Discipline in fitness is a life metaphor in addiction recovery to show you what you are made of and what you are capable of. Themes of patience, endurance, commitment, consistency and more help you build your body and your mind. Sometimes, we have to look at what these themes meaning our lives to understand how they apply to our recovery.
Patience
Patience is defined as “the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset”. Acceptance is a major life philosophy developed through recovery. To accept is to believe or come to believing that something is what it is. We have to accept the fact that we developed an addiction to drugs and alcohol. As part of patience, our acceptance helps us practice a meditative state through life. To be patient is to accept that life is full of challenges, peaks, and valleys. It isn’t always going to go our way, in fact, that’s a guarantee. Patience in exercise helps us wait to see the results we are anxious to see, make it through our work outs, and persevere. Patience in recovery helps us realize that life can only be lived one day at a time, our recovery will only move at the pace it can, and life will get better over time.
Endurance
To endure is to suffer something painful or difficult, patiently. Exercise builds our endurance for withstanding pain and challenge physically. Emotionally, we learn to endure thoughts of quitting, negative self-talk, self-doubt, desperation, and most importantly, fear. We transcend our limitations when we learn to endure the natural thoughts which try to inhibit us. Life is a marathon, not a sprint. Emotionally in recovery, we build endurance to patiently make it through every challenge life presents us, without ever having to pick up a drink or a drug again.
Commitment and Consistency
We can’t run on a treadmill for five minutes and expect to see the kind of results we would get if we consistently ran on the treadmill for five weeks, five months, or five years. Without a guarantee of what our efforts will bring us in the future, it can feel uninspiring to commit to a plan. Recovery is intimidating in this way because we aren’t sure of what a future in recovery will bring us and if it will indeed be better than what we have experienced in addiction. Just like we cannot find out how our bodies will change in five weeks, five months, or five years without consistency and commitment with exercise, we cannot find out how our lives will change overtime in recovery without committing to our sobriety and staying consistent with our personal programs of living sober.
Teaching men how to find freedom from addiction, the treatment programs at Tree House Recovery in Portland use inspiration from nature, fitness, and adventure to create sustainable change for sustainable sobriety. For information, call us today: (503) 850-2474
