Many of us know about visualization. If we played sports in high school or college, the coach gave us several talks that were laced with visualization.
"Picture yourself catching the ball and running all the way down the field and making a touchdown."
"See yourself leaping up and sinking the ball in the basket."
If he was a good coach he used this technique because he realized that picturing ourselves doing something helps us succeed.
A good coach or teacher uses many of these techniques to motivate their students.
In fact, there's a famous study where one group of basketball players practiced layups as part of their daily workout. At the same time, another group of players from the same school sat on a bench at the side of the gym. Their instructions were to visualize themselves doing layup practice while the other group of players was doing actual layups. At the end of the experiment, the group that sat on the bench did just as good as the group that did the actual practice.
And the reason I bring this up today is that the same type of visualization works for those of us in recovery. Most of us come into recovery with a lot of enthusiasm. And those of us who do have a better chance of succeeding than those who are wishy-washy about our recovery.
And the reason for this is that those of us who are enthusiastic about our recovery create scenarios in our mind where we are staying sober on the job, during our leisure activities, and so on. At the same time, those of us who are negative and questioning whether or not we can avoid alcohol or drugs often prove to ourselves that we can't stay clean and sober.
If we have negative ideas about our chances of staying alcohol and drug-free we'll probably live up to those ideas. When we're in recovery programs we often hear the phrase, "stick with the winners." And of course, the reason for that is that the winners create examples and scenarios for us where we can see ourselves being just like them – staying clean and sober no matter what.
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