Before recovery (and even after) my mind was always busy. I took in a lot of information and processed it profusely. I made a lot of plans. But often those plans never turned into any real action. Keeping my mind busy made me feel like I was doing something to make my life better, but nothing ever really changed.

In recovery I heard someone say, “I can’t think my way into right acting; I have to act my way into right thinking.” Small, well-directed actions can get me a lot farther than lots and lots of thinking.

Today, if I’m doing a lot of thinking at work, I will consider two or three small actions I can take to further my recovery. I will focus on a task instead of checking out, or I will make plans to call a program friend to talk about a situation rather than endlessly dwell on it. I will go to a meeting or read some program literature. Taking the action will help me behave a lot more serenely than thinking alone.