Life transitions, aren’t they just the scariest? From moving cities to changing jobs, I, Michael Maassel, have been there, felt that gut-wrenching fear, and come out the other side. In this episode, I share my journey through several significant life transitions and how, against all odds, I embraced change and found strength in my recovery from addiction. I’m not saying it was a cakewalk, but with a robust support system and faith over fear, even the most daunting transitions can be navigated with grace.
In the second half, we switch gears and tackle those life transitions that blindside you, like health challenges, including COVID. I delve into my personal experiences and unpack how acceptance rather than resentment has been vital in these situations. And just like in the first half, the mantra remains the same - lean on your support system. It's about meeting life's unexpected turns with courage and resilience. So, are you ready to reflect on your life transitions and discover strategies to navigate them better? Then this episode is just for you. Remember, it's not about the changes life throws at us, but how we react to them that truly matters.
For over 50 years, Harmony Foundation has worked as a nonprofit to serve those seeking recovery from substance addictions. Our residential and intensive outpatient programs are in a collaborative and respectful treatment environment with multiple specialty tracks offering additional support. Our main campus is nestled on a 43-acre campus in the Rocky Mountains just outside of Estes Park, Colorado, that promotes physical, emotional, and spiritual healing. With one of the most robust alumni programs in the county, clients remain connected and empowered for a lifelong journey of recovery.
For more information about Harmony Foundation, please visit:
www.harmonyfoundationinc.com
Life transitions, aren’t they just the scariest? From moving cities to changing jobs, I, Michael Maassel, have been there, felt that gut-wrenching fear, and come out the other side. In this episode, I share my journey through several significant life transitions and how, against all odds, I embraced change and found strength in my recovery from addiction. I’m not saying it was a cakewalk, but with a robust support system and faith over fear, even the most daunting transitions can be navigated with grace.
In the second half, we switch gears and tackle those life transitions that blindside you, like health challenges, including COVID. I delve into my personal experiences and unpack how acceptance rather than resentment has been vital in these situations. And just like in the first half, the mantra remains the same - lean on your support system. It's about meeting life's unexpected turns with courage and resilience. So, are you ready to reflect on your life transitions and discover strategies to navigate them better? Then this episode is just for you. Remember, it's not about the changes life throws at us, but how we react to them that truly matters.
For over 50 years, Harmony Foundation has worked as a nonprofit to serve those seeking recovery from substance addictions. Our residential and intensive outpatient programs are in a collaborative and respectful treatment environment with multiple specialty tracks offering additional support. Our main campus is nestled on a 43-acre campus in the Rocky Mountains just outside of Estes Park, Colorado, that promotes physical, emotional, and spiritual healing. With one of the most robust alumni programs in the county, clients remain connected and empowered for a lifelong journey of recovery.
For more information about Harmony Foundation, please visit:
www.harmonyfoundationinc.com
Hey, hey, welcome to season two, episode 17 of Monday State of Mind, brought to you by Harmony Foundation. My name is Michael Mausel and I am your host Today. October, all of you, amazing humans, october is here, halloween is around the corner. Thanksgiving, christmas, hanukkah, holiday season I feel like, is just in full bore and I'm so excited. So all of you guys kind of know new month, new theme, and you know what I've also noticed with Monday State of Mind this time around. I don't always wait for a new month to do a new theme. I've just kind of come to the realization if something has run its course with the theme we're talking about, then I can start something whenever I want, because guess what? It's my podcast. So I absolutely loved what we talked about with spirituality. You guys, with Steve, megan and Taylor, if you have not listened to episodes 13 through 16, I highly suggest you check them out, because they are amazing and it is such a big part of recovery.
Speaker 1:Another big part of recovery that I'm going to dive into today and kick off talking about, which will then be followed up with incredible guests, is life transitions, right, major life transitions and recovery, and how do we move through them? How do we choose to move through them? Right? Where do we start? Let's picture me sitting in a therapist chair, thumbs crossed. It all started a year, two and a half of sobriety. I'm just kidding, but anyways, it all started back when I was approaching three years of recovery. I was set in my ways with my recovery and I was like comfortable. And here's the thing too about major life transitions is a lot of us don't do very well with them because a lot of us addicts and alcoholics, we like comfort and consistency and we also come. Sometimes fear change and like I've always said since the beginning of season two, is that fear is rooted in every aspect of our life, especially with whether or not we choose to embark on major life transitions. And sometimes we don't even have a choice. They just happen to us and we have to decide what we're going to do with it. So here we go.
