About half of all adults make a New Year’s Resolution. Less than ten percent of those people follow through with their resolution for more than a few months. Individuals tend to lose track of their goals because they either establish too many or set the bar too high, making their goals impossible to achieve.
So, this New Year, how do you turn the tables on those statistics and make your resolution last? For those pursuing sobriety, it comes down to having a strategy, celebrating your progress, and making adjustments to routines you’ve already been building.
Create a Plan for Addiction Recovery in the New Year
Setting goals requires focus, discipline, and repetition. Brian Nash, Director of Clinical Management at the Progressive Institute in Connecticut, promotes this concept every day in Addiction Recovery programs, experiencing firsthand precisely what can lead to a positive recovery journey.
Focus on Progress and Not Perfection
One of the most common reasons people don’t continue with a lifestyle change is because they don’t maintain a positive outlook about their progress. If you have a minor setback with your recovery journey, don’t focus on the negative. Berating yourself about how you could have done better only perpetuates a negative thought cycle.
“If you’re leaving treatment and everybody expects you to jump right back into things, that can be troublesome. You can feel overwhelmed, which is why a lot of people relapse,” says Nash. Instead, focus on the victories. If you made a week’s worth of progress, congratulate yourself on those strides you made. When you remove those thought barriers of feeling as if you can’t be successful after struggling with addiction, that’s when progress begins to surface.
Establish Your Priorities
Taking time to analyze your resolutions and to set precise goals with actionable steps has been proven to elicit better results versus lofty, vague goals. Choosing to spearhead your recovery journey and focus on specific goals along that path can help you meet milestones along the way.
Investing in healthy relationships is a pivotal part of the recovery process. When you prioritize building a network of people to support you as you strive towards your resolutions, success is that much more attainable. “We always start with the priorities…something that’s going to connect them to the community. Getting them connected, staying connected, and trying to live by those priorities,” Nash says of the Progressive Institute. He emphasizes the importance of integration into a community of people also working toward Addiction Recovery, whether that be a twelve-step program, inpatient or outpatient recovery, or another group that offers accountability and support.
Give Yourself Tools for Success
When someone resolves to lose weight, they get a gym membership, a personal trainer, a workout buddy, or whatever support systems will make them more successful. The same logic can be applied to those in Addiction Recovery. If someone is looking to get sober, attending a recovery center, therapy, or a twelve-step program are all available options for care.
A comprehensive alcohol monitoring system can also allow clients to take control of their resolutions by providing proof of sobriety in real-time. With its compact size, Soberlink can help you conveniently stick to your sobriety goals through structure and accountability, even connecting you to your recovery coach if desired. “It holds them to an accountability that they’re not used to,” Nash says of his clients. If your New Year’s resolution is to get sober, utilizing a plan with trusted tools helps build strong, lasting habits.
Create a Routine
While other New Year’s resolutions might include exercising more often, volunteering, joining community groups, or dieting, Addiction Recovery resolutions often encapsulate all of those aspects and more. Instead of focusing on changing one specific habit, sobriety encourages creating new practices aimed to replace potentially harmful ones, which may have stemmed from addiction.
Modifying a routine is essential in the facilitation of relapse prevention. Although a recovery journey is a lifelong process, forming a habit takes approximately 66 days. Combining a new exercise regimen, therapy, building a support network, and utilizing alcohol monitoring may craft the routine necessary to lead you on a positive recovery path. This process takes time, and recognizing short-term achievements helps lay the foundation for implementing lasting habits.
Overall, committing to a New Year’s resolution is not an easy process, and when it involves Addiction Recovery, taking the initial steps towards a sober lifestyle should be recognized as a victory within itself. Discover how Soberlink can assist you with all stages of your recovery journey. This year, be the ten percent who can proudly say that they made a resolution and kept it.
About the Author
Soberlink supports accountability for sobriety through a comprehensive alcohol monitoring system. Combining a breathalyzer with wireless connectivity, the portable design and technology includes facial recognition, tamper detection and real-time reporting. Soberlink proves sobriety with reliability to foster trust and peace of mind.