Episode 248 - November 24, 2022

Mindfulness: A Path to Personal Growth

When we were drinking or using, our addictions helped dim our awareness of ourselves and what was happening around us. We used substances or other behaviors to escape reality or to create a different kind of experience that seemed better—or at least not as painful. Living each day in recovery requires a more honest relationship to reality and invites a new kind of self-acceptance and self-awareness. Step Eleven suggests prayer and meditation as ongoing practices that will help us do this. By improving our conscious contact with the god of our understanding, these daily activities help us access a power that makes the life we're building possible.

In her book, Find Your Light: Practicing Mindfulness to Recover from Anything, Beverly Conyers shows us how the practice of mindfulness meditation, which includes deep and compassionate acceptance of the present moment, can be a daily part of recovery and a path to a happier life. In the following excerpt, Conyers describes how mindfulness practice relates to the goals and spirit of the Twelve Steps and offers an accessible and powerful meditation exercise you can try today.

This excerpt has been edited for brevity.

For those of us in recovery, the Twelve Steps have endured, at least in part, because they support the almost universal human desire for purpose and meaning. In this respect, they have much in common with the practice of mindfulness.

Mindfulness is not simply an exercise in being awake. It is ultimately a path to personal growth, helping us learn how to live in harmony with our deepest values and with the world around us. Like the Twelve Steps themselves, mindfulness nurtures our innate potential to conduct our life with openness, honesty, and integrity.

That said, there are important differences between mindfulness and the Twelve Steps. For one thing, the Steps present a fixed set of guidelines for achieving self-improvement, while mindfulness assumes that we are our own best teacher—that by cultivating uncritical awareness of our thoughts and feelings, we begin to discover our own inner truths.

The Twelve Steps also prescribe reliance on a higher power, which—despite references in Steps Three and Eleven to "God as we understood Him"—can be an obstacle for people who reject the notion of such a being. Mindfulness, on the other hand, offers a more fluid concept of spirituality, one that springs from our own expanding awareness of our connectedness to the universal.

Finally, the Steps promote ethical living by placing a heavy emphasis on "defects of character," encouraging us to be vigilant in detecting and rectifying personal flaws. Mindfulness also promotes ethical living, but it does so within a framework of compassionate acceptance. Its underlying principle is that right actions emerge as awareness and understanding grow.

From Powerlessness to Mindfulness
"We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable."

The First Step is a big one. Whether we found recovery through Twelve Step programs or on another path, most of us had to confront the reality that we could not simply will our way to sobriety. We needed to radically shift our way of thinking. That meant letting go of the denial, self-deception, bravado, and hollow promises that had paved our self-destructive path: "I don't have a problem." "Things aren't that bad." "I can quit whenever I want." "I'll stop tomorrow."

It also meant accepting the fact that when it came to our compulsions, we had lost the power of choice. When we're addicted, our conscious will is lost to persistent, urgent need. We act automatically, without any thought or purpose beyond immediate gratification. We're like a puppet on a string, pulled this way and that by relentless cycles of highs and lows.

Yet addiction prevents us from seeing the truth of our situation. We cling stubbornly to our illusion of self-control. I can manage my life perfectly well, we tell ourselves, and we resist anyone's efforts to intervene. Only in brief moments of clarity do we see how out-of-control our life has become—how little power over addiction we actually have. Paradoxically, it's the recognition of our own powerlessness that allows us to break through the illusion of control and begin to develop our true inner power.

The road to recovery begins when we are willing to see what actually is. That is also the essence of mindfulness.

The value of seeing reality hit home for me one day when a woman who runs a popular restaurant in a nearby community revealed how practicing mindfulness changed her life. She explained that she'd left the small town she grew up in to become an executive in a big-city advertising agency. But fulfilling her dream didn't make her happy. "I kept telling myself that this was what I'd always wanted, but I was binge drinking, popping pills, and my blood pressure was through the roof," she said.

Her doctor recommended mindfulness meditation, which she thought was "a waste of time," she admitted. "But I gave it a try, and lo and behold, I began to realize that my job was making me miserable. I discovered that what I really wanted was to move back home and open a farm-to-table restaurant." She grinned. "That was six years ago. It's a ton of work, but I've never been happier." By seeing and accepting the truth about her "dream job," she was able to find a more satisfying career path.

When we practice mindfulness (and it is always a practice, since we never achieve it perfectly or consistently), we start by paying attention to the reality of the present moment. And from our willingness to see things as they are, we begin to let go of the delusions, distractions, and misperceptions that keep us stuck. We learn to recognize our innate talents, deepest values, capacity for love, and inherent worth.

And as the light of self-awareness grows, so, too, does our power to fulfill the promise within us. In the words of the poet T. S. Eliot: "We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."

PRACTICE: Feel the pause.
In this variation of the seated breath awareness meditation, we develop our powers of concentration by paying attention to the natural pauses within each breathing cycle. Begin by sitting or lying in a comfortable position. Close your eyes. Take a moment to notice whatever is happening—sounds, smells, physical sensations, thoughts, and feelings. Be aware of the moment, but don't try to do anything about it. Breathe normally.

When you are ready, bring your attention to your breath. As your breath enters and exits your body, notice the tiny pause before each inhalation and exhalation. Don't try to force or emphasize the pause. Simply notice the stillness within it. Feel how that stillness is part of you, even in the midst of activity.

Distracting thoughts will enter your head. When they do, acknowledge them without judgment. Let them go and bring your attention back to the small, still pause before you inhale and exhale. When you are ready to come out of your meditation, open your eyes.

How can you connect with the stillness within you as you go about your day?

About the Author:
Author Beverly Conyers—one of the most respected voices in wellness and recovery—has guided hundreds of thousands of readers through the process of recognizing family roles in addiction, healing shame, building healthy relationships, releasing trauma, focusing on emotional sobriety, as well as acknowledging self-sabotaging behaviors, addictive tendencies, and substance use patterns. With her newest work, Conyers shows us how the practice of mindfulness can be a game-changing part of recovering from any- and everything. She is the author of Find Your Light: Practicing Mindfulness to Recover from Anything (Nov. 2019), Follow Your Light: A Guided Journal to Recover from Anything (Aug. 2020) as well as Addict in the Family: Stories of Loss, Hope, and Recovery (2003), Everything Changes: Help for Families of Newly Recovering Addicts (2009), and The Recovering Heart: Emotional Sobriety for Women (2013).

© 2019 by Beverly Conyers
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