Speaker 1:What I have known to be true since your two and a half almost three of sobriety is when major life transitions started happening in Michael Mausel's world and my first big transition in recovery was choosing to leave my home, where my recovery journey started, in Telluride, and I took the job up here for Harmony Foundation in Estes Park. That was a huge transition for me. There was so much fear that plagued me. I had so much fear of will I find a recovery community that I like? Will I find friends? Will I find a boyfriend? I had so many questions and left my own devices. My future tripping almost cost me that transition because I was so stuck in self and stuck in wanting to control things I had no business controlling, like would I have friends? Would I love my job?
Speaker 1:What I knew to be true about this transition that happened for me is that I deep down knew I wanted it and that I didn't know how it was going to happen, but that I would rather say yes to a transition and go for it than live with what if I didn't want to do that. What I also know is that I was already rooted with courage from the moment I made my first major life transition, which was getting sober. Talk about fears, talk about having faith that something different might work for me. So that has really anchored a lot of my decisions in sobriety of like you know what you've already done the hardest transition probably of your life, which was choosing to put down the bottle and the drugs and pick up sobriety, and so I utilized that and I utilized those tools when it came to making this transition. And what I also leaned on was my recovery community you guys, community in recovery because sometimes left my own devices, my first thought is wrong and I need guidance because sometimes I am impulsive and I may not always see all angles that I probably need to see. So I took it to my community, I took it to a sponsor that I was working with and was like do you think this is a good idea? Because I need support. That is. What I know is that I need support in my life and I need people to help me to assess everything before I do something, and it just helps me to be aware of where our areas that I'm lacking, so that I can look at them and be aware of them and address them Right.
Speaker 1:I talked with all of my people in Telluride and they said you know, michael, you're ready, go go do this thing. And I was like, okay, like here we go. And I got excited. And I got excited because I knew that in this, no matter what I was going to have them to talk to, they were a phone call away, a text away if things got a little rocky, and in the transition, that's exactly what happened. I stayed in contact with my community, I reached out, I made sure that I had support in this big transition, because it's scary to try to do these things by ourselves. I'm so grateful that I chose faith over fear, because if I would have stayed in fear, I would have denied myself an opportunity that I couldn't see how good it was going to be. I couldn't see it until I was in it. And that's where it is. It's about trust and it's about saying, hey, I don't know what it's going to look like, but if I just keep showing up doing the next right thing, being a person of integrity, working on my recovery, life is going to check out pretty okay. It's going to be okay. It's rad when we can do that, which leads me to talking about another big transition, because again, let's talk about this for a second right.
Speaker 1:I had a choice with the next transition I want to talk about, which is when I chose to leave Harmony Foundation for a year. I left Harmony for a year to explore the bigger world of treatment, and that was a major I'm like talk about scary, full of fear transition. But again, when I made that transition to leave to be able to grow as a human, I was met with nothing but support Some sadness, of course, from some humans, but also knowing that, when this was happening, that I was doing it for reasons that I felt were right for me. And I knew that I had support because, again, with every transition that has happened, I always need to make sure that I am met with a support system, whether it's people in the rooms or out of the room. It's a matter of knowing that, hey, if I'm having a tough time with something, I can reach out to somebody, I can expose myself and my innermost thoughts that are going on to have somebody say hey, Michael, those are just thoughts, that's not reality. Snap out of it, you're going to be okay. And that's the beauty that I have found with people in recovery and people that are willing to have those kind of relationships with me. That was a beautiful transition that I was able to do when I left and then I chose to come back, and what an amazing transition that was. I am so grateful to be back.
