2022-1-12 Falling In Love With The Program2022-1-12 Falling In Love With The Program
Love Your Life, with Randy Mermell
Randy Mermell is an international coach, speaker, and podcaster. Randy helps people live happy and purposeful lives. Drawing from his own experience from 20 years of happy marriage, raising two daughters, and his success as an entrepreneur, he has helped others get through all types of professional and personal challenges, including love, marriage, children, jobs, and finding passion in everything we do. With over 28 years of sobriety, and success in his own life overcoming low self-esteem, addictions to alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, and coffee Randy draws on his real-life experience to lead meditation and recovery retreats internationally.
56:20•30 May 2022
Falling in Love with the Programme and the Quiet Mind
Episode Overview
- Daily recovery needs present-moment practice; yesterday’s meditation or prayer does not guarantee serenity today.
- Becoming aware of the alcoholic mind is useful, but change happens through turning to a higher power, not endless self-analysis.
- Steps Six and Seven involve becoming entirely ready to abandon self and asking a higher power to remove defects of character right now.
- Negative self-talk and judgement are common, but can be met with meditation, conscious breathing and a willingness to realign with a higher power.
- True peace and joy are found in the here and now, in a quiet mind and a single conscious breath, rather than in future achievements or external fixes.
“There is no there. There is here. It's right here, right now, always.”
What can we learn from those who have battled addiction? Here, an online recovery meeting led by Randy Mermell centres on quieting the racing alcoholic mind and falling in love with a spiritual programme, one breath at a time. The session opens with 20 minutes of silent meditation, then moves gently into a slow, line‑by‑line experience of the Third Step prayer, each phrase linked to conscious breathing and personal reflection.
Randy shares how his alcoholism shows up as an "unsatisfiable, fault-finding, opinionated mind" that believes happiness will come "one day" through money, a perfect spouse, or a better house – only to stay restless and disappointed. He compares daily spiritual practice to putting on glasses: yesterday’s meditation doesn’t guarantee serenity today; recovery has to be lived in this moment. A core thread is the shift from analysing the disease to actually applying spiritual principles.
As Randy puts it, "There is no recovery in becoming ultra-aware of how your mind talks to you. All of the recovery is in the turning." He talks through Steps Six and Seven as a willingness to abandon self, let go of delusions like self‑punishment, and ask a higher power to remove shortcomings right now. Participants like Rebecca, Scott, David, Didi, Alita and others share honestly about negative self‑talk, stress, grief, judgement, self‑sabotage and the temptation to numb out.
Their stories show how meditation, the 11th Step, and shared experience help them spot the "little gremlin" of the disease and return to the present. By the end, the theme is clear: "There is no there. There is here." The peace many were chasing is found in a quiet mind, a single breath, and a simple willingness to turn to a higher power today.
If your head feels noisy and your recovery feels complicated, could falling in love with the basics be the next step?
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