Little things mean a lot. That phrase might seem something like a cliché, but I think it’s a good phrase for the rehab and recovery processes.

After all, we’ve been talking a lot about success and failure lately. It seems like most of us measure success in ways that might seem little at first, but can have a big impact:

• If we succeed financially, we’re probably not going to make $10 million a year. Instead, we might earn a raise that averages out to an extra few dollars an hour. But if we earn $2.00 more an hour, that could mean earning about $4,000 a year more than we did before.
• If we succeed personally, it’s not by having perfect relationships with our friends and relatives. (Is that even possible?) Instead, we succeed by having healthy, respect-driven relationships that can weather bad times and good times. If the relationships experience trouble, we can succeed by taking steps to fix this trouble, not by letting things get out of hand.

Rehab and recovery view success in the same way. Both rehab and recovery are ongoing. They aren’t all-or-nothing processes. If something negative happens, like a relapse, it doesn’t mean that the entire recovery process is over. It’s one incident in a series of incidents. One failure doesn’t mean that the whole process is over, just like one success (like one successful day without abusing substances) means that the whole process is a success.

Taking this long-term perspective on rehab and recovery (and even life) can help us with our sobriety. It can help remind us that while we should be proud of our accomplishments, we can’t rest on our laurels. We still have to work. Similarly, one setback doesn’t mean the end of our sobriety. We can work to fix things to continue with our recoveries.