Matt: Hey guys. This is Matt with Project Unbroken. Hit that subscribe button and please share this video with anybody that you think might need some advice or direction when trying to find recovery from addiction. Today I want to talk about the number one tool that helped me shift my mindset into a positive direction when I was trying to find recovery.
So towards the end of my addiction, it became very clear that heroin was the culprit for this vicious cycle of court dates, wrecked cars, damaged relationships, prison, house arrest. My life was completely unmanageable. I knew that heroin was the number one issue, and I knew there were paths or avenues for me to get off of heroin and I would take those paths, but I would constantly find myself self-sabotaging my own success.
Something I was really, really lucky to find early on in this process that I still credit my sobriety to today is guided meditation. So I want to back up a little bit and explain kind of what went on with me when I was in the depths of my addiction. Essentially I was behaving in a way that was completely against my moral code. I was lying to people that I loved. I was stealing from anybody that I could steal from to further my addiction. I was not proud of myself at all, and I really began to have a very high level of disrespect for myself. And it wasn’t obvious to me at the time that I felt this way, but I started to notice that I had a lot of negative self talk. That I started to tell myself that I couldn’t get clean. I saw myself sabotaging my own success, and I tried to find help on this.
And something that came up was guided meditation. And what guided meditation allowed me to do was to slowly start to shift my subconscious in a way that I didn’t view myself as somebody with such poor morals or ethics. When I was looking at myself with that level of disrespect, I behaved in a way that kind of aligns with that disrespect. I didn’t treat myself well. I didn’t expect me to do positive things or to be able to do anything that I could be proud of.
Guided meditation allowed me to start to shift the way that I viewed myself back into a positive light. And when I started to view myself with some level of respect, I was able to make decisions that were putting me in a better place or allowing me to continue on a path to recovery. So to kind of bring this to light a little bit for anybody out there who’s like, “What the hell are you talking about?” I didn’t expect that this would work either, but I was in a place where I was absolutely desperate, and I needed help and I didn’t know where to find it.
And I found this program, and I’m going to put the link to that program in this video. It’s free, and it’s what I credit all my success to today. And what it did was, well, I had to listen to this video or listen to this audio every morning and every night when I woke up, before I went to bed. And this program would start to have me look at myself and where I wanted to be in life. So very detailed description. It would- I have to picture myself, you know, how do I look physically? Who am I with? What am I driving? Where am I living? How do I feel? Just a very detailed description of where I wanted my life to be. And I just did this day after day, night after night. And I think the video said in the instructions to do it for 30 days. I think I did it every morning and night for probably six months. And I still use this same program today. I still credit my success, my continued success, partly to this guided meditation.
But what that did was it allowed me to start to make decisions in a way that would improve my life. So when I was in my addiction, when I was, you know, had a really high level of disrespect for myself and the way that I was behaving, the decisions that I made just reinforced that poor self image. When I started to kind of change my image in my self conscious through this guided meditation, I started making decisions based on the person that I saw that I wanted to be. And it was slow, but it was constant progress.
And it was funny because I didn’t really even see that it worked until probably about five years later, when I was actually talking to my dad about mindfulness practices and things like that, and I brought up this guided meditation. And I kind of started thinking a little bit more about it, and I was literally the person- I looked like the person that I pictured in my guided meditation. I was driving what I thought I would be driving. I was just everything came to fruition. And it didn’t all just pop up out of nowhere and appear in my life, but I was making decisions that kind of brought me towards that image. And I still use this today and now, you know, I’d move the marker place even further to a higher level of success, which I know that I if I keep making the right decisions day by day, it’s just a matter of time and I’m going to get there.
So if you’re having a tough time struggling with self sabotage, which I think is a huge part of finding recovery or not finding recovery or relapsing or whatever. You might want to try this out. It sounds maybe a little crazy to a lot of people out there, and, again, I understand that. I kind of looked at it the same way when I got started on this path, but now I look back and I can’t credit anything more to my success than that guided meditation.
So, again, I’m going to post the link below to that meditation. I hope it helps somebody out there. I know that it was a tremendous help to me in my recovery and again in my continued success. And see how it goes, guys. It’s worth a shot. When you’re trying to find recovery, find success with breaking your addiction, why not? Try something, right? So thank you for watching. Again, hit the subscribe button. Leave me a comment. You know, maybe you guys have something that you use, some sort of mindfulness practice that brought you success. I’d love to hear more about it. You could also hit us up on the contact section at our website ProjectUnbroken.com. And I look forward to talking to you guys soon. Have a great day. See you.
NOTE: The program Matt was talking about is no longer free, it’s $2.99 – we make nothing from this program, it’s just a recommendation of what helped Matt.
Link to program Matt was talking about: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/visualize-success-with-andrew-johnson/id314525743?mt=8
