“It’s The Little Things That Can Cause Failure”

Once, many years ago one of my mentors mentioned to me “take care of the little things and all the big things will be taken care of.” This seems simple enough to say but sometimes very difficult for some of us to follow. In recovery from any addiction it seems that it is the little things that are not followed is what gets us into trouble. What is about not taking care of the little things in our recovery that leads us back down the road to relapse?

Conceptually when we take care of the little things it is usually a sign that we are also taking care of the big things that are important to our recovery. Why is it that when we stop taking care of the little things it seems shortly after that we stop taking care of the big things? And we all know what happens when we stop taking care of the big things in our recovery, we are no longer in recovery, but in relapse mode. Let’s attempt to examine why this downward spiral takes place. First question that needs to be answered is why do we stop taking care of the little things in our recovery? Do we become lazy, complacent or just don’t think we need to take care of these things because they just don’t seem important enough to warrant the effort?

My theory is that once we determine that some of the smaller responsibilities are no longer worthy of our effort, then shortly after that we have the mentality that the bigger responsibilities in our recovery are no longer worthy of our efforts also. In summary I believe what happens is once we deem the little responsibilities don’t need to be accomplished our minds soon tell us we don’t need to take care of any of our commitments in recovery, big or small. Recovery to be achieved must be taken very seriously and all the components of the recovery program, big or small, must be taken very seriously. So would you agree with one of my old mentors, “take care of the little things and the big things will be taken care of”.