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One of the biggest hurdles for me in sobriety is getting comfortable and putting myself on cruise control. I’ll often catch myself thinking, “I should start to eat better” or “I should go through the steps again,” and then the thought goes away. Then it comes back the next day, and I’ll shoo it away again, and I won’t do whatever had been on my mind.

That’s why it hit me yesterday at the gym when I read a sign on the bulletin board that said, “You are what you repeatedly do.” I freaking love that phrase, because I find it to be true. I also find it to be one of my biggest whiffs in life, and I suspect that most people would agree that they’re guilty of that, too.

I remember early on in sobriety I turned to caffeine—heavy, heavy doses of caffeine. I’d drink a 2-liter of soda in the morning on my hour-and-a-half drive to work. It would get me hyped for the day but come on, 64 ounces of soda before 10 am? Oof. I remember being bloated and too wired most days, but I kept doing it anyway. I remember thinking to myself, “God, soda isn’t great for you, and this amount of soda must be horrible for your body. I should stop.” I also remember somebody commenting to me that I drink a ton of soda, and I immediately said, “Nah, it probably seems that way. But I really try to avoid it.”

That was a total lie, or at least me saying out loud a wish I had. I remember being embarrassed that I had a reputation as a Diet Coke guzzler, and yet I didn’t change my behavior for a long time (I no longer drink soda, for the record, but it took 10 years). I was what I repeatedly did—I was a soda guzzler.

Right now, I go to the gym about 6 days a week, sometimes 7, and I work hard at my job, I pay my bills and I get to about 4-5 12-step meetings per week. So I am all of those things because I repeatedly do them. But I also eat about 800 calories of cookies and crap after 8 pm every night, so I am that, too. I don’t want to be that guy. I try to rationalize and say I am just about to stop eating all of that stuff… then I keep doing it. So I am what I repeatedly do every night, which is hammer the snack cabinet. Until I actually repeatedly don’t crush the chips and cookies, I am a guy who overdoes it every night. I wish I wasn’t. I vow to someday change my behavior. But I’m not guy that yet, because I repeatedly do it.

So with that in mind, my suggestion to anybody hoping for a change is to stop hoping, and start acting.

This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:

The patient was lying in bed, still groggy from the effects of the recent operation. His doctor came in, looking very glum.

“I can’t be sure what’s wrong with you,” the doctor said. “I think it’s the drinking.”

“All right,” said the patient. “Can we get an opinion from a doctor who’s sober?”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, March 2000, Matt W.)

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