The concept of recovery entered my life by complete chance. It was only 5 years ago that I first became aware of this recovery as we refer to it as in regards to mental illness. I had zero idea that I could ever be anything more than the absolute waste of a person that I felt I was.
I had no idea what recovery was yet I took a huge step and attempted to get my first therapist in 15 years. I took this step to get a therapist because I knew that I had very limited options in my life and they were, simply, to live or to die.
Without any doubt, I wanted to live. I wanted to live and thrive and achieve and celebrate and laugh and love and be successful and be proud. I had to choose, life or death, so I picked up the phone and called random phone numbers for therapists in the phonebook.
This was the first day of the rest of my life and it was 100% my choice.
Many of us might have forgotten or simply not know that we can be the ultimate decision makers in how we live our lives and manage our recovery.
Ultimately it is up to each and every one of us, the individual, to make the changes in ourselves and how we live our lives.
Making these changes allows us to feel better and live better.
Whether you love him or hate him, former President George W. Bush took the words right out of my mouth when he said “I’m the decider” during a press conference. He was talking about being the one in control.
I think being in control of our lives and how we interact during our day to day existence is incredibly important to achieving our mental wellness and happiness.
When George W. Bush talks about being the “decider”, or whenever I hear any person talking about what it is we need to live the quality lives we desire I can find empowerment in my control.
What does it mean to choose recovery?
To choose is such a basic act.
We choose one banana over another banana. We choose one seat on a bus over a different seat. We choose to wear a green shirt instead of a red shirt. We choose to live. We choose to recover.
How does one choose to recover and what does it mean to choose to recover? Well, in my experience, if I hadn’t chosen to seek help with managing my out of control life, then I would not be here today, alive. I simply would be dead, or homeless and sick or in jail and sick.
I know that I made the right choice and I want to help others, my people, all of you, in choosing that you too, can decide, to improve the quality of your life. We can choose to be in recovery and we can choose to be well.
After I had been seeing my new therapist for several months I knew that I wanted something more in my life. I knew that I wanted a job! I also knew that throughout my life I had a lot of difficulty in keeping a job. It was solely up to me to make changes in my life so I chose to contact the Massachusetts Rehabilitation Commission.
I went to their orientation meeting and after waiting several months I was assigned a counselor. This counselor told me that before he would request funding for me to receive vocational services that I had to prove that I could work and keep a job. He wanted me to go to a volunteer work center almost a one hour commute, by the T, from my apartment starting at 8:00 am five days a week.
I told him no thanks and that I will go get a job and come back after I have worked for several months and then request funding.
So I got a job selling pretzels at a pushcart for six months at Downtown Crossing. I went back to my worker and I told him that I wanted training and that I wanted to work.
He offered me vocational training for working in a cafeteria or doing filing in an office. I told him that I was a smart guy and that I can do more than that. He replied by saying that they were a state agency and only had so much to offer.
He then asked me what I wanted to do. Without a seconds hesitation, and being completely ignorant about the weight and importance of what I was about to say, I told the worker that it would be great to be able to work with people like myself and help other people live better lives.
The worker then left the office we were meeting in and went to several different offices and after several minutes he brought back an informational sheet dated 1997 from something called the Consumer Provider Program.
When I got home I looked them on the internet and there was a number, so I called and a woman answered. “Hello Consumer Provider Program”.
And I responded, “are you serious?”
She asked me what I meant and I said and I quote “do you really take people with mental illness and train them to be counselors?
She said “yes” and I responded by saying “That’s crazy they don’t do that!”. As it turns out they do and quite ironically, I am now one of they.
I was sent information about the program and miraculously it arrived the next day and that following day was their open house.
Well, guess who chose to get himself up, showered and out the door by 8:00 am for the first time in who knows how long?
I chose that I wanted to be well. It was my decision. I made the choice to face life and to face the difficulty of getting well after a life of dysfunction and sickness.
I made it to the open house, on time and I listened to what was being said and I looked around and I knew that I was not going to squander this opportunity.
I applied, I interviewed and I was accepted. The moment that I found out that I was accepted, my tears flowed freely and it was beautiful. This day was the first day of the rest of my life. I now truly had begun the rise of Mister Craig Lewis and it was all due to my choices.
Any step of the way I could have rolled over and given up however I was tired of giving up and I needed to find a way to improve my quality of life.
How easy would it have been for me to have given up?
How many times had I given up in my life up until now?
I had to take a stand and decide that I had no more time to screw around and I had to choose to move forward and find better ways to be.
When we have a choice, we have an option.
Some choices are better than others.
Some choices will put you on a more difficult road.
Some choices can feel more like a leap of faith than an educated decision or a positive risk and that’s life.
When it comes to my mental illness, I’ve figured out, that I make the choices of how things are going to be. I choose how I am going to respond to a difficult situation. Having a mental illness does not give me a green light to do and say things that are going to cause myself and others problems.
The reality is is that I make the decisions in these situations. If I am angry, then I need to step back and take some deep breaths, have some water and go for a walk. Why you may ask? Because I am building and protecting my future. If I can manage my anger and not get myself into too many complicated and unfortunate interpersonal situations then my life in the long run is going to be much, much better. There will be less stress and less pain in my day to day and I think most people really would benefit from a little less stress and pain on a daily basis.
Recovery is about choice for me. My medication helps however I must be the decider on whether or not I am going to be happy and successful and well. I decide and only I decide.
If I want to lose weight then I decide to implement the changes in my eating and my exercise to achieve my goal.
I am facing a great challenge and maybe some of you can relate.
I am quite often late. It happens all the time and people really do not appreciate it including myself.
Here is a situation where as of yet I have not been able to make that adjustment in how I do things and find ways to not be late.
Being late so often definitely does not help me at school, work, socially, in relationships, in my volunteer responsibilities and in so many other vital parts of my life.
How am I going to fix this problem; I’m not entirely sure. However, what I do know is that it is all about choice.
I can choose to prepare myself better so that I leave for my destination earlier. I can choose to not stop for coffee when I know I don’t have enough time. I can choose to not waste precious moments screwing around on my computer. I can choose to adjust my priorities and I can make better choices.
This is not a matter of if I can make better choices, it is solely a matter of choice.
Will I find ways to make things better or will I continue to prevent myself from meeting my potential? At the end of the day, I am the person who suffers the most when I allow myself to drag myself down. It is up to me.
Choice plays the biggest role in my recovery. If I want to be well, I better get enough sleep. If I want to lose weight I better prepare healthy meals instead of going out for pizza. If I want to be on time then I need to prepare myself better in advance and make sure that I give myself enough time to reasonably get to my destination.
The point of all of this is that we can control more of how we feel in our day to day lives that we might think. We all have to make choices everyday day in day out. Making positive choices is required hard work in order to positively impact our lives.
If there is one thing that I know, I know that the impact upon my life of choosing recovery, choosing to improve the quality of my life and choosing to experience daily wellness, has left me a happier, more content and infinitely healthier person.
I know that I have a lot of potential, as does every person in this room. I want to not only reach my potential, I instead want to go further than I could ever dream.
If someone told me five years ago that today I would be a healthy, successful and generally happy person, I would tell that person that was an absurd and completely foolish thought.
Well, as it turns out, I am healthy, I am successful and I am generally happy so two points for me!
I love life, I try my best at everything I do and I try to make the best choices possible in order to be healthy, successful and generally happy.
Victory is mine.
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