a great response thank
you everybody that tuned in and shared
that with me
this coming week i actually have another
special guest on wednesday
by the name of chris wells
is a guy i met out in fairview oklahoma
a few years back
when i was
on a different journey that didn't quite
take but it was one of my attempts to
get clean
i was out there at a church
that had offered to let me come out and
actually live in the church for a while
while i
sought god and and my recovery and
everything
like i said i i didn't stay clean um but
i'm forever grateful for the time that i
had there and for the friends that i
made
chris has actually become an evangelist
and the national chaplain of repented
motorcycle ministries worldwide
so he has a great story
it's not too much unlike mine and like
the rest of us you know we all have a
lot of things in common
so i look forward to having him here on
wednesday and i encourage you guys to
tune in and check it out
you know as you guys know i'm i'm trying
to really kind of go a different
route once a week
with uh new speakers and i'm just kind
of getting the feel
getting the feel for what this podcast
can do in people's lives and
hopefully give a little bit broader of a
spectrum
than just my own opinion of course
and i try to do that by bringing
different scripture and different
commentary from certain books and
whatnot
but
i'm trying to take that a little bit
further with some new insight from some
new people
that have great stories and so anyways
there was a great response so far i
appreciate it and i think you guys are
gonna really like this
as always if you guys know anybody that
could benefit from hearing my story or
one of the other special guest stories
or they just need encouragement to know
that they're not alone in their struggle
trying to recover
point them this way and
encourage them to be a part of this
i was just told on friday
that i'm actually going to be speaking
at a group called the breakfast club in
oklahoma city
and i'll get back on here with some more
details or you can hit up my facebook
site and i'll have the details there the
address and the time and all that so if
you can come out and join us for the
night it's a narcotics anonymous group
and even though it's called the
breakfast club is actually at night at
8pm on wednesdays and fridays
this week was one of those weeks where
i was just i was trying to deal with
some insecurities
i had some insecurities and fears about
a person that i've been in a
relationship with
and
her beliefs were a little different than
mine and
given my path and what
i see might be my future
that scared me a little bit
and of course as we do sometimes i
didn't ask her opinion i didn't
discuss it with her other than in
passing
i chose to take a conversation that
could have been casual and turned it
into a conversation that ended up with
us breaking up and it didn't have to be
that way
you know the more i thought about it the
more i reflected on that conversation
that decision that fear that i had
of moving forward in a relationship with
somebody that our beliefs weren't the
same
the more i felt like i had been rash in
that decision
so of course i reached out to some
people
that i trust and respect and
unfortunately for me they kind of
pointed out that i can be a little bit
shallow and i can be a little bit quick
to make those decisions
and
they didn't say it
directly but i got the hint that i
should probably reconsider or that i
should just think about it
meditate on it a little bit and
revisit what could have made me want to
make that decision
and like i said it turns out it was just
fear
i tend to
want to make life really black and white
i come into this
these programs the 12-step programs and
they tell you to change your people
places and things because of the
influence that they have on us and
so that kind of becomes a way of life
so any time in this last two and a half
years or so that i
foresee any problem
i tend to run from it
or at least to think that it can't be
overcome
and to be quite honest it's really
severely limiting my outlook on life at
this point but
i don't know how to get better
and
i haven't been
connected enough
to the people around me to
feel secure asking those those questions
how do i do this
and so i just get stuck
i don't know how to believe or do
differently than i already do
and unfortunately there's not there's
not a lot of literature out there that
is specific enough for me to feel like
it's talking directly to me on this
subject
where can i be lenient where can i feel
comfortable in people being who they are
and not requiring more of them than what
they are
and not fearing the differences
it falls back on that thing where they
say
look at the similarities and not the
differences and and i failed at that
this week is what i'm trying to say
and i was in a meeting this week and
this guy said something completely
unrelated but he was talking about some
situation that he has happened in his
head and he says my
sponsor always tells me pray
write about it
and talk about it
and that that will get you to the right
place and i'm like that's way over
simplistic that can't possibly work
so i put it in my notes and i prayed
about it and
i wrote about it
and i reached out to my friends like i
said and guess what it wasn't overly
simplistic it actually worked
i tend to
pray
you know every day and stuff but
i've been praying the third step prayer
um as an assignment every day for my
sponsor
and
the big part of that is is praying about
god doing his will
and him relieving me of the bondage of
self which i understand to be
giving me freedom to not just depend on
my own understanding
relieving me of the bondage itself my my
bondage the way i
enslave myself is by not being open to
the possibility of something or somebody
else knowing better than i do
and i know i'm not alone in that so what
happens is as i end up praying but i'm
not praying for god's will i'm praying
to try to change god's mind to my will
so instead of that you know i've been
praying this prayer every day
and it goes like this says god i offer
myself to thee to build with me and do
with me as thou will relieve me of the
bondage of self
that i may better do thy will
take away my difficulties
that victory over them may bear witness
to those i would help of thy power and
thy love and thy way of life
may i do thy will always
and in the aaa big book there's actually
promises that go along
with that step and that prayer and they
go a little bit like this they're on
page 63 it says when we sincerely took
such a position
all sort of remarkable things followed
we had a new employer
being all powerful he provided what we
needed
if we kept close to him and performed
his work well
established on such a footing we became
less and less interested in ourselves
our little plans and designs and more
and more we became interested in seeing
what we could contribute to life
as we felt the new power flow in as we
enjoyed peace of mind as we discovered
we could face life successfully
as we became conscious of his presence
we began to lose our fear of today
tomorrow or the hereafter we were reborn
you know and that's that's really where
it's at i had fear of today and
tomorrow i had fear of what god's will
would be
what if it doesn't line up with my own
so what would happen is you know i was
doing this third step prayer and i was
praying for god's will and then it
started to either not look like anything
was happening or it maybe looked like it
wasn't going to line up with my will so
i'd take it back
and i didn't give god the time or the
supremacy to to make a difference with
what his plan was for my life
in the end it just amounts to me being
afraid of what god's solution is for my
circumstance
what his plan is for my life scares me
because i don't know what it is
i don't have the capability to approve
his work
you know it's that same fear
what's gonna happen if i'm not in charge
what's gonna happen if it's not what i
think should happen
and so i mean what it boils down to is
i'm left with a lot of regrets in life
because of that one thing that happens
over and over and over again i have
given up on so many dreams on so many
people on so many jobs on so many
situations that probably could have led
me
to a better life i've given up
and even if they hadn't led me to a
better life i would have learned things
from that
i've stolen what god could have given me
it reminds me of this
this story i'm ashamed to even say it
but i inherited a car from my grandpa
not too long ago that passed away
and when i first got into it i was like
crap
somebody stole the stereo out of it
and a couple of days later i'm sitting
around
shopping for a stereo and i'm like oh
and you know what i remembered i stole
the stereo out of his car
i stole my own stereo
i didn't know it was going to be mine
but it would have been mine and i stole
it for myself not just him
and it that's what's happening now
i'm afraid and so i'm stealing what
could be mine
you know but i have to be careful when i
get in these mindsets
not just because of what i might be
missing but even when i accept it and
finally go along with what god's will
might be or at least just give that
opening say okay god just do whatever
sometimes i end up on the other side of
that and i'm ashamed of
how i've been acting
i'm ashamed of the weakness i had i'm
ashamed of my fear
and paul talks about this he talks about
having a thorn in his side he talks
about his weakness and his failures in
life
and he puts a nice spin on it and i was
actually reading a
bible study the other day and
[Music]
i took a little part out of it i want to
read with you guys
and the author of this study was
explaining it so well that i i'm just
going to read it i couldn't explain it
any better than this
it says implicit in this assertion
is recognition that none of this is
about how great paul is
or how great we are paul's lack
our weakness
within the context of submissive
relationship with jesus
only goes to highlight jesus wonder and
glory and so rather than trying to hide
it or underplay it or even exaggerate
our own skills or abilities
we can follow paul's example
and highlight our weaknesses
delight in our hardships
celebrate our difficulties
so that christ's power can rest on us
and he was a great example of that
he readily and openly admitted his
faults
because when we do that not only are we
setting our own mind in the right place
to receive god's grace and his power and
his instruction in our life but we're
giving glory to him
we're admitting that nothing that we did
made the good things happen that are
happening in our lives
we admit that if we had had our way we
wouldn't be where we are
and so making mistakes is no longer
something to be ashamed of
it's something that we can learn from
and use to as like a testimony as a
story to help somebody else realize hey
it's okay to be flawed
it's okay to make bad choices it's okay
that you had fear about something
because it brought you closer to being
able to accept that you can't do it by
yourself and that's the point
knowing that i'm not capable of making
all the right choices or
that i'm not capable of always being
unafraid helps me constantly be reminded
that i depend on a higher power
coming into recovery one of the fears
that i had is that i had already lost
everything to such a point that i didn't
have anything to look forward to
that the best that i could do was
not die
the best that i could do was
maybe be an okay dad every once in a
while
and
on february 23rd
the reflection of the day said something
that really spoke to me says the 12
steps teach us that as faith grows so
does security
the terrifying fear of nothingness
begins to subside
as we work the program
we find that the basic antidote for fear
is a spiritual awakening
we lose the fear of making decisions
for we realize that if our choice proves
wrong we can learn from the experience
and should our decision be the right one
we can thank god for giving us the
courage and the grace
that caused us to act then it asks a
question
am i grateful
for the courage and grace that i receive
from my higher power
and if i have to answer honestly most of
the times no i mean i want to think that
i am but usually when i get courage and
grace
i'm not immediately reminded that that
was from god
i usually just take it in stride as if
it came about because i'm just
awesome you know and that's hard to
admit
i would love to say oh i give glory to
god for every good thing in my life and
that's just a lie
it's just a straight lie i don't
i should yeah
when i realize that i haven't i do
when i realize that i haven't i come
back and i give the glory to god and i
thank him
but that's not my first reaction my
first reaction is to not notice it
because when things go well i don't
always think
of who i should be given the glory to
i just accepted that it's just how it is
i must make the right choice
when the reality of it is is i probably
made a stupid choice and god saved my
ass again
anyways moving on from there
the reflection of the day also as usual
has a prayer it says today i pray
i ask that i be given the power to act
knowing that i have at least a half
chance to make the right decision
and that i can learn from a wrong one
for so long decision making seemed
beyond my capabilities
now i can find joy
in being able to make choices
thank you god for the courage
and
this week i didn't have yet the courage
or the words or
well the courage
to reach out to that person yet
and
thankfully she had the courage to reach
out to me
and the the issue was i was i was caught
i was caught in between because like i
wanted i wanted things to work
you know i wanted a future there
uh
you know we always do
i mean it would be dumb to get into a
relationship and not think that there
was a future
but i didn't want to be the guy it was
like hey if you don't believe what i
believe then uh
you know you're gonna have to change
your beliefs because mine are right
you know i didn't want to say that but i
also
didn't think that it would work unless
they were
so i mean how did i approach it and i
hadn't figured it out honestly i hadn't
figured it out and
and probably never would have
and she contacted me and she was like
i'm not opposed to anything why don't
you pick a church and we'll visit it
together
and we'll just go from there
nothing's set in stone let's see what
happens
and i was like wow that's a really
simple solution
damn it why didn't i think of that you
know
so um so i did
and we actually just got back from
church and it went well
and i don't feel like she's just doing
it to appease me and i don't feel like
i'm forcing her to do anything so it's
like a win-win
and i was really surprised i was really
worried i was really kind of stressed
and future tripping about it
not knowing what was going to happen
because of course you know when it's not
my will and my plan it gets scary
because i haven't learned to trust god
enough yet
thankfully i don't have to i don't have
to be perfect i don't have to know how
things are going to work i don't even
have to have perfect faith or belief
i just have to be willing
and today i was willing and so was she
and it was awesome
you know at the beginning of today i
didn't even know what i was going to
talk about as usual you know i usually
don't
and
i started looking over all the notes
from this week and they're
they're all strangely related
the next little snippet i took was from
living clean the journey continues
a narcotics anonymous book
says when we let go and allow others to
be who they are
we are able to let go of our own
insecurities a little bit more and be
honest about who we are
that's not a deadly serious proposition
we can be playful and silly loving and
tender frightened or sad
and this is the the big part
we can finally be free of that terrible
sense we have
that who we are isn't enough
or that if they really knew us they'd
leave
and you know that was
some of what happened this week
you know i wanted to say that it was
just because of our beliefs or whatnot
but
i don't know exactly how but somewhere
in there it feels like there's truth
that maybe i was just afraid that i
wasn't enough
maybe i was afraid that i would just
mess it up again
you know when i'm when i'm insecure i
default to anger i default to depression
and
fear and all this stuff just leads me to
being lonely and desperate
it leads to more fear more regret
ends up coming out sideways at people
that are around me
then they think they did something wrong
when really i'm just feeling crappy
about the decisions that i've made i'm
feeling insecure about who i am
i'm scared about how it's all gonna work
out or if i just made the decision that
was gonna ruin my life again
thankfully i i can take a little bit of
comfort now though
instead of it taking months or years for
me to realize
it only
took me a week or so those fears they're
not gone
we don't just magically get over them or
at least i don't
it takes practice listening it takes
practice asking other people
did i do something stupid am i being
unreasonable
am i extremely shallow
in them saying yes
yes and absolutely
and that's basically what my friend said
it's like i love you i love the way you
think
you don't give yourself enough credit
but yes
that's kind of unreasonable and very
shallow
and you have a tendency to be that way
and my first reaction was like a mile
long text
and then i deleted all of that and i
said thank you
and that that's growth for me today
because that thank you wasn't just
hey thanks for your opinion
it was thanks for loving me enough to
tell me when i'm being a dick
thanks for calling me out on my
and not signing off on it
but some good came out of this week
other than just that because i got
really lonely i missed my friend
you know i missed my partner
and i got really lonely and i realized i
didn't have anybody to reach out to and
i'm like why don't i have anyone to
reach out to
i go to tons of meetings i participate
in a bunch of things and i'm like
even though i've been around i've been
removed emotionally i've been guarded
i've had too many things happen
too often that i've just lost my group
of people
so this week any time anybody said hey
do you want to go here i said yeah
hey do you want to do this absolutely
hey did you know that this is going on
oh cool i'm getting ready right now
and all of a sudden i didn't feel quite
so alone
i reached out to my sponsor i reached
out to another friend
they're like how you doing i'm like
not so great
i made a stupid decision i did this and
this
i'm sad right now and and i surprised
myself i'm sitting here saying these
things and i'm like this doesn't feel
natural
and both of the people that i reached
out to that i don't usually reach out to
called me later on that day again
how are you doing
you doing okay
i was just checking up on you
what are you doing tomorrow
let's go do this
call me in the morning
keep in touch
all those little things that made me
feel like
i'm not alone just maybe i can do this
there's a scripture
john 15 5
it says i am the vine you are the
branches
if you remain in me and i in you you
will bear much fruit
apart from me you can do nothing and
part of being in god's vine is being
next to the other people
that are also in that family that's why
it's so important because i might not be
able to handle something on my own
and i was removed i wasn't in contact
with these people and i was feeling
alone as soon as i reconnected to my
family to my my vine
i was fed i was filled up with peace
i had the support i needed i had the
nutrients the spiritual nutrients that i
needed to survive the day
it made all the difference
it's a surrender
it's saying god i can't do this
but surrender isn't just like a passive
thing at least it's not for me i don't
think
when i surrender it's a it's an act
to surrender i have to speak to somebody
and surrender to something or somebody
to a higher power
and when i surrendered to my higher
power
he reconnected me with my people
this is where you need to go to get fed
david this is how you live life not
alone but with support
and you succeed by letting people be who
they are
not discounting them based on one or two
things
but seeing them for who they are and
respecting it
you know and i didn't realize
in how much danger i was
outside of that support outside of that
net that security net i wither and die
i dry up
spiritually and emotionally and i die
whether that death be suicide
or relapse or whatever
it's still a death
it's miserable and desperate
in the bible it promises us that if we
remain in him we bear much fruit and
then it goes on to
say the different types of fruit
and it's all good things
love joy peace
patience kindness gentleness
faithfulness goodness self-control
none of those are a bad thing
why is it so hard for me to stay
connected why is it so hard for me to
stay surrendered
that's why i have to do it daily
every day god i give myself to thee to
do with me as thou will take away my
difficulties
the victory over them will bear witness
to those that i would help of thy power
thy love and thy way of life
help me do your will always
that prayer is not a mistake that is
skillfully crafted very intentional
it brings to mind all the right things
and i'll leave you guys with one little
excerpt from living clean
says the conscious contact we speak of
in
step 11
is a relationship with our higher power
intimacy is conscious contact with
another human being
we connect as we get close to others
we see the divine in them
and we see it in ourselves as well
we pay attention to them and to
ourselves when we were with them when we
feel real joy at seeing a struggling
member finally get that 30-day key tag
when we find the words we didn't know we
had in us
when we make a genuine connection with
another human being
and feel something shift inside us
we feel love and action
flowing through us
changing us for the better
any of you that have felt that
know exactly what that's talking about
that very first time that somebody's
like man i'm going through this
and all of a sudden blah out of your
mouth comes all the right things
and you can see in their eyes that that
just made it to where they were going to
be able to make it to the end of the day
clean that's what it's about that's what
sustains us too
and so this week
i'm gonna concentrate on that
being okay when
god's will doesn't look like mine
staying connected so that when somebody
needs something i'm available to say the
right things
so that when i need something
i'm close enough to reach out and let
somebody else say the right things to me
being present and purposeful about
asking god to
relieve me of all those things in me
that
take me away from the willingness to
accept his will for my life and i think
that's all i got for you guys today
thank you so much for tuning in
don't forget look out for that special
guest chris wells on wednesday you guys
have a good
[Music]
This week I have a special guest, Joshua is sharing his story of recovery with us!
Transcript
[Music]
thank you guys for tuning in to
victorious and recovery last week i had
mentioned that i planned on bringing
some people onto the show to share their
story and today's one of those days i
met this guy
in pottawattamie county jail and we got
along pretty good i have a lot of
respect for him this is joshua russell
from oklahoma city and he's going to be
sharing his story with you
hello my name is joshua russell
thanks for uh
having me on the show
i've been uh asked to talk a little bit
about the problem
and then afterwards the solution
when i was a youngster
like most alcoholics i was
raised in a
drug and alcohol field family
my mother she was a meth addict
my father
he also cooked meth
as a matter of fact he's still on the
run for that as we speak but as i got
older
at first i despised drugs
and the first time i drank
i was 10 years old
i literally drank so much
that i blacked out
i liked it i mean you know a lot of
alcoholics talk about the feeling that
it made you feel
and can relate to that
i stole the bottle from some teenagers i
drank so much of it like i said that i
blacked out and i woke up the next
morning
in a bathtub
my sister my older sister waking me up
and i had puke all over me i
didn't really drink too much after that
and then about
12 years old
i started smoking weed
and then also drinking a lot more at 13
i got put on probation for skipping
school
i did that for about three years and i
drank heavily smoked a lot of weed
and i'd say about 15
is when uh
i tried meth for the first time
i remember the first night you know they
talk about peer pressure and uh i'll
tell you that's real for sure the first
night uh you know my friends
asked me to do it with him and
i refused because like i said my mother
and my father were both meth addicts and
but the next night you know everybody
was having a good time so
i just kind of felt like hey you know
i guess let's see what this is talking
about
i remember doing a little bit of meth
and i literally right after that the
dude i did it with i asked him if he
wanted to have a pull-up contest i
remember
i did a hundred pull-ups and then right
after that i felt like my heart was
gonna explode and i was gonna die so
you know i wasn't too fond of it at
first
so i left that alone for a little while
too
but i kept drinking and i was constantly
in and out of juvenile detention center
mainly just for skipping school all the
time and building drug tests for my
probation
and
at 16
i
got my kids mother pregnant
and my
insane way of thinking i i had a buddy
of mine who
ran from his probation as a juvenile
until he was 18 and it worked for him
and he got off
so that was my plan and a week later i
got caught
so
i went to a
uh group home
for uh
four and a half months
and while i was in that group home
my daughter was born i also found my
higher power but i didn't understand
much about him
i kind of just thought like i was saved
you know and i didn't think anything bad
was going to happen to me afterwards but
i was definitely wrong about that
after my daughter was born
i was still in the uh
group home i think for maybe like a
month
and uh
when my daughter was born her eyes
wouldn't stay straight and we were kind
of
we didn't really know how to make sense
of all that at first and then a couple
weeks later
after i got out of the group home
this is kind of a funny story before i
tell you about my well my daughter was
born blind but
um
like i said my mother was a meth addict
so
at the time the judge would not release
me
to her custody
so
the judge had a court hearing with my
kid's mother who was at 18 and i was 17
and
you know the judge told my kids mother
that she was not gonna he was not gonna
release me into my mom's custody so
he was like look if you get a place
then i'll release him into your custody
so i was in my kid's mother's custody
until i was 18 years old
so she gets us a little place and uh
and i get out of this group home
and uh
two weeks later we find out that she's
blind
you know as many alcoholics
would probably share something similar
to this
i wish i could have uh
used that as a
as a way
to stay clean but as it was kind of the
opposite really
um i really used her disability as a
crutch for myself
you know not necessarily blamed it on on
my daughter but
it was a a part of my self-pity
and i remember as soon as i got out of
this
group home
one of the
times i remember where i i drank and i
knew i shouldn't have was i was going to
take my ged test
the day uh one of the days after and
the night before one of my buddies had
got out of prison
and uh he wanted to drink some secret
dry gin and
i know i thought it was a good idea so i
drank with them stayed up to about three
in the morning and then tried to go take
this gd test the next day
uh slept through the whole thing and
then woke up with about 10 minutes left
for the test just guessed on all the
answers
so i will fast forward a little bit to
when i had my son
or i didn't have my son my kid's mother
did but you know
i was 20. you know through about three
years later
i was in a pretty good opiate addiction
at the time
i had just wrecked a vehicle lost my job
and my kid's mother was giving birth to
my son
at the hospital
i was so messed up on opiates at the
time that uh
you know i was about to sign the birth
certificate
and this nurse stopped my hand
and looked at my kid's mother and uh
asked if she was sure if
i was the person that she wanted to sign
the birth certificate and
you know i look back at that now and i
you know
of how how messed up i was but at the
time you know i thought she was the one
who was being disrespectful
and um
so you know it goes a little further and
uh
i got like i said i got into a
full-blown opiate addiction and i would
say when
i was about 22
that's when i started using needles
you know i just got real bad from them
when i was 24 i caught my first
felony
you know like i said it talks about the
jails institutions and death and the
institutions and jails are something
that uh i've been in and out of all my
life
i've got eight felonies
you know the eighth fell and he took me
to prison
i went to jail like about four times
before i went to prison for
the longest time before i went to prison
for six months
every time just like any other alcoholic
i said that was it you know
and uh but it never was
the longest period of uh my actually i'm
a backup when i was in the jail for six
months that was the longest clean time
that i'd had since i was i think maybe
13 years old
uh off all substances
you know i experienced
some of the sanity that step two talks
about without even doing steps you know
because there's no you have no worries
when you're in a structured environment
like that you know as long as you're
doing push-ups with the right people
you're all right
so
uh my probation officer asked me
i went to court you know and they wanted
to revoke me and send me to prison and
he asked me you know well
um he's like they want to revoke you and
i said well i don't know i'm ready to do
whatever i have to do you know
and uh he said
with he said it's up to me if i let you
back out what are you gonna do
i said man don't let me back up
[Laughter]
he looked at me kind of crazy and i said
look man i'm enjoying my i'm enjoying
this clean time and uh
i still want to go to a year program
he was like a year huh and i was like
yeah i want to do i want i want to go to
a year program
so he uh
told me that they have this chicken
chicken farm out in jay oklahoma
and uh he said they'll give me a job at
a chicken processing plant and uh
and after a year i can keep my job and
they'll give me a thousand dollars and
let me tell you something boy that
thousand dollars sounded like the best
thing in the world to make the time
don't give me a job and give me a
thousand dollars
i mean i thought i was i thought i'd
made it you know
you know i needed every bit of that
program um
i did six months like i said in county
and then
i got out one i was supposed to go
straight to the program
but i had to do a i had to do a writ in
oklahoma county first
or clear up a little charge there too
and you know they accidentally let me
out before taking me to this program and
you know what do we do and
like it says you know i found a little
inch and i went i went and got high and
uh
but i did go to the program a week later
i went to the program and uh
it was one of the best times of my life
you know like i said i needed every bit
of it and i got my ged while i was in
this program
and as a matter of fact uh
i did i did my year there and then i
worked for the chicken processing plant
for three months and then after that
actually the program gave me a job
at the recovery center
or at the you know the rehab and i was a
dorm manager
and i also ran a sobriety house down
there but
i was no near i wasn't near ready for
that i kind of just jumped at a decision
that i didn't
pray about or have any um
wise counsel about i just thought that i
was ready for something like that and i
wasn't
uh like i was saying about the 12 steps
down there i mean i'm not saying that
the pro 12 step program isn't in that
program but
it could be better uh
because i didn't really get a grasp on
the 12 steps i kind of did my 12 steps
in like a week and then didn't look back
at it at all you know
i didn't take none of it serious
i ended up losing my job because i found
a cell phone
and they're not allowed to have cell
phones
i wrote the dude up
but at the same time i didn't hold him
accountable because i deleted everything
out of the phone before i turned it into
my boss so not everybody get in trouble
and then after that i went back to the
chicken processing plant relapse
and then uh
a month later i got off community
sentencing
you know i stayed clean enough to uh
pass my drug test and stuff and get off
community sentencing and then a month
later i caught a possession with intent
that actually sent me to prison
i did 22 months in prison
when i got out of prison i went to a
place called living faith ministries
which was
a wonderful place but it's more about
discipleship and then definitely
definitely has no grasp on the 12-step
program but
like i said it's a ministry it's it's
not a uh it's not a program they they
they raised disciples there and uh
like i said it was a wonderful place but
i'm an alcoholic so uh it wasn't for me
um i messed it up you know like they say
it gets worse every time and
now i went back to all my old ways i
went back to the needle i went back to
uh
i was using meth and heroin and uh just
whatever substance came my way you know
i experienced true insanity
i didn't know what i wanted to do with
my life i went to jail three more times
for some
petty stuff and uh
by my higher powers grace
i got out every time i'm still on
probation uh on paper time
so each one of them little
slaps on the wrist could have initially
sent me back to prison
after the second time i went to county
uh
i got put into a
program called team
it was funny because i was in oklahoma
county and they came and saw me it was
like maybe
i don't know
uh six days after i was in county or
something
i had also
broken my arm in that little run that i
was on and
i mean you know how we are i was just
looking at up in this program they said
hey you know would you be interested in
this program
you know and they talked about what they
were about and i was like look man that
sounds wonderful you know i mean i said
that i'd be lying to you if my life is
where
i need it to be right now um i said but
let me tell you like this uh
you know after 10 days they don't press
charges they're going to let me out
anyways i said i kind of flexed on them
a little bit you know i said hey uh
if you can bond me out before that
then yeah of course i'll i'll go in your
program and uh
they flex right back man they came and
bonded me out the next day
and i was so grateful that they bonded
me out i walked all the way from
oklahoma county jail to melrose and
rockwell to put a needle in my arm
[Laughter]
like i said i joke about that but that's
really what i did it was a long walk for
a first substance that i thought i
needed
and then i still had some charges that i
didn't
uh
take care of in cleveland county and
then
so i went to cleveland county and they
gave me another chance i was actually on
a motion tour revoke there was an
extension
and they told me they were like look man
if you don't get out and do what you're
supposed to do then uh
we're gonna make sure you do this year
and uh and we're gonna make sure you get
revoked from your probation parole as
well like i said i wish i could tell you
i had some kind of uh
spiritual awakening or something in jail
but
it was more like the willingness that
they talk about i didn't know even what
it was at that moment but
i had it i just knew
i didn't even necessarily want to get
clean
i just knew that i had to do something
uh i remember talking to my mom
the day i went to court i pretty much
knew i was gonna get out and uh
she was like so you're gonna come home
to to my house and
i mean nobody likes sleeping on her
mama's couch you know but uh
it's that attitude of gratitude really
you know my mom's clean now off meth by
the way so i went to mom's house
and uh
i was still smoking weed i got out
august
9th
2021
and um
i was still smoking weed
i got into an oxford house
i was still smoking weed there and you
know so i got they ended up kicking me
out
and then i went to i found a place
called better together recovery
that is where i got clean my clean date
is uh as of right now it's hopefully the
last one it's uh august 25th
2021
if i make it to the 25th of this month
i'll have half a year
i started going into the aaa rooms that
i'm so familiar with
but it was
like i said i had what they called the
willingness and
i didn't like i said i didn't know what
it was but i walked into these rooms
uh
all the way vulnerable
and
broken you know a lot of people talk
about vulnerability and envy being
a weakness but
i use them as a strength
because uh
i was vulnerable enough to walk into
these rooms and
i was envious enough to one what people
had in them
for the first 30 days of my recovery
i was in a meeting every night and
it was literally because uh
i didn't know what to do with myself
i didn't know how to stay clean
i didn't even want to stay clean like
i'd shared i remember the first time i
shared this time you know like i said i
was serious about these steps and
everything and
i'm hearing everybody share in the room
and everybody's happy you know like they
talk about i mean everybody's got that
joy
on them and uh i didn't like that at
first you know um
and i spoke
and i was mad actually because they i'd
been there for you know like a whole
week and they hadn't called on me
and so finally they were like you know
does anybody have any burning desires
and my hands shot up you know and i was
like look man i'm
so happy that you guys uh
i have to have a good life you know what
i mean i said but i'm not there uh i
said i want to hear from somebody that's
got 24 hours you know i mean because i
want to find out how they're doing that
you mean i was like i got like a week
and uh i'm dying
you know i was like i don't even know if
i want to be in this room
uh
i just know that nothing else was
working
i remember five dudes surrounded me
after the meeting and
i said you know one of them was a pretty
big dude and i know that i was gonna hit
him first if anything weird happened you
know because uh
as a
alcoholic i'm not used to uh
true
genuine emotion you know i'm used to
everything's just so generic and
you know people are only trying to get
something
and show you any kind of
generic
love
to get something out of you you know i
mean nothing's authentic you know it's
when i started doing these steps
well first these guys surrounded me and
that's when i found out that you know
they were real you know you you go from
being around a
a bunch of people that show you
a bunch of slimes you know i mean
showing you nothing but just generic
love to try to get something out of you
to a room full of slimes
that uh it's the opposite you know they
got nothing but authentic love for you
and
i've gotten all the way to up to step
six i'm actually on step two now again
because i've got a new sponsor but i
i've gotten up to step six with being
really serious and i'd like to talk
about those for a minute um
step one you know
admittedly we were powerless
and that our lives are unmanageable uh
you know when i first started to go into
rooms i thought i was an uh addict
you know i was i kind of looked down on
alcoholics and
you know i don't know if i thought i was
better than an alcoholic or what or if i
thought it was cool or something like
that but i didn't realize until i did a
real inventory of my step one that you
know i look back at being 10 years old
i just found out you know like i thought
talk about generic
and authentic you know uh
alcohol held a
false sense of empowerment it was like a
generic sense of power
that is what i craved so when i found
something that held
more power
it was like i graduated to that you know
what i mean so
i understand now and i was also a
chronic relapse and i've done step one
many times you know i mean
but now i finally understood that
you know i mean something else was
holding my power
that's why i kept relapsing and going
back to it uh step two
you know i like to i laughed at step two
for the longest time because like i said
i was so serious about these steps
and uh
i was like i'm never gonna get through
these steps you know i mean because
you know i wanted to find out so many
things about myself that i didn't even
know but when i got to step two
uh
you know i came to believe that a power
greater than ourselves can restore us to
sanity
i would literally laugh at that word
sanity
because
i was like there's nothing that's going
to be able to bring me back to santa you
know
it's like somebody was somebody told me
that uh
i was reading only half step
i was just saying a power greater than
myself bringing me the sanity but i was
forgetting it came to believe coming to
believe part you know it's uh
like i just have to believe that
something
can bring you back to sandy not that it
will
but then we get to step three um
and they talk about the uh you know
where you have to give yourself over
to th to your higher power that you
understand
i like to think of it kind of like uh
you have an inner child in you
i actually listened to this on a
different podcast called the two-way
prayer and they talk about the inner
child and i went to
uh some drug and alcohol assessment
classes and they talk about your room
and your house and how clean it is
so whenever i did my step three i kind
of thought about it as my inner child
and i looked at it as you know like
little joshua and
big joshua um
and big joshua was my higher power at
the time
uh i never really thought about that but
that's my own will you know
and i was living in my own will so i was
looking up to myself as my own higher
power i'm believing god you know but
i never really realized that i was just
playing god myself
so when i turned my will of my life over
to a power greater myself as i
understood him it was kind of like
little joshua
being in his room you know my room's
real dirty
big joshua comes in my room
and he says hey you know clean your room
i'll be back in an hour
and i better be clean
you know we're the same person so little
joshua he had lots of
bigger expectations for big joshua and
he's not really met any of them
expectations so he doesn't have a lot of
respect for him you know
so little josh was like man is this dude
serious he just left me in this room for
a whole hour
he said i'm going to mess his room up
for 50 more minutes and i'm going to
clean it in 10.
