Today, I want to talk to you about a major turning point that happens in all of our lives. This turning point is going to challenge some of you, and it's OK to be challenged in your affair recovery timeline. This turning point is the day when we hold ourselves accountable for our own healing. When I made the shift and began to hold myself accountable for my own recovery, it changed my life, it changed my healing and it changed my heart. At the core of personal recovery work, regardless of what you're going through, is self-responsibility.

When I stopped blaming and fixating on other people, it set me free to be able to go, I am responsible for my own healing and:

• Nobody is going to do it for me.
• Nobody can do it for me.
• Nobody is going to confront me the way that I need to confront myself.

Accountability partners, best friends and therapists can confront me — and we need that — but I also have to be able to say, "Sam, you're blowing it; you've got to take accountability for where you are right now." When we begin to focus on other people, we think that it helps us heal but it actually diverts our pain. Remember, the core of recovery work is self-responsibility. When we constantly get distracted by others instead of focusing on ourselves, we miss an opportunity to set ourselves free.

To take responsibility for ourselves is powerful, life-changing and necessary. Until we can take responsibility for ourselves, we're not going to be the person we want to be — for ourselves or for our loved ones. It falls upon our own shoulders to get healthy and do our recovery work.

How to Stop Hiding and Start Healing

We tend to hide from three things: our pain, our past and ourselves. We love to hide from our pain, and we really love to hide from our past. I've tried to run from my past but, let me tell you, it doesn't work. My life changed when I accepted my past, owned it, and accepted the consequences that were being handed to me because of my choices.

When we hide from ourselves, that's a tough one because we all have pain, we all have trauma and we all have agony. We don't always realize we're hiding from ourselves until later in our affair recovery, when we begin to confront ourselves and become friends with ourselves. Until we're able to understand and acknowledge that part of ourselves that is so dark, so hurt and so painful, we miss an opportunity for joy, healing and wholeness.

So where do we start in personal recovery work? Here are three ways we can hold ourselves accountable for our healing:

1. Focus on ourselves, our own heart, and stop blaming. Own your choices, consequences and actions. Until you deal with what you've been hiding from and own your decisions, you'll struggle to become the person you so desperately want to be.
2. Group work to process everything. Group work is not about commiserating, it's about coming together to heal, to confront your own stuff and to accept accountability. At Affair Recovery, we have excellent groups for the unfaithful, groups for the betrayed and groups for couples. We even have a restorative weekend intensive with small groups. When you have the right people and the right process, group work can change your life and certainly change your recovery.
3. Stop expecting perfection. The goal is progress, not perfection. Perfection is an illusion. We need expert help, yes, but getting wrapped up in expecting everything to be perfect will lead to more frustration. I'm here to tell you: There's no perfection in infidelity recovery.

As we grow older, we discover new layers of pain, new layers of trauma and new layers of confusion. I am a work in progress, and I know you probably feel like a work in progress — and that's OK. To think that's not OK, and that we should have it all figured out by a certain age or time in affair recovery, is just not accurate; it's an unrealistic expectation. You may be a mess right now but, you know what, that's OK. When we begin to hold ourselves accountable for our healing and our recovery work, everything in our lives can change. Don't give up today. You are worth absolutely all of it.