mr. wrong

"the only thing that never changes is that everything changes" - louis l'amor

this past year has been one full of change for me.

change of calling
change of employment
change of roommates
change of hobbies: now into running and firearms
change of facial hair: growing a beard
change of college:  BYU to UVU
change of church status: full membership with a temple recommend
change of relationship status: from progressing towards marriage with someone to progressing towards marriage on my own

but the one thing i've wanted to change more than any of all that and have spent time and effort and tears, wishing and trying and struggling to change, is this godforsaken addiction. 

i don't want it. 
i don't. 
but i cant seem to get rid of it. 

i've been through a lot of change.
i'm changing still. 
but its not enough. its never enough.

i feel like i'm stuck in a tar pit.

i can't imagine, i would never wish, for another righteous beautiful young woman searching for her mr. right to become such an important part of my life and be hurt and stained by this tar that has me trapped.

hopefully one day i'll have changed enough to be free and clean from this filth to become the future love of my life's mr. right.

but for now i'm still mr. wrong

just one of them days

i had a very enjoyable/spiritual/emotional experience last night as i read a letter my dear sweet mother wrote to me. she's such an amazing faithful woman and i so deeply love and respect her and am amazed by all that she has done for me.

i'll be the first to admit that i hate sleeping. its extremely inefficient and i don't enjoy it. i wish i didn't have to sleep almost as if some wishes come true there are nights where i'm just not able to sleep much; 

unfortunately these nights do not lend themselves to much increased productivity... usually happens that either my body won't rest or my mind won't rest and last night was one of those nights where my mind wouldn't rest. there was maybe a period of 3-4 hours where i did fall asleep. however, most of the time i was just laying there while my mind was continuously occupied by random thoughts of things i needed to do, things i wanted to do and unfortunately many thoughts and feelings of regret about my past sins, mistakes, offenses, and shortcomings and how my addiction has been at the root of all of those. a lot of thoughts also seemed to come back to my now-not-so-recent return to the single lifestyle. 

after my nap, i got up and got showered, ate and readied my things, got in my truck and started driving to school. as i'm turning in the intersection before before getting on the freeway my vehicle completely shuts off. 
no power steering
no power brakes
no power period
and it won't turn back on. so i'm just there coasting, cranking the wheel and stomping on the breaks as hard as i can in the middle of the intersection doing everything i can to avoid running into oncoming traffic...

oh (un)happy day!

- less than 4 hours of sleep
- lingering feelings for d. (and why i still feel like theres some connection i don't know...)
- unable to attend my classes (which included my favorite stress relief: my volleyball class)
- sat in a broken down truck in a parking lot all day
- my bank account is now $200 lighter
- feelings of frustration and stressed out and situations were out of my control. hungry and helpless and hot.
- being bashed bombarded and buffeted every moment with the temptation that i could easily escape from it all

OVERIT!

as i look up at the time in the top corner of my laptop i realize in less than an hour i'm supposed to be en route to a special PASG recovery meeting. 

and it all makes sense. its an eternal principle that there must be opposition in all things and satan would love to sift me as chaff before the wind to frustrate my progress and my participation in this work.

i guess i should be surprised that more bad things didn't befall me today... but there is still a lot of day left haha

"don't give up what you most want in life for something you want right now" - richard g. scott
"...thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment." - d&c 121:7

motivation wave

with health and exercise being the focus of my education and desired profession, this keynote address given by bj fogg to people working in the health and exercise industry was naturally interesting to me. but as i watched and listened i realized how this behavior model could be applied to recovery as well. the audio is a little soft, but i think its worth your 23 minutes.

when we are highly motivated we are able to do more difficult things and resist more difficult temptations. when the motivation is low and we're feeling BLASTED (bored, lonely, angry, stressed, tired, empty, depressed) we're in a weakened state, and its obviously much easier to slip.

its normal to have the peaks and troughs. in fact, the high motivation times he labels as "temporary" periods and the low motivational times are labeled "natural" periods.

its ok to have low motivational periods.

what i love about this model is that the focus is on utilizing those temporary high motivation periods to facilitate our opportunities to accomplish difficult things during the natural low motivational moments. the key is, when our motivation is high, we have an opportunity to do some very difficult things and he gives 3 priorities of what we should do when we are in a highly motivated state.

priority #1: do hard things that structure future behavior

priority #2: do hard things that reduce barriers to behavior (i might modify this to also include increasing barriers to the addictive behavior)

priority #3: do hard things that increase your capability

another thing i really like about this model is that it gives a great perspective, especially during the last 5 minutes, for the loved ones working with and supporting those of us making the effort to overcome our addictions. 

i hope this can help us to be at least a little more aware and take advantage of our temporary high motivational periods to give ourselves a greater opportunity for success during our more "natural" periods.