so you know big joshua comes back and he
says
man where'd you put all this
well i got stuff hidden every little
joshua's got stuff hidden everywhere
you know
in places where it's not supposed to be
things hidden in his closet
but it's uh clean though
well so when i gave my will and my life
over the paragraph to myself that i
understood
well the power greater than myself as i
understand is my father
so when i
do that it takes big joshua
out the picture
and then little joshua in his room
well instead of uh telling me to clean
my room he comes in and he helps me
clean it
and tells me hey look stuff doesn't go
here let's clean this up let's take out
this closet
my father's helping me clean my room and
do all these things with me
so
that's when i started i got to um
experience some of that sanity
this step two talks about
and then on step four
you know the inventory part that's where
all these alcoholics they always get
stuck on step four
i heard somebody share one time they're
like yeah you know
people that are
usually bs in their way through the
program they're always gonna tell you
that they're on step four you know i
mean
i think they can't ever get past step
four
so i get to step four and i thought it
was gonna be really hard you know and uh
i had a boss who was in the program at
the time and
he was like look man it's not hard just
write down your your harms your wrongs
your sexual arms all that stuff just
write it down bro get over
and i did that
and then my sponsor uh
talked to me about step five
and uh he's talking about this freedom
and also bro what are you talking about
freedom
i was like i didn't understand what is
me telling you anything
gonna make me free from
it it just it just didn't
make no kind of sense to me man and so
uh but the inventory is very crucial
because uh once i finally understood
step five
and i opened up and told this man
everything
got to experience some of the the
freedom you know and i didn't really
understand it at first like i said
even after i opened up to him i still
didn't necessarily understand it at
first
but the way i explained to people is
that like uh i'll explain it like in a
way to a
conflict and a regular human being you
know
i mean we're all regular but you know
what i'm saying
um
but so
in prison
whenever they do a shakedown
everybody that's got contraband they
just freak out and
everybody that doesn't have contraband
doesn't have a care in the world
you know what i mean if there's no sweat
there's no worries because you're not
hiding anything
even if there isn't a shakedown
you can usually tell who has contraband
because they move differently
and uh their patterns
are uh
very uh inconsistent
and
so the way i look at it is is that uh
after the step five it was kind of like
not holding any contraband
i no longer had
anything to worry about because if
you're gonna check my pattern or you're
going to
check anything on me and guess what i'm
saying everything that uh
everything that i have is on the table
you know what i mean there's no longer
anything that i'm holding on to
and then
to somebody that's not experienced that
i
like to give a restaurant reference from
the movie eight mile kind of uh whenever
eminem is rapping at the end you know
and the dude's about to unfold some of
his secrets but eminem's rapping first
and uh
eminem uh
kind of does a little step five of his
own on the microphone to all these
people he talks down on himself and
and uncovers some of his secrets
and then he uncovered the other dude's
secrets so my thing is if everything's
on the table
and everybody already knows
you know or at least one person knows
for sure that nobody can really hurt you
because uh you know what i mean it's
it's already out there
so like i said that's that's true
freedom
you know and it's also honest
because the thing but the inventory
though like i said it was very crucial
because
telling some another grown man
all the bad stuff criminal stuff and
things that you know kind of make me
look tough
that wasn't hard to do
you know what i mean the
hard stuff to do was to explain and tell
another man
the sick and embarrassing places that my
alcoholism took me
that was what was hard to do
i wouldn't have even known about none of
that stuff
if i didn't do an inventory of it
and i
really didn't think any of it was
relevant
you know to tell anybody else
like i said just sick places that my
alcohols and took me
telling somebody else about that stuff
and just not carrying it anymore
and then like i said i got to step six
and
i got a new sponsor so now i'm back on
step two but
so i won't speak no more about the steps
but i will talk about the solution um
you know one of my favorite parts of the
big book is where
i mean i don't know what page or nothing
but i know the story when them two dudes
are talking to that guy in hospital
and uh they're explaining their story
and the dude's relating to it
he's like yeah you know that's me that's
me i drink like that that's that's me
and then he's like but there's no hope
for me you know i mean you guys
and he looks at him and he says you guys
are somebody
and these two dudes start laughing
and i can relate to that so much man uh
you know i'll tell this little story
it's pretty funny you know the first
time i got arrested this is one of them
humiliating spots you know the first
time i got arrested i got arrested with
a duffel bag full of dildos it's just
it's part of the humility you know what
i mean and uh
i just want to talk a little bit about
the solution because
you know what i'm saying that it just
reminds me of them two dudes explaining
to this guy
like today
you wouldn't look at me and be like oh i
bet that dude has a duffel bag full of
dildos on him
you know what i'm saying uh it's just
you just don't see it in me and
so you want to talk about a solution and
mirroring a solution
i feel like one of those two guys that
are trying to talk to one of the new
guys man like
they're not laughing at the new guy
you know what i mean they're laughing
because this dude says that
there's somebody
and
these dudes are thinking in their head
like bro you don't even know
you know what i mean like they'll be
like explaining somebody to me like look
bro
uh
if you know where i've come from and
where i'm at now
you know so like i said it the solution
can work for anybody man and that's why
the first time i heard of the word
solution in the aaa program
i mean i know what the word solution
means but in my mind instantly it came
uh
you know solution that you put in water
to make it to make the chlorine clear
you know and everything
but it's a really good explanation man
because you have got to keep using that
solution to put in that water to keep it
clear
or else it just gets dirty
so that's like these steps man you can't
just go through these steps
and then all of a sudden you graduate
i'm not saying none of this to both
because i
i do uh give everything and all praise
to my higher power
first month i was clean i ran 80 miles
um it's not too far but i mean
far enough i guess you know
not all at once you know but and i have
also ran two half marathons
i'm
planning to run a full marathon in april
god willing i've got my health back
i have gotten undeserved
restoration with my family
my kids love me and i'm just an
alcoholic you know trying to mirror a
solution to others
my favorite word in the steps so far
that i've found is that word sanity
because
like i said i didn't think anything was
going to bring me
to sanity and
i shared before you know life is chaotic
you're going to go through things
but this program
will it promises you sanity
and
not necessarily the life's gonna get
better
or that you're gonna get a better job or
that you're gonna make more money or
that you're gonna get your health
it doesn't promise you any of these
things but it does promise you sanity
through
the chaos
when you
can finally see somebody that's why
sharing is so important because
when somebody shares a little bit about
their story or what they're going
through even at that moment
and you wouldn't even be able to realize
it without them sharing
and they
mirror sanity
that the solution
carries that
is the person that the new guy
or anybody else will look at and be like
whoa
you know if this guy
uh is going through this you know
he's lost his house or whatever whatever
the problem may be whatever the chaos is
but yet he acquires sanity
you know that
is what i'm trying to mirror to other
people
i think that's all i got for now man
thank you so much for sharing your story
today
i enjoyed it and i remember the stories
about you having a bag of dildos and
that that was hilarious absolutely
hilarious i think i actually told that
story to a couple of people
after i got out and nobody really
believed me but i'm glad now i have
proof of it you know
thank you for being on with me here
today
you guys have a good one
[Music]
hu·mil·i·ty | \ hyü-ˈmi-lə-tē , yü- \
Definition of humility : freedom from pride or arrogance : the quality or state of being humble
ac·cep·tance | \ ik-ˈsep-tən(t)s , ak- \
Definition of acceptance 1: the quality or state of being accepted or acceptableHis theories have gained widespread acceptance.
2: the act of accepting something or someone : the fact of being accepted : APPROVAL acceptance of responsibility
3law : an agreeing either expressly or by conduct to the act or offer of another so that a contract is concluded and the parties become legally bound
4a: the act of accepting a time draft or bill of exchange for payment when due according to the specified terms.
Transcript:
Welcome
to victorious in recovery what you're
about to hear is simply one man's
journey to victory over addiction
my ups and downs and everything in
between and the solutions that i find
along the way
my purpose is this
to let you know that you're not alone in
the things that we go through trying to
recover and that there is hope of a
recovered life from addiction my name is
david victorious and i'll be your host
[Music]
thank you for tuning in to victorious in
recovery it's been a pretty good week so
far
got to spend some time with my son and
we got to take some pictures in nature
of course he's
eight years old so he wants to take
pictures of
dog poop and weird stuff but either way
he took some great pictures
thankfully this week i got to work
on my third step with my sponsor we had
had some
conflicting calendar issues
we finally got it together and we're
able to do that so i get to work on
my fourth step start writing that out
again and we all know that it brings up
feelings and kind of hurts our pride a
little bit and
it's just overall kind of
icky
doing it
so
this week i wanted to kind of
do a podcast basically on what it takes
to prep for that what requirements
through what do i have to go through
to be prepared
to take a fourth step whether it be the
first time or the tenth time
and two words came to mind they were
humility
and acceptance
i know in
12-step programs we hear a lot about
acceptance a lot a lot a lot about
acceptance
so i'm not trying to beat a dead horse
with talking about it on here too
but
like always you know there's a personal
aspect
to all these things for me
and i'm just gonna do my best to share
my
my experience
with this
and going into these
things i i always have to remember that
like some of the old-timers say there's
a name for everything
so i'm definitely not the first person
that's done it
and also
you know keeping that in mind
i have to take into account that
in comparison to the whole world
if i'm taking into account
the universe basically
i'm a very very small part
i'm a very not insignificant i would say
because i have a soul i have creativity
but
in the grand scheme of things i'm rather
small
as an individual
and i i kind of take comfort in that
because in preparation
for step four or
it could be said in preparation
for
putting action to our humility and
acceptance
i need to feel certain things before i
can get there
and one of those
is step one i have to be powerless
to ever be willing to accept or be
humbled enough to do anything else in
the steps
the next step of course
is came to believe right
and i get comfort in that one too
because
not only am i
powerless
but there's also something that is
powerful
that is worth following that is worth
trusting
it's worth giving over something that's
scary for me to relinquish
every time i talk about how big
my higher power is i think about
something that a uh except out of mind
told me i was
at about 300 pounds and
i had lost like 15 pounds and i was like
yeah you know this is awesome and i told
him he's like that's like taking a
bucket of water out of the ocean and i'm
like what well yeah it just doesn't make
that big of a difference does it
i'm like oh that hurts so deeply but
it stuck with me though it stuck with me
it's like
to me it was a big deal but that doesn't
mean it's a big deal to everybody
and and it's the same with our recovery
it's the same with our
lives in general
you know we always feel
so selfishly that everything is
is about me that if my life doesn't go
well it's the end of the world
when in reality a lot of times people
wouldn't even notice of course as we
progress in life and get more
connections on earth and and develop our
relationships the more and more and more
our life becomes a matter of
importance to other people
but i thought that was just a funny way
of looking at it because it's so true
you couldn't tell visually
that 15 pounds it didn't matter
to me it did though and i kept losing
weight
i lost weight and kept losing weight and
i went down to 220 so it ended up being
a big deal a little bit at a time
and we're told to pray as we're getting
close to
the fourth step in step three
is the first action step that we
are given an assignment to do every day
which is to pray the third step prayer
and for
n a it's a little different than for a a
i like the aa one better
and bear with me it's
kind of in
king james format so i know that that
throws some people off but
says god i offer myself to thee to build
with me and to do with me as thou will
relieve me of the bondage of self then i
may better do thy will
take away my difficulties the victory
over them may bear witness to those i
would help of thy power thy love and thy
way of life
may i do thy will always
so we're told to pray that
and what it does is it's an affirmation
of what i want my higher power to be to
me
it says help me do your will
guide me in doing it
and show me how to do that in every
aspect of my life basically
and so we're asking for that every
single day so as we get used to praying
i
particularly
sometimes forget that that god's not
santa claus
i forget that in the grand scheme of
things i'm
yes a person that people love but
that i'm also a small part in the
overall plan in the universe
so i'll ask for clarity in a particular
situation i'll ask what god's will is
and the truth of it is sitting right in
front of me i already know
what the next right thing to do is
but
i ask again because it's not what i
would like it to be
please god please tell me what i'm
supposed to do
and all the while i know he's like don't
do it
don't do that
do this instead and i'm like i don't
want to do that though
and so i just i lie to myself
and i think i'm fooling everybody else
but really i'm just lying to myself
saying i want
this to be god's will
not all of that
and so while practicing step three
while getting used to praying
and
spending time with my higher power
i'm essentially i'm practicing
acceptance
so in the first step i'm practicing
humility and the second step i'm
practicing humility again
and a little bit of trust
and the third step
i build on that so now i'm practicing
acceptance
and i think this is by far if i had to
say i think this is by far
the most difficult thing in life not
just in this program but in the world
my capability for acceptance
determines how i perceive the world
and my perception of the world is what
gives me
strength to continue
so
in a nutshell today we're talking about
humility and acceptance
but i'm not here to to teach i'm just
trying to give you guys my
my experience with this so far
because i'm very much in the making when
it comes to these two very very much
you know patience
kind of
came to me a little bit easier this time
and a few other
things came easily but but this the
acceptance and the humility and it's
been rough
because in the beginning
i went through all different types of
experiences with these
at first i thought
that it was being meek or you know just
shutting up basically
and then i kind of lashed back and i
didn't shut up and i was like well i can
do this at the clubhouse you know and
that'll count as being humble
and you know what those little things
they helped
but it wasn't until i realized that the
reason
why i need humility is so that i can
accept a higher power
and that little click that little light
bulb was what changed it all because i
realized i don't belong to other people
and if i want my life to go right i
don't need to act like i belong to
myself either
when it comes to doing my higher powers
will when it comes doing god's will
i need to act as if i don't have a say
in it
you know that that's the whole
lord thing i have a will i have a life
i have my identity and the things that i
love to do the things that i don't love
to do but if i have a lord a higher
power that i respect that i am loyal to
that i owe my world to
that's where i get to say okay i respect
that he knows best
this isn't what i want to do but he's
asking me so i'm going to
that's the humbling part
to not know why or where or how
to not agree with it and still do it
anyways
it's so abrasive now in our society
because everybody wants to be an
individual
everybody wants to show off how special
they are
everybody wants to make a video and be
famous for
their talents for who they are
don't you dare call me this or dare call
me that i'm this person and you need to
fall in line with that
where does god fit in in that it's
really hard to be of service when that's
the mentality it's really hard
so
move on from that little rant
i have to also remember them
there's there's a key point here
that at the same time is doing what my
lord or my higher power however you want
to say that wants me to do
doesn't mean i have to be submissive to
other people
does it mean i have to
in any way shape or form bow down to
another human being for anything
the point of humility isn't to become
slaves to man
it's to serve a higher power
out of loyalty and humility out of
respect and of simply knowing that i
don't know best and i think that's where
a lot of confusion happens because
i
have always confused
humility with being meek or timid
the guy in the back of the room that
never has anything to say about anything
and that's that's not the case at all
it has to do just as much about
conviction
where our loyalties lie
than it does with anything else
it's in the little things sometimes i
feel like god's asking me to do stuff
that i think is just stupid
honestly like when i was in jail this
last time i was like god how can i serve
you because i didn't think i was going
to get out of jail i thought i was going
to go straight to prison don't pass go
don't collect 200 you know
straight there
and i was okay with that
i was okay with that because that's the
life that i had lived that's what i
deserved
one day really quickly actually like day
three or day four of me being at this
jail i was like god what can i do
i'm here i'm here to stay
but i still want to turn my life around
and i know that that requires
trying to do your will
trying to do better what can i do here
from this place
and i really feel like he said to pick
up everybody's tray every day or as many
as i could you know
and i was like oh my god
nobody does that
nobody so i started doing that i was
like hey man let me get that let me get
that let me get that you know and i'd
take him up to the front and i'd go
around and as many people that would let
me take it up to the front i would
and i don't think that changed anybody's
life but mine
that's the cool part that it didn't have
to
they can all think i was stupid they can
all think i was just a wuss or whatever
they thought i don't know
but for me it was that first chance that
i had to say yes
here i am send me
i read something in a
bible study
and the comment on
this particular study for the day was
if we are of the same mindset forsaking
our own reputation and honor in order to
be obedient to god's word and will
we will be able to make unbelievable
progress in our lives
and that's exactly what happened
i know that statement to be a hundred
percent true
and don't get me wrong you don't have to
have my higher power for that to be true
whatever your set of beliefs are
if you have a humble mindset and you
forsake your own reputation for the
honor of being obedient to your higher
power
it will create unbelievable progress in
your life that's a fact
i've seen people try that and it has
never failed
and you know if i hadn't done that
myself
i would probably make fun of those
people
i'd probably look at them and be like
what are you doing this is so stupid
nobody cares
that that would have been my reaction
and i would have judged the hell out of
somebody doing stupid looking stuff
but having done it myself it's
it's different i see people picking up
the books at the end of the meeting
doing it excitedly
making the rounds talking to each person
there's so many levels of things that
that is fixing in their lives when they
do it then i would have never known
about
and moving on from there a little bit
if you're anything like me i don't
always know the full definition of a
word
i have to really kind of dig deep and go
like okay what does this really mean
even simple words actually especially
simple words because i take them for
granted
and while i was reading up on these two
words
i was surprised at what i found
acceptance it's the act of accepting
something or someone
the fact of being accepted getting
approval
acceptance of responsibility
it's also in law it's an agreeing either
expressly or by conduct to the act or
offer of another
so that a contract is concluded and the
both parties become legally bound
that one's the one that really kind of
jumped out at me
because i had always thought of just the
first part
but how important has
the law aspect of that been in my life
i've signed and agreed to sentences i've
signed and agreed to divorces and
marriages
i've accepted things as fact
on that basis
that weren't actually fact i was
accepting of somebody's terms
knowing that it was a lie
mostly out of fear
sometimes just to get out of jail
but i guess acceptance can go both ways
i would really like to say that i've
always
done what's right
or
stood at my ground on my truth
but that's just not the case
there was this quote that i also came
across the
edwin dobb
in february of 1995 said
who is not gazed at the sky mouth a gape
the experience is so common its effects
so uniform that a standard vocabulary
has evolved to describe it invariably we
speak of the profound humility we feel
before the enormity of the universe
we are bits of dust and a spectacle
whose scope beggars the imagination
whose secrets make a mockery of reason
and
what that says to me
is what i've been trying to express this
whole thing that just kind of sums it
all up
my truth and my
ideas my contributions whatever just are
so tiny
compared to looking up at the sky
in a dark place and seeing
millions and millions and millions of
stars
i'm like oh now i get it this is why i
need to accept that god's will is
probably the right way for me
because i couldn't have come up with
this
and of course he's given us creativity
that we're supposed to use we're
encouraged to use it
but defying god's will
because we want to be creative with the
solution is not the way to use it
and i can only say that because
that's my biggest issue
i want to come up with a better more
glamorous more praise me type of
solution to things i want people to know
that david is the one that thought of
this
and that's the opposite of what i should
be doing
so i have to like reign myself back
all the time
i'm like oh well don't you think we
should do it and then i have to stop
myself and go david it doesn't matter
it doesn't matter for the piece of the
situation
don't correct that person
for my sanity stay out of it
and when it's god i just have to say
you don't know best it's not all about
you dave
and thankfully those those things work
so far
there's lot one last quote on humility
and it it was in the economists
in january of 2013.
it's as if leadership has a secret sauce
it may well be humility
a humble boss understands that there are
things he doesn't know he listens not
only to the other bigwigs
but also to the kind of people who don't
get invited
such as his customers
so i i would like to translate that to
my life you know and doing this
fourth and fifth step that i have coming
up there's there's going to be a lot
of these concepts
coming into it
because i'm going to have to accept that
i wasn't right
that i acted out of fear that my
intentions weren't good
i'm gonna have to admit that
i still feel certain ways about certain
things
and i'm gonna have to humble myself and
tell the whole story again
and it yeah it gets easier
like i guess this is my third time
around it gets easier but
not that much easier because it's a
different person this time
and it's like it's like going through
the part right after the honeymoon stage
in a relationship
you know it's never easy there's always
that oh
where's that been hiding
oh i didn't know that you know and and i
don't think he's gonna have anything bad
to say you know all of us basically have
the same stories just with a few things
changed up here and there
but somehow that lie in the back of my
head always says
probably shouldn't tell him about this
one thing
he doesn't really need to know
god knows and he forgave me
why don't i tell anybody else
and then i'm like okay dave there's a
reason why these steps work
just do the work
and so all that big
monologue i've had basically is to get
me
to that one little spot
the willingness to write down what i've
accepted about my past
what i believe to be true
and to be humble enough
to share it with somebody and lay out my
soul
my life
for the single purpose of getting better
so i can put a ton of words to it but
really all it boils down to is i want to
get better
and as long as i still want to get
better
i'm going to be okay
so
anywho
i think that's all i got
i have a series of interviews coming up
that i've been scheduling
i'm thinking i might be releasing those
on wednesdays and then doing
this on sundays
kind of switching it up a little bit
let you guys listen to some other points
of view some other stories
some other wisdom
and i hope you guys really enjoy it
i will announce the names of the people
as they're getting closer
so yeah it's going to be good it's going
to be fun for me to do that and
kind of get me out of doing everything
maybe i'll learn a few things
so so far today i'm glad to be who i am
you know i'm proud to be in recovery and
uh i hope you guys have a good one
Generous gen·er·ous | \ ˈjen-rəs , ˈje-nə- \
marked by abundance or ample proportions
characterized by a noble or kindly spirit
Service ser·vice | \ ˈsər-vəs \
contribution to the welfare of others
Transcript
welcome
to victorious in recovery what you're
about to hear is simply one man's
journey to victory over addiction
my ups and downs and everything in
between and the solutions that i find
along the way
my purpose is this
to let you know that you're not alone in
the things that we go through trying to
recover and that there is hope of a
recovered life from addiction my name is
david victorious and i'll be your host
[Music]
thank you for tuning in to victorious in
recovery
well it's been a pretty easy going week
for me
started out with some snow and
it's just overall been pretty enjoyable
although i i did have the same
issue this week that i've been having
lately and i just couldn't come up with
a
with the subject for
for the podcast
so i'm down to the line today and
i'm just shooting out messages i'm like
hey what do you think i should do hey
what do you think i should do
and finally somebody got back with me
and i'm like okay cool let's see what i
can come up with and
and you know i'm glad they they put it
out there
what my friend asked me to talk about
was
generosity and service
they didn't say anything else didn't say
what they wanted to know about it or
nothing they just said generosity
service and i was like okay well let's
see what i can come up with
so i started taking notes and
i came up with a few things
i'm gonna start out with
generosity and i was reading up a little
bit
and this article started out this way it
said
how did it make you feel
the last time somebody was generous
did it brighten your day
did you tell somebody about it
did it inspire you to pass kindness or
generosity onto somebody else
that sets the tone really
for what generosity and service
do or they the things that it can affect
we really we can't receive an act of
kindness
or generosity and not be positively
impacted in some way and that goes for
the flip side we can't be generous
or of service or kind and not be
positively impacted ourselves
generosity it's got that effect
you've probably heard it talked about
the butterfly effect
it's nobody can prove it
because it's a real abstract thing but
but it makes sense
because everything trickles down
everything rolls downhill
so when i'm generous it makes me feel
better
it makes the person feel better
they're more generous
and then it goes on and on and on and on
it creates this
avalanche an avalanche can start from a
branch dropping or
just one too many flakes of snow
one step in the wrong spot
and you can have an avalanche
that act that one little thing wasn't
big enough to push all the snow
but it was big enough to start a chain
reaction
and for me that's what encourages me
anytime i think about generosity is that
it has this chain reaction
even if it's not immediate even if it's
not noticeable
it makes an impact every time and in
addiction we have to be a little more
careful because we can try to be
generous to somebody that
isn't doing so well and it can actually
cause that avalanche effect in the wrong
direction so there is a certain level of
responsibility that goes with it too
there's even a like a bystander a third
party
that gets affected sometimes too
just somebody that happens to have
witnessed
an act of generosity
will many times take that and be
encouraged to
be generous themselves
and they say that there's
seven forms of generosity
and i agree with this but at the same
time i don't
and i'll tell you a little bit about
that at the end
but there's truth in all of this the
first one is generosity of thought
it can be forethought
to another act of service it can be
as simple as writing a review for
somebody
a restaurant a small business owner that
you know
you think about how good they are right
every a review
that that's being generous
that can start that chain reaction that
makes their business succeed
or answering that phone call
it's an hr manager saying what would you
tell me about so and so
there's your opportunity
and there's there's some humility when
those little things happen because
no matter who the person is or how
great the person is there's always been
a few moments where we were like oh i
can't believe they did that or
man i would have done that differently
or maybe they're just not the best at
this and this and this
and so we have an opportunity to help
and if we choose to help
to be
generous
with our words which is the next one on
the list
then we can have an impact on their life
and they may never even hear about it
and of course there's
there's money most of the time when
somebody says
be generous i think about giving in the
form of money
and that may be a cultural thing or
just the way my mind works maybe
a little side note about being generous
with money is that
that's one that is really easy to fall
into
and get caught up thinking of it as an
investment
or thinking of it as something that or
coming back later i should say
and feeling like that person owes us for
helping them out or even more abstractly
there's times where it's possible you
give to an organization or you give to a
church or
whatever and i've caught myself
feeling entitled to
something because of that from god from
my higher power
and so there's
there's always two sides of these things
there can be great benefit or there can
be great downfall
we can donate things which is the next
on that list
for example give someone a refrigerator
or an air conditioner because theirs
broke or whatnot
and the next one
is influence which i think ties in with
the first one the thoughts
but it can also be
a form of using your status or your
connections to help this person receive
generosity from a group they would have
otherwise not had access to
and this is a big one that takes a
little bit of humility
because a lot of times i don't have the
resources to help somebody when they ask
for help
and because of maybe shame or
being discouraged that i can't help them
directly
but if i stay humble and think
who do i know
what direction can i point this person
then a whole new door
of things opens up for them
i can say hey i know a guy or i know a
place
and make that phone call for them
and all of a sudden my influence helped
somebody else
and from what i've seen
that type of generosity tends to have
really big impact
because you have this three-fold
interaction because they know that i can
help or these other people can help and
so it builds this
chain this influence chain of people
that becomes a community of givers
and second to last on the list is
attention
and a lot of times especially with
family with our kids and
sponsees and friends
any close relationship
this is one that gets overlooked a lot
i know that i can get caught up
working and trying to have enough money
to buy the right presents or
to take somebody to the right places
having enough things to fulfill whatever
needs that i think i have
and i forget the sheer value of just
taking the time sitting down and saying
okay
let me receive what you have let me give
you
my attention
and all of these that i've mentioned all
seven
boiled down to one
in my opinion that's why i was saying
that i agree with them and yet i don't
because
the last one on the list is time
and if you're in the business of being
generous time is your biggest gift it's
been said that time is the only thing
that you give that you can never get
back
it can't be replaced
giving somebody or something my time
and expecting nothing in
return is the biggest act of generosity
but if we break that down
i have to realize that if i'm thinking
about somebody if i'm meditating on
how to deal with the situation in the
best way
if i pause and take a break pay
attention to the words that i'm using
when i'm interacting with somebody i
give my time to a corporation or to a
project to make money i take time to
become a part of
groups and
organizations
to be able to influence people
and it's almost
synonymous with attention because giving
somebody my attention is just giving
them my time
it's shutting everything else off
turning the phone over
and saying you have all of me
right now
and so
every one of these can be broken down to
the base level the foundation of all our
giving of all our generosity
of all our kindness the foundation of it
is our time
whether that be time one on one or time
spent at work
or
sheer amount of time continuing to be in
a relationship
time spent in prayer for others
all of it boils down to time
but i'm going to move on from that a
little bit and give the fine print at
the bottom
we can be generous
i can be generous
but i have to remember that i can't
pressure anyone
into being generous
the only thing i can do
to influence somebody else's generosity
is
my example of generosity
and not
not out of self praise not like hey i
gave these people this thing blah blah
blah no i mean it it has to be
a naturally occurring thing
it has to be something that you're not
praising yourself for it
at some point it has to be abundant
enough
to where you can't hide your generosity
anymore people will just notice it
and that example that we can plant is a
seed and it will grow
whether it be our friends or our family
especially our children
children that see their parents be
generous grow up not being as selfish
about the things they have because
there's something about being generous
that puts the focus on other humans on
other people
on other animals on
other things
a focus that can't be selfish
it's the best way that i can teach
my son to love others is by being
generous in one way or another
by doing selfless acts of service of
some sort
it builds deeper connections with the
people who are around
it helps us
give and receive like this this love and
appreciation for people
it's just an example it's a gift that we
can tangibly give to somebody else
something that's special
and it's amazing if you pay attention
how much you can learn from a person
or about a person
by what and how and when they give
and to who
or don't give
and there's something that happens in a
relationship when as partners or as
friends or as a community you give to a
purpose or to a person
there's a commonality
if you didn't have one before now there
is there's a strong bond that happens
when you're generous as a part of a
group
if you're generous
is a part of a relationship
that's a strong healthy bond that you
can build just by being generous
and bonds like that are what help us
with the respect that we need to have
for people when we have issues later on
because we're always going to run into
things
arguments disagreements and stuff like
that
but if we have that bond of something
out of love it's a good thing
to have that strength behind a
relationship
to help us through the other times
and of course it's really hard to
separate generosity from service
because service is just a form of being
generous with my time
with my effort with my strengths my
abilities
service usually takes a little bit of
self-knowledge though
of course you can
sweep the floor after a meeting or
fill the coffee
clean the coffee pot after you're done
and stuff but there's always a little
bit of knowledge a little bit of
experience that's required for service
the first time i saw one of those
commercial coffee machines i didn't know
how to use it
i was unable at that moment to be of
service concerning that
but i did know how to sweep a floor i
knew how to
shake somebody's hand and welcome them
at the door
so our our best acts of service
typically come from an area of expertise
of an area of maybe a gift that we have
towards something
the thing about
defining what is service
and what is work
because the service and work can be
doing the same exact things
but what makes the difference is our
intentions
it's where our heart is it's where our
mind is because i can
get paid to sweep a floor
i can get paid to make
things out of wood
i can get paid for a lot of things but
if my intent
is to be of service
that's what makes it service
so i guess what i'm trying to say is
that your intent
determines
the validity of service and it
determines who it's intended for
who's the recipient of this service is
all defined by my intentions
and services rarely based on performance
it's a matter of intent almost
exclusively
and that's that's good news for us that
are in recovery because
we've always wanted to judge ourselves
by intent
and not by our deeds
which was a downfall before but in
service we finally get to do that we get
to judge
the outcome by our intent not by the
performance
because the point isn't to be the best
or to have the best outcome or to have
any certain specific effect
even if i accidentally messed something
up it doesn't take away from the fact
that i was trying to be of service
so when my intent is right it's hard not
to feel good about myself
but that being said
if i'm getting resentful
or discouraged or burnt out then i have
to look at my intentions
and my expectations and that's where
i'll find the issue
because the moment then i realize i'm
getting resentful or bummed out or
discouraged or even mad at somebody
chances are my intentions were to get
recognized my intentions were to get a
response
or my intentions were to get reimbursed
so when i'm having those feelings
and it happens sometimes that's our
light bulb moment to know
let me step back for a second why am i
really doing this
can i do this
unselfishly or do i need to find
something that's more of a gift coming
from me
because service and generosity they're i
mean outside of
just bad intentions
it's good to remember that that service
and generosity they're not meant to
break us
financially emotionally physically or
wise
yes there is sacrifice
that goes along with service and
generosity but it but it shouldn't break
you in any way
and if it is
then it's time to find something that's
more suited to your time and
maybe your financial position or to your
expertise
because service and generosity have to
line up with
not just with our financial abilities or
our physical capabilities
but it needs to line up with our values
with our beliefs and hopefully something
we're passionate about
so i guess to sum it all up there's
always service that's gonna fit my
capabilities
and if i'm doing what fits if i'm doing
what feels right then i'm more likely to
have the right intentions
and if i have the right intentions and i
found my niche of service and generosity
it'll always better me but only if
that's not my intention cause like i
said earlier there's there's no shame in
feeling good about these things
it only affects us adversely when we
require praise and good feeling out of
these things
when our intention is to get attention
but i'll go back i'll sum it all up with
something i've already said ultimately
there's only one gift that we can give
and that's our time
our time is something we can never get
back we can never expect to get back
it's the only pure form we have
everything we do everything we think
every place we go takes time
and the amount of time that you're
willing to give is directly
proportionate to the amount of love that
you have for that purpose or that person
for that community
so
this week i'm going to take some time
and write down things that i value
people organizations etc
and i'm gonna try to budget some time
to service or to creating an opportunity
to be generous to those things
and that's what i can do to make a
difference
i can take the time to plan generosity
to plan service because then it's an
intentional gift that we're giving
it's not just a happenstance of course
you'll have those opportunities too but
when you plan them that's a whole nother
level
it influences more people it influences
you more
it changes my character and it teaches
me about what i really love
so i'm going to take some time to do
that this week thank you guys for tuning
in you all have a good one
This is how the 12 steps help me on a daily basis in real everyday life.
