This week, I’ll be celebrating four years of sobriety, so I’ve been doing some reflection about how much I’ve changed and what lessons that story might have for you.
Let’s flash back in time a little more than four years ago.
For a long time, I had wished I could change. I was depressed, in part because my way of life had been taken away from me by injuries, and in part because I was self-medicating with marijuana. I hated myself for being an addict, but I felt completely incapable of choosing sobriety. I tried – and failed – to quit many times.
I knew I wasn’t living up to my potential, so I was perpetually disappointed in myself. I convinced myself that I was lazy, and then proceeded to prove myself right by acting lazy. I was disorganized. I was a procrastinator. I wasted lots of time on television, video games, and social media. I looked at people who were working 60 hours per week and felt certain that I could never match their work ethic.
Then one day, something changed. Something in my brain snapped. I decided I was done. I got rid of my pot and resolved to never use drugs again. Something I had felt was impossible had happened: I had become 100% committed to being clean and sober for the rest of my life.
And it was so much easier than I’d imagined. Even when I resolved to quit, I was sure that sobriety would be difficult and miserable for a long time before it got better. That “long time” turned out to be two weeks. Very quickly, sobriety became routine. And shortly thereafter, my depression faded away.
So here’s one lesson to take away from my experience, and one that is backed up by psychological research: We’re terrible at predicting our future emotions.1
Now let’s flash forward two years from that time.
I was by then fully settled into my new identity as someone who didn’t drink or use other drugs. My work ethic had surpassed anything I had ever imagined I was capable of. I was working 60 hours per week, and I was teaching a weekly class on mental health, and I was launching this business. My injuries were getting better because I was going to three medical appointments per week, and I was doing about seven hours of physical therapy at home each week. I had an established morning routine that included daily exercise, wisdom, and meditation.
The big lesson here is that I had no idea I was capable of all that. In fact, I had spent years being sure that I wasn’t. And I was wrong.
You have to take the plunge.
“You never know how strong you are until being strong is your only choice.” –Bob Marley
What are you sure you’re not capable of? And what if you’re wrong?
It might just be that you have a great deal of mental strength that simply isn’t revealing itself because it doesn’t have to. Until you put yourself on the line and really go for it, you won’t find out what you’re truly capable of. The only way to discover and unleash your incredible human potential is to risk failure. You have to take the plunge.
And whatever the challenge is, whatever change you need to make, approach it with realistic optimism. Expect it to be hard. It will be hard. But also expect that it will get easier over time. Your future selves have the potential to be much, much stronger than your current self – probably far stronger than you can imagine.
So if you’re thinking that something, some change, is impossible for you, consider that you might be wrong because you don’t really know what you’re capable of.
1 Gilbert, Daniel. Stumbling on Happiness. Alfred A. Knopf, 2006.