Reality Check: Making the Best of The Situation - How I Overcame Addiction, Loss, and Prison

by Mike Sorrentino

Once each day is over, I place my head on the pillow, let go, and let God handle the rest.

“I love a success story, but even more than a success story, I like a dude-who-fucks-his-life-up-and-gets-his-life-together-again story.”

When all else fails, you just have to do the next right thing. Put one foot in front of the other to move forward. Eventually, you’ll get there. I promise.

believe a lot of people think that pain is a bad thing, and I disagree. I think it’s the opposite. It’s better to embrace the pain. Pain in life is inevitable, and you can’t ignore it. Drugs bury it. They don’t make it go away. When you get sober, all that recessed pain is dug up. You have to work through it to get back to your baseline. Life doesn’t get easier; you get stronger.

but I also believed that if you let a bird out of the cage and it came back, it was meant to be.

In the recipe of success, one of the main ingredients is failure. The key is to not give up on yourself. When you come across an obstacle, you have to understand it’s nothing more than a brilliantly disguised opportunity. Keep moving forward, don’t give up, and eventually you’ll find success. Too many people face failure and treat it like a finality. Once you meet failure, it simply means you’ve found a way that didn’t work. Use that knowledge to find another way.

What’s the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

Never let your emotions rule your intelligence. Get outside your body and try to understand what is happening. Understand the bigger picture of things. Get back to your standard operating procedure. Be grateful for today. Be grateful for the simple things like your job and family, food in the fridge, and your health. If you come from a default of positive energy, you attract more blessings and abundance.

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

I was of the belief that when God closes a door, he opens a window.

But God had given me this inner peace, and there was an uncanny sense that no matter what happened, it was going to be okay.

no matter what life throws at you, the only path is forward, one step at a time.