“Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day-in and day-out.” – Robert Collier
In 2021, 5.1 million Californians had a substance use disorder, and 70% of them were employed. People in California achieve their goals daily through treatment and recovery. At Pacific Sands, we want you to know that you can find healing, too. This guide outlines how to achieve your educational and career goals while in recovery.
The Importance of Recovery to Achieving Your Goals
In a recent study, researchers found there was a positive correlation between people who had educational and vocational achievement and the number of days someone has been without substances following recovery. This study confirmed previous research that was done in 2014 and 2004 that there is a connection between recovering from substance use disorders and achieving your goals. But why is there a connection?
Substance use disorders can come with many complications that make it challenging to achieve the goals you have for yourself in all aspects of your life, from your relationships to your career and education. Substances can make focusing on your work, relationships, and mental and physical health complicated. When someone has a substance use disorder, they are focused only on the substances instead of their responsibilities and performance.
Even if they want to spend their time focused on something else, the substances will pull them back in with cravings and very uncomfortable withdrawal symptoms. It can make them feel trapped and isolated, which places roadblocks on their path to accomplishing their goals.
That said, recovery can remove those roadblocks and make accomplishing one’s goals more accessible and manageable. While in recovery, people experience improved confidence, motivation, and mood, allowing them to make better decisions and work toward their life aspirations. They can also form positive relationships and have new-found time to focus on their career or education.
Substance Use Disorder Treatment: 3 Ways It Is A Key to Successful Life Transformation
Drug rehab is the key for many people to experience the successful life transformation of recovery. Attending treatment can provide people with tools and social support that can be translated into their everyday life aspirations. While there are several ways that treatment helps people, below are 3 of the ways it can lead to someone achieving their goals:
Treatment provides a distraction-free environment where you can focus on recovery and escape potential stressful situations and triggers in your career and life. Your life is most likely filled with distractions and stressful expectations that, in the past, you have turned to substances as a way to cope. Attending an inpatient treatment removes you from that environment. It places you in one that allows you to grow and develop the necessary tools to utilize in your daily environment to manage and cope without substances. These healthier ways to cope and manage your life make room for career and educational success.
One of these tools learned in treatment includes time management. A substance use disorder takes up a lot of your time. Learning time management will allow you to become more productive and less likely to turn to substances as a way to cope with stress or anxiety. It will enable you to create a predictable schedule that establishes routines and priorities, allowing you to see what your life will look like. Having this predictability in your life provides you the clarity to develop a clear and attainable path to reaching your goals.
No matter your profession, attending treatment will introduce you to people in similar situations as yourself. It doesn’t matter if you are a veteran with an alcohol use disorder due to your experiences in combat or a lawyer navigating recovery after taking cocaine to make it through law school. Treatment for a substance use disorder will help you feel less alone in your circumstances because of the people you get to know while you are there. These people will be the ones who will provide you with motivation, encouragement, and celebration as you accomplish your educational or career goals.
How to Balance Work or School with Recovery
Most importantly, it is essential to prioritize your recovery, especially in the beginning. Forming your journey’s foundations will give you a sense of stability. This stability will allow you to return to work and school stronger with time. Prioritizing your recovery also means ensuring you have time for support meetings, therapy appointments, and self-care management. These aspects are necessary for you to prevent a potential return to use.
It is also vital that you establish boundaries with others. You do not have to disclose your entire situation to your employers, professors, colleagues, and classmates, but making your needs and availability clear can make for a smoother transition and a healthier personal environment.
As mentioned above, self-care management is crucial to your success in recovery and your educational and professional goals. Self-care includes utilizing meditation techniques like a body scan, where you notice every body part individually, from your toes to the top of your head. It can also mean making time for your favorite hobbies or scheduling exercise during the day. Treatment for a substance use disorder can help you learn different ways to practice self-care that will work for your life.
4 Tips for Reaching Your Goals While in Recovery
Reaching your goals while in recovery may be challenging, but it is not impossible. People in California do it every day. Below are 4 tips that will help you establish your goals and make reaching them seem less overwhelming.
SMART Goals: SMART goals stand for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound goals. Creating these goals gives you a clear path to achieving them while maintaining treatment. For example, a SMART goal could be to not drink any alcohol as a way to cope for the next month. Below is an outline of what a SMART goal might look like for someone in recovery.
