Just For The Day
Just For The Day
#4 - August 15, 2025 - Healing Over Time (Patience)
Recovery is a gradual process that unfolds over time, not an overnight transformation that happens instantly. We explore why it's unrealistic to expect years of destructive habits to dissolve quickly and how comparing your progress to others can harm your journey.
• Recovery takes commitment to a lifelong journey of healing and growth
• Addiction symptoms are often band-aids covering deeper underlying issues
• Small, manageable steps create sustainable progress in recovery
• Focus on "the next meeting" or "the next right thing" when overwhelmed
• Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to someone else today
• Reframe struggles as evidence of growth to transform your experience
• Progress happens through consistency and patience, not perfection
Keep plugging along and be patient with yourself—as long as you're moving forward, it doesn't matter how fast you're going.
Question: How do you focus on your long term progress instead of your short term mistakes?
Jay and Diane's Just For The Day podcast is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Just for Today, any 12-Step program, or any other recovery-based product or organization. They should not replace your regular group or sponsor meetings.
The views expressed are solely those of the hosts and guests. Take what you like and leave the rest.
Welcome back to another episode of Just for the Day. I'm Jay and I'm an addict.
Speaker 2:I'm Diane and I'm codependent.
Speaker 1:And we want to welcome you to another day of our daily meditation reader. It's August 15th, that's right, august 15th. The title is Overtime, not Overnight, and the quote at the top is we found that we do not recover physically, mentally or spiritually overnight.
Speaker 2:Have you ever approached a recovery celebration with the feeling that you should be further along in your recovery than you are? Maybe you've listened to newcomers sharing in meetings, members with much less clean time and thought, but I'm just barely beginning to understand what they're talking about.
Speaker 1:It's odd that we should come into recovery thinking that we will feel wonderful right away or no longer have any difficulty handling life's twists and turns. We expect our physical problems to correct themselves, our thinking to become rational and a fully developed spiritual life to manifest itself overnight. We forget that we spent years abusing our bodies, numbing our minds and suppressing our awareness of a higher power. We cannot undo the damage in a day. We can, however, apply the next step, go to the next meeting, help the next newcomer. We heal and recover bit by bit, not overnight, but over time.
Speaker 2:Just for today, my body will heal a little, my mind will become a little clearer and my relationship with my higher power will strengthen. This is so true, right? How many times have we talked about the fact that it took 30 plus 40 years for us to develop all these bad habits? And then we go to meetings and we think they should clear up within the first six months. And that's just not how it works.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, I think this is both a great thing and a difficult thing. So one of the key things that an addict realizes is that they came to the program to fix a symptom and they wanted relief and in reality, recovery is a journey that is always changing, always evolving, and you're learning. It's a lifelong thing and so there's a mind shift that has to happen and right around the time that that mind shift happens, I think significant clean time, because there's like a surrender. That's part of the surrender that it's going to take time and I have to commit to a long time. It's not just going to fix me right Because there isn't something to fix. That's the point. There isn't something to just solve and then you're going to be good and that's been my experience. I've come in and out of the program. You know I went for a number of years where I got clean time and then thought I was good and then left the program and relapse, right, how many times has that happened?
Speaker 1:Uh and uh. So I I think that's so. There's that aspect of it where you know there's this um, in the surrender, you get the realization that, okay, I'm, but you also get this other piece where it's like I'm okay not to be okay it's okay to struggle, because that's part of the process, right?
Speaker 1:now it doesn't mean you can't get a better life, and I have a belief there's. No, I have no data to support this. It's just a gut feeling based on my own personal experience, but I believe that you need to. It takes about a third of the time dedicated effort. It takes a third of the time it took dedicated effort to break a habit that you took building it. So if I like, for example and I've noticed and I'm saying that because, like I have multiple addictions, you know pornography. I've been a pornography addict since I was.
Speaker 2:A teenager.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm just thinking of the age 15.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:So a long time, two decades, easily over two decades, right, and I've been fighting it for probably 10 years, maybe seven, and I'm just getting ahold of it.
