Turning Criticism into Progress

May 25, 2016

Being an addict has its truckload of challenges, but to feel criticized in the process of recovery can seem to be the hardest part. To be looked down upon and made fun of can push one deeper into despair.

It can be friends, family, or strangers who become our criticizers. Feeling despised and belittled, though, is not how recovery should feel.

Whether one has just barely decided to become clean or is almost through, recovery is a hard and challenging process.

Criticism can put you one step back.

But really, you should use criticism to help you move forward.

Although it is painful to hear what others have to say, sometimes there is truth in it. And that truth is a push in the right direction.

Yes, you may look sleep-deprived, and your life has become a mess. But all of that should motivate you to push forward and to pull your life together.

Let those nasty comments and criticisms motivate you to become better than you ever were.

If you are being criticized, then that someone must not at all know how you feel. They do not understand how you question your own life and your own decisions. They just see someone who failed in a way that they have never failed before. And they think that it is below them. But just those thoughts puts that person below you.

And if you can come out of criticisms and addiction and become stronger, then you have undergone a much more character-rising experience than anyone else.

Walter Anderson said it well: “Bad things do happen; how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life. I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have – life itself.”

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