Transcript
welcome
to victorious in recovery what you're
about to hear is simply one man's
journey to victory over addiction
my ups and downs and everything in
between and the solutions that i find
along the way
my purpose is this
to let you know that you're not alone in
the things that we go through trying to
recover and that there is hope of a
recovered life from addiction my name is
david victorious and i'll be your host
[Music]
thank you for tuning in to victorious in
recovery there's so many times in
recovery that i have these ups and downs
and ups and downs and
these last few days have been
one of those times
i think initially i didn't realize
how disappointed i was
about not getting
the position i thought i was gonna get
with this new company
and i i like to think that i'm mostly
self-aware
but this one kind of caught me off guard
and honestly i think it caught me off
guard just because
it's been so long since anything that
disappointing has happened really
it's amazing how much my life has
changed that that's the worst thing
that's happened lately
i remember a time where you know it was
a regular friday night that somebody
held me against my will or something
or threatened my life
or any number of things
to think that the worst thing that's
happened in this
last month or so is that i had a little
bit of pain in my stomach and that i
didn't get a position at a company that
i thought i was gonna get is
it's pretty astounding
so to be honest i was kind of
a little hesitant to even get on here
today and do a recording because i've
been kind of down
i'm like up and down from bed and
just trying to make myself do things
even the most
simple things and
a good friend of mine was talking about
this analogy that she had told me about
the other day which was
that sometimes we have
different levels
of capability
any given day
that some days we might be able to
handle only three things
and other days we might be able to
handle 20 things
and that every day doesn't have to be a
20 thing day
some days can just be a one or two or
three thing day
and i've described that similarly in the
past that
then it's like having a cup of water
that that my life and my energy and my
stress level is this cup of water
and in the bottom of it is like
childhood trauma
and mean things that people have said or
done
that we still hold a grudge about
above that is
other
stresses that we've carried for a long
time that we just haven't let go of
and so
the only part that that leaves when
we're holding on to so many things
is that top little bit of the cup
and that's what we end up having to
navigate each day of our lives
i think nowadays we do that more than
generations of the past maybe
we hold on to more
we have more things in our cup that that
just aren't popular to talk about
they're not okay they're not accepted
people it makes people uncomfortable
to hear about them and then you have the
stigma about going to therapy or
being in a recovery group
or attending a peer group of any sort
and so we're left
with no solution
for all those things that we've carried
for a long long time
not only no solution to fix it but
no relief whatsoever because it's just
not cool to talk about that stuff
humility is such a rare thing
admitting powerlessness is like this
mythical creature
so we end up with this cup and it only
has room enough for getting dressed in
the morning
going to work maybe dealing with a
couple of stressful issues at work
and
coming home and you might have enough
left to cook dinner
and maybe enjoy your evening
maybe
you know and that depends on
on how much of our cup we've been able
to clear out
and you know that kind of
sets the stage
for how important it is to do and go to
meetings
to have a sponsor
well even just to be in contact with
people that
go through the same things they have
things in common that you don't have to
be ashamed to be who you are
you know i'm pretty sure that's why a
lot of sponsors will tell you that
the time you most need to go to a
meeting is when you don't want to go
because i mean if we're sticking to the
analogy
your cup is full you don't feel like you
can handle anything else today
there's no way i'm getting out of the
house no way i'm going to go to a
meeting
especially not if i have to get a ride
or go pick somebody up
then i might get to the meeting and it
might be about me
and i don't know if i have enough in me
to share about my day or about my life
at the moment without breaking down
all the while we're forgetting that
that's exactly
the mentality that got us into this
feeling like we couldn't be real
we couldn't possibly give the world who
we are and what we are at the moment
without getting rejected
thankfully this isn't a problem that the
whole world suffers from as much as we
do
thankfully
a lot of other countries have a lot more
outlets
are a lot more emotionally accepting
to these things and
not quite as judgmental as we are here
in the united states
so there's this
this thing
that i was reading and it's like the
laws or the
almost like another version of the
promises of the 12 steps
and it talks about in the first step
that
being powerless or admitting our
powerlessness
will actually result in strength
and i i wholeheartedly believe that not
just
spiritual strength and not just
emotional strength but physical strength
i've had times where immediately after
going through a hard emotional thing i
get really sick
it's so easy to forget that admitting
and accepting our powerlessness over a
situation or over a person or over
whatever
is actually what opens us up to learning
from that situation
because just as
regular people we don't tend to learn
anything unless we're really quite
forced into it
with the exception of like our chosen
passion in life
it's rare for somebody to learn
to learn something thoroughly
not just random factoids but but to
learn something about life without
having suffered for it
without having admitted defeat
without having the realization and the
acceptance that i need help
then it goes on to say about the second
step that
humility will result in honor it's
another
lost art
the art of humility like true humility
it's really easy to be like oh yeah
don't worry about it it's
it's just who i am you know or whatever
pretending to be humble is popular
pretending to do good deeds for
the good of the people but really just
doing it to show off on your social
media is not being humble
being humble is is more than that
and if you really are humble
and i can't proclaim that i am
but i try to be
humility will result in
changing like really actually changing
the people that surround you
you'll make a real difference
in life
humilities like this proactive
seeking to help others
not for my own gain but just for the
sake of
doing it
knowing that it's the right thing having
a value for other people's lives
and their well-being
and not seeking any kind of
fame or fortune from it
on a more
personal level it's coming to a higher
power and knowing that
we're not capable of doing
everything we need to do
without help
it's the difference between a prayer of
god i need this and this and this and
this and i need to buy that date and
that date and i need this person to do
this and i need this person to do this
and thank you amen bye
you know and that's that's a real prayer
format it has been for me sometimes and
and i get caught up in that trap
and then there's the other
humbler
type of prayer
god i don't know what i need please help
period
the contrast is is amazing
the results are way better way more
amazing
because when we can
humble ourselves and take our
hands off of things
relinquish the control over how and why
and when and where
good things happen
better things than i could have come up
with on my own
and that's that's kind of the point
because if i'm always
praying for specific selfish things
i'm always gonna be disappointed
because rarely do things happen to where
we want them or think they're gonna
happen
but by praying in a in a generalized way
you know please help me i don't know
what i need but i know that i need your
help type of way
it sets us up to accept help however it
comes
it helps us when we are grateful for it
later on
because it's so easy to get a blessing
and not be grateful for it because it's
not what i wanted
but you bring like real humility in
there and you accept and relinquish your
right to what you think god owes you
then you're able to be thankful for the
things that you would have never known
to ask for
and i hope you guys know that
anytime i do a podcast i'm really
talking to myself
i'm really saying to my future self
david this is the things that you need
to remember that you learned once upon a
time
it's just like writing in a journal
except for i get to help
other people with it sometimes
then
there's step four and five
which i i kind of have to lump together
because
one isn't sufficient by itself they have
to be together
one is the the preparation and the
acceptance and the willingness and the
other one is the actual action
putting it into the universe
but that's that's where we get to feel
loved for the first time
like really truly deeply
loved for who we are and we get that for
the very first time in this whole thing
to take out some of that water
out of the cup
and it gives us a little more room
to be whoever we need to be on a daily
basis
without it overflowing and us losing our
cool
or making a bad choice
so so far we've like
we've learned how to admit that we're
pretty much powerless over everything
we've humbled ourselves we're starting
to get a little
positive feedback because of being a
little bit more humble than we have been
probably in a long time or ever
you know on step forward we're digging
deeper
we're going down and trying to be as
honest as we know how to be at this
point
which sometimes isn't isn't great but
it's good enough is what's important
no matter what your level of progress is
when you get there it's good enough
you shouldn't stop there
because if if you can only do 20
or 30 or 40
the first time around
it still has the
desired effect
and i'm not saying try to hold back
i'm just saying do whatever your best is
your best is enough
because when you write it out
and you go to share it with the sponsor
or a priest or whoever you feel
comfortable doing it with
and they hear it and they'll be like oh
okay
pat you on the back or whatever if you
start crying
encourage you to continue
but you'll notice the one of the first
things
they're not getting up and leaving the
table
or the couch or wherever you're doing it
they won't be getting angry or
picking up the phone to call the cops
they're not texting their friends
telling them all your deep darkest
secrets and when you're done
they'll probably hug you
tell you they love you
say a prayer with you there's so many
things that happen afterwards it just
depends on who you're with
but what is happening
regardless of the moment in itself
is that you've taken a part of you that
you've held onto for a long time
and you've laid it out bare in front of
somebody else in god
and instead of receiving wrath or
scorn or
humiliation
you received acceptance
and love and support
disproving everything we've ever thought
or felt
about what might happen if people
realized who we really were
so you get to pour a little bit out of
your cup and you don't have to put it
back in unless you absolutely want to
you can be done with it
and completely let it go
you know i'm really fortunate i've been
able to do that
on here and in my videos i've shared
things with the public that i never
thought i'd share with anybody
my emotions and
the possibility just the sheer
possibility of somebody saying
you're wrong
or you're dumb ass
or humiliating me for something that i
said or
for how i looked et cetera
it's like this constant rolling fourth
step
fifth step and i'm just like ah
what are they gonna think when i post
this one
and you know i've gotten like two people
in this two and a half years
i've gotten exactly two people
that have said something mean and both
of them were ex-girlfriends
and they were just being hateful
and so you know that's pretty good
that's pretty good
i'd say that that's
almost impossibly good
what i have gotten very consistently
though
is encouragement
i've gotten people
that have honored me with long emails or
long texts
about how
something i said affected their lives
and you know i'm no genius i'm no
guru
you know i'm just a regular guy
that happens to have a good microphone
and some life experience
what what made it special to that person
is that i was willing to share it
so i was willing to put it out there
so at first it seems like a sacrifice to
open up to other people
it seems like just simply it seems just
like a bad idea because everybody has
always told us oh man i probably
wouldn't mention that
um
we'll just hold off on that one
your friends sit now and they're like
eh not here man let's let's let's talk
about a different subject
and so
we end up making the sacrifice we can
either sacrifice
our fears and go ahead and share
where we can sacrifice
our well-being and keep it all inside
well if we sacrifice our fears we get
this fulfillment from doing it that's
that can't be gotten any other way
because it's something that only truth
can bring about
something very powerful about telling
the truth
and not masking it not
distorting or leaving anything out
just telling it however it is no matter
how stupid you think it sounds
when it gets out there it's like wow
i didn't know it's gonna be that easy
i didn't know it was gonna feel that
good
now i don't know if you guys have
noticed this but like every step and
every couple steps
are required
for the next ones that are coming you
have you build up and that's why they're
steps
i can't get to the top without going
through all of them
because having had
shared all these things
and having the humility that we've
learned them one and two
and the willingness to let a higher
power
take over in three
then there there comes a readiness to
get better
more so than before
takes a little bit of a readiness on on
coming in off the street in step one but
here we see that there's a possibility
so there's like this influx of faith
that we haven't known before
because all our preconceived
notions about
life at this point have been pretty much
shattered for the first time maybe ever
as step 6 were like
i really think i am ready to change i
think
if i changed
i might get better
and you know
having written everything down in four
and with a little bit of help from your
friends and your sponsor
you'll know exactly what what you need
to be ready to change
if not a good starting point
and for the first time
in this process we'll have that cup
that's emptied out enough to where we
can actually take on the little bit of
stress and a little bit of
difficulty that it's going to take to
actually change
so then we
have one of those humble prayers in
seven
humbly asked him to remove our
shortcomings
and by humbly for me is exactly what we
were talking about before you get to
that point where you're like
i don't really know how this is going to
work
but i trust my higher power
to know how
so instead of saying god i need help to
remove this and this and this and this
and this and this and this we just say
god i need help
and maybe say with
these things and
point out whatever else
help me with the start
and i'd recommend to try to work on one
at a time
that is enough
it's enough to get better a little bit
at a time
it's really easy at this point to
take on too much and to get disappointed
so we have this hope and
faith that comes in six and then
we have a little bit of surrender like
okay i admit it
i have some issues
but out of that surrender
out of that admittance of flaws
comes the very first possibility for
victory
because we're no longer letting things
go this is a turning point
we're no longer letting things go now
we're moving in the other direction
now we're fixing the things that we can
fix so we we've let go of all the things
that we can't handle ourselves
we've let go of all the things that we
held inside
or at least the ones we could
so far now we get to accept that help
from god
so we're actively working on
on accepting help and practicing little
things that are opposite to our bad
habits
to try to correct who we are
or how we approach live
then we get to eight
and eight nine or one of those people
are like uh what do i do don't worry
you'll be ready by the time you get
there because like i said we've been
building on up this point we're building
and building and we're working on seven
we're seeing ourselves get to the better
version of who we had hoped we could be
and now we're asked to make a list of
the people that you've harmed
and don't don't go out and and do
anything yet this isn't an action step
this is just we're just making a list
i'm just admitting okay i did this and
this to these people and i'm saying god
i need help with the willingness to make
it right
and the willingness will come
i have a lot on my list i've taken care
of
some of them
the point isn't how quickly we get
through them it's being willing
because willingness is enough
we don't necessarily have to go seek all
these people out at this point i just
need to be willing and the way this
plays into what we've been talking about
is that
when i've made a list and when i've
become willing i'm no longer looking
over my back
i'm no longer scared to go to
a certain place or
constantly dreading somebody popping up
out of nowhere and going oh crap what do
i do and so
letting go of that
fear
is another little bit of juice out of
our cup
we can breathe a little bit easier
not stress so much
as a result it gives us a little bit
more to put into our everyday
and every time we we get that little bit
more to put into our day
we get more done
we work on more character defects we
accept god's help more
we become willing to let go of more
stuff in another form five
we lose the fear to admit our
powerlessness over something new
so overall they just build and build on
themselves
freeing us a little bit more each time
and there's a lot of
opinions let's call them on step nine
because there's there's some things that
we can't do
and some things we can you know there's
there's people that have died there's
crimes we've committed
that it just wouldn't be
smart
to go up and and admit to somebody if we
don't have to
but we get the opportunity now now that
we're willing we get that opportunity to
if somebody pops up and we remember oh
that's one of the people on my list
you can go up to and talk to him say hey
um
i did this that one time and
i'm working on my recovery
blah blah blah
is there any way that i can make it up
to you is there any way i can make this
right
and regardless of what they say after
that is that's not the point of course
it's nice to
get forgiven or get let go easy
but that's one less thing one less
person that you have to worry about
running into
it's something that you can be like i
did my part now
you know there's rarely a way to fix
what we've done but doing what we can
now
helps me know that i've done my part
so there's no more regret there's no
more self-hatred over that it's no more
shame
and as a side note sometimes it gives
them the opportunity to heal from it too
so you actually make a positive impact
each one of those potentially becomes
a strong point in our life
some of those relationships are restored
and they're stronger than ever
some of those create good habits in us
because we commit to
making payments or to changing our daily
life to make up for
what we did
and so we get to take a little bit of
energy that it takes to hold on to shame
that's a little bit of water out of our
cup
shame is exhausting
fear is exhausting
the more of those two that you can get
rid of
do it
those two will will change everything
so now we've shared of ourselves
we've asked god and accepted god's help
fixing little things we've made up for a
bunch of stuff
we're willing to continue to make up for
things that we've done wrong
and so there's there's maintenance now
we got stepped in we we made a list
a little mental or maybe even on paper
inventory of what we do on a daily basis
like was i out of line did i talk to
that person in a way that i wouldn't
want to be talked to
did i fudge the truth a little bit
did i manipulate that situation
maybe not necessarily lie but
i definitely didn't let on to the truth
and then the sole purpose of this is to
not add more stuff to your cup
because at this point in your life
everything's going good and it's really
easy
to relax a little bit and then before i
know it i've lied to that one person so
i have to avoid them
and
i didn't pay this guy so now i gotta
avoid him
and guess what i'm adding
a whole
brand new thing
to my cup when i've worked so hard to
take everything out of it
so this is my my chance to not become
counterproductive basically
to continue to do good
and the other benefit is is that
we get this opportunity for healing
every day because you'll say the wrong
thing you'll do the wrong thing and
things will pop up
and you'll have to admit it
and you get to heal just a little bit
every single day
kind of like making your cup larger
so we've taken water out of it we've
kept ourselves some putting water back
in
now we get to make it a little bit
bigger
leading us into
step 11
sought through prayer meditation to
improve our conscious contact with god
is another step where i get to make my
cup a little bit bigger
and remember making the cup bigger is
good that means i can handle more
i'm more prepared to take on bigger and
better things in life
i get to have a the opportunity to
really develop a relationship with a
creator
with the people around me
with the rooms
i become willing at this point to listen
and i practice listening what god is
telling me that's part of improving that
conscious contact
it's just like any other relationship it
can't be maintained if i'm just like
okay bye
no i mean there's there's conversation
there's communion there's
there's the basic necessities of any
relationship
except for the one on the other side is
way better than me
and knows everything i need to know
so it's mostly just beneficial for me
like i was saying on my episode on
sunday god doesn't owe me nothing
so for me to get the opportunity to
be in contact with him is just really
amazing
and then of course we have the
opportunity to make a difference
in a way that we've never made a
difference before in somebody's
life and that this is the type of thing
that
helps me on days like today where
i don't necessarily feel capable of
doing much good in the world
i'm just kind of down and
in the dumps i have to remember
step 12 sometimes
and i i like how it starts out with
having had
that means we've accomplished something
already
so having had a spiritual awakening
as a result of these steps
basically having had been willing to
change and willing to admit
been humble enough to ask
having had spent time with a higher
power that has helped me improve and
let go of so many things and take on so
many better things and
improve my status in life basically
having had a spiritual awakening as a
result of these steps
we tried to carry this message to others
and to practice these principles and all
our affairs
and i think that's that's kind of what
this whole podcast has been about
how do the 12 steps translate to real
life
what do they really do
and i've tried my very best
to describe how and what they mean to me
as a matter of fact that's what i've
tried to do since i very first started
all this
is take every little bit
of what i've learned and apply it to as
much as i possibly can and share how it
worked out for me
so at this point we get to share it with
somebody
in a sense we take on a little bit of
responsibility
for the people we're sharing it with by
taking on that responsibility by being
willing to share
and be vulnerable that way
it further secures what we've
accomplished so far
because we get to see the results
and the more i talk about it the more we
talk about it with other people the more
it sets in
the more it makes sense because there's
something about having to
explain things to somebody else
that helps us further understand what
we've already got inside
so we we build our cup up just a little
bit more
with the confidence because it brings a
certain confidence knowing that we have
the ability
and the experience and the standing to
be allowed to help somebody else
with something as important as their
life
we're helping people with life and death
matters
every little decision could mean going
one way or the other it could mean
overdose or getting your kids back
we deal in the currency of lives
and we should feel that way about every
interaction that we have
regardless of whether or not it's in the
program
because believe it or not it's not just
alcoholics and addicts that are needing
help
it's not just people in the program that
can benefit from our instruction our
help
our experience
you'd be amazed at the amount of people
that are also in life or death decision
making right now
they don't have a drug problem don't
have an alcohol problem
but they want to die
they've lost the hope to live because
they don't understand what their value
is
what they have to contribute to the
world or any of a thousand million
different circumstances that can cause
somebody to want to die
or just wither away and never interact
with anybody again
so on days that i'm feeling down i try
to remember my responsibility
my responsibility is to not stay quiet
my responsibility is to share and help
and to serve
and to do everything i can to make a
difference in everybody's life that i
come in contact with today
i encourage you guys to try to remind
yourself of that
as often as possible
remember that everybody has a lot of bad
days
and they don't have to be in the program
to benefit from what you have to say
or at least from a smile a kind gesture
a little bit of help
we have the ability to make people feel
special make people feel loved
cared for appreciated
and it doesn't take that much
it just takes being conscious of your
ability to do it
so try to stay conscious of that and i'm
going to do the same this week
thank you guys for tuning in and sharing
my life with me
y'all have a good one
Definition of old friend : a person who has been one's friend for a long time.
