strategery

Welcome! I wanted to start a new thread here. One of the things that I think that is really important in recovery and long-term sobriety, is positive thinking.

Positive thinking is something I've had to work on a lot with my recovery and my hope is I can share some tools I have used to help build positive thinking muscles. It's still something I very much work on, but my hope with this thread, we can help each other with building positive thinking skills. You are more than welcome to chime in at any time, but most of this work is meant to be done on your own. What you put into the exercises, is what you will get out of them.

Today's exercise: List 5 things you like about yourself. List 5 things you don't like about yourself. If you could change these 5 things you don't like about yourself, would you be willing to lose the 5 things you like about yourself?

Take home message of the day: We are each unique. We each have unique strengths and weaknesses. They are what make us who we are. If we were all the same, it would be pretty boring. Even if you see someone that seems to have everything together, know they have weaknesses too.

zjw

you know my first thought is listing 5 things I like about myself gee there are none then i think well i beti could think of a few i guess. but then i feel how thats very self centered and rude and how dare I think of myself so highly in any regard and i woudlnt want to boost my ego and get a fat head now would I?

what is wrong with my thinking.

strategery

It shows that you have something to work on zjw.

If you are truly struggling to come up with 5 good things about yourself, you need to spend more time thinking about the qualities that make you who you are and how special they make you. There is nothing wrong for recognizing qualities that you think are good about yourself. It helps you recognize who you are and that we each have unique talents and qualities. It also helps you realize what qualities you have that you can bring to the table and offer to help other people since not all of us have these qualities.

It's a balance with recognizing what is good about ourselves and things we don't like about ourselves.

Fly N Buy

Hi Strat - thanks for the thread, good idea!

I know I can can spend too much time beating ourselves up. We can be very malicious in the way we view ourselves which is extremely self defeating and a hindrance to helping others. How can we love others if we don't even like ourselves??!

Daily the program I work encourages a night time (moral) inventory of our day. The methodology of this ledger system has both liabilities and assets - give credit and correction so to speak.

Last evening here were two I reviewed in my day;

Liability(watch for) - self condemnation
Asset (strive for) - self esteem

Small examples, but this thread can certainly get us thinking about the positive attributes we have and some things we need to correct

Thanks!

ScottFromWI

I like the concept Strategery. Making the list might be difficult but it will put on paper what we need to work on, as well as list accomplishments already made.

I agree wholly that you cannot fix the problems until they are identified...and writing them down can definitely help.

zjw

any self worth i had got beaten out of me as a child i think thats where my issue stems from. so you say list some qualities and its a harmless activity i'm promptly taken back to some child hood memories where such an activity would have been thrown in my face and used to demoralize me etc.. so its a rather terrifying task to do. I also see nothing normal about the activity. i was not brought up to see something like that as normal ok behavior.

This just shines another light on an area in my life where I have to figure out whats normal and ok. You say its ok to list 5 things your like about yurself and honestly I think umm ok if you say so and it feels like a very awkward activity and i'm like looking over my shoulder wondering whos gonna smack me senseless for having my nose in the air about a few things when like you said its just listing 5 qualities totally harmless. I did a lot of totally harmless things growing up only to get beat for it.

I"m gonna try and wrap my mind around this idea and try it it seems to make sense.

silentrun

I was thinking about you this morning zjw. It's not wrong to speak highly of yourself. When I had a big ego it was a defense mechanism against all the negative self talk I did. Stop that beating yourself up and the ego will deflate all on it's own. I will spend today making my list.

zjw

yeah i'm on a roll here this morning. thinking about all the things i'm not very good at. its not something i like to focus on. because theres a lot on that list that I once thought I was good at. and others also have been like why cant you just get this seemingly simple thing right? cause i cant? cuse i'm just not good at that sorta thing no matter how hard i try i keep screwing up. the scary thing is what i do for a living there is a lot of that going on too and has been. I just never really noticed it till i got sober. The solution to keep my spirits up is to just do what i can and be happy with that and not dwell on it. but it is a surpise to others around me too that i cant get somewhat seemingly simple tasks right. LIke say ordering dinner for the family forget it i screw that up all the time my wife has to rattle it off to me i cant remember it and always mess it up.

maybe i'm just toxic today.

gonzo51511

Any good strategys on dealing with fear in particular.. or any advice? Facing some probable financial difficulties

Carlotta

I love the concept of this thread Strat. One of the first thing I had to really work hard on in recovery was reprogramming the way I thought about myself and also the way I talked to myself.

If someone had asked me 15 years ago to list 5 things I'd like about myself, I would truly have struggled and it might have taken me a while to come up with such a list.

