Five Truths of Sustained Change: What Addiction Recovery and Finance Teach Us About Life
Building Your Resilience Portfolio When the World Couldn't Care Less
Have you seen 'People, Places and Things', the Olivier Award winning play about Emma (expertly portrayed by Denise Gough), an actress who belligerently, defiantly, cynically, wrangles with being in rehab for drug and alcohol addiction?
Last night I watched it in the comfort of my own home, thanks to National Theatre at Home, as a treat for myself.
I know, I'm a laugh a minute like that.
Between this powerful drama and listening to Morgan Housel's "The Psychology of Money" on my morning walk this week, I've been thinking about how recovery capital and financial wisdom overlap.
Bear with… because they both share great insights into how humans actually change.
Part of the ending in the play is Emma receiving a reaction to her sobriety which was not what she had hoped for. It's a key moment, and made me think about what we need to have sustained change.
We all have those moments when we try really hard and the world just does not care.
It can be the last thing we expect, and we can ruminate on 'Can you not see how hard I've tried' to which the world replies:
You tried?
You tried?!
Access denied!
Ouch.
It can make us bitter:
Bitterness I get it.
You're clever.
Well done.
Whilst I swing my way through
An obvious rhyme,
Your Deep meaning
Brain steaming
Prize gleaming poems
Last and last and last
On published paper...
In bookstores...
Approved by agents and editors...
And maybe a reader or two...
I didn't want a book deal anyway.
Ahem, I may have personal experience of this.
When we've summoned up the courage to try something new, admit our fallibilities, reach out for help, stand our ground and say 'enough' - and the world still blithely carries on with indifference or rejection, it's tough.
And totally typical as part of the human experience.
It's tempting to pull the cord at this stage, parachute yourself out into a soft landing of victimhood, self-pity and bewilderment.
Here are some principles that I fall back on and use within my work, in a weird intersection of addiction recovery and financial wisdom, that apply to all sustained change.
They're the kind of insights that prepare you for those hard moments so that you can bounce back… or at least, not face plant completely. 😄
Truth #1: Forget Big Returns – Small Deposits Compound
In recovery, they don't celebrate the grand gesture of checking into rehab. They celebrate 24 hours. Then 30 days. Then 90. One day at a time.
In "The Psychology of Money," Housel makes this same point about wealth: "The first rule of compounding: Never interrupt it unnecessarily."
The magic isn't in the heroic moment of quitting or making a massive investment. It's in the unremarkable Wednesday afternoon when you're tired and cranky but still don't reach for your unmanageable medicator of choice. It's when you automatically transfer that small sum to savings, despite really wanting those new shoes.
Sustained change works exactly like compound interest. Each small choice builds upon previous choices, creating returns that eventually become life-altering. But like financial compounding, the early days show almost no visible progress.
That’s tough in a world that manically measures metrics and wants to woo you with distraction from your discomfort.
Truth #2: Your Plan Will Fail. Plan For That.
As Housel writes in "The Psychology of Money," "The most important part of every plan is planning on your plan not going according to plan."
Kudos for that amount of alliteration Housel.
In recovery, a lapse isn't treated as failure, but as part of the process. The question isn't "Will I face a crisis?" but "What's my plan when I inevitably do?"
Good plans incorporate failure modes.
Great plans survive first contact with reality (rare).
The best plans recognise that no single strategy works in all situations and have multiple opportunities for how to handle this (something in recovery land known as ‘recovery capital’).
When Emma faces that crushing moment of indifference to her sobriety, she needs more than just her original motivation. She needs backup systems and alternative sources of validation.
Truth #3: Your Capital Must Be Diversified
Recovery capital isn't just about willpower or knowledge. It spans personal resources (physical health, coping skills), social connections (supportive relationships), and community resources (access to services).
When one fails, the others must compensate.
Housel makes the same point about financial resilience: "A plan is only useful if it can survive reality. And a future filled with unknowns is everyone's reality."
Gulp.
Or ‘bring it on!’ if you have a plan.
If you're making a big life change and your entire strategy hinges on a single resource – be it one relationship, one skill, or one opportunity – you're going to come a cropper when that thing inevitably wobbles.
Emma's journey shows us this truth: when external validation fails, internal resources must step up. When willpower falters, community must hold you up.
Truth #4: Paranoid Optimism Is Your Secret Weapon
Successful recovery requires a mind-bending contradiction: unflagging optimism about long-term outcomes paired with vigilance about immediate threats.
You must simultaneously believe "I will absolutely succeed at this" while thinking "Danger lurks around every corner."
Housel nails this: "Optimism is the best bet for most people because the world tends to get better for most people most of the time. But pessimism holds a special place in our hearts. Pessimism isn't just more common than optimism. It also sounds smarter."
This paradoxical mindset of paranoid optimism prevents disappearing into pitfalls and the despair-induced abandonment of your dreams.
When Emma faces disappointment, she needs both the vigilance to recognise the threat to her sobriety and the optimism to believe her efforts still matter beyond this one moment.
Truth #5: Creation Requires Destruction
Sustained change isn't just about adding new habits or skills. It requires dismantling parts of your existing identity.
What a bummer.
In recovery, people must often grieve their former selves. The party animal. The social lubricant. The escape artist.
They grieve relationships that they have to let go of, old haunts, destructive paraphernalia.
They have to grieve people, places and things.
Housel discusses this in financial terms as "the price of admission." Every significant gain requires accepting losses elsewhere.
All significant change involves loss. Old relationships may not survive. Comfortable patterns must be abandoned. Sometimes entire social worlds become no-gos.
These truths aren't just for addiction recovery or financial management. They apply to everything from writing that novel to changing careers to fixing a broken relationship.
When the world meets your hardest efforts with a shrug, remember: sustainable change was never about the world's validation. It's about building a ‘diversified portfolio’, if you will, of reliable, healthy resources.
The benefits of building these resources compound over time, accounting for setbacks as a part of the plan.
We may never get the applause that the cast of People, Places and Things enjoyed, nor our equivalent of an Olivier. The book deal might remain elusive. The recognition could forever be just out of reach.
But the change? That's yours. And that’s a keeper.
And on that note, this week I interviewed a friend of mine about his addiction recovery. Martyn has been in recovery for over 20 years and shared his journey and the lessons he has learnt along the way.
I recorded this for my Feeling Freedom community and paid subscribers, which you can access below.
That’s it for now,
‘Til next time
Jacky ✨
Ps. Yes, this email is out today later than usual. I really TRIED to write earlier in the week, but just had so much on so this one is hot of the press. But let’s face it, do you really care that I tried? 🙄😂
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