Transcript
[Music]
welcome
to victorious in recovery
what you're about to hear is simply one
man's journey to victory over addiction
my ups and downs and everything in
between and the solutions that i find
along the way
my purpose is this
to let you know that you're not alone in
the things that we go through trying to
recover and that there is hope of a
recovered life from addiction my name is
david victorious and i'll be your host
[Music]
thank you for tuning in to victoria's in
recovery
hope you guys are doing good this
morning
i had a pretty interesting week this
last week
the
job that i thought i had
actually ended up falling through based
on
some of my background stuff
and
that's always disappointing but it's not
unheard of or even unexpected anymore
considering
the types of things that i have in my
background
unfortunately when you're
a felon
it's kind of
it's just something you
learn to accept and
almost
except
most of the time
this week i had been
talking with a couple of people about
how
getting into sobriety
is
it's like losing a best friend
you know of course there's a lot of
things we gain
there's a lot of things that we learn
and
a lot of
you know just good stuff that comes
along with it but we're losing our our
best crutch
our running buddy
we're losing our best friend
we're losing the thing that got us
through so much
and it's one of those things that
non-addicts don't really get
you know a um
a running buddy or a best friend
doesn't
have to be good for me
for it to
have a hold on my life
has to be something that was present
all the time
and for me that was drugs and alcohol
and i i described it as
is saying goodbye
to an old friend
and uh
it just kind of it clicked
i was like you know what it was it was
like saying bye to
to an old friend
it wasn't just the people or the places
or the things
it was my relationship with that crutch
there's like a
there's a freedom of no responsibility
and
and i think that's a big reason why it's
hard for us to reintegrate is because
most of us
went a really long time
without having a job
without being a part of other people's
lives
really without any responsibilities
we were always stressed we were always
busy
but it's not the same
you know chasing drugs and chasing money
it's not the same as responsibility
and it doesn't have the same weight on
us as
regular life responsibility does
so then you know you end up
or better yet i ended up
transitioning a little hard not as hard
as i could have because i started out in
jail
and i had three different jails to
to get used to
not being on drugs
so my transition wasn't an immediate
impact
but my transition into
not quite freedom
and
quite a bit more responsibility
was a hard one
it was very stressful it still is
sometimes
you know because i went
for six or seven years this last time
with no job
practically no
[Music]
interaction much with my son
or with most of my family
no bills
other than maybe a cell phone
when i could afford to have one
i went from that to
reporting the three different counties
taking a bunch of drug tests every week
trying to see my son
trying to get a job getting a job
maintaining a job
paying bills
paying off old debt
getting calls again like
your son's sick
or you know covet happened gosh
and then i lost my job
and just having all these things all of
a sudden is is really
it really makes us want to run back to
what we know
our good old friend
and i was talking about
and i knew that wasn't an option
but it was really tempting some days
because i just didn't know how to deal
with real life
and i still very much
don't do a great job at it
but it really has gotten a lot easier
it got easier and easier as i
learned to give up the control
of those things to a higher power
and
i tend to want to take those things back
because i have this this horrible habit
and i think a lot of us do that
i want to take things back not like
consciously
but just
out of habit i want to do things myself
and not ask for help from anybody
god included and then when it doesn't
work out or when i get stressed about it
when i get overwhelmed
then i'm begging god to bail me out
or even worse
i'm upset at my higher power because
of the things that
happen because of the stress i'm like
where were you at
so essentially i get i blame god
for my mistake of not including him in
my life
which you know of course is unfair
on every level
i have to
bring myself back and be like okay well
what if it was a wife or a girlfriend or
a family member a regular friend
and i
had this expectation but never
communicated it
never asked for any help
but then got upset when they didn't show
up to help me
move
or
help me complete a project or whatever
which is it's unreasonable to think that
that would be okay
but somehow
i tend to always do that with god
and let me tell you that it's really
frustrating to not get help from
somebody you didn't ask
and then for it to be pointed out by
your
inner monologue to say oh
you probably should have prayed about it
you probably should have waited until
you got a response to that prayer
or got an inclination or a leading in a
certain direction before you made that
decision
maybe david you should have asked a
sponsor or a friend
or an expert on the subject
or maybe just
waited
paused
until it made sense
like seek that little thing that's like
could this be god's will or not
let me put it up against some of these
principles real quick
let me put it up against
these 12 steps
let me see how it stacks up then
for some of us
that amounts to different things and you
know for me i have to put it up against
some rules of my
specific beliefs too
so not only does it line up with
the 12 steps and
in like a harmony with my
sobriety
but it needs to line up with
with my beliefs with my core beliefs as
well
and that's that's usually the process
that'll get me to where
i'm most likely doing god's will
you know and then
giving up my old friend staying on that
same subject
i also at some point and sometimes still
do
feel like this sense of
entitlement
like people should just
praise me for doing the most mundane
normal adult things
that somehow since i quit using people
should be like oh my god yeah man here
take this
here you deserve a free car and a free
job and
a uh
no accountability
whatever
you know just here's some free money and
some free stress-free life for you
because you quit drugs
you know that's just not how it works
so i was in this meeting the other day
and
a guy said something that just
really drove that concept home to me
he said god doesn't owe me
and at first you know it kind of took me
back in my seat a little bit
and i'm like
okay get out your notebook
because there's so much truth in that
and it relates to
this entitlement
and we've all seen it whether it be in
ourselves or in somebody else that
they're like
well i've been going to work every day
you know
well of course that's what normal people
do
that doesn't mean that that everything
just works out all of a sudden
so like i really want to
i want to apply that to my life somehow
you know maybe different wording or
whatever but
i want to apply that to
my emotions
i want to somehow like internalize that
in a meaningful way because i need to
remember that
god doesn't owe me
i mean it's it's quite possible one of
the most
insightful things i've heard this year
so far
you know but there is good news though
the good news is
just that
if we do the things
that we learn in the program
we're gonna have like new found peace
this confidence that we just never had
before because we know we're doing the
right thing and when you're trying to do
the right thing
it propels us forward
quickly
way quicker than
than ever before usually
not because god owes me something
not because the world owes me something
but because that's what hard work
does for people
when we do the right thing usually
good things happen
it's like this master spiritual equation
doesn't matter what religion you are
doesn't matter what
ethnicity background you have
doing the right things
the things that are
acceptable and not
hateful things and not
stealing from people and not
deceiving people
doing business in a non-corrupt way
in all aspects of our life
doing those things is what propels us
forward
you can't do those things you can't be
good at life you can't put the 12 steps
of this program
into effect in every part of your life
and not be successful in life
at some level
at the very least you'll be successful
at a peaceful life
and that's enough
i mean my opinion really is that's
that's all i really need
because i can build on that
and i was i was reading in the just to
kind of switch it up a little bit here
i was reading in the n a
basic text
and i ran across this that
it was interesting it was kind of
impactful to me and it said willingness
honesty
belief in unity
and faith in the process makes us
valuable wherever we choose to serve
we know how to make ourselves useful
how to be teachable
and how to show respect and allow others
to speak
being able to focus on a primary purpose
and work creatively toward it
is so much a part of our way of life
that we may not
realize how highly valued that is
in the world at large
learning to serve gives us skills to
lead
but it's in our relationships
inside in a that a particular kind of
work happens
and that's one of the reasons that it's
so important for us to plug in to the
fellowship
and this
directly relates to what i've been
saying
we learn all these skills in the program
and
[Music]
sometimes i fail to realize that i just
need to use it in every part of my life
that yeah the 12 steps are great for
recovery
pretty much everybody knows that even
the government knows that and that's
crazy
but
like it's good for everywhere
and the more i've remembered that
like the better it gets
the better i did at work
the better i did in random conversation
with a person on the street
the better i do when i look at a person
like if i follow the 12 steps
what comes out of my mouth is better
because it goes through this filter
when we were out there using everything
went through this filter
can i use you to get drugs
you know i don't care how you want to
put it that was the filter
are you going to be
vital
to my
survival
in this world can you keep me alive
can you give me shelter can i get drugs
and that was basically it
that's how i saw people that's how i saw
places
businesses
etc
what can i get from you
and i judged you
based on those things if you didn't
fulfill any of those needs
why would i talk to you
why would i enjoy your presence
why would i want to stay there
but when i look at somebody through
the principles and the steps
it turns into
a whole new view i get to look at a
person for
being a person
how can i
serve this person's life how can i
better this person's life
how can i better accept this person and
their flaws
because we all have them
so instead of just seeing a flaw and
being like
bye
i can see a flaw and listen to it
i can see a flaw and ignore it sometimes
i can see somebody's physical appearance
as we do a lot of times like mine when i
first got in the program
and not immediately discount them
because i've been there
that whole 12 step that having had
a spiritual awakening
we try to carry this message to addicts
and practice these principles and all
our affairs
that includes helping people no matter
what they look like
no matter what their voice sounds like
no matter how
jacked up their mind may still be
no matter how angry
or whatever
we genuinely try to help
you know at least until it becomes
obvious that they don't want any help
there is a point where you're just like
okay bro
i can't do anything for you until you're
ready to do something
but that's no longer my first reaction
anymore
and at work if i take the skills that
i've learned in the 12-step program
it translates into asking for help
admitting that i don't know how to do
the things that i don't know
trusting somebody else to help me do
those things when i make a mistake
admit it work on my defects as an
employee
be ready to accept the input of a
manager
or a trusted employee another person one
of my peers
to help me improve on my you know not so
good parts you know and then the part
that
nobody really likes but we do it because
we need to
we take note of the things that we did
wrong
and we ask not just for help
but for forgiveness
and or make amends for him
and as new things come up at work
you know and then i'm saying i'm putting
these all out there because it's
important
i had to really think this through
at one point
why are the 12 steps important in the
rest of my life
and how can i apply them
just something that that we're not
always taught
because remember
god doesn't owe us nothing right
and neither does anybody else
so if i want to succeed in life
i need to learn how to live it right and
this is the way to live it right
and i left off on step 9 work edition
step 10 is continuing my education
on whatever my specialty is
continuing to admit when i've made a
mistake
you know the eleventh step doesn't
really change
sought through prayer meditation to
improve our conscious contact with god
you could add in there developed my
relationships with my manager
with my co-workers
knew when to take a break
knew how to self-soothe when something
frustrates me at work
and then guess what if you've done all
those 11 things
you'll get a higher position
and then you get to help the new guy
and practice all those principles
towards the new guy
no joke that's how life works
if you do the 12 steps at work like you
do in your program
you'll move up
and if you get to a point where you
can't move up in this company
i guarantee you by then you'll have
enough qualifications to move to another
company and continue to move up
because these things work
and i used to train people i used to
tell them
60 percent
of your job is being here
if you can manage to be here all the
time
you're probably gonna get promoted
regardless of how talented you are
but if you add like being at work and
practice these principles
you're gonna be like in the top
five percent of all the employees that
you've ever met
because nobody
works a program
like somebody working a program
it's like this
magic outline for
good things
you've got to like really actively turn
down responsibility and
and just be
really annoying i guess
for this to not propel you forward in in
everyday life
after would really really have to try
hard
thankfully that doesn't usually happen
because by the time we're doing all
these things we're pretty happy
we're pretty enjoyable people to be
around
one thing that the 12 steps
still hasn't i don't think helped me as
much as i had hoped
is
my battle with knowing where i fit in
how do i fit into this world
what am i supposed to be doing
what's my purpose in life
even though things have been going well
even though things have been going great
really
that whole self-worth thing
is still an issue
i'm sure there's some more diligent
12-step work that'll help with that
and i'm one of those people i have a lot
of skills and a lot of us do
most addicts and alcoholics that i've
met
are really pretty exceptional people
skills wise we learned to survive we
learn to do a lot of things to survive
and a lot of those skills translate into
real life very well if we know how to
use it
if we know how to make that conversion
but still somehow i'm like what do i
really have to offer this world
and i come up blank sometimes
you know and then
people give me compliments
about things that i don't think i'm
doing right
or that i'm too hard on myself about
or things that i just simply don't see
you know some of us have talents have
gifts
like god-given gifts that people
compliment us on and have our whole
lives and we still somehow have an issue
have a problem
saying thank you and believing what
they're saying
truth is is that nobody's as hard on you
as as you
no one's going to be as hard on me as i
am on me
and the days that i can remember
to remember that
are the days that when somebody gives me
a compliment i'm more likely to receive
it believe them and say
thank you
but really those four little things are
the things that have kept me down the
most
and that's not bad compared to my issues
that i had before
not a bad place to be
at the end of most days though the thing
that that brings me peace
is that i've realized a couple of things
in this whole
journey so far
that i don't really need glory or
praise or accomplishment even
doing the right thing
helps me feel good enough about myself
doing the right thing is enough
regardless of the outcome regardless of
whether i see
success or accomplishment in my
day-to-day
if i've done the right thing
and and i can truly say yeah
okay
i did my best you know when i count
through my day at the end of the day and
i'm like
what happened today okay i talked to
that person i said this i said that
i corrected my mistake at work
i held the door for that one person
i made this other person feel special
etc etc i'm talking about of course a
exemplary day you know all my days don't
go like that
but
on the days that they really it really
goes well where i'm just like man i did
the next right thing today
on those days
those days aren't the days that i worry
about what direction my life is going
those are the days that i go to sleep
satisfied knowing that it was enough to
just do the right thing
as best as i know how
of course there's you know there's tons
of things that go into achieving that
though
but there none of them are impossible
things
basically i i get to know myself
so that i can be a little bit easier on
myself
and when i'm happy with myself i free up
some space
i free up some energy
to do good things
i can be present in life it's really
hard to do nice things
when you're not mentally present enough
to see the opportunity
so
when i couldn't remember to do it i
typically pray for that
god show me
how i can serve you today
show me how i can serve others today
help me help someone today
and what that amounts to is being
present in the moment
caring about the people that you care
about
and if you're there and you care about
the people
you're gonna do nice things
it's just that simple
it's not like rocket science or anything
i was reading last night actually
and added one little final thing to my
notes today
and it's
i think it's in matthew it's talking
about they were trying to cast out some
demon or something right
and and that's not what i'm going into
regardless of your
spiritual beliefs there's a principle
here that i'm trying to get at
it says he tells them
this kind can only come out by prayer in
essence he is saying
you have failed there because you did
not have sufficient power
you will never be able to deal with this
kind
unless you go to god for the power which
he alone can give you you must
understand your complete helplessness
without it
that sounds pretty familiar
like i said not in a religious thing i'm
not trying to
sell anybody on anything right here what
i'm trying to say is that there's
certain things in life that we can't do
in fact most things but especially
there's certain things that we just
can't do on our own
as long as god doesn't cut off my air
supply or my blood supply to my brain
somehow all of a sudden
i could go brush my teeth on my own
i can probably accomplish that
can i provide a good job for myself
in a place that typically doesn't hire
felons
no that i can't do without prayer
that i can't do without
some sort of supernatural interference
in my life
a connection
there's things that happen for us that
aren't supposed to happen
and they happen for all of us in
recovery
like wow how'd you get that job that's
awesome
you mean your car broke down and the
next day you met a guy at a meeting and
he gave you a car
or even smaller things
man i don't have money for cigarettes
and your roommate says hey man i gotta
expect cigarettes for you and throws
them on your bed
or you don't have money for food
and somebody's like hey let me give you
a ride to
such and such place they're giving away
boxes of food
those things happen like all the time
all the time if we open our eyes to see
them
those things happen because we're doing
the right things because we're praying
for help
because we're
doing all the things
there's certain things that like in the
stress of the moment of not having food
or not having cigarettes or not having a
car
i can't do that for myself it's too much
if i'm new in recovery and i don't have
a job and my family won't talk to me
and all my friends are tapped out on
giving me loans
and
all these other things are on top of me
plus i'm in drug court and i have to do
this and that like how am i going to get
a car
how am i going to pay for food how am i
going to get my id so that i can go
to the unemployment office or go to
the food stamps place
and have my job and do all these other
things it's like so overwhelming
and so we pray god help me and boom
things like that happen
things that i couldn't possibly do
myself
for all intents purposes they're things
that are impossible
for me to do alone
so i guess the moral of the story is
that yes we had to say bye to our old
crutch
our old best friend
we may have had to say goodbye to
people
places
things as well
but we've gained a new family we've
gained a new group of people
we've gained
a new standing and we've gained a higher
power that can help us do those things
that none of those other things can help
us do
and when you put all that together life
gets better
and when you're not alone and life's
getting better
i mean that's the point
that's the goal right
to live life successfully
and do good to others
that's the goal
so today personally i'm gonna try to
remember that god doesn't owe me
and neither does anyone else
but that doesn't mean that i can't have
it
that just means that i have to practice
these principles and all our affairs
it's almost like i've heard that
somewhere
and i think that's all i got today
thank you guys for tuning in
you all have a good one
English (auto-generated)
Definition of "real world"
SINGULAR NOUN
If you talk about the real world, you are referring to the world and life in general, in contrast to a particular person's own life, experience, and ideas, which may seem untypical and unrealistic.
Transcript
welcome
to victorious in recovery what you're
about to hear is simply one man's
journey to victory over addiction
my ups and downs and everything in
between and the solutions that i find
along the way
my purpose is this
to let you know that you're not alone in
the things that we go through trying to
recover and that there is hope of a
recovered life from addiction my name is
david victorious and i'll be your host
[Music]
thank you for tuning in to victorious in
recovery
it's been a pretty long week
earlier this week i went into the
hospital and
had a couple of surgeries
and i'm still
recovering from those it's hard to
do certain things and
which really kind of surprised me i'm
i don't know what i was expecting but i
wasn't expecting
this much discomfort
i don't know why i mean they're taking
an organ out it's gonna be uncomfortable
but for some reason i just didn't think
that uh
somehow i didn't think it was gonna
affect me that way
and that just
kind of humored me this week
how
far off my expectations were from
reality
i also got to
see a close friend of mine
make some really bad choices
and you know you get to that
point where
you're like hey
if you keep going down this road
these things are going to happen
and i can say that because i know i've
been down that road i've made those
choices
and i'm like
you really gotta get some help
then they say no
they're not ready or
no they don't think i'm right or
whatever it is it's still a no
and it's so frustrating
so frustrating because i just want
things to work out well for this person
and then i have to remember
how many times did i say no
how many times that i need it
proved to me
that it was gonna get worse and it
always did of course
i'd be like no i think i got this
or sometimes not even think about it
and
before too long i'm in situations that
i'm
ashamed of i'm having big consequences
that i don't want to have
and somewhere in there
i'm like what happened
why is this happening to me
i don't understand why my life is going
so bad
and i'm like
what gets into our heads
what part of our drug use do we stop
seeing reality
um i think it's pretty soon i think it's
pretty early on
you know at first we may
start using drugs or alcohol and
think um this is a normal thing
everybody's doing it
and then
other people go home
rest up
go into their jobs on monday
or school or whatever
and we don't
we continue to use
that's like the very first little
thing like oh maybe there's an issue
and then we cause ourselves problems
because of our drug use and alcohol use
or whatever
because we're in those problems we feel
justified to continue using because our
life has gone to crap
and then it keeps going badly so then we
keep justifying it because of how badly
it's going and eventually
everybody stops talking to you and
everybody stops helping you and your
life really does
go to crap really does
like everything's gone
and then
we have no reason to quit anymore we're
like well
i don't have a family i don't have
friends i don't have a job i don't have
a house
i don't like myself why would i quit
what's the point now
and i see this
over and over and over again i saw it at
myself
i've seen it in other friends that have
since passed away
i see it in this friend now
and it's so hard
but it was like it was comical because i
went into this surgery
thinking the same thing
yeah
they're gonna stick a few things in me
blow me up like a balloon
take out an organ
and
i'm gonna go home i'm not even gonna
need any pain meds i'm gonna be good
like no that's not how it works man
that is not how it works
there are some surgeries that are like
this this isn't one of them
and i don't care anybody could have told
me that and still somewhere in the back
of my head i would have
because i had already made that decision
i had already made the decision that it
was going to be okay
that the normal rules of life didn't
apply to me
and i think that's where we get caught
up
in the beginning we're still
hopeful
that things are going to go well
eventually we know better than to be
hopeful but for some reason we still
think we're beyond the natural rules of
life
and i i hate to go further than that
but you know we've all gone further than
that when we know it's too late
then you get that jails institutions and
death
if you're lucky
some people
end up
damaging themselves so much
that
their life is miserable afterwards
physically or mentally
so i sat here
thinking for
a couple of days now like what am i
gonna do my podcast over
because i've been kind of loopy on
the meds they have me on to get better
and i've been a lot of pain so i've been
sleeping a lot
and honestly it was just hard i i didn't
know what to do
i contemplated not doing
the
podcast so i
decided that i would
because i started to think and
pray on this topic
and the topic was
you know why do
bad things happen to good people
and
are we in denial
about how bad we are
those were my two points
you know and you can switch that around
to why do good things happen to bad
people
etc
and
[Music]
somehow this this whole situation just
revolves around that for me
you know uh and me being sick and
somehow expecting
my recovery to go differently from
others
for no
no apparent reason
i have no good reasoning to
substantiate that
belief
just like
when i was out there using
driving around and stolen vehicles with
stolen equipment
sometimes even stolen drugs
thinking that man i'm about to
to get on top again i'm about to make
that money it's all gonna get better
what part of that
is better
well part of what i'm doing
would make
anybody expect that things are going to
go well for me
and somehow we still manage
to completely ignore it
and think
i'm doing the right thing for me right
now i like thinking of it like when
we're in
school and we're doing math
or science
things that are
of a calculated nature that need to be
precise
and we're doing the problem
and the teacher comes up and they say
that's not going to work
because
you're doing the wrong equation or
you're doing the wrong
combination
of
liquids or whatever depending on
what class you're in
the smart thing to do the rational thing
to do is to say okay how do i do this
why is this not going to work
what will work better
or at the very least
say oh it's too late i messed it up
but i'm never going to expect to solve
those problems or do those experience or
experiments in the same way
and get any different of a result
but i go to jail
i get out i continue to do drugs i
continue
to sleep at trap houses i continue to
steal
cars and motorcycles and stuff that
aren't mine
i continue to make deals with people
that have burned me in the past and
somehow
i still want to blame my problems on
other people
and it just you can't do that
you can't continue i can't continue
doing the same things over and over and
over again and saying it's not my fault
it's your fault
eventually people just stop talking to
you
they're like okay whatever
i'll see you on the other side
i hope it goes well for you
and i said i've had to do that a lot
i had to see these people continue
to not change their people places and
things continue to not change
their lifestyle continue to not change
anything
and you love them
but you have to say
okay i hope it goes well for you
let me know if you ever need any help
let me know when you're ready to change
it's hard to do
i want to just grab them and hug them
and not let them go and be like don't be
stupid
this isn't gonna work out good for you
and i always have to bring myself back
and say david you wouldn't have listened
either
there's nothing anybody could have done
to make me see a truth that i don't want
to see
so we have all these people out there
myself included in the past
thinking but i'm a good person i would
even profess to not steal from my
friends i would profess that i
was a good guy
i was a good guy
why are these things happening to me why
are these cops picking on me
why are they always following me around
none of that was true
i was stealing from people and i would
have stole from anybody
at the time
i may have had
good thoughts
but my intentions and my actions were
rarely
unselfish and rarely
concerned with other people's well-being
and somehow i expected a
our friend old karma to just not not see
any of it
my higher power to be like ah
i'll turn a blind eye
we'll let it work out for you this time
ah it just doesn't work that way
what ends up happening is i have all the
right consequences that go along with
all the things that i did
and it's it's that simple
i didn't get arrested for anything i
wasn't doing
even if i did get arrested for something
that i wasn't doing it didn't mean that
i didn't deserve to be arrested at the
time
it just means that they thought i was
doing something different than what i
was really doing
and while these people complaining about
oh man
they did me wrong so and so snitched on
me
well if you were doing the right things
there wouldn't been anything to snitch
about
it's very very rare that anybody gets in
trouble and truly is not involved
truly 100 percent
isn't guilty of anything
like it's a great guy somehow he just
fell into this at the wrong
split second and it looked all wrong
and now they're in jail and most of the
times
they realize it and they let those
people go there's a few i have to admit
i've met a few that i'm like he might
actually be telling the truth
like
99.999 percent of the rest of them rest
of us
we're there because we did
stuff to be there
so do bad things happen to good people
yeah i mean there's
there's accidents people lose
kids and getting car wrecks
you know die of cancer
that have otherwise lived exemplary
lives
but you don't typically hear of people
overdosing that aren't drug addicts
or
getting felonies
when they're not doing anything wrong
you don't hear of people getting their
car impounded
and thrown in jail for months
for
having all the things
the way that they're supposed to be you
know
there's usually something behind it they
lost their license why because they
didn't pay their child support or they
didn't pay a ticket or they got too many
tickets or
etcetera etcetera etcetera
their car had no headlights and they
were driving around at two in the
morning
things
that we do the decisions that we make
cause the outcomes
not the other way around
i'm sorry such a kind of a dark subject
but it upsets me
that there's nothing i can do
and it upsets me even more that now i
feel what my mom and what my family was
going through
when they had to say you know what
we love you but you have to go don't
call me
don't ask me for money
don't come here anymore
no you're not invited to christmas
we'd rather it if you weren't here
until you get better and strangely
enough that defeat
that utter
defeat
is what ends up actually helping us in
the end
all the other suffering all the other
consequences
none of it mattered until
there was nothing
once i finally had nothing to live for
and got lucky enough to get arrested
for a long enough period to stay clean
then and only then was i able to do this
that doesn't keep me from hoping that
there's an easier way for somebody
someday
two years ago today i had
posted a video about not forgetting the
journey
and i was talking about
everything that i i've been through
everything that i've learned
and how i can't regret the past or wish
to shut the door on it like it says in a
big book
and that sucks to think of like
i would like to say
that i'm smart enough or that i'm
talented enough or whatever to have
learned the skills that i have now
in everyday normal life
but that's not true
that's not possible
i couldn't have become
the man i am today without
all those horrible things happening
and so
do bad things happen to good people
i guess it just depends on how you look
at it
because i i think of myself as a fairly
good person like when i was 12
and then a bunch of things happened
then i wasn't a good person for a long
time and now i'm trying to be again
so
looking at it that way yeah absolutely
bad things happen why do they happen
though
one because there are consequences but
we get consequences not because our
higher power hates us
we get consequences because it's through
consequences that we learn the lessons
we need to learn
and the information sticks and it
becomes valuable
it becomes a part of who we are and what
we have to pass on to the next person
and unfortunately there's just no other
way
to end up
the way i am
there's no other way for me to be
passionate about doing this podcast
than for the way that i got here
through going through all those problems
the little conversations i get to have
with people at coffee shops or
at church or at their houses or at
meetings when they ask me
for things for advice or whatever and i
get to give them
my best
i don't get to have those opportunities
without going through the issues that i
went through
so no
i don't wish to shut the door on my past
because i've learned to
to see it for what it is
it's my life
it's how i became who i am and there was
no other way
all that being said it's still really
really hard to see a friend go back out
and to think oh
that's because they they need they need
some more teaching so that they can help
somebody down the road
it's really hard that is not my first
thought
my first thought is you're gonna die
something horrible is gonna happen
like it always does
and it's gonna be bad
but somewhere
after thinking about it for a little bit
i can eventually get to that point where
i'm like
maybe they they need one more story
that'll save somebody's life
maybe they need that one more experience
it
is going to help them help somebody
in their future
and i hope i hope that that's the case i
hope that
that it turns out that way
everything about this physical recovery
that i'm going through is
is spiritually enlightening
it is showing parts of my character
that uh i hadn't had a good reason to
show
lately i was fortunate enough to go and
stay with
somebody that really cares about me and
recover over there just so that i
wouldn't be sitting at home by myself
and she was like i really expected you
to be grumpy like i thought this was the
time that i was gonna see you be grumpy
and i was like you know what i kind of
expected to be grumpy too
once i realized how much it was hurting
and surprisingly that just didn't come
out
that part hasn't come out for a long
time so i had this little glimmer of
hope like
maybe
maybe it's finally taking
hold
maybe these things that i've practiced
over and over and over again
are helping
you know when you're building stuff out
of wood or
making stuff out of metal
there's always that final test
and little tests in between
where you screw something together or
you weld something together and you test
the strength of it
and that's the proof of a job well done
yeah you can do little things to make it
look nicer you know you can sand the
wood or you can grind on the
weld a little bit and buff it out
but
could it withstand the strength that it
needs to withstand and that that's the
proof of it at the end
is the strength of it
you know and you get a few of those
tests and then at the end
you're making a chair or a table or
whatever what are you gonna do you're
gonna sit on the chair or you're gonna
put something on the table you're going
to use it
and that's the final exam you know the
final test
does this do what it's meant to do and
so i've had a lot of these little things
popping up in this
recovery
physical recovery after my surgery
that have been like those little final
exams
i i have to take some medicines that
they gave me
it's just not a recovery that i can make
without them
and
can i
take them as prescribed
yes
i have been successful it has not been
an issue
can i be in pain and treat people with
love and respect
yes
i can
practice that enough that i didn't even
have to try
it came out naturally
and all these little things i'm like
this is the proof
my life is getting better
there's a verse in the bible
about what comes out the mouth is
overflows from what is abundant in the
heart
and that you can always
see
you can always hear
it's always made evident
what's inside a person what their true
motives are
by what eventually comes out of their
mouth
like in a freudian slip
whether they want it to or not if you
listen close enough you'll hear what
people are about
they will ask questions about the things
that are important to them
they will
have conversations about the things that
they want you to hear
that they think are important
and in situations of high stress high
pain
they will say and do the things that
they usually wouldn't say and do
because they're
caught off guard
those things that we do under pressure
is the definition of who we are
truly inside
and i was really happy that for once my
self-image
what i see myself as
was really similar
to what the other person saw
without a conscious effort
the things that i professed to care
about were the things that i ended up
truly caring about
for once
and that was really nice
kind of a
unexpected relief
there's been so many times that
i have
said oh no no don't worry about that
it's not a big deal and then found
myself resenting somebody for it later
on that night
i'm like well
crap i guess it was a big deal or
i'm like oh you know i'm
such a nice guy
and then i have a bad day where i'm in
pain and i'm like
at everything
i guess maybe my temperament isn't quite
where i thought it was
i didn't have any of those things come
up this time it was really nice
so i guess what i'm trying to get at is
that
there's only a certain amount that i can
do for somebody
that
isn't willing to do for themselves
and it's always better to set my
expectations on
real tangible things
and what really matters in the end is
what i've practiced
what i've worked hard to get
practice my
devotion
practice my
service practice my
words and practice my thoughts
practice my reactions
line those up with what i believe
is my higher power's will
or at least
that doesn't go against what i think my
higher power's will is
those are the things that are going to
happen when i
get under pressure
because they're the things that i've
practiced are the things that are
muscle mental memory
i've made that connection
and for that i am truly grateful and
unashamed to be in recovery today
thank you guys for tuning in
