How to Be More Patient

Having patience is linked with a host of health and recovery benefits. This includes being more mindful, less lonely and better able to overcome stressful situations and stick with goals. 

Simply put, patience is going to help you better deal with the ups and downs along your journey toward lasting sobriety. As you likely know, recovery requires lots of patience – with the process, with yourself and with loved ones.

So what if you’re just not a patient person? Many people in recovery aren’t. This is because you’ve likely spent a fair amount of time in “instant-fix” mode during active addiction. But here’s the good news: Patience is a skill that can be learned through practice – and these tips can help you get started: 

• Make yourself wait. Test your willpower with small tasks – whether you make yourself hold off to eat dessert or choose a longer line in the grocery store. 
• Embrace being uncomfortable. A big part of recovery is being okay with being outside your comfort zone. During these times, try to remind yourself that these feelings are temporary and that being impatient about your circumstances won’t help.
• Just breathe. Inhale for a count of 7 and exhale for a count of 8 – this simple breathing exercise can help you slow down and tap into your patient side.
• Find a healthy release for your emotions. Even if you’ve mastered patience, you will get frustrated and lose your patience from time to time. And that’s okay – as long as you release that frustration in a healthy way. Some ideas: Take a walk, meditate, vent to a good friend, or distract yourself with a funny movie or YouTube video. 

Post-Treatment Support for Men & Women

At Haus Recovery, we provide our clients with continued support as they transition from a secure recovery environment to sober life filled with daily stressors and tension. To learn more, call today: 888-551-4715.

Spring Clean Your Resume

Spring is the perfect time to “clean up” your resume and significantly improve it so you can start seeing better results. After all, just like our closets, resumes need a good yearly cleaning and/or organizing to determine what to keep, what to toss and what to emphasize to put your best foot forward. 

Here are few questions to ask yourself as you freshen-up your resume so it’s current and appealing to prospective employers.  

• Is your experience still relevant? A good rule of thumb: You should only show the most recent 10 to 15 years of your career history. Take a look at your resume and determine what’s ancient history and what needs to be highlighted to meet the criteria of the positions to which you’re applying. For example, if you’re focused on a career in accounting, you no longer need to include your past job in a pet store.  
• Are you grabbing the reader’s attention? Take a look at the “career summary” section of your resume and make sure that you’ve highlighted your experiences, skills and contributions in a succinct manner. The goal is to showcase your skill sets with no more than five or six lines of text, say resume experts. 
• Are you using the right language? The best resumes often use strong action verbs — managed, launched, built, lead — at the beginning of each section. Read over your resume and edit any passive phrases like “responsible for” or “handled.” 
• Are you being specific? Do your best to quantify your experience — for instance, can you attach a measurement to a past job task or accomplishment like an increase in profit or level of customer satisfaction? 
• Are you being honest? Lying or “stretching the truth” on a resume is never okay. 
• Is anything missing? Take a look at the specific requirements of your target job — do you possess these skills and are they coming across clearly on your resume? And if you find that you're missing any of these skill sets, why not use this time to start a plan to learn them. 

Employment Help at HAUS 

Finding and keeping a job, and making a contribution to society, is a pillar of recovery. After all, accountability and being self-supporting are vital steps to the reintegration process. Our staff will assist you with resume building and more. To learn about our sober living services, call today: 888-551-4715.