7 Steps to Making Real Change Last
What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of the term “Mindful Recovery?”
Is it Addiction? Trauma? Depression? Or maybe something else?
Maybe it’s all of those things, but I’m going to pose this moment to be a time to look back on the last year and ask yourself, “What afflictions have I suffered this year that I am in recovery for?” Maybe this last year you let stress get the best of you? Maybe your relationship slipped this past year as you got roped into more television programs or Facebook addictions. Maybe you did slip into abuse with drugs, alcohol, sex, work, or overly accommodating people in life who abuse you.
What’s going to be different in the coming hours, days, weeks and months ahead?
Perhaps the simplest path is to make the intention an awareness of the moments you get sucked into these destructive behaviors that you want to change. In this space of awareness we draw a second intention which is to get curious about what the feeling is that you’re trying to escape from.
I think where we make our greatest error is when we make those resolutions that say, “I’m going to go the gym more, meditate more, start playing guitar or bring the romance back.” This jumps the gun. There are so many steps that occur before taking action with any of these things. There’s already a built up resistance to them and to skip over that is a recipe for failure.
What if these changes you wanted to make were couched in less immediacy? It’s helpful to actually understand what going on with the auto-pilot that lives within each one of us.
Here’s 7 steps to get underneath the hood and give yourself the change of making real change last:
A short while ago 
Sometimes you run across a story that provides a great teaching. 
Every day we walk outside our door to go to work, the post office, the grocery store or wherever, our mind is already ahead of itself. In many of the mindfulness-based classes I teach we start with Jon Kabat-Zinn’s raisin exercise where we pretend we’ve never seen this raisin before and proceed to bring all our five senses to it. Inevitably people come out saying they noticed so much more about the raisin than they ever knew. Many say they enjoyed it so much more and found it satisfying.
There’s no denying it, inherent in our human make-up is the need to judge and criticize. Some of us are more naturally talented at this than others. It’s worth getting curious about how the act of criticizing or judging others affects us. The truth is it rarely – if ever – has any lasting effects of helping us feel better. In fact, it usually has the opposite, like a slow leaking toxin in our minds and bodies. So here’s a practice for today.
In the past couple weeks I’ve been asked by a few different people in leadership positions how they can work with inherent and constant interruptions in their workday. One minute you’re engaged with an important project and the next someone calls you up or walks into your office with an urgent matter that needs attention. This constant moving back and forth interrupts focus and creates frustration that makes it difficult to concentrate. It’s a vicious cycle.
Part of the process of healing from our various mental and physical afflictions is learning how to do a 180 degree shift from self-avoidance to self-inquiry. Self-inquiry is a simple process, but at times not easy.
We’ve all heard the adage that “It is what it is,” telling us that whatever is happening is simply the reality of the current experience. But I like to add on another piece saying, “It is what it is, while it is.” 
In my life, as in many peoples’, my in-basket is never empty. A story is created in my mind that there is so much “to do” that “I don’t have time” for the less important tasks. I have clients that I see along with a number of projects that I engage with when I’m not seeing clients. This morning I found that same story about not having time invading my mind, creating tension in my shoulders and making me irritable.
Mindfulness and Psychotherapy has been gaining a mounting interest among thousands of clinicians and clients. The following is one in a series of informal conversations between 