you all have a good one
thank you for tuning in to victorious
and recovery
you know so far
it's been a really good week
i had an interview earlier this week and
got the job offer
which means that i was only out of work
for about
three weeks
and really that's not too bad
that's not bad at all for
the guy with my background
to
have an interview and
get a job offer that was
enough money that i could take it
at a good enough place
with my background
usually takes a lot longer
lately i've been talking about doing
step work with my sponsor
and i still haven't had a chance to meet
up with them
to take care of the third step stuff
but you know i've had my
fourth and fifth
on my mind of course
and it started me thinking
you know for as much as i talk on here
i've never really sat down and
told
my whole story i've never been invited
to tell my story at a meeting
or anywhere
which is a little strange to be honest
i'm surprised nobody's asked yet people
have teased me about doing it but
they've never actually done it
so i was thinking maybe
i'll kind of give a little bit of a
rundown
of some of the moments that when looking
back i'm like
i had issues even then you know because
there's a lot of moments like that
if we really look deep
and sometimes we don't even have to look
that deep to be honest
but there's a lot of moments that
before our drug use before alcohol
before
any other slew of things that we use
there's always signs
that there's going to be issues later
and i mean outside of trauma because of
course we've all had trauma and i've
talked about that at length
but there's there's little moments
you know like i remember
throwing big fits
when i was young
just
amazingly big fits
like i remember getting upset with my
brother for something
and throwing needle nose pliers at him
and it
stuck into the wall
right next to where his head was
and my sister's like i'm going to leave
those in there so mom will see him when
she gets home and i'm like no
but i mean what what could have happened
to get that frustrated
given we had one of those
tvs that was missing a knob and we had
to use the pliers to turn it so it was
probably readily handy
so it's not like i went and
looked for him to throw him at him
but still
there's just little things like that and
i'm like that might have been a little
overboard
i remember coming home from my
grandparents house and it was when i was
real little i didn't realize what day it
was i knew my birthday was coming up but
i didn't realize
one day and
we roll back up to the house
and there's a bunch of cars there and my
first thought
as a kid isn't
huh i wonder what's going on was
something happened to my mom
and i just started freaking out and i
remember running in and there's a bunch
of people and i'm crying and i'm like i
was worried about you like what could
have gone through a little kid's head to
to go from i just had a good time with
my grandparents too
the only thing that could be happening
right now is that somebody died
and that's our
magic magnifying mind as they call it in
the
a.a big book there's no in-betweens
my mind goes straight from here to all
the way over there
in a split second i've constructed this
whole story
that in the end
spells out to me
that somebody died
when really there was probably a million
other options of things i could have
thought of at that moment
one of which maybe it's my birthday
party
and then i see
the opposite of that is true too
i remember my
parents telling us that
we were gonna move to costa rica with my
mom
and
i didn't even know my mom was from costa
rica
never clicked never even thought about
it
why my mom might speak another language
didn't ever occur to me
just completely oblivious
didn't realize really what was happening
until i was on the plane there
and it occurred to me hey
maybe i ought to learn some of the
spanish language
my first thought of that i was on the
plane there
you know those are the things it's like
maybe
i don't always pay attention to what's
right in front of me
maybe i was a little self-centered
but you know most kids are
then you have things like i remember i
think it was second grade
i was coming back to school after
summer break
and i see what i think was a good friend
of mine i'm not really sure
how good of friends we were
but i remember seeing him and going hey
what's up
and feeling okay
and by the time i got to where he was i
hit him in the face
and i don't know what happened between
there and the other spot
you know what what could have been going
through my head i have no clue
i do know that he wasn't expecting it
though
so most likely whatever it was was in my
head
that's where the story starts to get a
little different
i started acting out in school
they started doing tests on me
i ended up in a special class because of
it
and i'm not dumb
i'm not slow pretty well mannered now
but i mean it had to have been something
right
the test said that basically that i was
having a hard time
with the easy stuff
it didn't keep my interest i guess
and i would get frustrated because they
would ask me to do things that i didn't
feel like were important
but the harder and harder the problems
were in the testing
the better i got at them
so as the difficulty went up
i got done quicker and quicker had
better and better success
and that's that's just like an addict
that's just like an alcoholic
to thrive in in a chaos to thrive in a
situation
that is unnatural for most
and to fail at what most consider normal
and you know this is pure speculation i
can only
go on the information that i have and
that's what's in my head
most likely
some of it's probably not true
then you know i'm i'm getting in
fights in school in costa rica
broke a kid's leg
i don't remember how i broke his leg but
i broke his leg
all while learning another language and
doing quite well with everything else
just doing regular kid stuff
but i remember always feeling like
either i was all alone or i wasn't
accepted or
that i wasn't doing well enough
and it was really easy to feel those
ways because i'm learning a new language
i'm
i look way different than all the other
kids that are around me and
but as a kid i didn't know any of that
to me i was just
in a strange place and i didn't get it
it set me up to
feel
different and inferior
for a long time
so of course i'm
failing classes um
doing everything
but using drugs and drinking because i i
just didn't have those types of friends
thankfully
we got in other types of trouble
i remember though when i was 13
we had gone to the beach we were staying
at a beach house
for a couple weeks in the summer
my aunt was there and we all went out to
this discotheque
club thing on the beach
and over there it's different you don't
have to be
21 as long as you're with your parents
they'll let you in anywhere
somebody thought it was a good idea to
give me a
beer or a sip of a beer or something
and
by the end of that night i had stolen
beers from people i had grabbed beers
off the bar that who came from who knows
where
i i kept drinking
from
the very first time i ever
had alcohol in my system i was like
this is the stuff i remember dancing and
having a good time
woke up the next morning didn't feel
great but i was okay
went for a run
like nothing ever happened
and i didn't put two and two together
thankfully
because in costa rica i could have
bought anything i wanted at the store
nobody would ask me for nothing could
have said it was for my mom or my dad
and they would have been like okay here
you go
so it wasn't until i
moved back to the u.s that
i i was about to get out of high school
i was turning
didn't have anything going on on my
birthday and my friends like come out to
shawnee
we have a party going on i was like oh
cool
i remember because it was my 18th
birthday
and
i don't know what i drank that night
but i remember chasing a cat around
outside because he had gotten out and
watching rocky horror picture show and
it was just a weird night
didn't wake up with the hangover the
next day nothing it was just took it in
stride
i loved it
next thing i know it was like a
saturday and
something happened i don't even know
what happened
but i was like i'm gonna go join the
army
screw this
it's my first change of scenery
and you know joining the army is just
great for somebody that's about to
become an alcoholic
and i did very quickly become an
alcoholic i didn't realize it till
many years later
but i can tell you that within about
five months of drinking
i had already done cocaine
i haven't even smoked weed at this point
i went alcohol cocaine no stops
thankfully everything else had such a
bad stigma that
i didn't feel the need to get into it
yet
so i went back and forth with that i
remember i just gotten out of the army
and came back and my friends were still
drinking and doing coke and so i fell
back in with them
and it couldn't have been more than a
couple months
i remember
selling my sound system out of my car
taking money from my mom and from other
people and just getting my cocaine every
day
just a everyday thing
so of course
i realize um something's not quite right
here
maybe i ought to have a change of
scenery
so changes scenery number two go back to
costa rica
you know that's
not the best place to go when you're
trying to stop drinking
and using cocaine it is after all two
countries away from colombia
so yeah i'll just tell you that didn't
go over very well
everything just got a lot cheaper and a
lot more accepted
and
we did that at work
i worked at an offshore wagering company
we took bets over the phone
guys that owned the place were mob
everybody was doing cocaine there it was
just a daily part of life
somehow i was able to stop just one day
things got really rough they closed down
the
the place i was working at like the feds
walked in just closed it down
and i took my lunch break and moved out
of my house and disappeared
basically
by the end of the day
and
i stopped
i really stopped
like i had gotten really high and it
wasn't a good experience and i remember
just not being okay with it
anymore and this is probably
2004
so called my dad and said hey i need to
come home
and he bought me a one-way ticket home
thankfully
somewhere in there
though
my daughter samantha was conceived
before i left the country
and it didn't even click
and that that makes me really sad now of
course
like
i didn't even think about it
what the what effect that would have
on my daughter i didn't
didn't think
and it's it's just that
attic
selfishness i can't even attribute it to
anything else it was just selfish i was
so selfish
that i didn't even it didn't even occur
to me
that she might need her dad when she was
born
and went on with life like it hadn't
happened
shortly got married to a girl that was a
math addict
and
back then i
had never done it and
she said she was clean i didn't know any
different
looking back on it now i can't say
definitively but looking back on it now
i'm pretty sure she was high all the
time
like our whole relationship
and quite a bit after that too
so of course i married her
like after knowing her for three months
i was probably moved out
living with her
a few months later and we went back and
forth back and forth for
forever
and
had another daughter
i was there when she was born though
thankfully
but i went to the strip club right
afterwards and drank
because of course you know it's
celebration why why wouldn't i
go
like what goes through our heads
i don't get it it's it's
so bad it's comical like i have to laugh
at it because i'm like what the hell bro
like looking back on him like i just
want to slap myself
i tried to
stick around
for my daughter and
in the beginning i had
some real issues
still
then after that i was i was still
drinking a little bit but not
not horribly
i was still able to not drink when i had
her over
for visitation
and then we started with the court
battles
and
i ended up losing custody losing
visitation rights
and
she was my life
she was everything
so i gave up
i gave up trying i gave up on life
i gave up on happiness i gave up on
my wife at the time
i gave up on any resemblance of
responsibility
well then i had a business and was
successful
i was making plenty of money i had
bought a house
and when i lost visitation of my
daughter within
within a couple of months it had already
gotten so bad in my marriage that
my wife told me she wanted a divorce
and i just said okay
i took a couple of things from the house
and left and never came back
it was gone before she got back from
work
she deserved better
and you know when you're going through
that stuff there's so much pain that you
don't realize when you add to it
and i just kept adding to it
so i wasn't dealing with the loss of
not being able to see my daughter
this point i get back in contact with
my other daughter's mom my first
daughter and
decide it's time to go see her
and i did and i'm like we'll forever be
grateful for that little bit of time
that i got with her
probably saved my life
it didn't work out with her mom
but it saved me
i needed that
i needed a win i needed to
feel like i was an okay father
feel like i had done something right
and i did my best
it wasn't good enough
but i know that i did my best and that's
important
that's what kept me alive
so
that little stay in costa rica didn't
last
too long it lasted about a year
i had a good job thankfully
working at ibm at the time and
it was fun it was a good time of my life
it was a good little bit of recovery
there i was still drinking but i wasn't
doing any drugs
and i wasn't dying
inside as much
as i probably would have been if i would
have stayed here
but it didn't work out so
called family
they got me a ticket i came back
and i started trying to live i started
trying to recover a little bit
i went to meetings and
you know it didn't stick
but i was able to see that i needed help
at that point
because i'd lost my wife and
custody of my kids and
the respect of many people
and it was starting to hurt enough to
want some help
unfortunately i had some success
and the pain went away for a while
so i forgot that i needed help
for the next
10 years or so
i am
maybe not that much maybe like eight
years
i moved a lot drank a lot
had a lot of
relatively good times things weren't
horrible yet
met a girl
she got pregnant
and
my son was born
i was still in tennessee
still drinking a lot but i'm pretty
successful but once my son
was born i realized i need help
with him too
so i convinced his mom that we should
move back to oklahoma and she came with
me
and this was in 2015
no
2014 still
and things went well
again
i got a great job
made plenty of money and they had me
working from home overnight
so i had
no direct supervision
made more money than i've ever made
and
it started to go bad
because i'm trying to be a good dad i'm
trying to
do things right i'm trying to work and
do all these things and his mom's
getting sick
so i'm taking on more responsibilities
and i broke
something just clicked i started
drinking a lot again
i went out one night and
saw one of our people and i'm like hey
where can i get some cocaine
he's like i don't i don't know
where to get cocaine but i can get you
some speed
and i'm still so naive at this point i
didn't realize what speed was
no clue
i thought it was maybe like a pill or
something i was like okay cool can i
crush it and start it and he's like yeah
i'm like all right let's go get some
and we did
i did meth every day from that point on
that was what i had been looking for
not one day was able to use that
successfully
completely took over my life
i probably kept my job for two months
after that just barely
by the end of the next year i had two
felonies
i had
moved out
left my son with his mom
which was still sick and it was still
hard for her to take care of my son but
she managed and i'm forever grateful to
her for sticking in there and
doing what i couldn't do at the time
she even let me come back there for a
while knowing that i wasn't doing okay
but one day i had
been up a little too long
and i fell asleep
on the couch and i didn't wake up for
like three days
and it really scared my son it really
scared
her and my mom and everybody else that
came over and tried to wake me up nobody
knew what was happening
after that i i knew i never wanted to
scare my son like that again but i knew
i couldn't quit so i left
and i stayed gone i stayed gone till i
lost my car till i lost my
friends to all i lost my family
well you guys know how it goes i lost
everything
many times over
and still didn't quit
ended up getting
another felony
and another one
and that fourth one
was this last one
i remember i was i was riding around on
a stolen motorcycle and
i had a bag full of checks
and a computer for doing that sort of
work and
just all the wrong things
all of them
i was on my way to do
who knows what for some money
for more drugs
and the lights came on
not like a aha moment but like a police
moment
and i'm like well
i pull off into the neighborhood i'm
like why'd you stop me and he's like
put your hands up get on the ground i'm
like why'd you stop me put your hands up
get on the ground
and then i got superman punched by
second cop that it showed up and i'm on
the ground and i'm like why'd you hit me
and he's like you were resisting arrest
and i'm like of course i was
and
it really was i'm not even joking that's
how the conversation went and then i was
in the back of the cop car and they
found the bag that i dropped
and he told me you should have ran
and i was like
this is gonna be bad if the cops telling
you that you shoulda ran
you just got caught with one too many
things
and i did
and i just i knew my life was over
i knew i wouldn't get out of prison for
a long time
spoiler alert that's not how it ended up
happening but at that moment that's what
i felt
and i looked at him i said first that's
really bad advice
i shouldn't have ran
and second thank you because i couldn't
stop
and he looked at me
with that realization of what i just
said to him and he said i hope you get
help
i hope they let you get help
so i went to jail and it took them too
long to file charges so they sent me off
to the next jail
and uh they ordered me out from there
surprisingly
because i was on my third motion to
revoke and
they'd put out like a hundred thousand
dollar
warrant on me and
never thought i was gonna leave there
and not go to prison
but i didn't so then they sent me off to
the third jail
next county
and i spent some time there
and i knew i was going to get out this
day because it was just like a city
charge on that one
and the judge
was talking to him and he's like why
why didn't you ever make an attempt to
pay this
it was like a ticket it was just a
regular ticket
and i said because i'm an addict
and i couldn't stop
and he looked at me said i was i was
gonna release you today
but don't try not to be mad he said i
want to help you
but i need to make some arrangements for
that so hang tight and i'll talk to you
on monday it was like a thursday
he said come back and we'll talk again
on monday
and i came back on monday and they gave
me a
a divergence program
which is
kind of like a drug court
but cheaper because i didn't have to pay
for my drug test but i i drug tested
basically every week
for
a lot of weeks
they ended up shutting down that program
while i was in it and
instead of transferring me to whatever
new program they were gonna have
they
graduated me from it
and i got my first my first evidence of
maybe my life can continue to get better
so they they did they let me out
of all three counties i had a lot of
running around to do
a lot of meetings a lot of drug tests a
lot of
stress about what they were going to do
with the charges that they still hadn't
charged me with
but life started getting better
not great
but better
started seeing my son
started making videos about
how it was going in my recovery and what
was helping me
and people started to respond
and i thought just maybe
maybe there's a reason for all of it
and that was that was the moment when
that when people started telling me that
it was helping them
that i knew that i was where i needed to
be and it's the first time in
14 years that i knew that i was in the
right place
that my higher power wanted me right
here right now
and i cried
that day
because i never thought i was gonna have
that again
i never thought i was gonna experience
joy
satisfaction of any sort
i was just doing this deal so that i
could see my son
the only child i had left
the only one i could still see
so i've been doing this ever since
every day
anytime i see something that helps me i
take note of it
and i save it for you guys
and i make something of it every sunday
and a lot of people don't listen
that listened in the beginning and
you know it's been a hard road
switching from the video to the podcast
but i continue to do it because every
once in a while somebody says hey
that helped me
i listened to you and i went to rehab
and i'm doing good
never every time i get that
i realize that's a life
that's somebody that didn't have a life
to look forward to that now has a life
to look forward to that has a chance
so even if it's just one listener
it doesn't matter anymore
i get to do this for me
this is what keeps me clean
with the
lucky added bonus that every once in a
while it helps someone else too
not trying to do anything special other
than that
i just want to survive i want to
continue to feel like i make a
difference in the world
and you guys help me do that
so i guess
the moral of my story is it gets better
it's worth fighting for
it doesn't always have to look great for
it to be getting better
you don't always have to feel strong
to be moving forward
and i think that's all i have for you
guys tonight
thank you for tuning in
thank you for listening to my story
today
wis·dom
/ˈwizdəm/
noun The quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgment; the quality of being wise. Transcript
welcome
to victorious in recovery what you're
about to hear is simply one man's
journey to victory over addiction
my ups and downs and everything in
between and the solutions that i find
along the way
my purpose is this
to let you know that you're not alone in
the things that we go through trying to
recover and that there is hope of a
recovered life from addiction my name is
david victorious and i'll be your host
[Music]
thank you for tuning in to victorious
and recovery
it's middle of the week and
i've been having a lot of things come up
in my studies this week i've had
a little more time on my hands and i've
been able to
spend a little
time in meditation that i haven't gotten
to spend in a long time
and i've been thinking about
the upcoming steps
i'm still waiting on my
sponsor to
do step 3 with me
but as we tend to do
i've been thinking ahead a little bit
not in a bad way not in a future
tripping way
just
staying conscious of what's to come
kind of mentally preparing for it which
i think is a healthy look forward
in one of my studies yesterday
proverbs 4 came up
and i wanted to share
just a few of my thoughts with you guys
proverbs 4 is about getting wisdom
it's titled get wisdom at any cost
and on verse 1 it starts listen my sons
to a father's instruction
pay attention and gain understanding
i give you sound learning
so do not forsake my teaching
for i too was the son to my father
still tender and cherished by my mother
then he taught me
and he said to me
take hold of my words
with all your heart
keep my commands and you will live
get wisdom get understanding
do not forget my words
or turn away from them
do not forsake wisdom
and she will protect you
love her and she will watch over you
the beginning of wisdom is this
get wisdom
though it may cost all you have
get understanding
cherish her and she will exalt you
embrace her and she will honor you
she will give you a garland to grace
your head
and present you with a glorious crown
listen my son
accept what i say
and the years of your life will be many
i instruct you in the way of wisdom
and lead you along straight paths
when you walk your steps will not be
hampered
when you run you will not stumble
hold on to instruction do not let it go
guard it well
for it is your life
so that was proverbs 4 1-13
and there's so much of that
that i can relate to i can relate to
that as a aspiring good father
i can relate to that as the son that
remembers a couple of things from my dad
i can relate to that because
it says there at the end hold on to your
instruction
do not let it go guard it well
for it is your life
and to me that that's talking about
experiences
it's talking about
what i've gone through what i've learned
from it and to not let it go
what i've done in the past what i've
been in the habit of doing is i'll go
through something difficult
and
i'll want to erase it i want to just put
it behind me and never think about it
again
which in some cases
is the right thing to do
until i can figure it out until i can
figure out what what to do with that
experience in my life
but most of the time
it's best worked through it's best
thought about
shared with others etc and then learned
from it
so i wrote down some notes of things
that this meant to me
i wrote wisdom as a rule of thumb
is going to be what you perceive as
important
to leave your kids as knowledge and
teaching
just as a simple layman's terms
definition of what is
wisdom to me it's what life has taught
me
because
like knowledge is different
knowledge i can pick up from a book
knowledge i can hear somebody
talk about
but for it to become wisdom i have to
use it i have to experience it i have to
learn from something that's happened
then it becomes wisdom to me
and for me to consider it wisdom though
it has to be something important that i
deem
valid enough
to teach it to somebody else like my son
or my daughters
i think that a lot of times i thought
wisdom was some mystical thing
i thought it was just some biblical
thing
i thought it was just something that
monks had and
old people
people with a lot better connection to a
higher power than me
when really it turns out that it's just
my experiences put to good use
just an understanding of a larger plan
it's like the difference
between
somebody telling you what they're gonna
do
to a house
and then laying out the plans on a table
and you able to see all of it
come together as a larger plan
as a larger concept with the pictures
and the little drawings of the trees and
all the little things that
that make an idea into a vision
that's the difference between knowledge
and wisdom
to just to see how everything connects
when you make that connection between
your past
and what you need for your future
that's the wisdom that you carry along
so how does that relate to
step four and five
it's very closely related
because
in order to gain that wisdom in order to
accept that teaching
from my experiences
i have to look inward at the things that
have happened
i have to be honest about
my part in things
but more than that because a
self-appraisal is rarely enough
i also have to share it with another
and get their view on it their take on
it
and there's something that happens
when i go back and i
put everything on paper
and then i say it out loud
i always tend to
elaborate a little bit more
memories come up
feelings get translated in that talking
to another
and inevitably somewhere in that
conversation the other person will be
like
do you think that maybe
this and this and this could be causing
this and this and this
and you have that aha moment
and boom that's the wisdom
that's that little nugget you take
and you set aside you say okay
i know when this and this happens in my
life
i've always translated it to this other
thing
and i need to make this connection
in a different way
and that's the wisdom
that's the process
so i look inward
i share it outward
and i take other people's opinions about
what i share
and i let all those things
brew together
and what results of that whole process
is healing
it's acceptance
it's the breaking of chains
that have held me it's
resentments melting away
it's realizations that i was at fault
and things that i didn't realize i was
at a fault at
and sometimes more importantly it's the
realization that i'm not
responsible for some of the things that
have happened
so i look at this and i'm like
if this is how i gain wisdom
what i've learned from this whole little
thought process
is that i have to take what's in my past
communicate it
be open
to hearing somebody else's view on it
and then meditate on it
not forget about it like i used to
not push it aside not cover it up with
drugs
but see it as an opportunity
to learn and move forward
so i was kind of mulling that over and
i'm like
what's one thing that i would want to
pass on
one little bit of wisdom that i've
learned
in sobriety
because of my background because of what
i've been through
and to my surprise
what came up was this
is there's three things that i must not
ever give up on
first one is god
the second one
is myself
and the third one is love
and it's these three because they're so
interconnected
they're so dependent on each other
they're symbiotic they require each
other to work
because you can go at the lowest level
of that
or highest level depending on how you
look at it a belief in god a belief in a
higher power whatever you want to name
it
that's important but it always fails
when i don't believe in myself
because if i don't believe in myself
then how can god love me
and if god loves me then it goes back
how can i love myself
but there's love
there
at the lowest level
what if i give up on love what if i
experience something in my childhood
that
makes me feel like i was unloved
makes me give up
on people that say i love you because
the people that said i love you did
horrible things
so if i give up on love
i don't know how to love myself i don't
know how to be accepting of myself
and it's just this nasty cycle and we've
all seen it we've all seen this horrible
cycle
with abuse
to a child
you abuse a child in any way
they lose that self-confidence they lose
that
nurturing belief
in love
and then they lose
faith
that there's a god that loves them
but on the restoration side of that
there's a solution there too
if i'm willing to just
be open to the idea
that there is a loving god that there is
a loving higher power
then just maybe
somebody loves me and cares about me
and if somebody a higher power
loves me and cares about me then i have
worth
and if i have worth
then other people have worth
and if other people have worth then i'm
able to give my one true gift that i can
give in life which is love the caring
for another person
in any way
so just like it's broken down with one
little piece
of my history as a child
it can be built back up with one little
piece
as an adult
that very first thought that maybe
there's a higher power that cares about
me
so that's why it's important to me
the one little bit of wisdom that i
would like to pass on is that you can't
ever give up on god
you can't ever give up on yourself
and you can't ever give up on love
and i think i'm just gonna leave it
right there
that's all i have for you today
thank you for tuning in
being a part of my life being a part of
my recovery
you guys have a good one
pur·pose
/ˈpərpəs/
noun
The reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists.
Transcript
welcome
to victorious in recovery what you're
about to hear is simply one man's
journey to victory over addiction
my ups and downs and everything in
between and the solutions that i find
along the way
my purpose is this
to let you know that you're not alone in
the things that we go through trying to
recover and that there is hope of a
recovered life from addiction my name is
david victorious and i'll be your host
[Music]
thank you for tuning in to victorious
and recovery
it's been a another good week
and i'm saying that more so to myself
try to convince myself
than anything else i think
i know that last week i had mentioned
that
i had been sick and had to go
to the hospital and stuff
but so much more happened and i just
didn't even think to say anything about
it
because everything was kind of
overshadowed by that
and more's happened since then
so where do i start
that tuesday before i went into the
hospital
i had my probation appointment in the
morning
and was told that i was taken off a
probation
they had closed out my case that i was
one hundred percent done
so in the last year
that means that i've had four cases
close
four different felony cases
that are now done
out of court
off probation done
and that's a that's a pretty big
testament of what recovery can do
that's a pretty big
statement because
in 2020
i still had three years left
of probation
so
it's barely 20 22 and now i have nothing
left
that's really good
and it's not like i did any
crazy
jumping through hoops or anything i
didn't call in any favors i didn't do
anything like that all i did
was keep a job go to my probation
appointments
and stay clean
and it's amazing because at the
beginning of all this
it looks like such a
huge insurmountable thing
like i'm gonna be on probation forever
i've got a million fees that i have to
pay
i have to take drug tests for the rest
of my life and
you know all these things that go
through
my brain
in the beginning
looking at
a huge undertaking like that
and it it almost never fails that at the
end of it
i realized that it wasn't as bad as i
thought it was going to be
so
now it just kind of adds to
those big questions what next
what happens now
well i can tell you one thing that
happened since then
or two one of them you already know went
to the hospital
had to have a surgery
gonna have to have another one
secondly
a bunch of people got laid off at work
and i was one of them
so
what next
what do i do now the reason why i bring
up those questions is because that's
what i wanted to talk about today
starting out
in
recovery and
in this whole journey there's a lot of
big questions like that
and i've heard people recently
ask things to the
tune of
what does life look like now that i
can't get high
what will i do
how do i have fun
and
there's more really big questions
why me why is all this happening to me
didn't i live a good life before this
why do i deserve this life
you know and then there's always the
why now
why did everything work out just fine in
my life even
drug use and alcohol use and then all
the sudden
everything just
fell apart why now
what did i do to deserve this
to deserve this life to deserve
this outcome
and more importantly what should i do
now
how do i move on from here
you know and every single one of these
is
a horribly
almost impossible
question to answer
i think i could spend
a lifetime
trying to answer any one of these
questions
just to find out that there is no good
answer
i think that's that's like one of the
bigger things that i've
found
throughout this whole deal
it's that all these big questions that i
want to ask myself and that i want to
ask the universe that i want my higher
power
to be accountable to answer to me
all these things
aren't the right questions
they don't really matter
it's not relevant to moving forward in
life
why did i experience
my childhood
the way i did why did those things
happen to me
why was i introduced to
that sort of thing that young
that was one of the questions i had
that's one of the questions that a lot
of us have
there's abuse
of so many different types in most of
our backgrounds
and
what i've come to find out is
if there is an answer
the simple answer the only answer i can
come up with for that particular
question is
so that i can help others
so that i can relate to somebody that
needs somebody to relate to
you know and then there's the
not so pretty answers
why did that happen to me why did i get
arrested or why did
i end up in a relationship with somebody
abusive
why did
xyz things happen
those are other questions that there's
not really good answers to
but if we're being honest
if i'm being honest with myself
most likely
the answer is because i put myself there
because i made a series of choices that
put me in the situation
not to say that
i would have chosen
those situations for myself or for the
people around me that got hurt
but i was most likely in a place that i
shouldn't have been
dealing with things that i should have
never been willing to deal with
putting myself in danger in a way that
i shouldn't be
it's a series of choices
that get us to the places where we are
if you're anything like me it's it's i
like to look back and be like i didn't
deserve that
i didn't deserve to be treated that way
i didn't deserve to
have that relationship i didn't deserve
that maybe
maybe not
i can tell you that if i'm honest
i can usually trace it back to a series
of bad choices
little ones
because i like to ask questions now big
ones
but i don't ask myself the right
questions when i'm making those small
decisions that lead me
to where i am now
it's important to ask questions i i just
don't think that i ask the right
questions
little questions
that lead to good decisions
in time i only like to ask the why
nows why did you etc why did god do this
to me why did
life turn out this way
but i forget that what i really needed
to do was ask
why do you want to do this right now
david
why do you really want to go to this
place
why are you talking to this person right
now
why do you want to take this job
why do you want to leave this person
those are the questions
that i need to be asking
those are the questions that shed light
on the things that end up changing our
lives forever
why did i want to move here instead of
there
why did i choose
not to go to sober living why did i
choose to leave silver living
why did i leave the stable relationship
and go and be with somebody else
if i had taken the time to ask myself
those types of questions that shed light
on my real motives
i wouldn't be able to blame people for a
lot of the stuff that i've blamed people
for and i know that's
not what people want to hear
i don't want people to tell me this
stuff
i don't want to admit that it's my fault
and you know you can always argue that
there's things that happen that are just
completely out of your control and
that's true
but if i'm really honest
i know that that's the minority of the
things
the majority of the things
happen because of a series of bad
choices on my end
so next time i go to ask myself
why did this happen
or i go to ask my higher power
god why did you do this to me
i need to be okay with the answer being
it's your damn fault
i need to be okay
with maybe god saying man i can't save
you every freaking time
you tempted fate one too many times
why'd the police pull me over because
you're driving without a license it was
bound to happen eventually
that's one that i had to admit last week
i got in the turn lane too soon got
pulled over
had to tell the cop the truth
license is still suspended
i got a ticket yeah i could blame the
universe on
putting the cop there on
whatever
oh it was construction it was really
backed up there was no other way to make
that turn
i the excuses could go on forever but
really what is it
it's that i chose to get in the car
start it up and drive without a license
that's the choice
that's the why
the sooner that i can get to that
conclusion the sooner i start to make
change in my life
because the change isn't in the big
decisions it's not in the big why and
what's and where's it's in the small
things
it's in those everyday small choices
that difference that change happens
why was that one of the ones that got
laid off at work
yeah i can blame it on my
personal differences with
the bosses or i can blame it on
bad company management i could blame it
on a million different things
but at the end of the day
maybe i just wasn't worth what i was
getting paid
maybe i chose to buck up one too many
times
maybe i didn't show the right respect to
the right people
maybe i chose to not show up to work one
too many times
those are all hard realizations
but you add all those small decisions
together
and when it comes time for a company to
decide
whether you're the one they should keep
or not those things weigh in
and the end result is
you weren't the one they picked to stay
most likely
it's a mixture of the two
but can i really blame them no
would i have let me go probably
it's as simple as that
the ability
to admit that is the progress
because honestly i i did what i could i
did the best that i can
mentally emotionally physically i did
what i could i gave it my all mistakes
good decisions bad decisions yeah but i
gave it mile
i mean there's progress there though
there's progress in the fact that i can
admit
