Recovery Is Peace

We reframe recovery around peace and practical steps that build you up instead of tearing you down. We break down why traditional language can push people away and how “12 Steps Explained” uses clarity, help, responsibility, and self-forgiveness to create real momentum.

• addiction feels safe yet drains peace
• recovery as peace and serenity as the base
• why “powerless” and early spiritual talk can backfire
• rewriting the steps into uplifting two-word anchors
• character-building over shame and blame
• emotional intelligence as a recovery tool
• community, social proof, and transparent guidance
• health as wealth across emotional, mental, physical, financial, spiritual
• simple, repeatable practices to live your best life

Join the Facebook group, the Recovery Freedom Circle. Link is down below

Chapters

• 0:00 From Addiction To Action: The Steps
• 0:47 Community Invite: Recovery Freedom Circle
• 1:24 Why People Stall At The Start
• 2:36 Recovery As Peace, Not Just Connection
• 4:17 Rethinking Step One And Spiritual Talk
• 6:01 The 12 Steps Explained: Uplift, Not Shame
• 8:16 Credentials, Proof, And Lived Experience
• 10:09 Health As Wealth: A Whole-Life View
• 11:34 Closing: Build Serenity, Live Well

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:01

So, you want to stop gambling. You want to stop drinking. How do you do it? Where do you begin? It can be done. It's two words the steps. Welcome again to another episode of the 1% in recovery podcast, where we encourage you to laugh every day. To work hard, to work hard in recovery, work hard in relationships, work hard in your business, your job, your school. Just work. Put in the work, and you will see the results. And put much more love out there. Love unconditionally. The more love you put out there, the more love will return. Now, we encourage you to join the Facebook group, the Recovery Freedom Circle. Link is down below. That is a community where everybody gets to participate, where we list dreams, goals, the steps, success, even struggles with the steps, even things that we are struggling with, and we want some feedback. Allow people to bond with you and to help you grow so you can live your best life. So now let's jump in to this week's episode. Now we're going to be breaking down each of the 12 steps. Now, a lot of people, when they first come into a meeting, they hear about the steps. Or when they're researching how to stop gambling, how to stop drinking, they come across these words 12-step rooms. There's also therapy and treatment centers that will encourage people to also go to 12-step rooms and to what they say work the steps. Now it's also important to list what keeps people back. People get held back from starting this new life. One, and this is the most important, is because the addiction is the only thing that feels real and safe. It is self-destructive, and you are going down this path, and we will continue to go down the path, whether it's gambling, drinking, drugs, sex, that will never, never fulfill you. See, there's been some talk over the years, and people want to define what is recovery and try to encapsulate it into one word. The one that got the most traction was recovery is connection. True. True. But deep down, even recovery as connection can be broken into the thing that's staring us in the face always. When you're in addiction, the the biggest problem is you. What you are struggling with, what you haven't processed, what you allow to keep in your life, what you allow, what types of behaviors you keep doing. So what it is is some always this internal strife, this fighting, this world war within our insides and our outsides. So to me, recovery is peace, and that is what the steps are designed to do, to bring peace to your life. I always say life is wonderful, is about getting people to live their best life. Now, the only way you can live your best life is you have a certain amount of serenity, and that's the reason why we state and say the serenity prayer in all 12-step rooms. Also, which is so important, is between serenity and peace, that is what will allow us to grow. We have to feel safe, we have to have a certain amount of peace, we have to know that whatever we're gonna talk about, because what we're gonna talk about is all this emotional stuff that is scary, that is frightening, that is terrifying. We don't know how to begin. So the steps allow us, and it's not the just the original 12 steps or the the six steps that Bill W got from the Oxford group. The thing is, is when you start talking about the addiction, and you focus only the way they did about alcoholism, and they talk about words that never inspire anybody. You have to admit you we have to admit we're powerless, you have to admit you're powerless. Very few people are gonna get it, and they're not, they're always gonna rebel, and you even the the let's say 10 to 15 percent that fully do all 12 steps, and that's millions of people, but there are so many millions and millions more that don't finish because the way the words are situated, and the other thing is no one wants to surrender, no one wants to turn their will over to a God, or to turn their life over to Jesus Christ, or to give themselves to Allah. No one is going, people are gonna struggle. You cannot talk about spirituality and God and higher power early on when people are so upside down in their life. The only part of step one that makes sense is allows people to say, Hey, your life's unmanageable right now, and that is the one thing that people can truly get. But that's why I rewrote the 12 steps into the 12 steps explained, and it's also why I've been very transparent in putting it and placing it on my website all over social media, because you have to allow a person to judge me, judge what I have learned over 25 years. See, the steps are like the Bible or any other religious book, the Torah, the uh the Quran. You have to study it, and I've been studying the steps for 25 years. That's why I say I am a step scholar, no different than a biblical scholar that really focuses in on the gospels or on the overall Bible or focuses on the psalms. You have to not only read it, you not only have to live it, you have to keep reading it, living it, and evolving so then you truly understand. I have broken down the steps into one or two words, such as clarity or help, responsibility, self-forgiveness. These are the way certain steps should be explained. Just one word, two-word answers. They also should be explained in a way that really will uplift you. The steps are about uplifting and building you up. No different when they talk about the Bible, how a person needs to be almost like torn down in three days to be rebuilt back up in three days. There's also a lot of the stuff where the steps, the original steps are about, and why people struggle with were about tearing a person down, about admitting you're powerless, about writing an inventory, about listing character defects, about making a list of people that you need to make amends to. And you see that that is not uplifting. What really needs to be is what all addiction's about. You're immature, you're fighting, you're not living life on life's terms, you're being the king baby, you're throwing tantrums, it's always in blaming others. These are what the life of an addict, and then there's always a story of what needs to be done. So, what I'm trying to do is help people truly understand. We're going to break down all these steps. And so, this to me, the steps, yes, the steps are about truth, the truth are about self-awareness, and we will help you stop gambling, stop drinking, but in the right way, because what I do is I help someone build up their own character. What I also do is I address all the emotional trauma baggage so you can actually have emotional intelligence. And ultimately, you can do this and lay it all out. That's why I'm again I say this. I'm very transparent. I can have over 200 episodes on my podcast. I have thousands of either videos, shorts, reels on social media. There has to be social proof, and there has to be a lot that has to be given for free before you trust what I am saying. And I will challenge anyone about the steps, whether you want to question me, debate me, because I do know what I'm talking about, and this is through lived experience, and I just keep living life. I came into the 12 steps when I was 30 years old. I still gambled till I would, that's when I stopped drinking. Came also into other 12-step rooms when I was 33. Also a believer in therapy, 58 years old. But a lot of this has to be explained in a way that makes sense. So understand that overall recovery is peace. We are going to seek out serenity. The 12 steps explained will build you back up. And you get to live your best life. You get to have the people that you want in your life and have relationships that are fulfilling. That's what makes my life so enjoyable because health is wealth. And health means emotional health, mental health, physical health, financial health, spiritual health, all the health that some of it money can't buy, some of it money can buy. You have to know when to do and invest time and when to invest money. So that way you can live your best life. And with that, we're going to conclude this episode of the 1% in recovery podcast.