Speaker 2:Is that making sense? Yeah Well, and actually there are studies that show that it takes generally a third of the time to break a habit. Yeah, there's studies that talk about how many weeks it takes to create a habit versus how many it takes to break a habit.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's much easier to break it Versus alcohol, which is I didn't have a drink for 10 years right.
Speaker 1:And I drank for three months. Basically I had never had it, I had not drank, and then I started drinking, drank for three months into the ground and then haven't drank for 10 years and it's been easy largely hard, but easy right, whereas with other drugs, like prescription pills, it's taken a lot longer right and pornography has been a lot longer. So there's this. You know it kind of sucks, but and yet there's. There's. That's part of what you need to realize is that it's going to take time and it's okay to take time, you know, go ahead.
Speaker 2:I think that you brought up a good point. You were talking about the symptom right that people come in because of symptoms, because of the way that the symptoms are affecting their lives, and it's the symptoms that we discover and that we identify as the thing that's making our life unmanageable right. It's often the symptoms that we hear complaints about from other people, and yet the symptoms are just that.
Speaker 2:They're symptoms of a deeper issue and you can totally band-aid solutions for symptoms all the time, right, you know, the geographical cure is a band-aid solution to handle some symptoms. Don't go to the same people and places where your addiction took place. Avoid those areas. That is a band-aid solution for a symptom, right, and you can implement those kinds of things and you can see some results. And yet those even those, I think don't happen overnight. They still take some time and some dedication. But if you want to actually resolve the underlying issue whether that underlying issue is a self issue, a self worth issue, a trauma issue that you're running from right, whatever the underlying issue is that is causing you to want to numb your body, your mind, that's causing you to want to escape, that's causing you to feel like you're worthless and that this is the best you can do. Whatever it is, it takes longer to analyze that, to understand that and then to be able to change that.
Speaker 1:That's right. And it's harder not just because you know it is. It takes work. It's harder because it's hidden, like it's not readily observable. You have to see the behavior over a life cycle of times in many different circumstances to kind of get the themes.
Speaker 2:And it takes a lot of work, and not just work in the present, but also work going through your past and all the things that you don't want to relive and you don't want to have to go back to in order to really dig through it. You have to go back to it. You have to sit in your shit, yeah, and experience it again, to let those to reframe those thoughts and those experiences in your mind, to let that energy go to you know, redefine how, what you take out of that experience.
Speaker 1:That's right, which is why it's so important to get comfortable and even push to be comfortable with the uncomfortable, and I would probably push it a little further. The best thing you can do is start to enjoy the struggle, start to look forward to the difficult times. That's when it really changes.
Speaker 2:But how do you do that?
Speaker 1:No, it starts by reframing. It starts by in the moment when it sucks and you're it like, cause it doesn't just turn around overnight, right? Um, it just happened recently with a different thing. You know, I've started lifting weights you know, and. I'm not doing that as frequently as I should, but it was it hurt in the beginning. And I remember listening to a podcast and they were saying it hurts, Good, Do it. Oh, you don't want to lift that weight? Oh good.
Speaker 2:Get at it.
Speaker 1:And I was listening to that and thinking about. You know, it seems to me the people who are successful in building muscle mass and getting healthy reframe they work to reframe how they appraise that activity. If every time you got down to do 10 pushups, you said I hate this, I hate this, this is the worst. You're not. You're going to stop.
Speaker 1:But, if you were. And I did that and, sure enough, I started to notice the way I felt and then I started to like the way I felt at the pain at the end was evidence of the progress.
Speaker 2:And you love going down and knocking off 50 pushups now.
Speaker 1:Right, right Before. It was a huge pain, right, but there's something, if you just need to work, to refrain to and that's how it starts, right. So the next time you're craving an addiction for you it'd be food or something like that, right and you're struggling right rather than watch what and this is what you should get really good at watching yourself. What do you tell yourself in those moments? That's the key watch what you say to yourself Do you complain?
