|
The
maximized thinking technique is easy to understand. Simply ask yourself
each day, "Is this the most I can put into my recovery today?"
If the answer is more "yes" than "no", you will find
yourself progressing with your recovery. Maximized thinking plays a big
part in early recovery, especially during the first year of recovery.
Those who consistently do a morning checklist*, will make tremendous gains
with maximized thinking added to their personal, spiritual, sexual and
financial life-style. I have seen many sex addicts who have chosen
maximized thinking double their income in their first year of recovery and
experience a much better social, spiritual and sexual life-style. In their
words, "I've earned more than I even thought possible."
The alternative to maximized thinking are shades of minimized
thinking which is asking yourself "How little can I do in
order to show others that I am trying," even though you are still
struggling with acting out, fantasy or broken boundaries.
This type of minimized thinking is done more on a
subconscious level and is measured by deficient recovery behaviors
(subsurface anger, withdrawal, forgetfulness, unaccounted for time, etc).
One way I determine the sex addict's level of seriousness in early
recovery, is by his recovery behaviors. Intention, no matter how good,
misleads you to think that you are in recovery when you actually are not.
The checklist* is a good way to determine if you are applying maximized
thinking to your recovery approach,
Maximized thinking may be the hardest task of your life.
But it will help you when recovering from sexual addiction. If you
are still reading up to this point, that is a good sign, but keep on
going! Your life in recovery can be 10 to 100 times better than any day
living actively in a sex addiction life-style. Trust me when I say,
"you are worth your recovery!" But, nobody deserves recovery
without effort, and nobody that I know gets recovery without hard work.
So, maximize the early part of your recovery, and you will have the rest
of your life to thank yourself for the time you put in to it.
*Early
morning or daily checklist:
1.
Bible reading
2.
Prayer
3.
Make calls from telephone list
4.
Journaling feelings
5.
Reading uplifting material about recovery
|