that they had good reasons
it does help though to know that i
wasn't the only one
so i don't feel too terribly singled out
so where am i really going with this
i started thinking about all this
because i've i've been thinking about
what's my purpose
that big question what do i do now
where do i go from here
it comes back to purpose
anytime i think about purpose i have to
wonder what
i was made to do
what's going to bring me fulfillment in
life
that's what it comes down to
what can i do in life that is going to
bring
me fulfillment
and it's going to
fulfill other people's lives
at the same time
i came across a
deal in a study the other day that i was
doing
and it kind of rang true and i wanted to
share with you guys this in a bible
study i was doing
the person that wrote the bible study
wrote this
when we talk about purpose
we're talking about what we can do to
make an impact on others around you
we're talking about a sense of calling
and investing in a cause
calling is when you have a sense of i'm
made for this
it's when you find the thing to do that
makes you feel most alive
cause is found when you're able to say
i'm moved to do something about this
i can relate to this
i mean that's why i get in front of a
microphone that's why i get in front of
a camera
i feel called to do this
and it's good to to see things put
on paper like this and to be able to
relate
so i'm going to continue reading this
since living on purpose
is about investing your life
in the things that matter most
so that you can live a life of mission
and meaning
determine your purpose
purpose gives you a sense of direction
and meaning
we believe your purposes are revealed by
god
here are some questions that will help
you determine your purpose and this is
kind of
helpful
i wanted to leave you guys with these
questions kind of open-ended
maybe they'll help you the way they've
helped me
and this is all from your own point of
view
what does the world need
based on what i've been through and what
i've been trying to do
what i felt my calling is i mean i felt
the world needed
to know that you're not alone
so you're not the only one that's gone
through these things that you're not the
only one that has these
crazy thoughts and difficulties
recovering
so that's that's how i answer that
question
what am i made to do to help fill this
need
i'm just i'm uniquely qualified
i had all the
right knowledge of audio and video stuff
i had
all the right experiences in life
and
somebody told me i had a good voice for
it basically
so
just
when you find something
that's
part of your purpose
things just kind of fall into place
especially when you learn to ask
yourself the right questions
the next question was what can i do to
make a difference
and leave a positive mark
i can speak up i cannot hold back
i can open up about things that most
people don't open up about
share my life
even when it's hard
the next one was was hard
says what breaks my heart
i felt that was really interesting
because it's a important question that i
would have never thought of myself
because what defines me
has a lot to do not just with what makes
me happy but with what destroys me with
what makes me sad
so this was an important question what
breaks my heart
seeing people suffer not knowing
that there's a way out not seeing it
thinking that they're all alone
that there's nothing to be done that
that it's not worth it that they're not
worth it that breaks my heart and it's
because i've been there
that was an important thing for me to
find my purpose
and the final question is hard to answer
it might be something that
i can get other people to help me answer
the question is
what's at risk
if i don't do what i'm called to do
and there's always a flip side right if
i'm making a positive difference doing
what
i'm supposed to be doing then if i'm not
doing it who's making that positive
difference
who's gonna pick up my slack if i don't
do this
chances are somebody probably
but at the same time
i have to believe that there's somebody
that i can touch uniquely
than nobody else can
somebody maybe in my inner circle
possibly somebody outside of my inner
circle that's just a
second or third connection
either way if there is a purpose in life
if everybody's
made to be something
created for a particular purpose
then chances are nobody can fill those
shoes
nobody can be
me like i can be me
nobody can speak into the specific lives
that i'm gonna get to speak into
so what happens if i don't do
what i'm supposed to do
i don't know but i don't want to find
out
i don't want to go through life and find
out that i could have done something
that could have helped someone
so to answer that question what do i do
now
i keep doing the next right thing
the next right thing for me
i keep sharing my life
when i have the choice
of whether to serve self or to serve
somebody else i'm going to try my best
to serve others
and make a difference
and i think that's all i have for you
guys today
thank you for tuning in
sharing this bit of my life with me
y'all have a good one
What Is Step 3? The third step of the 12-step journey introduces the process of surrendering control over your addiction to a power greater than yourself. Step Three is written as follows: “Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him.” Transcript thank you guys for tuning in to
victorious in recovery
it's been a really interesting week for
me
i was
doing just fine last sunday
and
tuesday afternoon i started to feel a
little
off
and within like maybe three hours or so
i was
doubled over in pain and
headed to the er
so i spent the better part of the week
in the hospital
had to have
some gallstones taken out and
a stent put in and it was just a long
week
very long week but
i got released now i'm just at home
recovering again
so as you guys know i've been
doing some step work with my sponsor out
of a step working guide
i was gonna share
my answers with you this week like i did
a couple weeks ago
we're in step three
i like step three not because
of the higher power part but
because it's a surrender part
it's that
that moment where
you finally get to
give it up
and you're at step three um you've gone
through one and two of course and one
you're basically just admitting you're
hopeless
and
it's kind of a hopeless place to stay if
you don't move on in the steps and then
you go to step two
and
you're like okay
maybe there's something out there that
can help me
but if there's nothing after that
then you're just stuck knowing that
you're hopeless
and there is something out there that'll
help you but you're not willing to or
maybe you don't think
you're worth it or
that it's real you know or can help
or whatever
that's just another one of those
points where people are like no you know
what bye i can't do this this isn't for
me
etc and
so i like this one because it's
it's always simpler
than we make it out to be in our heads
it's always a very very simple thing and
it's it's basically just saying
is there anything that you have trouble
with
can you
ask somebody to help you with that
and let them help
you know whether that's somebody
you've chosen to be a god or your
sponsor or the group
or a doorknob or whatever it is that you
chose
that's as simple as this is
it's just a willingness to ask for help
and then
accept it when it's given
and as simple as that is
i have trouble with both parts
i have trouble in the asking and i have
trouble in the
accepting it
because it'll take me forever
i'll fail at every single thing
that i can possibly think of that i
think is the right way before i'll ask
somebody for help
and i'm still really bad about that
and then on the other side of it there's
always somebody saying yeah
um i went through that and this is what
i did
or i'll pray about it and i'll
kind of
think i know what i need to do
and i'll be like no
no that won't work
no
no uh
who else can i ask
i don't i don't think that'll work
and i won't even try it so it's been a
battle for me
so anyways
these are the step three questions that
i have
the first one is why is making a
decision
central to working the step
and for me
i put it's because
it's an action step for me
it's
that surrender that i was talking about
it's a way of of me saying
okay
i need help
can you help me
and then the humbling part of saying
okay i'll try that even if i don't think
it's gonna work
and the second question is
can i make this decision just for today
it's a two-part question
and
do i have any fears or reservations
about it
and if so what are they and that first
question there
can i make it for just today is
is an exciting one really
that
that's so much better than to think that
i have to
just write a blank check
of my will over to the world
and just
say yes to everything for the rest of my
life
the fact that we can do it
on a daily basis
means that i can look at my day and
look around and say okay
um this thing and this thing and that
thing
i'm gonna probably need help with those
things who can i call or i better say a
prayer
or i wonder if i could look that up in a
book
that might have the answer
whatever it is
i can do it as the things come up so i
don't have to
worry about what i'm going to be giving
up tomorrow or next week
or
when i have a million dollars you know i
don't have to worry about what's going
to be required of me
later
the today part i always like today
it makes things so much simpler when i
can just stay here
so
says do i have any fears or reservations
about it
and
you know to be honest my fear is that
i'll fall on my face
and look stupid
i think that's always been my fear
in just about everything
you know it's been my fear at work
it's been my fear in
working on cars it's been my fear in
relationships
it's just
that's what i fear in life is looking
stupid funny enough
because of fearing that there's been a
lot of times that i looked stupid
because i didn't ask for help
this self-fulfilling
thing
i've seen it in
a million different ways in my life fear
of rejection
fear of disappointment
fear of infidelity
just fear and it's all it's all
self-image
of course you know i fear the the
feelings part of it
but on the surface it's uh
everybody else probably already knew
this and i didn't
and i hate that feeling
as for reservations about it
no not really
if anything i'm
very pro
only giving up what i have to today
so i think i've already answered what
needed to be answered for that third
little part
so let's go on to
number three
what areas of my life are difficult
for me to turn over
and you know that could be a huge list
but i'd say the biggest ones are
probably
finances and
relationships
or at least the ones that get me in the
most trouble
in the second part of that question is
why is it important to turn them over
anyways
it was a little
interesting uh trying to answer that
part but what i came up with eventually
was
that it it reminds me that i'm not
alone in
[Music]
everything that goes into making these
decisions that everything that
goes into the daily life stuff then i
have options that i have help and
and it kind of
keeps me humble
and you know sometimes i don't have to
ask sometimes it's easy stuff and it's
just one of those things that's like i
know better
but sometimes i really don't know
and it's nice to know that
i have the option to ask for help
because for a long time i
i guess i just didn't get it i didn't
realize that there was
help
i didn't realize that i could just pick
up a phone
i didn't realize that there's
state-funded stuff for
medical for dental for all kinds of
things that i needed and i just didn't
know
i didn't know i didn't know that i could
ask i didn't know that i would be
eligible
i didn't know that i didn't have to feel
bad about asking for help
and the next one was
kind of overly simplistic of an answer
from me but i couldn't come up with
anything else
the
question is
will pursuing my goals harm anyone
and i answered no
because
i don't have first of all i don't have
like
huge
goals or what i consider to be selfish
goals
i've only ever wanted to be a good dad
and
you know i've really been trying to do
that as best as i can you know i can
only
try to do that right now really with one
of my children
and so i'm doing that
and i'm just doing
my best
and there's not really anybody that can
get hurt by me trying to be a good dad i
don't think
my only other goal is is to
say yes to service when i can
and i don't think that uh that is likely
all hurt anybody doing that either
number five
is
have there been times in my recovery
when i've found myself subtly taking
back my will in my life
big yes on that one
huge yes
it happens
almost daily in one form or another
for a long time
i didn't see it
and then i saw it and
i would feel bad
like man you know better you know and i
get really down on myself i'm like what
are you thinking and
you're never gonna get this right
you know all that bad self-talk
and
somewhere along the line i've i've
gotten a lot better
not necessarily at not taking it back
but and realizing it sooner
and giving myself a little bit of a
break
and just say oh damn i took that back
i better start praying about that again
or i better start asking for help
or i have a work step in six months
maybe i ought to do some steps you know
and those are the little things that
that have changed
you know i i'm a lot easier on myself
now
by being easier on myself i free up all
that energy that i would have been using
to
be upset
i end up doing more than i would have
otherwise
and there's a
part two and three to that question as
well
the part two is
what alerted me to that
for me i just get really stressed
i start to get frantic um
people you can't ask me anything i i
can't
just can't deal with
my surroundings at the moment
and i kind of have these
just ah stop
leave me alone
and when i get that way it's usually
because i'm trying to do
too much
with too little
that i have taken on too much or
that i'm
not using my resources
to ask for help or
sometimes
it's just a matter of
the idea of having to do something is
overwhelming because
i haven't taken the time to
mentally give it up
and once i can mentally
give up the stress of it to a higher
power
i realize
in doing it that it's not even as big of
a deal as i thought it was going to be
and i'd say that
that kind of
future mind tripping
is
is one of the biggest things that i i do
the part three of that
is
what have i done
to recommit myself to the third step
and that varies
it's not always the same
way that i'm i have to give things up
sometimes it's a
kind of like a spiritual
unease that i have to
work through sometimes it's a mental
unease that i have to work through
sometimes it's just a matter of
overbooking myself
and i have to
kind of pull back on a few things
but
a couple of things that help
no matter what kind of
thing it is
is to
do that little mental review in the
morning of what is going to happen
and
how you can
relinquish that over to a higher power
or
make a
plan who i'll ask to
help if something goes wrong with
whatever it is etc and then
remind myself at the end of the day to
try to make gratitude list of some sort
even if it's a short one
and what that does is it just relieves
the stress of what hasn't happened yet
it lets me
say okay i've done my part
i've committed to
asking for the help that i need if i
need it
and at the end of the day i write down
that
gratitude list and it helps me stay
humble about
how the day went
number six
how do i communicate with my higher
power i could say a million things here
but
in a nutshell
they all come down to some sort of
prayer some sort of
meditation
you know it might not look like the
lord's prayer
it might be
closer to me
being really angry
and saying what i need to say
but you know somewhere in that range
between yelling at god
and the lord's prayer
is usually a good communication form
there's no
specific rules on that for me
a lot of times i'll i'll write it down
in a journal
as a prayer
i'll write down what's going on or what
just anything
and at the end i'll sign it with
please help me with this god
and i try to do meditation of some sort
every day
you know during the day at work it's
i just go out back
try to
be present in the moment and just walk a
little bit
and at the end of the night i do a lot
of
guided meditations
and just kind of help me
not as much as i would like but
it's still a good practice it's better
than anything else i've tried
on to number seven
how might my life be changed if i make
the decision to turn it over to my
higher powers care
and
what i want to answer is i don't know
you know uh
if i knew i i probably wouldn't need any
help
and i feel like that's a that's a fair
response to that question honestly it's
i don't know i don't know what else to
say about that one there's just
how would it change i
have no clue
and i can't see that far into the future
i
guess on to number eight
am i fighting anything in my recovery
and one thing i i fight a lot is
impatience
impatience with myself mostly but
sometimes with other people and with god
i want things to happen now
and i've
always wanted things to happen now and i
don't want just anything to happen now
on what my thing to happen now
it's very selfish and patience
you know i mean i won't tell you that
if you know if we're in a room together
but
i might not not even realize that but
when i look back at it i'm usually just
impatient because i didn't get my way
there's a second part to that question
says what do i think would happen
if i became willing to let recovery
prevail in that area of my life
i think that's a more in-depth question
than the first part
really all i could come up with is that
uh i'd probably have more peace
a little more serenity in my life
be a little more accepting of
just whatever comes
and the last one number nine
what action do i plan to take to follow
through on my decision
and i just went back to
kind of what i had said before to take a
look at my day
and
look at the
most likely problem points
that might come up in the day and make a
plan to ask for help
who or how
maybe even a plan of if this happens i'm
gonna take a break and pray and do my
thing and come back and try to do better
and the second part of that question is
how does working the remainder of the
steps fit into this
i'd say pretty easy there's gonna be a
million different
questions
and things that come up through working
the steps every single step and as i
rework them i have new questions that
come up
and new worries
that i need to
again
resubmit through that
process of surrendering my will
every time i do that i get to kind of
restart
so i get to just take
days as they come instead of
worrying about
my step 8 right now or my
9 or 10 or 12 or
redoing them next time
i don't have to worry about any of that
stuff
that's how it comes into play because in
order for me to not worry about it i
have to give it up today
because it's not something i can do
today
and kind of make an agreement with
myself that i can revisit it
when the time comes
and ask for help
and deal with it then
and before i go
today i was gonna share with you guys
some notes i took while i was
in the hospital the other day
i was listening to this meditation
and it was talking about
being divinely created
being
engineered in such a way that we're
special that we're unique
that we all have these very specific
things about us that make us who we are
and i thought it really tied in with
this
where that took me in meditation
was that
sometimes i get
caught up and trying to
be what i think other people
think i need to be
or i start to
see a quality of myself and i don't like
it so i think i need to get rid of it
and how hard it's been it's been really
hard to
to accept
all the things that i found out about
myself because there's things i like and
things i don't like
there's even some things that i've
really hated to find out
but one of the things that i've come to
believe
that i've
chosen to believe
is that i was
created to be this way
you know i wasn't
created to be a
car salesman or
to be a
football player
you know i wasn't created to
be a pilot
or a police officer
you know it's just simply not who i am
but i've always been the type to have
all that like a million things going
through my head at the same time and
i'll start going over all these thoughts
like
just going everywhere
and i don't even know where it's taking
me
and i've always gotten so frustrated
with those thoughts they're just racing
thoughts just everywhere
then i always thought man i need to
change that
i need to figure out a way to change i
need to figure out a way to be something
else to be
someone else
i need to figure out a way to be better
and in my mind being better wasn't
necessarily being
a better me
and improved
upon me
it was uh
let's minus a lot of stuff out of me
and
implant
some different stuff
you know and there's
there's some
something wrong with that
so i've had to
kind of have a whole
shift
in mentality
instead of trying to
become what i think that
they think that i need to be
or trying to become what
i perceive is
a better version
i've had to start looking at
me as a set of tools and
skills a set of sensitivities
a set of values
and when i do that
i can
value who i am
i can see
the good parts
yeah my mind might
race in crazy directions but when i take
the time to put a pencil to paper
i come up with some good stuff
you know i'm a mess
with how i think it work and
organization skills etc but
but i can make some beautiful things
i can solve
some intricate problems
can build
machinery and
woodwork
i can work on cars
of course i do some audio editing
but
there are
always positive sides
to the sides that i hated
and the more that i look for those
the better off i am
so nowadays instead of trying to change
or trying to be better
it's in
the surrender
just like step three
it's a different way of viewing what's
already there
i don't have to solve the problems i
don't have to know all the answers
i just have to do
the part that i'm good at
and let my higher power take care of the
rest
and so i started building on the skills
that i have
spending time with my values my core
values
learning about
what i do and don't believe
what's important to me and lo and behold
the things that frustrated me about me
start to kind of fizzle away because i'm
using
that energy somewhere else
i'm using it for the good side i didn't
have to change who i am
i just had to change how i used it
i had to change what i'm doing with it
just had to make the decision
to use it for something productive
something beautiful
something i can care about
something that means something to me
or that means something to somebody else
that can help someone
and that's that's like the step three
core for me
that's what i get from it that's the end
result
and
i think that's all i have for you guys
today
thank you for tuning in
you all have a good one
Transcript
thank you for tuning in to victorious
and recovery last week i had left off talking about a
higher power and my you know new concepts of that and
my new understanding of higher power and
what that means to me and the reason why
i've been on that subject is because i'm
on step two with my sponsor again
and i've been just trying to
work through some of the workbook
questions and i'm doing the uh n a
program abbreviated work book right now and so
it's a little more questions than i'm
used to but it's a good experience so far
i just had a few questions left i had
left off around question six last week
and the things that i was talking about
so this week i wanted to go a little bit
more in depth of what my answers are and
and why i feel that way now i guess
in essence i'm going to go through these
questions as if i was sitting in front
of my sponsor in hopes that somebody can relate and
say oh okay i'm not the only one that
has that answer or i'm not the only one that feels that way
or maybe even it'll help
it'll help a deeper understanding
who knows but either way here i go with these
so question number seven on my
list here is what evidence do i have
that a higher power is working in my
life and i've been instructed to go through
these since it's not my first time
going through the steps i've been
instructed to go through them not in reference to
necessarily my using
but answer them as i would right now
in reference more so to my life and recovery
which i think is a a good way of doing it because it's
really easy for me to regurgitate
all the things that happened to me in my addiction
and what helped me get out of that
but it's also really easy for me to stay
there and get stuck and eventually what i'll find out which i
have several times is that what worked for me in the
beginning isn't working anymore now
so it's really important for me to
answer these questions
from my current point of view
regardless of what my point of view was
that got me clean it's more relevant now of my point of
view in recovery so that i can stay
clean so the question was what evidence do i
have that a higher power is working in
my life and i'm just going to read my answers
verbatim and then kind of go a little
deeper i answered i'm not dead
i have a life that is reasonably happy
most of the time and i kind of ripped off that last part
from the part of the serenity prayer that we
don't usually say the whole thing we just say
a small part of it but one of the parts
at the end of the original serenity prayer says that
we can be reasonably happy most of the
time in this life and into the next i believe
and i guess what i'm trying to say is
that the biggest testament that there is a
higher power and i'm not talking strictly
god right now although i do believe in in god
i'm gonna talk outside of that today
i'm going to talk about all the
different versions of a higher power
you know i'm alive uh by the works of many higher powers
my god the court system
the team program that bonded me out to
begin with the divergence program in midwest city
all of these are higher powers that have
played into me seeing that there's a higher power
working in my life at some points in my recovery it's been
my family it's been a significant other
although that's not a healthy one
it has been nonetheless
so in a nutshell i'm alive i'm alive and that's my biggest evidence
that there is a working higher power in my
life question number eight
is what changes in my thinking and
behavior are necessary for my
restoration to sanity and this one is kind of a sore subject with me because
the thought of sanity is just ridiculous
to me i've never known sanity
so restoration to sanity seems like
impossible so still even at
two years and some months clean i have
to say that my thought of sanity
would be maybe not being on mental health drugs
you know and it's it's a misconception
i know that but still i have to admit
that inside me i just wish that i could
be free of all these things that i
consider to be insane that i consider to
be dysfunctional so my answer was these days fear of the
unknown has held me back
and in response to the second part of that
question what things are necessary
i would say willingness to try new ways
that's kind of
going back in reference to higher powers
things that no more than i do
is this definition in my head of higher
power isn't always a spiritual higher power sometimes it's
intellectual it's practice it's everyday wisdom
willingness to accept that maybe
somebody else's way or that somebody
else's opinion or some group's method is better than
mine is necessary for my restoration to sanity
question nine was what expectations do i have about being
restored to sanity
and i kind of already touched on this in
the last question i had to admit to myself that none
unfortunately i'm rather disappointed or
unexpected of much progress in that area
and the reason is is that i've been
disappointed a lot throughout this process i've tried to
stop taking my mental health meds
several times and it doesn't ever work
and i know that the two don't
necessarily compete with each other i
can still have mental health issues i
can still be on mental health meds and
still live a relatively sane life
but somewhere in me there's still that
nagging that says you're never gonna get better
dave even if you do get better
you can't really take credit for it
because you're taking so many mental health meds
and that's unfair to myself
it's unfair to the programs it's unfair
to everybody because the the truth is is
that i know that that's not the sanity it's talking
about but that's the sanity that i have
to talk about because that's what's in
me that's one of those answers that is kind
of all over the place for me and i'm
still still learning to accept all the different facets of
sanity that i might be able to restore in my life so
that brings me to number 10.
how am i demonstrating open-mindedness
in my life today
and i answered that i've stayed at my
job longer than i ever thought i would
and what i mean by that is that i've
been open-minded to the fact that
this isn't the industry that i
have ever worked in this is a new thing
completely for me and
to think that maybe i would stay there
permanently is is really crazy to me
and i've been keeping an open mind about
other things and so i my second part
answer to that is in my spiritual life
and needs and the solutions related to that
i've had to keep an open mind and be willing to try
a lot of new things
not just a new job not just a new way of
dating not just a new way of
friends not just a new way of
you know following the letter of the law
i've also had to reimagine
what my god is
what my god is capable of what
i'm willing to accept as truth
in my spiritual life and
the links i'm willing to go to and the
methods that i'm willing to use to
achieve spiritual growth so
question number 11 is
in what ways has my life changed since
i've been in recovery
do i believe more change is possible so
another two-part question there
and the first part i answered i've been
more consistent
at being a father at being a friend and
being an employee
and more consistent emotionally
to answer do i believe that there's
more change that is possible
say i hope so but it's hard to see right now
i've made a lot of progress and i've
kind of done all the things that i know
how to do and i've done all the things
that other people have told me to do and
i'm kind of at a plateau right now
it's hard to see what else i could do so
i'm thinking maybe it's just a matter of time
i don't know if there's a lot more i can do
but maybe doing these things for enough
time will open up more doors later on that i
just don't see yet
moving on to number 12
is there something i am now willing to
do that i was previously unwilling to do
so what i answered on here is to not quit trying
go with the flow at work and at home
and put my recovery above anything
and any person in that first part
the not quitting part
obviously i'm not talking about not
quitting drugs i did quit drugs but i'm
not willing to quit
i've gone through a whole bunch and i'm
what i'm willing to do is not quit i'm
willing to keep trying
and that sounds very simple but
there's a lot of self love
that has to happen to not quit
there's a lot of forgiveness
self-forgiveness that has to happen to
not quit to not give up because i make a lot a lot of mistakes
i get disappointed often of the choices
that i make i get angry and want to lash
out at other people and at myself
and every one of those is an opportunity to give up
every one of those is an opportunity to
say you know what it's not worth it i
give up my life hasn't gotten better i give up
every one of those is is potentially
an upset where i'll say
it's just not worth it why am i even trying but somehow
somehow along somewhere along line i
don't know when it actually happened but
at some point enough things that
happened that i didn't have to use over
that i said you know what i don't have to stop trying
i don't have to be perfect to keep trying
i don't even have to be liked to keep trying
i don't have to be understood
i don't have to have a love in my life
i don't have to have
the job i always thought i would have
i don't even have to have the friends
that i thought i wanted to have
to keep trying so i'm willing
i'm just willing to not quit above all else and
most importantly my recovery comes first
if i feel like i'm in a situation that
is not conducive to my recovery bye
don't expect me to stick around
don't expect me to feel like i have to
explain to you why either
if my recovery is in danger i'm leaving period
that doesn't mean that i'm not capable
of sticking around to help somebody out or i'm not
capable of loving somebody when they're not in a great place
but if it's a sticky thing if it's
something that is continuing
to chip away at my security
i'm not going to stay there
whether that's a job or a person
a house a relationship a side of town
whatever a conversation
it doesn't matter what it is i'm vigilant
and i can promise you my recovery is
more important
because with recovery i can get
any and all things back i can make more
money i can get another girlfriend
i can find another job i can buy a new car
i can spend more money so that i don't
have to go to that side of town whatever the case is
i'll survive if i'm clean it's just that simple
as long as i'm willing to put my recovery first
i'm gonna be okay it's overly simplistic
but it really is just that simple so number 13
what fears do i have that are getting in
the way of that trust
and honestly i don't know what trust
it's talking about on that one so i'm
just kind of going out on a limb
so i'm just going to kind of go through
my normal fears are
usually related to some sort of failure
i don't like failing at anything i like
being the best at everything i do
unfortunately i'm rarely the best at
anything i do so
that leaves a lot of room for
disappointment i fear being let down
i know that i'm not the only one out there like that
when you've lived the lives that we've
lived let down is just something we get
terribly used to
and at some point we learn to expect it
routinely i'll go into a relationship or a place or
into a job expecting it to fail
therefore like egging it on to fail
just because i'm so used to it
so it's like this daily reminder david
you don't have to fear this let it just let it play out i don't have to
fear and cause things to fail just
because i know they're gonna fail
because honestly i don't know anymore
i know the fears there
but i'm in uncharted territory
it's not healthy anymore for me to put
an expectation on something to go one
way or another because i've never been
here before i have no idea what's possible anymore
still sometimes i find myself fearing
that this is as good as it gets and i had made a
video or a podcast not too long ago a
few months back or something that was
about that what if what if this is as good as it gets is that so bad
and i had to think about that one day
because somebody asked me i was i was
crying and i was having this conversation with
somebody about i don't even remember what it was but
something wasn't getting any better
nothing had to do with my medicine or something and
the person pointed something out that
was just mind-blowing to me she said
what if it doesn't get better
can you live with that is it okay would
it be so terrible if it doesn't get any better and i had to
that just stopped me in my tracks
so sometimes i have to remind myself of that
that my life is already pretty good what if
what if i don't get any better would it be that bad no
my life is already leaps and bounds better
my mental state is so much better
financially so much better
home life so much better so i really
shouldn't get that down on myself if i stayed at this
rate progress for the rest of my life as slow as it
may seem right now i'd have a pretty
good life that was a big realization this year
number 14 almost there
have i sought help from my sponsor gone
to meetings and reached out to other
recovering addicts that's part one of
the question part two what were the results so
as is my custom i love answering
multi-part questions with a single yes um yes yes yes
to those the only thing i could think of
to answer that second part
that what are the results is i'm part of real life
i have real things happening that happen to other people
i'm able to see that because i'm around
other people so i know that i'm not alone
in the issues that i go through and the problems and
and the victories and all that stuff i'm not alone
i'm a part of real life i'm a part of normal life
if there is such a thing as normal life it's trials
it's failures it's successes
and time passes and things get better
everybody goes through it
i'm finally a part of real life
yeah sometimes it sucks but
still i can reach out to any of
hundreds of people and say hey have you
ever been through anything like this and
they'll say either they are right now or they have
in the past and if for whatever reason it's some
really one-off thing
they'll know somebody that has and
they'll appoint me to them i'm never
alone in anything that i'm going through
and that's what it is to be a part of
real life knowing that i'm not special when it
comes to the things that i go through
but i am special to have
the opportunities and the friends and
the groups that we're in
because most people although they go
through the same things that i'm going
through they don't have the support that
i have so really i'm on the plus side of things
and it's because of those three things
it's because i've sought help
it's because i've gone to meetings
it's because i've reached out to help
other recovering addicts because of
those three things because of those
three things that's why my life is good
so
last but not least
simple question not so simply answered
what is my understanding of step two
my answer to that is that there are many
powers greater than me
as an individual
greater than my knowledge
greater than my strength alone
that can guide me to success
and keep me there
powers that are more than i can be
and more than i can do and will be there
for me when i can't restore me to a path that leads to
sanity same choices and thinking
and i kind of hinted at this at the
beginning that's how i see it
step two came to believe that a power greater
than a myself could restore me to sanity
i think originally it said came to
believe in god but i'm glad that they changed that
i'm glad that it's not that way anymore not because
i have an aversion
to god but because i think now it encompasses
way more higher power
now to me means way more than just my spiritual higher power
because life isn't all spiritual
life has a lot of mundane things a lot of life
that i guess i could relate to my spiritual life but
it's so much easier to see this in a broader spectrum
there's people out there that know more
than i do sometimes individually sometimes as a
group there's people out there with
wisdom not so much on the knowledge side but just the experience side
and there's of course programs that can teach me wisdom too
so i've got options i have so many
options of higher power i have a higher power for every need in
my life if i need to have somebody teach me how to get in shape
how to take care of my body
i have higher powers i have people that
their knowledge and experience on that
is way surpasses mine
you might call it a resource every
resource that's good for you is a higher
power of some sort
when i need to know about the n a
program i've got an n a sponsor when i
need to know about any other program i
know other people in other programs too
i have answers for any question that i'm willing to ask
and i have other higher powers that aren't so enjoyable
but still nonetheless higher powers
i came to believe that the oklahoma
probation and parole office
can leave me the right way so that i can be free someday
you know is it a higher power that i
really love to interact with no
but they have a set defined way
for me to get off of probation
and to become free again
and if i follow their instructions I will be so yeah
came to believe i came to believe that even if i don't like
the method even if i don't like the
person even if i don't like the program even if i don't like the entity
i've still relinquished my rights and need to fall in line
and if i just take their suggestions i will be successful
and that is the sanity part coming out
the other side better than i am today
so my understanding my translation of
the second step is if i'm willing to ask if i'm willing to do what i'm told i
need to do i believe that there's a chance that my
life gets better in the end.