Speaker 1:Do you bemoan how hard it is and how badly you want that thing? Well, all that's doing is reinforcing the desire which is setting up the expectation you're going to give in at some point, right? Instead, focus on the effort, the struggle, and say look at how good I'm trying. I resisted, which is why, with our family that has struggled with similar addictions, right. My focus with them is not on anything other than hey look, how good you did.
Speaker 2:Look how long you made it between this and this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, look at the effort you're giving. I see you trying so hard. Way to go. And it's been interesting to see the transformation, that being the, that being the reframe. Anyway, that answers your question.
Speaker 2:But then the other thing to go along with that is that it's harder to implement a habit that has a lot of steps to it.
Speaker 1:Or that takes a long time. Simplicity the power of simple.
Speaker 2:Right. And so if I wanted to start a new exercise regime but I was overwhelmed at the thought of doing an hour-long exercise, maybe what I say is I'm going to do 10 sit-ups and 10 push-ups, or 10 sit-ups long exercise. Maybe what I say is I'm going to do 10 sit ups and 10 push ups or 10 sit ups, and, if I can get you know, 21 days in a row I think it's three weeks is generally the standard for setting up a new habit 21 days in a row of doing 10 push ups, then maybe next time I add 10 sit ups to it, whatever you know. Like I kind of switch back and forth with those, but you, you establish a habit and then you kind of add something onto that habit because the first habit's already established and you can kind of generalize and increase it's beautiful.
Speaker 2:And I think that the same is true when we're looking at recovery and we're looking at okay, well, what can we do? How can we do this? It's a matter of deciding okay, what small step can I take? And that's why I like that they end here with the ideas of I can make it to the next step, the next meeting, the next newcomer. Right, it's not trying to eat the whole elephant, but biting off just what you can chew, right? Do you have any thoughts on that? Because I have another topic in here that I want to switch to.
Speaker 1:When we're no, it just makes me want to talk about some of the slogans what just for today and one day at a time, those types of things, because that's what you just described was a really great. Um, you know description of like if it's too much to get to tomorrow, then just get to the next hour. If it's too much to get to the next hour, get to the next 10 seconds. And you just keep shrinking the goalpost until you can tolerate the movement. That's right.
Speaker 2:And that's something Go ahead In the words of Anna from Frozen just do the next right thing, okay. So the other thing I find interesting is at the end of this first paragraph. It talked about when you see newcomers and and they have less clean time, and you're like, but I'm just starting to understand what they're talking about and I find it interesting that they brought this into this reading. That is talking about our progress, right, and how long it's going to take us in our progress, and it brings in this concept of comparison. Comparison is always a dangerous thing.
Speaker 1:Always.
Speaker 2:And so to look at someone else in your group and say I'm progressing more than they are, or how are they doing this so fast?
Speaker 1:That's never going to help your recovery, never and in any other area of your life, right, professionally, family, whatever financially.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:There's always going to be somebody better than you that you can choose arbitrarily to compare yourself to. You could just as easily select someone else that's worse to arbitrarily. It's that easy to change that perspective that's how simple it is.
Speaker 2:A lot of the bully mentality is focusing on people who are less than right. You put yourself up above them and that's how you become. A bully is like my self-esteem depends on other people feeling worse than me.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to bring people down.
Speaker 2:So I'm going to bring people down. It's not a healthy approach at all. No, a healthier approach is comparing me today to how I was yesterday.
Speaker 1:That's Jordan Peterson's rule, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:In 12 Rules for Life. Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.
Speaker 2:That's right, and so we're all running our own race. We're not racing against each other. It's us looking at ourselves and saying am I doing better than I was? And if I'm not, what can I do? What little steps can I implement to do better? And if I am doing better than I was, pat yourself on the back, say that's great and then keep doing better.