The good news is that as I was reading your post I had most of my list already in mind and also that I noticed that the things I don't like about myself are not things which are character oriented but more stuff like:
I have gained too much weigh and feel sluggish.

Basically things that I can change, not things which are the essence of my being.
Would I give up any of the character assets on my list to rectify what I don't like about me?
Absolutely not!
I can still be generous, flexible, hardworking, caring and teachable and still have a big butt. My butt does not define me as a person LOL... even better, I could stop eating so much carbs and start exercising more.

Once again, thank you for posting such a positive thread with a potential for awesome "tool" sharing.

Della1968

I think this is great!! I will work on my lists after work!

bossybutt

I too have a hard time talking nicely about myself but I'll give it a go. I'm kind, loyal, funny, nurturing and a good cook. On the flip side, I have low self esteem and talk badly about myself a lot, can't take a compliment without debating it, don't take good care of myself, I can be selfish, moody and argue about stupid things till I'm blue in the face. I'm very young in my recovery and still trying to figure things out, and how to deal with my emotions sober instead of drinking them away like before. This is a good thread. I'll be coming back to it

JDSOBER

I too think this is great! I know early in recovery it was always my intention to be the worst of the worst it became an ego thing- pride working in reverse today I have days that I still struggle but the important key I found was to stop comparing myself to others and give take an honest inventory:

If I dont care for me today I know no one else will its up to me today!
This is an awesome thread!

Dee74

I'm sorry for your rough childhood zjw.

I think the time comes though when we have to stop letting events of 20, 30 or 40 years ago dictate your way of thinking.

I'm not criticising you at all

I was the same way for many years and it was certainly a factor in my turning to drink - it's much easier to destroy yourself when you feel you have no self worth.

Building up my self worth, and acknowledging my worthiness have been a constant theme in my recovery.

Being negative was a hallmark of my drinking days - I refuse to let it be a defining characteristic now I've done the hard work to get sober

I had some counselling help, but there's a lot of resources on the web about this: here are some of my favourites

10 Tips to Overcome Negative Thoughts: Positive Thinking Made Easy

Positive thinking: Reduce stress by eliminating negative self-talk - Mayo Clinic

and this is the grandaddy of positive thinking books:

The Power of Positive Thinking: A Practical Guide to Mastering the Problems of Everyday Living by Norman Vincent Peale

most libraries will have it

Let's get positive

D

Dee74

hey Gonzo

I think dealing with fear is really important but it's drifting a little from the topic here in this thread so I made a new thread about it - check it out

http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...ling-fear.html

D

Carlotta

This is really a good exercise Strat.
Bossybutt I could really relate to you (not just your screen name )
It took me a while to be able to accept compliments.
One thing which really helped me was whenever someone said something nice to me; mindfully pause for a second, smile and just say thank you and nothing more.
It was a bit awkward at first but with practice it became easier and easier.
I am worthy of kindness and appreciation and so are you
Try it and see how it goes

strategery

It's awesome to have you all on board and I am thrilled to see all the responses.

I was thinking about what you were saying today zjw with your childhood trauma and just wanted to mention that I can relate. I also agree with Dee that at some point, we have to let go of past trauma and can't continue to dwell on it. While we can't change what happened to us, we can change how we respond to it to move ourselves forward.
It was also really awkward and really uncomfortable for me to list positive aspects about myself at first, but it gets easier the more you work at it like Carlotta mentioned. I am not sure if you noticed, but when you started listing those positive qualities, nothing happened.

Gonzo-I will have a post on fear and keeping yourself positive tomorrow.

zjw

I know what your getting at Dee and I understand. but this thread just triggered some bad memories. I dunno how to keep those memories from surfacing is all.

I did make the list. Coming up with 5 things and struggling with the awkwardness of feeling like i was tooting my horn and shoudlnt be was not easy. but i did it. As of now Im not sure I got much out of the exercise outside of that.

It is what it is. I guess i have my good points and bad points just like anyone else.

Dee74

It's not about stopping the memories from surfacing tho zjw -it's not about avoidance - that's old alcoholic thinking...it's about dealing with those memories in a healthy way.

The point of the 5 things exercise is to start us thinking in positive ways rather than negative ones.

Take that a step further and you can start dealing with catastrophising:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog...ve-distortions

I really believe we don't have to settle for who we are if that makes us unhappy.

Healing really is possible

D

suki44883

A friend of mine on Facebook shared this photo, so it showed up on my timeline. I don't know him, but, I gave the guy a like and a share. Way to go, Randy!