Higher Power
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Higher Power is a term used in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and other twelve-step programs.[1] The same groups use the phrase "a power greater than ourselves" synonymously. The term sometimes refers to a supreme being or deity, or other conceptions of God.For other uses, see
Transcript
welcome
to victorious in recovery what you're
about to hear is simply one man's
journey to victory over addiction
my ups and downs and everything in
between and the solutions that i find
along the way
my purpose is this
to let you know that you're not alone in
the things that we go through trying to
recover and that there is hope of a
recovered life from addiction my name is
david victorious and i'll be your host
thank you for tuning in to victorious
and recovery
well it's
christmas week
and it's gone pretty good
there were some times this week where
i got a little bit lonely because
my mom and
my brother and
my daughter are all in costa rica and
i'm not there
so it started to feel
a little out of place
i'm used to having it at the very least
my mom
around for christmas
i still did christmas with family
and it was nice
kind of short and
not too elaborate
lately i've been talking a lot about
where i'm at with my faith
and my higher power and
and
that subject is still kind of really
fresh
i'm still delving into that
i'm still trying to
just reevaluate
all these things
trying to figure out where i'm at and
i've had to be really easy on myself
because i want to say well dave just
don't worry about it it's okay
it's not a big deal
it's on your head
but it's just been nagging me
like what's going on
have i have i just lost my passion
because honestly it's been hard to get
on here and do the podcast it's been
hard to do the videos
i haven't felt like i've really had
much to say
and that's
new to me
that's only happened briefly a couple of
times in this last two and a half years
so it's a big red flag i'm like have i
lost my passion for this
and you know the next question is why
what happened
so instead of answering a question i
don't really want to answer
because i don't think i've lost
my passion for
sharing my life and
helping other people
and i don't think i've lost my
belief in my higher power
so
what is it
how do i approach this
and so this morning i was at church
and the pastor said something really
simple
but he asked everybody where have you
seen god lately
and for some reason that struck a chord
and things just started
to come to my mind i pulled out my notes
and started taking notes right away
and what
kind of struck me about that is because
i had to think where have i consciously
noticed god working in my life lately
and
my first response was i'm still alive
you know that counts i guess
and i had to think and think
and i was like perseverance
you know it's kind of on those same
lines but i've never had that before
so i know that not only has god kept me
alive
he's also
given me the strength to continue
even when i didn't feel like it even
when
i didn't think i was gonna have the
strength
somehow i've still continued to move
forward but i'm still trying to answer
that
big
red flag that i have in me
you know there's just red flags
something's wrong you need to change
something
and so
i kind of took that thought a little bit
deeper
and
i think
i think i've come to a conclusion i
think i've come to
the next step of my
understanding of what i need to do next
and it reminded me of
a passage and i had to go and look it up
but it's in first corinthians
three one and two
and he's talking about
how he approaches
these people in these letters that he's
writing brothers and sisters
i could not address you as people who
live by the spirit
but as people who are still worldly
mere infants in christ
i gave you milk not solid food
for you were not yet ready for it
indeed you're still not ready
and to me what he's saying there is
is what i have gone through you know
the
low level belief
the milk
the baby infant
needed
belief that i had coming into
sobriety
brought me only so far
it kept my
spirit fed
my motivation up
and as i moved on i don't think i
progressed
in my definition or my understanding of
a higher power
i progressed in my program in the 12
steps and i progressed in my
relationships and in my
job
in my home life
but i never again stopped to re-evaluate
what i believe my higher power
is truly capable of
so
i'm doing these readings and
answering these questions in the
step working guide
in preparation for meeting with my
sponsor and
continuing to work the steps over
and
the question that i'm on is do i have
problems accepting
that there is a power or powers greater
than myself
what are some things that are more
powerful than i and that's the exact
question
that i'm talking about needing to know
the answer for
my first response is no
you know no i don't have any problems
with that
i believe in a higher power
but in practice
i find myself feeling
lonely and discontent and
afraid of
what might come next and if i'll be able
to handle it
not even giving
thought to whether or not god can help
me just
trying to take on things on my own
so in practice it seems like i have a
lot of trouble
believing in that power greater than
myself
i just didn't think i did
like i said before maybe it's just
practice
you know maybe i just need more practice
at
giving things up to my higher power to
letting things go
but maybe maybe i need a different
understanding a more in-depth
understanding maybe it's time to move up
to the meat
and get off of the milk
so
some of the reading that went along with
that question
is in the
it works how and why
on page 17 it says
our white booklet says
there is one thing more than anything
else that will defeat us in our recovery
this is an attitude of indifference or
intolerance towards spiritual principles
three of these that are indispensable
are honesty open-mindedness and
willingness
we've all heard that part they read it
at every meeting
the book goes on to say this does not
mean
we must be unfailingly honest
open-minded and willing
we just have to try as best as we can to
practice these principles
as we first approach step two
we can practice the principle of honesty
by acknowledging and sharing what we do
or don't believe about a power greater
than ourselves
this developing our open mindedness
requires some effort
but we can practice this principle by
listening to other recovering addicts
share how they came to believe
and it goes on from there
so honesty open-mindedness and
willingness
and i've heard those a million times but
i never thought of them in
in reference to this
in reference to
how and what i believe my higher power
is capable
or not capable of doing
my beliefs have always been very closed
off very
textbook beliefs
and sometimes it's hard to find
something to relate to in the bible
when it comes to
mental illness and drug addiction
it's not always the easiest thing to
relate to
so i found myself kind of just
winging it
and this part in the book
reminds me that i don't have to figure
it all out myself
i have to be honest with other people
about
the disbelief or the issues i have
believing
or the issues i have with putting my
beliefs into practice
that i'm pretty good at doing i do that
on here with you guys all the time
the other two
open-mindedness and willingness
it's like the difference between prayer
and meditation
i had been doing the first part
and not ever sticking around
or opening my mind up to listen to the
second part
because there's a ton of people around
me
that can tell me how they did it
what they believe
and i can hear those things and say
okay
my higher power is big enough
for that situation
okay i'll take that little bit of
knowledge
and realize that he can help me there
too
and i'm just picking up little nuggets
from
other people but i have to keep an open
mind
that maybe their words aren't gonna
sound like mine
maybe they're gonna call their higher
power something different than i call
mine
but that's not the point
the point is is that they understand
that they can depend on their higher
power for that specific situation
and if they can i can
no matter what i call him
so i guess in summary what i'm trying to
say is that i've
i've come across one more thing
that i can do
one more thing that i had forgotten
about
that my higher power doesn't have to be
a static thing
unchanging forever even though
i believe he is my understanding of him
can't stay static because i'm always
changing i'm always going through
different things in life i'm always
going through some of the same things in
life but they're all
in a different time frame
and it's so easy
to think he helped me yesterday but this
is different
so today i'm going to try to
practice to keep an open mind
look around and see what god has been
doing in my life and in the life of
others and start accepting being willing
to adapt my understanding of my higher power
to suit what i have going on right now
not selfishly but to expand my knowledge and to expand my
depth to allow me to help more people to allow
me to live a better life so have i lost my passion
no i haven't lost my passion and i'm
grateful today to realize
that have i lost my belief in a higher
power no
it was just too small
my understanding of my higher power is
too small for where i'm at right now
and i need to grow it
and i'm grateful that i know exactly the
people that i need to listen to to grow
it
because of these programs i'm surrounded
with people that know all the things
that i need to know or can at least
point me in the right direction and for
that today i'm very grateful
so if i have to leave you with anything
it's a matter of is your higher power
big enough
does your understanding of your higher
power include enough for this issue that
you're going through right now
and if the answer is no
you don't have to freak out
find somebody that's gone through
something similar and they'll tell you
your higher power can help you with this
too
and you're not alone
and that's all i got
thank you guys for tuning in
you have a good one
cour·age
/ˈkərij/
the ability to do something that frightens one.
According to Professor Daniel Putman, "courage involves deliberate choice in the face of painful or fearful circumstances for the sake of a worthy goal". With this realization, Putman concludes that "there is a close connection between fear and confidence".
Transcript
[Music]
welcome
to victorious in recovery what you're
about to hear is simply one man's
journey to victory over addiction
my ups and downs and everything in
between and the solutions that i find
along the way
my purpose is this
to let you know that you're not alone in
the things that we go through trying to
recover and that there is hope of a
recovered life from addiction my name is
david victorious and i'll be your host
[Music]
thank you for tuning in to victorious
and recovery
it's been a very quiet week
around my house
everybody is here a couple of weeks ago
and now
they're all in costa rica
and
i'm left here by myself
and it is super quiet
and it's weird even when i was by myself
here before it didn't feel like it does
now i guess just knowing
that no matter how long i wait today
nobody's going to be coming in the door
is a weird feeling i've gotten used to
having people around
it's been nice though i've had a chance
to
do some deep reflection and some more
reading than i usually get to do
i've also
had a chance to just
be with myself
in silence
i haven't had that in a while
other than a few moments that i steal
here and there
out in the car
i don't really get a lot of time alone
just truly alone to where i can sit in
silence and meditate and
know that i won't be interrupted lately
i've been in need of that
i've noticed that
my frustration level has been
a little on edge
so my patience has
not been what it should be
not just with other people but with
myself as well
i've kind of been noticing myself
retreating a little bit
when i first got out of my relationship
that my failed relationship
from not too long ago
i was really excited to just
be back in the groove of things and
go to my normal meetings and do all the
things that i had been neglecting for a
while
now i've noticed that i've just kind of
secluded myself a little bit again for
no
apparent reason so i've been trying to
find that balance
that balance within my
self of taking the appropriate amount of
time to be alone
to allow for meditation and study
but also not retreating into my bubble
so much that i neglect the important
parts of
my recovery which includes other people
includes all the relationships that go
along with being a healthy human being
so like i said i've had some time to
meditate in the last few days and one of
the things that popped up was
it's describing the progression through
the first
several steps
how we
have this hopelessness
this despair in the beginning and then
we
accept that maybe something can help
and then we decide
that we're gonna let a higher power help
us
and then there's an aspect of faith
on the fourth step
where
you have to just kind of take people's
word for it
that it's gonna work
because nobody likes to do that fearless
and thorough self-appraisal no one
really likes the idea of the fourth step
when it comes around the first time
and then it goes on to
say that once we've written it out
or to say another way once we've put our
lives on paper our failures
and our
feelings and our perception of
the life we've had basically
on paper
there's already enough relief
to where we don't really need the
encouragement we thought we would need
to actually share it with somebody
by then
we're usually ready
but it's that transition between the
fourth step and the fifth step
the made a list and the
shared it with another person
it's it's right there
in that transition that you have to have
the courage to fail
you have the faith that it might work
out but in view of what
might come of it the good that might
come of it
i'm willing to have the courage
to maybe fail so the benefits
outweigh the downfalls of it
at some point i have to believe that
what's out there is better than what
i've had before or better than the worst
case scenario
that courage to fail
that courage to
go towards a goal
even though that there's a chance that i
might fail but i i just
keep going because i know it can't be
worse than what i had before
that courage
carried me through and carries us
through
so much of the 12 steps
so much of our lives
can be carried through with just a
little bit of courage to fail
the willingness to fail willingness to
do something that
may require us to pick up the pieces
afterwards
it's risk the willingness to have
a little bit of risk
ever since i've gotten a little settled
in my life i've had
to play
back and forth and back and forth with
that
take a risk in a relationship
it failed
but the hope that i had for it
was enough to take the risk
so i really didn't lose
i just learned some lessons
i took a job that i
wasn't qualified to do on the hopes that
maybe
maybe it was the right thing
and i succeeded
but there was always risk there
so those are
kind of two very benign examples
somewhere along the line in my clean
time my sobriety
it got really easy
to not be willing to take a risk
because i had successfully managed to
reduce
so many risks
you know i don't hang out with those
people anymore i don't do these things
anymore
i'm not breaking the law anymore
i'm
staying within this very narrow
lines
in my mind at least
that safety of it gets comfortable
so then when when i've reached what can
be reached within those limits
then i started feeling a little bit
stuck
because getting within those lines those
rules
got me so far
it got me a good job it got me
a little bit of experience in the world
it got me a little bit of confidence
in my own feelings
and my capability to continue
and
thrive in life
but i narrowed that so much
that i also took away some possibilities
because i wasn't willing to put myself
on the line a little bit
for fear of failure
so i'm meditating on that today and
i start to realize how how much that
plays into everything it plays into my
personal life into my work life it plays
into
my ability to serve
it plays into my relationship with my
higher power
because as soon as i take the
willingness to have risk in my life
as soon as i take that away
i take away my ability to trust in god
i take away my need for a higher power i
take away my higher powers ability
to bless me beyond my
wildest dreams i take all that away
because i'm not willing to make any
decisions that incur any kind of risk
and it's that paradox
because if i'm willing to take that risk
i'll find out that my higher power
always had my back and so really it
wasn't a risk to begin with
but at some point it has to feel like a
risk inevitably it will
and i had become complacent i'd become
unwilling to have any risk
for fear of failure
so today i find myself kind of in awe of
that
and i'll be praying and
doing my best to let god reveal some
more on that for me
reminds me of
my higher power i believe in jesus and
he knew what was waiting for him if he
went back to the city
he knew that as soon as he went back to
the temple that people were plotting to
kill him
that they would find him and give him up
that he'd be tortured and crucified it
wasn't a pretty sight but he had faith
that the outcome was greater than the
loss he was experiencing
it was the loss and the physical
for an outcome in the spiritual and the
eternal
and our lives aren't much different than
that
and the fact that it takes sacrifice and
faith and hope
it takes the willingness to fail in
order to get the promise
it can be any promise
anything that god has promised me
is gonna take sacrifice it's gonna take
a little bit of pain
it's gonna take
a leap
that step where you
don't know if it's the last step at the
end of the staircase and it's pitch
black
and you just kind of gently step down
because you don't really know what's
there that's what i imagine a lot of
life has to feel like
when you're doing it right
it feels like not knowing but still
having the courage to put your foot
there
and then being relieved to find out that
your higher power had your back
and i have to say that every time i've
forgotten my fears and said you know
what my hands are off of it i'm gonna
trust you
everything has worked out better than i
could have asked for
and i'll leave you guys with that today
thank you guys for tuning in you have a
good one
Transcript
welcome
to victorious in recovery what you're
about to hear is simply one man's
journey to victory over addiction
my ups and downs and everything in
between and the solutions that i find
along the way
my purpose is this
to let you know that you're not alone in
the things that we go through trying to
recover and that there is hope of a
recovered life from addiction my name is
david victorious and i'll be your host
[Music]
thank you for tuning in to victorious
and recovery
this week seemed to have gone
pretty slow
just work home meetings work home
meetings
usual schedule for me really
and this week really wasn't that much
different than the rest
i find myself kind of in a plateau right
now and i don't think that's a bad thing
all the time
it's kind of annoying when you get used
to things
progressing quickly
as
most of us do
it feels strange
to just be
at peace
to be at ease with where i'm at
i find that i want to
not necessarily be doing something all
the time
but i want something to be happening all
the time but i don't want it to
interfere with my peace either
so
it's just
completely unpleasable of me to think
and be that way
i find that i'm just
dissatisfied
with general life most of the time
and i've mentioned
things like that before
but i'm really starting to see
the magnitude of that
and what that might reflect about me
and it hasn't always been this way
i would say for the first
year or so
being clean and sober it wasn't this way
i was very appreciative i was very
grateful
and i think it was because i didn't
have to look that far back to see where
this all began
to see how low that i really was once
upon a time
and not only that
somewhere between then and now
even with my daily bible study even with
my daily devotions and prayers and
everything
i seem to have lost a little bit of my
identity
for the longest time in my life i had
this strong identity of a christian
believer that really truly believed in
everything
that i was
in my mind supposed to believe in
and my belief hasn't changed i still
hold god and jesus christ and the holy
spirit as my higher power
but there's something about
the identity
that i had in that that has kind of
fizzled away it's giving room for
something else but that something else
isn't here yet
or i don't recognize it or maybe i just
don't know how to walk
in the new being that i am
i was reminded of this because i was
reading this thing and it was talking
about the jewish people and
some war that they were going into
and the guy described it as the
israelites having
identity amnesia
that's what i have
because i can i can be blessed today
and forget everything by tomorrow
and of course it's never my intention to
be that way
i want to be the
grateful joyous guy
that i love being
but i think i i tied up so much of my
identity
in with my emotions
and i forgot that
it has as much to do with that as it
does with
my choices
and my actions
either my circumstances or my life in
general has just conditioned me that way
but i tend to think of joy as a response
to something that's
happened to me
or the lack of bad things
happening
just a result of some
something some favorable
circumstance
and so i i get in this rut
where i forget who i am
i forget how
i became who i am how
life works
of course i'm gonna have joy when good
things happen
of course i'm gonna feel like a child of
god when things are going my way
when i'm celebrating
all the victories in life of course i'm
gonna feel good about those
that happens automatically
what i forgot is that joy is the choice
and then i'm equally able to grab onto
that
that joy that identity that i have
with my higher power
by simply choosing to do that
by reminding myself daily of where i'm
at
of the progress i've made of the
failures i haven't made
i find myself right now
just waiting
just waiting and trying not to mess
anything up
which is fine
i don't feel like i have the forward
motion that i had
before but
i don't need to have that kind of
momentum i just need to
continue to move forward
but it's so easy to forget that
just because
everything hasn't been perfect
just because everything isn't exactly
the way i thought it would be
doesn't mean that i'm any less
blessed or
accepted
doesn't mean that my higher power has
abandoned me
if anything it probably means that he's
preparing me for something
out of his love for me
which is usually the case
so
these last couple of days
not as well as i would like but i've
been reminding myself of that
that my joy doesn't have to be attached
to a certain set of circumstances
that i don't have to
have a season of sadness just because
things aren't going the way i thought
they were
even though lately i've felt a little
incomplete
a little dissatisfied with little things
around me
worried about the future
disappointed about
decisions and
outcomes of different things
i must
absolutely must remember
to remember
so that i can be grateful i can look at
the things because i'm not great at just
coming up with gratitude lists out of
nowhere but it's really easy to come up
with one if i look backwards
thankfully i was allowed to go through
some pretty hard stuff
and now i can look backwards and easily
find things to be grateful for
but another thing that's
been holding me back is this bitterness
it's like a unwillingness to forgive
not that i'm incapable of it but i've
had things pop up
you know some people call them
resentments
in my case most of the times it's not
anything that anybody's done to me
it's mostly
the reactions that i've chosen to have
to the things that they've done despite
of me
taking things way too personal
getting upset with people for
asking me to do things that are 100 my
responsibility
and it's it's robbed me of my joy
of course there's still been good
circumstances that have popped up and
boom i'm joyous i'm free you know
but the trick is getting to the point to
where i can find that joy and that peace
that serenity
outside of good circumstances
outside of a victory
on the other side of a tragedy
that i could still
dig deep and find it and i only find
that when that's my identity when that's
who i really am
but i can't be
joy i can't be victorious
if i'm bitter and i'm unforgiving
i can't be serene and happy
if i'm holding on to things whether
they're
fault of somebody else or fault of mine
it doesn't really matter
you know and of course like everybody
else i'd like to say oh i don't care
what people think about me
or oh no no
i don't hold grudges
i'm fine i'm over it it's okay i forgive
you
i don't
and it's not okay
that's what i have inside
i don't know how to let go of everything
so i'm doing the next best thing i'm
working my steps
i'm sharing it with another person
slowly hopefully
just chipping away
at those things until someday i can
really let them go
but i've come to find out that there's
things that i truly honestly with all my
heart i want to let go of
and i haven't been able to do it
big things things that affect my
everyday
yes they've gotten better though and
that's my saving grace
is that i can see that they have gotten
better
i stand a little bit taller
i can look people in the eye just a
little bit more
it's not that i've gotten better
at some magical formula to forgive
people
because honestly i don't believe there
is this magical formula
you know some things yeah i'm just being
petty but there's some big things that
i'm like
every day i have to ask god to take it
every day i have to do whatever it is
that i can come up with to give it up to
my higher power
but who teaches you how to do that who
can tell me how to do that
i can say the words
all day long and it hasn't happened
i can want it from the deepest part of
me and it hasn't happened
i'm left with the question how do i get
better
people tell me what the steps i'm doing
it again
and i'll continue to work them
in hopes that they work
there are some things though that i know
do work
i've said it a hundred times if not a
thousand
guys are probably
tired of hearing it but
sharing with other people
like opening up like today today i'm not
providing people with
huge insight
or any kind of
amazing wisdom
i am
expressing my
discomfort
my frustration with
my inability to forgive
but that that's one of those few things
that i know has chipped away slowly
at those huge things inside me
those things inside me that make me feel
like what's the point
why do i even try
[Music]
sharing that frustration with others
helps
asking others to share theirs with me
helps
it helps when people
are brave enough
to talk to me about the things that i
share
so i'll continue to go to meetings i'll
continue to
log into zoom calls
because i need you guys
i need all the help i can get i am
not yet healthy
i'm motivated and determined though
some days i feel
somewhat healthy
that's a lot better than two and a half
years ago where
i was neither healthy nor motivated
nor dedicated
and was in deep despair
i don't have anything else today
i just want to thank you guys for
being on here and sharing my life with
me
y'all have a good one
[Music]
you
Tyranny of small decisions
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The tyranny of small decisions is a phenomenon explored in an essay of the same name, published in 1966 by the American economist Alfred E. Kahn.[1] The article describes a situation in which a number of decisions, individually small and insignificant in size and time perspective, cumulatively result in a larger and significant outcome which is neither optimal nor desired. It is a situation where a series of small, individually rational decisions can negatively change the context of subsequent choices, even to the point where desired alternatives are irreversibly destroyed. Transcript
thanks·giv·ing
the expression of gratitude, especially to God.
thank you for tuning in to victorious in
recovery
this past thursday was thanksgiving and
pretty good thanksgiving
got to visit with a few friends
visit with my brother that's in town
from costa rica
and it was overall pretty good
today i am doing my podcast out of my
garage though because i can't seem to
get a quiet enough spot in the house
for long enough
but other than that it's been really
great having everybody around and
being able to just do the gratitude thing do the
thankful thing on thanksgiving
so of course you know that got me
thinking this week of you know what am i grateful for
what do i have to give thanksgiving for
and you know a few things
pop up here and there
and i was going to share a couple of
them with you i took down some notes
over the week i was at a thanksgiving marathon meeting
thing and one of the speakers said
something that really stuck with me
what he said was to learn from the
mistakes of others because you might not live long enough
to make them all yourself and i was like yeah that's
that's a good way to think about it
because i don't have enough time i don't
have enough energy i don't have enough
stick-to-it-ness to make all those mistakes and still
stay clean and still stay alive
so at some point i have to learn to
learn from other people and i'm grateful
i've been able to do that lately i've
been able to see some mistakes that
other people are making and say oh i
know what not to do and on a more positive side of that i've
also been able to see what people are
doing and say hey i should do that
and it's helped you know i remember the very first thing
that i was grateful for i was locked up
and i was thinking about my life as you
tend to do when you first get there especially
and i remember thinking i can relax i don't
have anything left to lose and i was i was grateful and i know that
sounds weird but i was truly truly grateful and
my mind was at ease at that moment
where i realized i don't have anything else left to worry
about don't have custody over my kids i don't
have a car i don't have a house i don't
have a girlfriend i don't have anything
and in my mind at the moment i didn't
have hope to get out anytime soon either
so i really had nothing tying me to the
outside world i was grateful that i could just accept whatever my new
life was going to be i didn't have anything to look forward
to getting out or staying in or otherwise i was truly at a blank slate
and i was grateful and i can still look at that moment now
seeing how it all played out and still be grateful for that moment
because it's it's moments like those where i get to grow
because i'm not trying to exert my will on everything around me
i'm not trying to force things to happen my way
because i've given up on the idea that anything can be done of my own hand so i opened up that door at that moment to let god work in my life
and that's beautiful now you know at the moment i was grateful
for it but it kind of makes your heart sink a little bit too
and you know coming out of addiction into
you know and that's kind of a crazy life
a crazy day-to-day how am i gonna make the money
where am i gonna get this where am i
gonna get that who am i gonna sell this
to who do i gotta talk to to do whatever
where am i gonna stay tonight
etc i remember being really grateful
that i didn't have to worry about any of
that i saw my very first little glimmer of sanity sitting in a jail cell
knowing that three times a day i was
gonna get a good meal
i didn't have to go steal anything i
didn't have to break in anywhere
i didn't have to try to find somewhere
warm or somewhere cool i was gonna be okay
there was a piece about that there was
the sanity i was like okay they're gonna
manage my life for a little bit and i'm
okay with that because i was just exhausted
exhausted of of trying to make things happen
everything was stressful and then all of a sudden it wasn't
and these days i kind of judge my mental state
on something having to do with that because every once in a while get
stressed enough that i'll wish i was still in jail
and that that's kind of a good gauge to
know when i'm not doing something right
if i catch myself going man i wish i was
just in jail it was so much easier
then i know that i'm stressing about
stuff that i shouldn't be stressing
about or that i've put myself in a situation
that i don't need to be in and i've
caught myself there a few times
i'm grateful today that you know i don't
have to be there not today at least
and everything seems to be new right now
like i'm i'm at that point where
i'm doing things that i've never done
before i have a job or have had a job
for longer than i've ever had one before
i have money and i have things that i've
never had before so a lot of times i start to get
stressed because i don't know how to do what's next because i've never
been here before but i do have all the tools
that are required to do anything that i'll ever need to do
so i find myself being very thankful that even when i don't know
what i have to do to make something happen i don't know how to
thrive or move forward from here that i don't really have to worry about
it because whatever comes up i have the tools i have the people i have the daily spiritual maintenance my daily reprieve i have all the things that i need and if i don't know it i know someone that does
that's willing to help and that's like
big weight off anyone's shoulders especially mine
and for someone like me that's it's really great because i i still have a
lot of trouble with faith because i still want to know things
before i jump into them you know it's really hard for me to just
say man i just have faith it's going to work out
but the cool thing about having all the right tools is that i can set a plan in action make a plan for what i need to do and action plans work
whether i have faith or not i can go to those people that know the
right answers and say hey how should i do this make a plan
and do it and i don't have to rely on faith all the time i can rely on their know-how and for me that that works right now still dealing a lot with
the lack of faith and belief in certain things but i do know that they know how to do it my sponsor my friends the people around me they've been
through these things they've done it they know how to make it out the other side all i got to do is ask so i find myself giving thanks for
for that for the people for the peace of mind that i can get
knowing that i i don't have to worry
about how to do this somebody's already
done it and they can tell me how they did it and it'll work for me too
i was reading in a bible study the other day and i wanted to
share this with you it says try this exercise whenever you
need to strengthen your grateful perspective
think of something or someone good you have
now work backwards until you find god as
the source of that good thing
realizing god is the source of our good comes with many benefits
not only do we become more grateful when
we realize we're not spinning up the good in our lives
but we become less anxious about loss better at caretaking
more generous and giving and less friendly to pride
i was i had to go back and read that a few times
i'm like man there's a lot of truth there
because when i can trace back the good things to a power greater than
myself when i take the time to do that then i
get to lift that responsibility off my shoulders
then i i don't have to create the good things in my
life i just have to be willing to trace them back to a higher power
so all the stress of trying to make things happen like i was talking about
earlier i don't have to worry about that all i got to worry about is being humble enough to realize that i didn't do it and to be happy with not being the one that made all this happen and if i start looking or when i start looking for my higher powers fingerprints on all the good things in my life that's when i start finding them a lot of times we don't see any good things until we actually look for them once we start looking for them then they're happening all around us it's like the chicken or the egg thing what really came first does it matter no not really all i know is that when i'm looking for it i can see what god's doing in my life
and when i'm not i'm typically miserable thinking he's
not doing anything for me so i guess what i'm trying to say is i
have to stay in the mindset of expecting
and looking and being ready to accept
the blessings that are all around me
i read something too that was
kind of along those lines it's in
leviticus which i have to admit isn't
always the funnest book of the bible to
read
but in leviticus
6 12 it says the fire on the altar must
be kept burning
it must not go out
every morning the priest is to add
firewood and arrange the burnt offering
on the fire
and burn the fat of the fellowship
offerings on it the fire must be kept
burning on the altar continuously it
must not go out
and i was kind of letting myself dive
into that
in meditation and
and it's like it spoke to me that
i have to stay ready to be humble i have
to stay ready to be able to sacrifice
something in order to make progress
that i can't just whenever i'm ready
beef up my spiritual daily reprieve all
of a sudden just
on a whim
then i have to keep that fire going
i have to keep my readiness within arm's
length
so that when that opportunity comes when
that little nudge that little tap on my
shoulder says hey do this real quick
i'm ready
and i'm listening for it
but i can only do that if i keep that
fire burning if i'm ready to make that
sacrifice on the spot
if i'm ready to do whatever it is
whether it be service work or talk to
that person or say yes to a request
you know it's that
constant
seeking of the fingerprints the little
clues that my higher power is truly
working
around me
it's it's that being open
having my eyes open
waiting
for those moments
that allows me to say yes when the right
opportunities pop up but if i'm too just
lost in my own head
i don't see those opportunities i miss
him
and then i start getting resentful of
god
thinking that he's not he's not blessing
me anymore he's not doing anything for
me
why is my life going crappy
why hasn't he been answering my prayers
etc
every time that i felt that way
i find that if i look back
i'll see that i just simply wasn't ready
i wasn't ready and i wasn't looking for
the things that he throws my way
so then i get back on the horse and i'm
like okay now i'm ready
and i keep looking i keep looking and
bam stuff starts happening again
just me being ready
it's that seek and you'll find
that goes both ways if you're looking
for bad stuff you're gonna find bad
stuff
you're looking for good stuff you're
gonna find good stuff you're gonna find
what you're devoting your time to look
for
i think the the thing that i'm most
grateful
for
the biggest lesson
that i've learned this year is that
things go a lot slower than i thought
they would or could
like real progress moves quite slowly
most of the time
it's a tiny gradual upward slope that
i'm on
and that's how like
how it all works
because sometimes i i take this giant
leap
and then i find that
i'm not prepared to maintain it
that i can't
continue
to function on that level
and it's not that i won't ever be
capable of it
it's that i took a shortcut
it's like going into the olympics but i
only go to the gym twice a week
you know i'm not ready for the olympics
you know i might be able to bump up 15
minutes on the elliptical though
may be able to run an extra mile now and
then
so like the real change
what i've realized the thing i'm
grateful for is that realization that
aha moment where i'm like
i don't have to be there today
i can be where i am right now today
and it looks really far out there but
all i need to do is progress just a
little bit
every week or every day just a tiny tiny
little bit and then maintain that little
bit of progress
and then a little bit more and maintain
that tiny bit of progress
then a little bit more and eventually
i'll make it up that big ass step
i don't have to do it all at once though
matter of fact i probably can't do it
all at once and if i can do it i'll find
myself on top of that step not being
able to hold my together
because i didn't go through the process
and the process is where it's all at
the process is where i grow
to get to where i need to be to take
that step
and that's that's what i'm most grateful
for that lesson
doesn't have to be today i don't have to
be all the way to my goals today i can
just be where i am and that's what i'll
leave you guys with today
thank you
for tuning in and being a part of my
life y'all have a good one.
Constructive criticism focuses on providing constructive feedback, supported by specific examples, to help you improve in some area. (Constructive criticism should be offered in a friendly manner with good intentions.)
Step One:
We admitted we were powerless over our addiction - that our lives had become unmanageable
faith
/fāTH/ A strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof.