Speaker 1:And again, when that transition happened, simple things my toolkit was always, and is always, readily available for me. Right For me, readily available. It's something that I want to invite all of you to look at when you look at transitions, when you look at major life experiences, whether they are your choice or it is something that happens to you, whether you're somebody that got COVID, or because a lot of people don't want COVID and don't want the aftermath and that's the first thought I had was people with COVID, Some people became long timers with some of the side effects of it. Right, major life transition and not one that was expected. But asking yourself, with something like that, something that's not expected, how are you meeting this transition? Are you meeting it with anger? Are you meeting it with resentment and hate? Or are you meeting it with, instead of having fear, of having faith that you're going to be taking care of, even though this is something that you did not wish upon yourself? But you know that if you lean in and you talk about it and you have a support system that things are going to be okay they might not be the way you wanted them, but it's going to be okay that's where faith comes in. That's where choosing to relinquish control I'm a big control freak, let's be real here. But it's where we choose to relinquish control and we decide to say I have no idea what tomorrow holds. All I know is what is right in front of me in this next 24 hours and if I can manage this next 24 hours, I have a pretty good chance at managing the next 24 hours.
Speaker 1:Life transitions, whether we want to admit it or not, like they're going to happen, and sometimes you might have an opportunity and then you might not do it because of fear. But if you ask yourself I do want you guys to just sit here and ask yourself how many different opportunities have you denied yourself because of fear, because of fear of anything, what people would think, fear of failure, fear of anything at all? I'm like anything. Just ask yourself why. Why let fear win? Because here's the thing the only constant is change, and so in a transition, even if you don't like it, you can always change it up, you can always course correct, and that's something that was so pivotal for me when it came to these major life transitions, for leaving telluride and moving to take the job up here with harmony, from being able to move from Denver down to Salida and switching jobs. What I needed to realize is that you know, michael, nothing is permanent. Nothing is permanent, and if I don't like it, I don't have to stay in it. So why not give it a shot? Why not try? Why not? There's no hurt in trying.
Speaker 1:And there's also, like I will say, with life transitions. I always like to call it to failing forward if it doesn't work out. If a major life transition that you embark on is not something that ends up being something that you thought it would be, at least you learn something from it. There's so many gifts in those experiences, and I can say that about when I left army. I was super stoked on it and then I wasn't, but I didn't beat myself up about it because I was like, hey, this all served a purpose for my path and for my journey. And just like when I was scared out of my mind to leave Denver and move to Salida, I was like I don't know if I'm going to like this, and it turned out even better than I could possibly imagine.
Speaker 1:So it's about fear and faith. They cannot live in the same room. So when you are in a space where something big is happening, whether it's to you or for you, the question you must ask yourself is am I gonna approach this riddled with fear or am I gonna approach it with a little bit of faith? I can't stress enough how important it is to have people in your corner to support you with major transitions and ask yourself do you have those people? Are those people present in your life today? Because those are the people that are gonna throw you the life raft when you are drowning and you can't see a way out. They're gonna say, hey, you got this and I got you. We're in this together. You can do this.
Speaker 1:I wouldn't have known the power of community if I didn't get sober, you guys. I wouldn't know what I was capable of managing. Like I didn't know that I was capable of being able to manage these bigger transitions until I got sober and people helped to believe in me before I could believe in myself. How powerful is that? So look at this, guys. How cool is it that we can be here on this planet and I will also say whether you're in sobriety or not but that you have opportunity and that you actually do have a choice. Is it gonna be fear-based decision-making or is it gonna be faith-based decision-making? I love this stuff, this business of having faith and having a program and having friends in sobriety has been a game changer for me and has allowed me to have experiences that I never would have had. I never would have said yes to if I had to do it alone. Magic happens when we have shared experiences amongst any life transition that we embark on. That's what I got for you guys Major life transitions. Take a look at it.
Speaker 1:I'm super stoked for you guys to be here and to listen to all of these episodes. If there's any episode that you've listened to that you know would benefit other people, share it. If this is an episode you think that people would benefit from, share it with people. That's what this is about. It's about helping each other out to gift each other amazing tools so that we can become better humans every single day. All right, so, with that being said, you guys take a deep breath, stretch it out, get excited, get so excited about something you might have learned or something that you were reassured with while listening to this podcast today and go out and have an amazing rest of your day. Love you guys so much. Before we part ways, I want to remind you that help is available If you or someone you know is in need of assistance, please reach out to Harmony Foundation at 970-586-4491. Just remember that together we build better humans. All right, you guys, I'll see you next week. Cámara da.