Recovery from any kind of addiction is a long winded road.

It is not straight, nor does it even always go in the right direction - there are many u-turns and steps back along the way.

But that's okay. I think for many of us, we need to relax a bit. With that I mean: yes we do need to set a goal and understand why we want to get there, so we have a longing inside of us that can be our GPS in life.

Instead of getting caught up in the details of how we are not perfecting the road to recovery, I think the better way to approach it, might just be... to let go.

To let go of how we think it needs to work out.

To let go of our rigid ideas of what recovery looks like. To let go of expectations of what life without addiction looks like.

When we can relax in the process, knowing that we have set an overall goal, it is easier for us to get back up every time we stumble and fall. When we expect to stumble, we do not judge ourselves as harshly - we see it as part of learning to walk.

A baby learns how to walk by having a longing of wanting to copy his or her parents in walking. After a year or two, finally the brain has figured out how to get us up and walking. If the baby became obsessed in the process of every detail, he or she would likely never get anywhere - they would stay stuck in the details.

The key here is to have trust in that life will work out for us, even if we do not understand how right now.

We do of course need to know where we want to go - but then, all we need to do really, is to let go.

Let go of our own limiting beliefs which really never serves us in moving ahead.

And yes, that is the scary part for many of us: daring to have faith in something that we have not yet seen.

But I don't think there is any other way around it.

To find the change we are looking for, we must choose to believe in that which is yet unseen. And yes, it is a choice we choose to make. We choose to have faith - as naive as it may seem to us in the moment. There is no alternative, if we want to move forward.

When we begin to doubt, we freeze, run away, look down instead of ahead. Doubt is debilitating. It prevents us from any risk taking, and we stay stuck in the fear that we have created ourselves. Progress cannot occur when doubt rules our thoughts.