Formed Under Pressure
Why real transformation is forged through daily, deliberate practice
I gripped the three-ring binder as my knee bounced. I eyed the clock on the wall again.
Five more minutes until the first session began.
I had been invited to skip any session I wanted the first three days of rehab, but I knew it was an offer I had to reject. My stomach turned at the thought of stepping into that room for the first time.
I stared ahead, trying to calm myself, directionless and unsure how my life could possibly unfold from here. Thoughts raced through my mind as I stood to walk to my first group session.
How am I ever supposed to do this?
Session by session, I adjusted to the rhythms of rehab. I grew more comfortable sitting in those chairs for hours on end, and began developing a closeness with others through our shared struggles. I found myself drawn to people who had one of two traits—an ability to sit in present-moment observation and reflection, and those with a real, but healthy, fear of what life outside the safe walls of rehab would entail.
I knew that by the time I left rehab, my everyday life would have to change if the fragile momentum I was building was going to survive.
I had been so rule and routine driven before rehab, needing to execute my day flawlessly to avoid throwing everything out the window and going to drink. The simple act of sleeping in, getting criticized for work I was doing, or not performing as well on a workout as I desired might send me into a six-day tailspin of drunkenness, chaos, lying, and hiding from the world.
I knew I needed to find a manner of living—a new lens through which to see the world—if the twenty-eight day reset I was going through was going to stick.
As the repetitive days within rehab continued on, I slowly began discovering a way of living each day that allowed for presence, flexibility and a genuine focus on personal progress. I threw out the idea of comparing myself with others and focused only on myself today compared to who I was yesterday and trusted that if I did the work required of me today, tomorrow would yield better results.
I did away with desires of perfection and, for the first time in my life, embraced inefficiency. In doing so, I found practices that became my guiding light in each day. Practices that were easy to translate into action, that I could progress in, and that helped me believe I could face each day anew as I walked on my new path of recovery.
What I didn’t realize then was that I was beginning to build the practices that now anchor my life.
They were simple, yet held depth and significant space for exploration. They allowed me to have days where I excelled and others where simply showing up was the best I could do for the day, and that was alright. And without realizing it at the time in rehab, they extended far beyond healing from alcoholism.
These practices are not a checklist. Simply doing them does not solve a specific problem. Yet living by them and allowing them to shape the lens at which you view the world, your problems and how everything fits together has immense power.
They are practiced not to be completed, but to become integrated into who you are.
Since leaving rehab, I began shaping, honing and understanding how these practices fit together and how they could be applied beneficially to my life.
They became the source of my physical, emotional, and spiritual strengthening. Over time, five practices clearly emerged. Simple in concept. Approachable daily. Demanding in their application over time. Together, they became the framework that still holds me:
Movement
Awe
Vision
Community
Faith
Simple, not easy. Flexible, not rigid. Permitting progression, never perfection.
We’ll spend much more time investigating each later. These worked for me. They carried me when life came bearing down with all its might after rehab. They aren’t a prescription—but when you let them shape how you see the world instead of treating them like a checklist, something changes. People change.
Keep showing up.
Kyle Layne (Kyle Zibrowski)