- Specific—This is where you establish the goal. What do you want to accomplish exactly? This goal should be as specific as possible. Write down the goal. An example would be: “I don’t want to turn to alcohol as a way to cope with my work stress this month.”.
- Measurable — Your goals need to be measurable. You might create a list of smaller goals you can check off or download a habit-tracking app on your phone. Goal-tracking apps allow you to form small, daily habits and see which goals need more attention. Continuing the example, you can check off every day on a calendar that you didn’t drink alcohol.
- Attainable — Don’t create a goal that is so big it feels intimidating to try to achieve it. Instead, break it down into smaller, easily achievable goals that make room for prioritizing your recovery. You don’t want a goal requiring all your time and energy, so your recovery is left behind. This could lead to burnout and a return to use. Also, if it is unattainable, it might lead to you giving up on it. In this example, you are starting small. You aren’t creating a goal that says, “I’ll never drink alcohol ever again.” The goal should be: “For the next month, I’m not going to drink alcohol as a way to cope.” For some, that goal might be too broad. You may need to narrow it down to: “For the next hour, I am not taking a drink.” And that’s just fine, too.
- Relevant — Does your goal align with your values and priorities in life? If achieving your goals doesn’t matter to you, you will have less motivation to complete them. Think about why you want to accomplish this goal and write it down alongside the goal. In our example, a reason you might want to avoid drinking alcohol for the next month is that you want to recover from an alcohol use disorder for your career to progress.
- Time-bound — In recovery, the length of time someone needs can vary from person to person and even change throughout one’s journey. However, your SMART goal might involve establishing a routine while in recovery. The goal can continue to expand and develop over time. You do not have to stop working on your goal once the timeline ends. Instead, use the timeline to motivate you not to give up on the goal. In this example, the month deadline is the time you are concerned about. At the end of the month, you can extend it to the next month and so on to reach a larger goal.
Get Support: One of the most vital tools for achieving your goals while in recovery is having a support system. This support system will keep you accountable and provide you with encouragement and motivation to keep going even when it becomes challenging. Your support group may come from family or friends. It can also be found in your employers, coworkers, professors, and classmates. 12-step support groups and the people you meet in recovery are also great resources because they’ll support and encourage you to achieve your goals.
Be Prepared for Obstacles: Treatment and recovery can produce a more accessible experience for you to accomplish your goals when compared to trying to achieve them with a substance use disorder. That doesn’t mean that there won’t be setbacks. Experiencing obstacles is a normal part of life. Perhaps you didn’t get at least a C in a class and now have to retake it. Or you lost the chance of getting the promotion you had been aiming for at work. Maybe you had a return to use after a stressful day. Things happen, and they don’t mean that you have failed. Working with your therapist or returning to treatment can be beneficial in helping you work through those obstacles and grow from them.
Create Rewards: Recognizing milestones can help a larger goal feel less overwhelming and stressful. To increase your motivation to reach those milestones, create rewards for each goal you have. These can be as small as buying a new candle or plant or taking a bubble bath with your favorite snack.
Other Helpful Resources for Those in Recovery
Several guides are available online for people who want to achieve their goals while recovering. Below are 3 of them.
This guide for medical professionals provides information about returning to your medical practice while undergoing substance use disorder recovery. It provides all of the information you need to know that will make your transition easier in California.
Another helpful guide for lawyers provides insight into how you can balance your career with recovery while practicing law in California. It provides information and resources that lawyers in the state find helpful in achieving their goals while maintaining their recovery journey.
Suppose you want to learn more about balancing your career and recovery. This guide on balancing high-pressure careers with alcohol recovery provides helpful tips and tricks. While the guide was written with vocational goals in mind, it can also help those looking for help balancing educational goals with substance use disorder recovery.
Attend Substance Use Disorder Treatment in Santa Ana, CA
The first step in achieving your educational and career goals following a substance use disorder is to attend treatment. You will be exposed to a solution-focused team willing to work with you to discover what will work best for you, your needs, and your goals.
Pacific Sands has a maximum of 6 clients at a time, so you get the attention you deserve. Our team is focused on ensuring you have the appropriate tools and resources to achieve your goals while discovering a healthier life through recovery. For more information, call us at 949-426-7962.
Pacific Sands – The first step towards a new life.