Transcript
welcome to victorious and recovery
thank you guys for tuning in today
it's sunday and it's been a pretty good week
had a few things come up here and there
but overall it was pretty good
did a lot of studying this week
you know came across a few things that i
wanted to share with you guys
but mostly it's been
kind of a interesting week
growth wise
i have had the opportunity to experience
a few things this week that
were new to me
or renew i had a friend
be a little disappointed with
something and so that's always a little difficult
to know that you made a mistake and
but you know
the more mistakes i make the more i get
to learn how to do things better
and i'm just hoping that i learn
this week from the mistakes i've made
i have here on my notes to
be humble enough to be teachable to be
small enough to be teachable
and to be honest i don't remember why
why i wrote that down what happens is i i'll
just take little notes throughout the week
and try to piece my week back together
for you guys to give you just an idea of how how my
brain works, how i'm doing this you know because i
don't always have time
or i'm not always home either
to be able to just turn on the
microphone and go
you know i used to do that with the
video camera and i could do it a little
better because i could just walk outside or walk to
another room and turn on my phone and
videotape it but
when it comes to this it's a little
different
that doesn't mean it's any less real
just not spur the moment like the videos
were
and i kind of miss that sometimes
but i was reading
this week and i came across this i
wanted to share it with you guys
it was in the bible app that i use
and it says god gives you grace one day
at a time
he will not give you tomorrow's grace
today and you don't need it
why because his word tells us his
compassions never fail
they are new every morning
great is your faithfulness
that's lamentations 3 22-23
so if you're fearful or concerned about
what is going to happen tomorrow
you're essentially telling god that you
don't trust him and i believe that
he goes on to say
you are telling him that he is not
trustworthy
you're sending your own thoughts into a
cycle of pain and fear that will prolong
your addictive behavior
rather than helping you overcome it
to be fearful about tomorrow is to lose
your peace
and victory today
so let it go
there's so much in that reading
that goes along with what i've been
talking about
you know i've been talking about how to
use the things that god has given me
i've been talking about just for today
and a few other subjects
but this kind of covers all of it
to think that god has grace for me
always
but that by worrying i'm actually trying
to require of him that he give me
tomorrow's grace
when really i just need to let it go i
need to let tomorrow go
and that was that was a big help for me
this week
you know like i said i made a few
mistakes
and
i was disappointed with myself i was
disappointed with all of it
of course i didn't like that the person
got upset with me i didn't like that i
was upset at the person getting upset
with me you know and it was just this
cycle
this cycle of worry and concern about
what this is gonna do
to our friendship you know what what is
this going to do
to me today what is this going to do to
this person today
what is it going to do to
our friendship tomorrow
and i failed to give myself the grace
that god is giving me
kind of in a way nullifying
all the work that god has done for me
today
so i don't you know really know where
i'm going with that but i just wanted to
put it out there that's such an
interesting
concept
that we try to
require things of god that we don't need
yet
i don't need tomorrow's grace
i don't need tomorrow's salvation i just
need what what he has for me today
i had mentioned this
last week that i had had a
lunch with the pastor and
that conversation and and time spent was
just really nice
but one of the things that came up was
that i have had a struggle of faith
i've had a struggle um
believing in jesus christ
as my higher power
not so much believing that there is a
god
there's way too much proof in my life
for me not to believe in god but
i hold myself as a christian
and to be doubting
that and it's not like i've changed my
beliefs it goes back to what has
happened to me
in my addiction
what has happened to me in my
relationships what has happened to me
in my life and to the core of who i am
some might say that i'm even on the
autistic spectrum a little bit
because i i need
to know
things like beyond a shadow of a doubt i
i have this
thing
and it's always been that way but
especially after my addiction
what i've realized is that i want proof
proof is is knowing
proof is being able to
understand
and prove a
concept
well
unfortunately that's just not how
everything works
i forgot
somewhere along the way i forgot
that there's a measure of faith required
you know the the guys that were around
2000
so years ago walking with jesus
they knew
they were with him he was there
he was flesh and blood
they saw him
they had the proof
they had
the firsthand knowledge this guy is real
and then he died and he showed back up
and they saw him again they had the
proof
it's a proof i'll never have
not in that sense
and i had forgotten that
i'd forgotten that there's a measure of
faith required in my faith
you know it seems like such a simple
concept it should be easy to remember
hey dave
they call it a faith because you have to
have faith but i wanted to belong to a
faith and have
firsthand knowledge
so
this week
has been
different because of that unrealization
because i
i have come to understand again
that i don't have to have proof
that it's enough to just have faith
thankfully i have a little practice with
faith i just hadn't been using it in my
faith towards my higher power
i had been using it in my faith in the
process
i have a faith that the 12 steps have
provided me the 12 steps are full of
faith
the first step
we admitted we were powerless over
alcohol or
our addiction that our lives have become
unmanageable
that's a faith in the concept of the
program
to admit that
is to say i might have a problem
when everything in us tells us we don't
have a problem
there's a little bit of faith required
there
there's a lot of faith required in step
two came to believe
that a power greater than myself
could restore me to sanity
there's faith all over that one one
faith in a higher power that there is a
higher power than me
faith that
there is restoration faith that
something
exists
that some people would call sanity
in faith that all of that has anything
to do with each other
number three
made a decision to turn our will and our
lives over to the care of god as we
understood him
okay once again faith that there is a
higher power
faith that i have the ability to turn
over my will
that that's even possible
faith that god actually cares
about me
and can do anything about my issues
number four made a searching and
fearless moral inventory of ourselves
faith that i have the courage
to actually write things down
admit it to god to ourselves and to
another human being the exact nature of
our wrongs
that takes some faith
because who cares to admit that stuff
first of all but to another person
and to think
maybe
they won't tell anybody else that
requires faith
we're entirely ready to have god remove
all these defects of character
once again faith in god
faith that there is a way that we might
get a little bit better
someday
humbly asked him to remove our
shortcomings
faith in the asking
faith that they can be removed or else
we wouldn't be asking
made a list of all persons we had harmed
and became willing to make amends to
them all
it's in the willingness
being willing to do anything requires
faith
because if we didn't have faith it would
make any difference
why become willing in the first place
in nine the scary one made direct amends
to such people wherever possible except
when to do so would injure them or
others
all kinds of faith required there
one that it might actually make a
difference that it's worth it
faith that it won't hurt me or it won't
hurt them and i won't go to jail
faith that it'll be okay if i do
etc there's dangerous
amounts of faith there
we could really fail if something went
wrong there but faith
keeps us alive long enough to see that
it really will work out
continue to take personal inventory when
we were wrong promptly admitted it
faith that the whole damn program works
so much so that i'm willing to do it
over and over and over again every
single day
sought through prayer meditation to
improve our conscious contact with god
praying only for knowledge of his will
for us and the power to carry that out
that's faith that being unselfish will
actually improve our lives
faith that if i
take care of my side of the street and
wish the best on others that my god
cares about me enough to take care of me
in return
and of course
number 12
having had a spiritual awakening as a
result of these steps we tried to carry
this message to others to other addicts
to other alcoholics
and to practice these principles in all
our affairs
faith that i can make a difference
faith that the other 11 steps has
changed my life enough that's a having
had to put all these principles in every
aspect of my life and to help somebody
else do the same thing
that's faith that i won't fall on my
face that i won't look stupid doing it
and that even if i do that it's gonna
keep me clean and sober
it works
faith works
this program proves that faith works and
i know i've said faith faith faith a lot
but i'm saying it to myself
because none of this works unless i have
faith in the thing that i claim to have
faith in
my higher power
and today i believe i do
again renewed for the first time in a
long time
today's scripture this morning was
your word is a lamp for my feet
a light on my path you know and and it
says the word is christ
christ is the word
but i believe that there's a word
more than just in the bible there's word
that comes to us directly
a word that lives inside of us from all
the things that have been given to us
before
there's word all over the 12 steps
lighting my path every single day
giving me what was required
to have the faith that i'm rediscovering
today
and i'll leave you guys with today's
prayer
says god thank you for caring about my
life
you've given me scripture so that i
might know your will
and follow your commands your words
instruct me and show me how to live in a
way that pleases you
thank you for illuminating my life with
your words
in jesus name amen
thank you guys for tuning in
you have a good sunday.
tool
/to͞ol/
A tool is an object that can extend an individual's ability to modify features of the surrounding environment.
Transcript
[Music]
welcome
to victorious in recovery what you're
about to hear is simply one man's
journey to victory over addiction
my ups and downs and everything in
between and the solutions that i find
along the way
my purpose is this
to let you know that you're not alone in
the things that we go through trying to
recover and that there is hope of a
recovered life from addiction my name is
david victorious and i'll be your host
[Music]
thank you for tuning in to victorious in
recovery
well it's wednesday
it's been a good week so far
today a friend of mine sent me a ted
talk
and it was talking about our
misconceptions about addiction
and it was mentioning that they had done
a study
back in the 60s that
everybody recognizes it's the one with
the little mouse and
he drinks from the water bottle with
drugs instead of from the regular water
bottle
and um
he was telling that story because they
did another one
that was a different test the first test
had
one mouse in a box with nothing else in
it
just the water
and the food
well
they did another test which was
a better test
and it had a bunch of different mice in
it
and it was like a mouse park
there was a bunch of mice and they had
all kinds of things to play around with
and different types of good foods and
a couple of different water bottles when
one of them had drugs in it and the
other one didn't
and what they found was that the
box where the mice had other mice around
and had other things to do and basically
they had
a social aspect to it
the
mice that did every once in a while
drink out of the water with drugs but
none of them became dependent on it
and the theory is is that they had that
communion they had
maybe even a sense of belonging they had
other options
so they they weren't doomed to have to
choose one or the other
because of their loneliness maybe
and i like that i like that it's a
different take
you know i always tend to get caught up
on
the semantics of
some of these programs and
you call yourself an addict or an
alcoholic but then in the same breath
everybody there seems to know that the
drugs and the alcohol weren't really the
problem they were the solution for me
they weren't my problem and so i grew up
in a family where
you watch what you say
i believe in the power of the word i
believe in the power of what comes out
of my mouth
and so in meetings and stuff like that i
i describe myself
as an addict or an alcoholic but
every once in a while get caught up on
that
you know i wish there was a better way
so that i didn't have to constantly
claim
something that i don't believe is the
real problem
because drugs
facilitated my downfall
they accelerated it but they weren't the
problem they were a solution i tried to
fix my problem
and my problem was many things
it was my inability to
share with other people
it was the feeling that i was all alone
in the world
it was my belief
that i had to be something different
than what i was
and i still suffer from every one of
those things
i've just found a new way to deal with
it a new solution
and so i'm constantly battling that like
i don't want to call myself an addict
i don't want to call myself an alcoholic
i don't want to put that on me still
but i do it out of respect for the
programs but i know in me to my core
that
my problem wasn't
that
because my problems started before the
drugs and before the alcohol
i remember as a kid when i was saying i
just moved to costa rica
it's where my mom's from and my parents
had gotten divorced and we moved back
because you know that's
the hispanic thing to do
you know to be
quite blunt about it and that's just
what people do
and um
so
my mom got a divorce from my dad she
moved back so that she could have
support from her family
i remember the first days of school
and i didn't know any spanish i was in a
new country it was all very surreal to
me
i
hadn't even heard of costa rica or
didn't even know my mom was from another
country
until we were moving there
so i'm sitting in class and
somehow i communicated to the teacher
that i needed to go to the bathroom
but i remember specifically
that i didn't need to go to the bathroom
what i wanted to do because it occurred
to me
it occurred to me that maybe things
weren't what i thought they were
maybe it was all one big prank one big
joke so i went out to the bathroom and
i stayed gone just long enough
i looked through the windows to see if
they were carrying on without me
so there's
several things going on with this story
because
of course i looked in and of course they
were carrying on
with the class because it's not all
about me
but thinking back on this i'm like okay
i was very egotistical to think that
they would pretend to have a class just
for me
very selfish
very suspicious of me way before drugs
way before alcohol
there were things happening
that pointed to the issues that i have
today still
so
the alcohol and the drugs they they
accelerated my issues
and they postponed my progress but it
wasn't the cause of my problems
somewhere in me
and the human in me is the problem
maybe even the problem could be just
thinking that there was a problem
i thought there was something wrong with
me my whole life
i thought it was not okay to be me
it's not okay to be flawed
it's not okay to talk about it it's not
okay to be all the things that i was it
just wasn't okay
and then i wasn't good at being the
person that i thought i should be
so
alcohol helped me a little bit feel like
i was better at being sociable and stuff
the person i thought i was supposed to
be
and then drugs made me not care whether
i was better or not
i was
fine
you know that they just told me i was
okay
and i was okay with being okay even
though okay was very very dysfunctional
but that's what they do that's what
drugs do for us
so
selfish
self-centered egotistical paranoid
i could go to meetings and say
hi my name's david i'm paranoid
hi my name is david i'm
an egotist
hi my name's david and david's my
problem
doesn't really matter
what i say the point is is that i'm i'm
getting around people that have the same
issues
and together we're able to work it out
and working it out sometimes isn't
solving a problem
because honestly i'm always going to be
david
i'm always going to be some form of who
i am
god made me that way
do i misuse the things that he gave me
to use in life yes
do i misuse them grossly
to ridiculous amounts that gets me in
trouble and causes me all kinds of
issues yes but i was made this way for a
reason i just gotta find how to use it
correctly
how to be me
in a way that doesn't adversely affect
other people there is a version of me
that helps people
there's a version of me that
adds something good
to somebody else's life
there's a version of me that will be
another half for somebody someday
and it's not that i need to change as
much as it is that i need to know how to
be me and be okay with it
how to take the things that i have
currently and use them in a different
way
inserting good into the world
for example
a couple years ago
when i got out and was
deciding what things i was going to
allow into my life and what not
the question came up of
should i have facebook
it was a very real question
and i prayed and
meditated on that and my response from
my higher power was
the tool
isn't the problem just like guns
don't kill people people kill people
facebook doesn't ruin people's lives it
doesn't do these things
it's how it gets used
that creates that effect
so
in my past i used facebook to
deal drugs
um
con people out of stuff
communicate and coordinate
for different activities let's put it
that way
i used it to talk to women to hook up
i used it for a bunch of things was it
the tool or was it me that caused the
problem with it
it was me so i felt like the solution
was
not whether or not i could have it
in my life the solution was how do i use
it
so i made a commitment
i'm going to use it to insert good
things into other people's lives
i'm going to use the tools god gave me
in a way that benefits others
so facebook is the example
life can be that way though
anything i have can be that way i can
use my car
to go to the drug dealer's house
where i can use it to take a meeting
into an institution
it's the same car
same capability same gas
everything the only thing that changed
was
how i used it
so my focus with this is that the issue
isn't the drugs
the issue was why i wanted to use them
because there's people out there can go
out and drink
hell they could probably do a line of
cocaine every once in a while and be
fine
honestly
not that very many sane people do that
but has it happened yeah
so i try to really reign it in because
it's really easy for me to
look at myself
and just hate it
just be so frustrated with myself all
the time why david why can't you just be
better
why can't you just be somebody else
why can't you just shut up when you're
supposed to
why can't you do this better why can't
you do that better why didn't god give
me this
why didn't he make that work
so i can stay there and hate myself for
it
or i can make a choice
to maybe just maybe believe that my
higher power who i choose to call god
didn't make any mistakes
i am not a mistake the skills and
deficiencies that i have
are not a mistake
i'm supposed to depend on other people
to be able to live life successfully
i'm supposed to have to lean on god
to live life
successfully
and
he gave me gifts
that if used correctly
i can use to help other people
including my kids my family my friends
and myself
all in the right context all with the
right choices is good
for glorifying my higher power
used in the wrong context with the wrong
intentions all bad
so today i choose to go a little bit
easier on myself
and realize that it's not
that i need to be different it's that i
need to use it different
and that's what i'll leave you guys with
thank you guys for tuning in you all
have a good one
thank you again for tuning in to
victorious in recovery follow me on
facebook at victorious recovery
and don't forget to hit the follow
button or subscribe
and leave us a review
hope to hear from you soon
[Music]
fo·cus
/ˈfōkəs/ : a center of activity, attraction, or attention
Transcript
[Music]
welcome
to victorious in recovery what you're
about to hear is simply one man's
journey to victory over addiction
my ups and downs and everything in
between and the solutions that i find
along the way
my purpose is this
to let you know that you're not alone in
the things that we go through trying to
recover and that there is hope of a
recovered life from addiction my name is
david victorious and i'll be your host
[Music]
welcome to victorious in recovery
it's sunday
and uh it's been a up and down and all
over the place type of week but overall
it's been pretty good
a few weeks back i
started trying to sell
the engagement ring
because i obviously don't have any use
for it anymore
and
i hadn't gotten any responses or
anything because
i mean honestly it's pretty expensive so
i didn't expect to get a lot of
responses i had some people drive in
from out of town to look at it
yesterday
and we met up at a jewelry shop and they
did their little inspection and stuff
and all of that and
they give it back to me and say okay
we're gonna think about it we'll call
you tomorrow
but in my mind
it goes back to the days that i used to
do business
and
so they cleaned the ring while we were
there and everything and i'm looking at
it i'm like man
i think they swapped the ring out on me
and so i'm like in the parking lot
freaking out and going through my
pictures going i don't know it looks
really similar but hmm maybe they're
just that good
and it's funny how your brain will do
that to you you know and i'm like
ah just breathe david just breathe
they're not who you used to be they're
not that type of people i mean just get
a grip
and i had to calm myself down you know
and my mind went
straight there
no stops
so
today
they
shoot me a message back and say they
want to buy it i'm in church and
okay i'll meet you afterwards
i told them the story because you know i
had to i had to admit i'm like
yeah sorry i had a moment yesterday and
they we all kind of laughed it off and
it was it was good after that
it's just amazing how quickly
my brain can go
from
having a nice peaceful quiet day to
they just stole my ring
and uh i don't know
you know if that ever goes away
if that's just part of the the thing or
what um i hope so i hope it does i hope
i get better at that that's just a
really
exhausting way to be
being that way with people and with
things and with places it's really
exhausting
to expect the worst and it's it's
exhausting on other people
to be honest in case you don't know it's
not just exhausting to you it's
exhausting to other people around you
i've been told that many times
and i believe it because i can see it
i can see when that starts to affect a
relationship
because of my
inability to trust
i can see it like the light dim
like there's that excitement and there's
that wonder of the beginning of a
relationship
and
then my mind starts to do what it does
best it seems like
starts to ask all these
questions and think that it's seeing all
these things in a relationship that
aren't really there and then eventually
you can see that look
and it's that look that happens when
people lose hope when
they know that there's nothing they can
do
that's going to be good enough
and it's not just in romantic
relationships this can happen
in a work relationship it can happen in
a
friendship that moment where they
realize that
you're too difficult to deal with
at least i've seen it in people's eyes
usually way before
they tell me
so
you know just kind of brought all that
back up to the forefront of my mind
like david focus
and had to do my little grounding
exercise where
uh which is harder to do while driving
it turns out that you have to let
yourself feel something and hear
something and see something
that's present that's right there right
now
and so while i was driving i was doing
that tell myself it's okay
nothing happened
and even if it did
it's not the end of the world
but when i get that way
this is the part that i really kind of
wanted to get to in this is when i get
that way
there's one thing
that if i'm paying attention i can tell
when i'm getting there
my days start to be like a blur
what i mean by that is an actual blur
for me personally
i can notice that
i'm spending more time
driving doing things around the house
etc
in this kind of out of focus view i'm
there but i'm not really focused in on
individual objects with my eyes i'm
talking about real focus here
like actually focusing in with my eyes
and i'm not really focusing in
and it's not until something grabs my
attention that i focus in i realize
man i've been kind of in a daze
for who knows it might be days
sometimes maybe hours minutes
but anytime that i can catch that
and bring myself back because what
happens is when i'm there it's because
my mind is somewhere else
and so my mind is wondering um i could
be reading i could be talking to
somebody but really in my mind
i'm thinking about that thing that
happened yesterday
where i'm thinking about that fight i
had with so and so
or what i could have done better in that
one conversation i'm replaying those
things over and over in my head getting
upset all over again
getting into that moment that isn't
right now
so
so easy
to get lost
in all the moments that aren't right now
and what happens is is we miss the right
now and we make mistakes in the right
now because we're rehearsing the future
or we're rehashing the past in our heads
and i can only speak for me but i'm
pretty sure that i'm not the only one
because i've heard other people describe
it
i would even venture to say that some of
the things that i'm rehashing how i
could have done better
it's probably because i was in one of
those days thinking about something else
and didn't make a good choice
didn't have the energy
or the want to to do it any better
because i was exhausted going over
things in my head
so my focus right now my focus has to be
my focus
i have to get back to that
how do i become more present in the
right now
and simply it's just realizing that i'm
doing it
it's like getting a smart watch
there's a study that says if you get a
smart watch
you walk more
you'll do more exercise just by getting
it
and that's because you're conscious of
it
it's not that it's some magical thing
it's that you literally
think about it more often because you
have the smart watch you want to get
your steps in
unfortunately that's not necessarily the
case with the gym membership
but it is the case with some wearable
that you might have
and so if it works for that
then reminding myself putting a reminder
somewhere for me it's on my phone
to focus
to come back to the now
to ground myself in in today
i'm more likely to do better today than
i would have otherwise
and spoiler alert doing better today
keeps me from rehashing it tomorrow
doing better right now
focusing on the right now keeps me from
thinking about what i did wrong
yesterday
so by staying in the present
by forcing myself to focus on what is
right now around me
keeps me from stressing about what i did
yesterday
and it keeps me from stressing about
what i'm going to do tomorrow
and going forward if i do it enough days
in a row
i'll have less and less and less to
worry about in my past
and i'll have more and more peace about
what's coming because of it
that's truly like the most basic
definition of progress
not regretting the past and not dreading
the future
is progress
if i can stay in the right now
so i'll leave you guys with that
bring your eyes back into focus
stay right here right now
and i'll do the same
i hope you guys enjoyed this weekend
you have a good one
grat·i·tude
/ˈɡradəˌt(y)o͞od/
-The quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness.
Transcript
[Music]
welcome
to victorious in recovery what you're
about to hear is simply one man's
journey to victory over addiction
my ups and downs and everything in
between and the solutions that i find
along the way
my purpose is this
to let you know that you're not alone in
the things that we go through trying to
recover and that there is hope of a
recovered life from addiction my name is
david victorious and i'll be your host
[Music]
thank you for tuning in to victorious
and recovery
well it's friday
gratitude friday
and uh i like that because my 7 a.m
meeting that i go to
always does gratitude lists on
friday mornings
and it's a good start to the last day of
the week
it kind of gets me in the right mindset
of
being grateful for what has probably
been a hard week
because i mean let's be honest it's not
always the easiest thing to be grateful
especially when we've had a a long hard
tiring week
so
this morning when i got the opportunity
to share
i was telling them about a few things
that i'm grateful that i'm on a schedule
i'm grateful that my life has
calmed down
i've leveled back out
because there for a while i was
really close
to relapsing
maybe not physically but mentally i was
not okay
i had gone through some
suicidal thoughts i had gone through
some
self-hatred type of thoughts
i had gotten frustrated a couple of
times enough
that i had actually hit myself
out of frustration
and you know that's not easy to admit
but it happened
so to say that my life is leveled out
to say that i have a good schedule now
that's big i'm very grateful for that
today
i've been working out i've been showing
up to work
every day
which wasn't happening either
i've been eating right
which i like to do
my life at work and my life at home
has progressively gotten better
since making a few major changes
one of which was exiting a relationship
i have
since then
lost about 15 pounds
and
feel great for it
actually
after the first couple of weeks
which were an emotional whirlwind
i started to get healthy physically
i think that emotionally i had been so
wore down
that it was starting to affect me
physically
so i'm very grateful
very grateful for the stability that i
have in my life today
that i didn't have
three months ago
so i'm grateful that i didn't relapse
honestly quite simply put
i'm very grateful that i have the two
years clean that i have
because there for a minute
i was
not doing so good
today i was
fortunate enough to meet with one of the
pastors at a new church i've been going
to
and we had lunch
great conversation i got to tell him a
little bit of my story he got to tell me
a little bit of his
we're gonna meet up again
and continue to
work together one-on-one
building my
christian program
you know there's
steps and a a and n a and all the other
a programs
and uh we're going to be working
some
non-recovery related
type of things
and i'm really excited about that
because it it'll just go to further my
depth of my relationship with my higher
power
which in case you hadn't picked it up
yet that's very important very important
to me
i was reading yesterday
in deuteronomy talking about
relationship with god
in deuteronomy 17 god's describing the
king that he's going to choose for
israel
this is after they came out of egypt
before they went into the promised land
and it lists different things
don't have too many wives just don't
hoard a bunch of money basically and
then it goes on to say this i'm going to
read this part verbatim
starting in verse 15. it says when he
takes the throne of his kingdom
he is to write for himself on a scroll a
copy of this law
taken from that of the levitical priests
it is to be with him and he has to read
it all the days of his life
so that he may learn to revere the lord
his god
and follow carefully all the words of
this law
and these decrees
and not consider himself
better than his fellow israelites
and turn from the law
to the right or to the left
then he and his descendants
will reign a long time
over his kingdom in israel
and that that impacted me
a little bit
not because i see myself being the king
of the israelites anytime soon but
because it's talking about the leader of
all leaders of the time
god's telling him
about the soon to be king
and what he needs to be
so to me if i want to be somebody
if i want to be anybody
great in this world these are rules that
i need to work on these are things that
will help me in my life
i may never be king of anything
i may never even be the boss of anything
but it wouldn't hurt to have some of
those attributes
it wouldn't hurt to have some of those
same practices
i may not ever be perfect but i'm sure
gonna practice the things that is gonna
get me as close as i can be you know in
the programs they tell us to do 90
meetings in 90 days
get a sponsor somebody that's worked the
steps
read the big book you know read the
basic text
all those things is like what they're
describing here
to write down
the rules the commands the do's and
don't do's
have them with you at all times don't
don't veer from
the left or to the right know what's
expected of you
you know it's like having
the steps or the serenity prayer on a
coin in my pocket
having god's law in my hand reading it
every single day
to keep it fresh on my mind
using what i learn
not to
elevate myself
but to stay humble and know that i'm not
above anybody around me that i'm not
more than this guy or that guy
and it says to do this so that it'll go
well for him
and his descendants
so if if that's going to keep a king
and his family in power then it's
probably going to keep me little old
david in check too
chances are
blessings will come my way too so why
not practice it you know
so that's where i'm at with that today
a little out there sometimes
but i love these books
because it's it's it's israel at its
worst and got its best basically
they're throwing all kinds of fits and
doing all kinds of crazy stuff
and god's just like
so frustrated but still loves them
so dumb with them but gives them one
more chance
so ready to wipe them all out
but comes back and loves them again
and that's like that's
the god that i know because that's the
god that saved me
that's the god that
loved me when i was sitting in jail in
the back of the cop car when i was
sitting at the trap house when i was
sitting on the bar stool
when i was ripping that guy off or
stealing that guy's stuff
you know fill in that blank
that's the god that loved me when
blah blah blah
whatever it is the same one for me
personally
he put up with a lot from me
so reading these things
helps me remember that it's not too much
for him to put up with
that still no matter what
even if i've been a little my whole
life he can still love me
therefore my higher power is
still capable of loving me
and if that's the case then just maybe i
can continue to get better
because in the end i needed something
that would still love me at the end of
the day even though just about the only
bad thing i can think of that i haven't
done is murder somebody
everything else i've checked off the
list
so i needed a god that could really
really forgive some stuff
and he did
thankfully
so
if there was ever any doubt about what
my beliefs are there you go
so what am i really trying to say
guess what i'm trying to say is that
taking the time to take some instruction
from somebody like pastor at my church
and how to have a better relationship
with my god
and have a better relationship with his
people
is just as important to me as working
the 12 steps
probably a little bit more
to be honest
because after all said and done
that's what i'm really here for
that's what's really important
serve god
serve others
that's what i'm about
thank you guys for tuning in
i hope you have a good one
Luke 6:45
A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.
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Bitterness, anger and resentment can act as emotional cancers, eating us up inside.
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Gratitude doesn't come naturally, it's a conscious effort.
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Its about survival.... It's about mental and spiritual stability. That stability is what keeps me recovered.
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excuse[ verb ik-skyooz; noun ik-skyoos ]
verb (used with object), ex·cused, ex·cus·ing.
-to offer an apology for; seek to remove the blame of.
-to serve as an apology or justification for; justify.
-to release from an obligation or duty.
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Definition of perspective
-
a mental view or prospect
-
the interrelation in which a subject or its parts are mentally viewed
-
the capacity to view things in their true relations or relative importance
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10 October is World Mental Health Day
The overall objective of World Mental Health Day is to raise awareness of mental health issues around the world and to mobilize efforts in support of mental health.
The Day provides an opportunity for all stakeholders working on mental health issues to talk about their work, and what more needs to be done to make mental health care a reality for people worldwide.
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I have to say the serenity prayer a lot, especially when my GAF is broke...
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I do vulnerability for me, Its helps me be more ok with the me I've always been afraid to share with others.
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It's so easy to fall into selfishness, sometimes I need to remind myself "It's not all about you David!!"
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Everything I've gone through in life has made me who I am, It's time to get acquainted with me.
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Sometimes my body and mind tell me to stay out, why bring things up? I've been fine not dealing with these issues for years! It's time to go in those danger zones and heal some stuff.
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Take my will and my life, show me how to life, clean. Please God don't let me forget to live.
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Today with the help of a little Tai Chi, I had yet another spiritual awakening.
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There are no shortcuts to being whole. Everything has to be let out and worked through.
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When pain comes, we are expected to learn from it willingly.
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Honesty: Being honest is being open, trustworthy and truthful. When people are honest, they can be relied on not to lie, cheat, or steal. Honesty is telling the truth. ... It is being honest and sincere with others and yourself. You are a person of integrity when your words and actions match.
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self-ab·sorbed
/ˌselfəbˈzôrbd/
adjective
adjective: self-absorbed
- preoccupied with one's own feelings, interests, or situation.
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Don't waste time and energy worrying. Its probably going to be better than you think!
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Make a list of needs vs wants, you will find the issue there. - Day 714
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I keep wanting to be better than I am today. Today I admit I'm not where I want to be but I am not where I was and I can be proud of that. There is time to get where I need to be and I'll get there if I take my time and I'll be happy when I get there if I'm not too hard on myself.
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Accountability matters Day 710
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Forward is a way of life, but I'll continue to be stuck until I practice feeling my feelings.
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I will never be alone, God is with me. Day 707
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I recorded this about 30 mins before being asked to leave. Life really is just one day, one moment at a time... day 706
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An Interview with Delaney H.
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"I must keep my magic magnifying mind on my acceptance and off my expectations, for my serenity is directly proportional to my level of acceptance." -Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book Pg 420
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Finding an outlet of stress and an inlet of joy. Day 702
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Turned our will and our lives over to the CARE of God...
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What do I do with all these feelings?
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Take care of your mental health like your life depends on it. Day 693
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Finding Serenity is a path to self acceptance.
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What if I never get any better? And, what if that's OK?
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Had to get out my tool bag today
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It's easy to forget what works.
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Stay mentally healthy by knowing what to detach from and what not to.
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It takes practice and faith to trust our higher power.
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Rediscovering our God given gifts post addiction is not always easy.
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Introduction to "Victorious In Recovery" Podcast, for new listeners.
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