The world of recovery from addictions is filled with pithy sayings like “One Day at a Time” and “Easy Does It.” I suppose this is because people who are trying to recover from an addiction (especially in the early days of withdrawal) have a very short attention span. In my own experience of early recovery, there wasn’t much information I could retain for any amount of time…except for those pithy sayings. Because of that, I became more and more open to hearing new ones that would shine a light on the path before me.

One of my favorites of those pithy sayings is “Nothing changes if nothing changes,” or its not-so-pithy cousin: “If you keep doing what you’re doing, you’ll keep getting what you’ve been getting.” This idea wasn’t introduced to me until I was well beyond a few days of back-to-back sobriety. I am certain that’s because there was no way early-recovery-Jessica could have grasped it. It takes a person with some semblance of clarity to understand the implications of this statement. I smirk just thinking about someone saying this to me when I was only a few days clean. I would’ve crinkled my brow and raised the right side of my upper lip while producing a brutish “huh?”

But, when it was presented to me, it was done with perfect timing. I had been dating and breaking up with the same guy for just over a year. Each time I broke things off with him, he would become the most wonderful guy in the world, promising to change. Predictably, each time he did that, I would take him back. As you have probably already guessed, it did not take long for him to go right back to being the same old guy I had recently broken up with! One evening, I was crying to a close friend who I had met in a recovery therapy group about his “surprising” decline once again back to bad-boyfriend, and she responded with, “Well Jessica, if nothing changes, then nothing changes.” Even with more than two years of sobriety under my belt, my first response was still “huh?” Then it sunk in. How could I expect this guy to change – for our relationship to change – if I kept right on accepting unacceptable behaviors? If I was going to continue to take him back without setting healthy boundaries or standing my ground, I was going to keep ending up with bad-boyfriend. Therein lingered my conundrum: If I broke up with him and stayed broken up with him because I knew I deserved better, I would be alone. I certainly did not want to be alone. But, I had to ask myself, was being alone any worse than being with someone who didn’t show me respect?

I cannot walk around expecting good changes to happen in my life if I am not willing to start taking actions that might be a little scary. When I first entered the world of recovery, I had to start by following the directions of those who had gone before me. I had to have faith that the things they were telling me would help me. I had to “act as if” until I actually believed. I had to show up even when I didn’t feel like it. Had I done none of those things, nothing would have changed. I would have stayed stuck in my additions. It was because I followed those simple directions, that everything changed!

Had I not heard my friend’s subtle advice the first time she said, “Well Jessica, if nothing changes then nothing changes,” I would still be with bad-boyfriend, who was disrespectful and shaming towards me. Instead, I heard her, asked for help, and moved on with my life. It took a couple more boyfriends and the kissing of a few frogs, but I was eventually led to my handsome prince (well, ok, my begrudgingly affectionate, but always respectful, husband). Because I was accepting of some tough-to-hear and harder-to-carry-out advice, everything has changed!

Today, I absolutely LOVE the experiences I have been having over the past three years of part-time learning in seminary. I would be experiencing none of them if I had not made a change in my life by taking the risk to go to that open house, show up at the admission interview, and enroll in that first class. It was because I followed God’s guidance to do those things that everything changed!

Nothing changes if nothing changes is true. However, it is also true that if you start doing what you’ve always been afraid to do, you will start experiencing your dreams coming true.