30 Meetings in 30 Days
30 meetings in 30 days. This sounds so straight forward yet so unobtainable to many for all kinds of reasons. The 30/30 is a daunting task that requires commitment, planning, and probably some help. Stop right now and take a look at your calendar. My initial thoughts were; I have several things going on and I’ll never be able to orchestrate this for a whole month. My schedules collide and I have these real pending things that will probably get in the way. Not to mention the imaginary pending things that I think might happen but I don’t know what they are much less when they will happen.
Why do people do 30 meeting in 30 days you wonder? It is often to reset their sobriety or strengthen a weak program. Mostly new comers, recommend by sponsors, after relapses, and when you are trying to buckle down.
Here are a few tips
Keep it simple with the same meetings for each day.
Have a printed out copy of the information as well as the information on your phone so there are no issues trying to connect.
Make sure you don’t have extracurricular activities such as work, drive time, other meetings that could leak over into the time you need for the meeting.
Express that you are doing a 30/30 in your share and why. Give small updates periodically.
Have an accountability partner in addition to a sponsor (if you don’t have one, get one). Just as important as a sponsor. They can be that difference of stopping at 12 meetings and often will got to most meetings with you if you ask.
You don’t have to share at each meeting. Just give it your undivided attention.
My biggest challenge when I started in SAA I downloaded and printed the meeting schedule for my area. There were so many meetings I couldn’t comprehend making it into a schedule. I ended up redacting any meetings I couldn’t physically make it to due to driving distance. That knocked out a lot of meetings. Then I looked at the address of each meeting and picked a primary meeting for each day and highlighted it in green. For most people that would have been good enough, but I tend to get bored and want to do something else so I picked a secondary meeting each day. This wasn’t to attend two meetings, it just gave me an alternative. Some meetings were the same times and others were offset a bit in case I was running late. I then entered them into my phone as appointments. This formula worked great for me. I felt organized and It kept me from overlapping and double booking myself.
Doing 30/30 for me was a good in several ways. I had a lot to share at the beginning. That tailed off later as I began to listen more to others. I shifted from being in my problem to being in the solution. I was able to deter engrained habits and build new healthy ones.
I hope this helps you in your journey.
Keep coming back!