Speaker 1:I think there's actually a tremendous amount of mental anguish and issues that people have that come down to this simple thing, the point of reference that they are arbitrarily and I'm using that word intentionally, arbitrarily choosing to self-select out of the world. They're choosing a version of themselves that is either farther back in the past or way too far in the future. The only person you should be comparing yourself to is who you were yesterday, not two days ago, not a month ago, not a year ago. You should be comparing yourself today to yourself yesterday, and that's it. That's the only scope for progress, because if you look too far back, you're going to get disappointed on how far you haven't come.
Speaker 1:progress, because if you look too far back, you're gonna get disappointed on how far you haven't come, and if you look too far in the future you're gonna get disappointed on how far you have to go and where you're not.
Speaker 2:I think it depends on your perspective, because I know there's a um an interview I saw with matthew mcconaughey or he. He did a talk, a speech at one of the ceremonies and he said he was asked who his idol was and he said it's me in 10 years. And then he uses that to motivate himself to be his idol in 10 years, right yeah and so I can see it being motivating if you have the right perspective of it and you're willing to work to become that glad you brought that up, but I do like that, that when you're comparing yourself.
Speaker 2:If there's a comparison happening, then it should be who you are today, who you were yesterday, who you want to be tomorrow. Like, don't go further than that, because it's more you can wrap your head around it more.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm not going to judge Matthew McConaughey. He's amazing.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And I imagine if we talked to him we'd understand some nuances to what he means by that I've heard him say it differently in in that who is his god? His god is him in 10 years his higher power.
Speaker 1:Um, what I find, and that I think the average person, what the average person experiences, is that there's nothing wrong with having a 10-year version of yourself on the horizon, but you shouldn't be comparing yourself to them, and that's the difference, right? And it reminds me of you. Know, I like to think of analogies and I think of life as being on a ship. You know, we're all. There are many destinations traveling across the vast expanse, right? And what do we use to get our bearing in the middle of the ocean where we can't see land?
Speaker 1:Stars we use the stars, but the stars aren't always available. If I'm staring at the sky and the stars all day long and I'm comparing myself to them all day long, I'm not attending to the sails, I'm not attending to the ship, I'm not taking care of what I need to do to write it right. But if I never look up to the sky and I never pick a star and go back to it and check in in the evening when it's available, then I'm never gonna. I not going to be able to chart an effective course to where I'm going to go and I'm going to be wandering right.
Speaker 1:So, it's a matter of how much you. It's not like there is a comparison there, but it has a very specific purpose. It's to get your bearing and then you leave it alone.
Speaker 2:Is that making sense?
Speaker 1:Versus. I don't think there's anything wrong with comparing yourself to who you were yesterday because, yesterday is within my control. Yesterday is the lots of data. There's richness there where I can say, okay, I could do a little bit better, right, but anything else, anything else makes it really hard. Anyway, we can debate the theory behind that, but I think it's fundamentally different on how you frame those things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so definitely it is.
Speaker 1:And I guess that's my point is is find most people get if they're feeling hopeless and debilitated. They're typically comparing themselves way too often and way too frequently and to too great an extent to something way too out in the future. Yeah, they're not deploying it properly, if that makes sense. And they're ignoring because they're spending so much energy on that. They're ignoring all the rich data they have of their behavior yesterday.
Speaker 2:That would help them, enable to make better decisions anyway. Yeah, this is good information. Guys, jay has this skill of being able to analyze information, especially feedback that people give him, and implement it. Be able to take it and analyze it and say, yeah, you're right, this is what I need to do to correct that. So anytime he gives you some suggestions on how to improve your behavior, you should listen to him. He's really good at this.
Speaker 1:I'm just saying from my personal experience. I appreciate the kind call out. Okay, yeah, great Over time, not overnight. Did you have anything else that you wanted to share about that reading?
Speaker 2:No, I just just be patient with yourself, be gentle with yourself. The program, as long as you're moving forward, doesn't matter how fast you're moving forward, just keep plugging along.
Speaker 1:Love it. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 2:We'll talk with you tomorrow.
