Recovery Nation

the quote below is from lesson 50. i'm just pondering on decision making right now and i wanted to share my thoughts with others...

"In life, when such a fundamental skill as decision-making has not been developed efficiently, it leads to similar problems in the scope of your life. Problems like addiction."

this is an interesting point because it reveals the importance of decision making. and that if we begin our youth with poor, unhealthy decision making, it will continue to grow and expand. i’m not saying necessarily turning to pornography for masturbation, yet there had to be something inside of us (at least in me) that was creating unhealthy decision making, which then in turn leads to deal with problems in another unhealthy way: masturbation. it’s interesting how it builds.

it’s not dramatic. it’s not yes or no. yet it’s something that takes years to develop. no wonder it’s easy for the addict, or simply the person living an unhealthy life to not realize it, because they’ve grown use to living an unhealthy life for so long.

yet it’s interesting because as soon as you begin to take steps towards healthy decision making, you can see your old self before. your old self of all of those years...undeveloped and unfulfilled.

i’m wondering how continuing healthy decision making throughout the years can change your life. will you even notice it? is that a bad or a good thing? will you feel healthy if it’s something that you’ve been doing? i don’t know since i’m just a beginner.

but i’m sure you’ll (hopefully) be fulfilled at working towards meaningful values in your life. happy for finding health in reality and never running away from your problems. yuuup.

I think making healthy decisions has about the same arc as unhealthy decisions. That is they have the potential to make big changes very fast, or small changes over a long period of time, depending on what the decisions are and the context in which they are made.

I believe that just like bad decisions cause pathways to form and patterns to emerge, healthy decisions create healthy habits and help prevent bad decisions from being seriously considered. Part of that is upbringing, but as addicts we all know that upbringing isn't all of it. I had a great childhood after about the age of seven or eight, but my rocky times before that are not the only things affecting my choices, especially later as an adult.

As addicts going through RN, we are slowly building new decision making skills, which will hopefully become habits in our lives. If we live a certain way long enough, we will come to accept that lifestyle over our past lifestyle, and the future will be guided by good choices as opposed to poor choices.

No one, and I mean NO ONE can (with any type of absolution), see what's ultimately right for any one individual.

Heck, for what it's worth, I'm old enough to remember when margarine was 'good' and butter was 'bad'. Today, we now know that margarine is only 1 molecule away from being a plastic!

One must allow time to take it's course. Just like it took time for any problem to develope it takes time to understand and accept the adjustment and/or solution.

Just a thought.