has robbed from you—perhaps you have lost your family, your home, your possessions, and your hope, along with your self-respect and self-esteem. Relationships may be dead or dying; friendships that were once vital may seem all but impossible to revive. Money problems may be a looming threat. Yet, you see others in your recovery fellowship beginning to thrive. Since you now know the program of recovery that works for them works for you, perhaps you are allowing yourself to hope that you, too, can regain some of what you’ve lost and that you can rebuild a new and better life—and you can. But how?
Recovery teaches us to be grateful for what we have in our lives today, and no matter what, each of us can find something to be grateful for.
Making a five-year recovery plan calls on each of us to continue to build on the assets we have discovered as we worked the steps. These are worthwhile and acceptable activities that can help us build a stronger recovery.
Planning for a better future does not mean being ungrateful for the present. It is about doing “the things I can” to build on the gifts of recovery that you have already received.
This planner is not a Fourth- or Tenth-Step inventory guide. Rather than looking back at past mistakes and character defects you need to address, you will be identifying your wishes, hopes, and dreams for the future. You will lay out a vision of your future and discover for yourself the steps you need to take to make that future a reality. It’s a beautiful thing to look forward to living life beyond your wildest dreams; but first, it’s important to identify and clarify what those dreams really are. This journal can help.
List the wildest dreams you have right now. Don’t be too analytical or hypercritical. There’s no right or wrong answer; think of this as a sort of “benchmark” for future reference.
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As human beings we are endowed with four aspects of our natures that can be categorized as the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual parts of our existence. In recovery, we first begin to heal physically, as toxins are removed from our bodies. As our thoughts become clearer, we start to heal mentally. Emotional healing begins as the mask of addiction wears away and we begin to connect with our feelings again. Finally, we heal spiritually as we seek a connection with our Higher Power. This is not a prescribed, but rather a descriptive progression, based on the experiences of many people in recovery. Your progression may differ, but will likely include these four “recoveries” within your recovery.
As we seek to align these four points of balance, we build and maintain a strong foundation. While we will never master perfect balance, this is the ideal that we strive toward.
Finding harmony and peace of mind in life is one of the goals of recovery.
Too much focus on any one point will throw us out of kilter. For example, many of us enter recovery in terrible physical condition and wish to improve our health and fitness, which is a laudable goal. However, an overemphasis on physical exercise or extreme dieting, especially in early recovery, will leave little energy for attention to the mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects of our lives. Similarly, an overemphasis on spiritual development might impede our emotional growth if we focus too intently on prayer, meditation, worship, or other solitary spiritual practices to the detriment of our emotional lives with family and friends. Being overly emotional may tend to cloud our thoughtful, mental reactions to life events, and so on. This journal, which you will begin to create for yourself on the following pages, will help you focus equally on each of the four points of balance in your five-year recovery plan.
What does balance mean to you?
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What actions can you take right now to help you find balance in your recovery and life?
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What do you think your recovery and life will look like in five years?
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USING THE “SERENITY PRAYER” AS A RESOURCE
Members of twelve-step recovery fellowships are familiar with a short devotion known as the “Serenity Prayer.” In its most common form, it asks a Higher Power to…
