Retreats, Spiritual Retreats: Finding Your Three Key Relationships and the Secret to Stopping Addiction.

Spiritual retreats offer a transformative opportunity to strengthen the three relationships essential for recovery: with yourself, your higher power, and your recovery community. By unplugging from daily distractions, we create space for self-discovery, spiritual connection, and authentic relationships that sustain long-term recovery.

• Recovery and life are fundamentally about connection and relationships
• The relationship with yourself develops through quiet reflection, reading, and journaling
• Reading and writing produce more growth than just attending meetings and sharing
• Relationship with your higher power comes from letting go of control
• Connection with others in recovery provides the human help we all need
• Success includes mental, physical, emotional, spiritual, and financial health
• Understanding others is more valuable than being understood
• Giving love freely results in receiving love tenfold in return

Join our Facebook group Recovery Freedom Circle where we focus on recovery, the steps, your goals, dreams, and provide a supportive community for any questions you might have.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Recovery Freedom Circle
• 1:22 Spiritual Retreats and the 12 Steps
• 2:34 Three Essential Relationships in Recovery
• 4:19 The Power of Understanding and Love
• 7:54 Benefits of Regular Spiritual Retreats

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

How to get that closer contact with a higher power, god, how to develop spirituality. Welcome again to another episode of the 1% in recovery. We encourage you to laugh every day, to work hard, work hard in recovery. Work hard in your jobs business. To work hard. Work hard in recovery. Work hard in your jobs business. To work hard in your relationships. Just work and to love unconditionally. Just put more love out there and watch more love return, because recovery is beautiful. Your EQ is your IQ and you cannot outthink an emotional issue.

Speaker 1: 0:44

Keep encouraging people to join the Facebook group Recovery Freedom Circle. That is a community where we focus on recovery, the steps, the miracle that is you, your goals, your dreams and any questions you may have. What's going on in your life where you actually need some advice, some help, some suggestions. Just put that in the community and let the community help you. There is so much valuable experience in recovery and in the community. So now let's jump into this week's episode.

Speaker 1: 1:22

Just finished a spiritual retreat. This one happened to be with fellow compulsive gamblers. We always do retreats covering all 12 steps. I love the steps. The Recovery Freedom Circle is based on the original 12 steps. It's been changed and worded into what I feel is more impactful where more people can recover, where more people can get this whole idea of a better life, of stopping addiction, no more relapse, living your dreams and your goals. So that's what the Recovery Freedom Circle is about. That's what's about rewriting the steps. That's what's actually why we work the steps.

Speaker 1: 2:11

Even if you're just doing the original steps, the steps really can change your life. But it also is a matter of how you work, also time. How efficiently do you work? And we go over these 12 steps because we want to focus on the three big relationships. We talk about life really being about connection. Recovery is about connection, life's about connection Recovery and life is about relationships. Well, there's only three types of relationships that you need to be successful. Number one, and most important, because you're always looking in the mirror. The relationship that you have with yourself and that is what a retreat can do can allow you that quiet time where you can sit in your room, no TV Hopefully, you're not on your phone you can spend some time in thought, you can spend some time reading.

Speaker 1: 3:15

There's always 12-step literature there. There's even the Bible there for people to utilize all types of sources, resources to gain more knowledge, and we try to also have a. There's also a desk so you can write and writing and journaling is so important in recovery the two most well, there's three, but everyone focuses on meetings and when they get to share so they can vocalize whatever's going on. But the things that really produce growth are reading and writing. You have to read and reread 12-step literature and other literature just about emotions, just about health and just to gain more knowledge on just how to live your best life. And also it's about journaling. You've got to be able to journal and write and rewrite, whether it's on the steps, whether it's on your relationship, whether it's on your future. You've got to write things down. That's how you brainstorm first within yourself and you gain that knowledge of who you truly are and what you truly believe in and what type of character you have. So we always focus on that piece of the retreat first. You.

Speaker 1: 4:47

Now, throughout those three days Friday night to Sunday lunch there's also the relationship that you are developing with your higher power of God and what I also say great mystery. You try to find out what that means to you, how that can move you forward, and so then you can develop this type of relationship because you need that divine help. You need to almost let go. They talk about turn your willow, but a lot of it is just about letting go about a lot of things in life. Stop trying to control too many things. You're not going to get very far in life when you try to control your life too much, especially if you're trying to control your spouse, partner, kids, parents, siblings never works. You'll find out real fast that that control does not work and you just allow people to live their own life, the freedom so they can pursue what gives them joy and contentment. And then the other one that the retreat allows is the relationships that you're developing with other people in the fellowship, other people that are on this road journey of recovery, of self-discovery, self-awareness, and you connect with others because you also need human help. We're talking about divine help. You need human help. You need all the help you can get if you're trying to be successful and, like we say, successful instead of just being a financial definition, success first and foremost is your health, your mental health and your physical health, and then, of course, your emotional health, uh, your spiritual health and of course, yeah, and your, your financial and social health, health and you have all that, then you are truly a successful person because you can tap into all different areas of what really drives you. So that's what the retreat's all about, and we also like to tie in that the.

Speaker 1: 7:04

You know almost like the retreat can be like the Step 11 prayer, the St Francis of Assisi prayer, and I love those two lines. It's better to understand than be understood, better to love than be loved. We get so focused on having people try to understand us, having people love us, when really the secret to life is just lend an ear, listen to people's story, understand others and then you will truly get this almost spiritual awakening and also just love others. There's nothing better in this world than to just love. Just love others and stop worrying about being loved. If you give out more love, I guarantee you it comes back tenfold. It's happened so much.

Speaker 1: 7:53

I grew up being angry and depressed and not knowing it. I understood that, yeah, certain people loved me, but I always felt that it was either conditional or just because my parents they had to, and that was also at a certain percentage. It wasn't this true, unconditional love, and so now I just try to just live in love, just love others. Some of those people are going to love me back. Actually, majority of those people love me back, or at least like and respect me. And the other thing is there's lots of other people out there just throwing, pushing love in my direction Makes life so much easier when you just live in joy and contentment instead of that anger and depression. Trust me, I've lived it all in terms of emotional extremes, so I wish people to go on more of these retreats, especially spiritual retreats, 12-step retreats.

Speaker 1: 8:58

Now, being a grown-up Catholic, the place I went to Holy Name, it does have different retreat centers around the country. I'm here in Houston, we have one here, so there's also Catholic retreats, and I know there's other religions with their own types of retreats, but seek out different ways to unplug. So then, when you get re-put into this daily grind, or almost just daily existence, that you just smile and you know how to handle everything. So go on more retreats, find yourself, find higher power in God, discover more and deeper intimate relationships, and then you will continue to see your life become wonderful. And then you will continue to see your life become wonderful. Like we say, life is wonderful. And that will conclude this episode of the 1% in Recovery podcast.