Is it Sobering to be Sober? Clearing Roadblocks and Shifting Beliefs around Drinking
If you’re like a lot of people, you don’t really care about the health effects of drinking, and frankly you probably don’t care to know. But the fact is that most of us have been drinking more than we want to for a long time.
And a lot of the time when we do this it also fills us with guilt, maybe even shame. Or to bring this full circle, maybe you really don’t think about it and don’t want to think about it.
But if you’re honest, really honest, like we chose to get honest with ourselves finally–you probably don’t feel entirely in control of your ability to choose whether or not you actually drink.
We are not here to evangelize. But we are here to share a couple of things. First, as coaches, we fully recognize that we have to be doing the very work that we are coaching others in. If we are helping others free themselves from mindless habits and envisioning the life they want, we have to have done the work ourselves. Perhaps even more importantly for you, we want you to see–to have the insight or recognition–that you are in control of you. You can shift your thinking and experience transformation unlike what you ever thought might be possible.
It doesn’t matter what your friends will say or think. It doesn’t matter what your spouse will say or think. It does matter what you believe and what you think. And this topic, like any other, is about beliefs, both conscious and unconscious. It is about the power of these beliefs and how they shape our thinking, and therefore our actions.
The aim of this episode is NOT to offer you tips. Tips are a dime a dozen whether they’re good ones or bad. What is more difficult to come by are workable ways to apply tips, to replace one behavior pattern with another. When you learn how to change a habit, it is usually not too hard to decide which ones to change.
Let’s dive in!
Time Stamps:
2:30--Maybe you're just a little curious about evaluating your relationship to alcohol.
6:14--We want you to have the recognition that you have the control over your thinking and what you want to do, and this is about shifting your thinking, not tips.
9:50--How alcohol dependency became like a slow burn, just this habit that formed over time.
15:24--When the shift happened for Shelley early on this year.
21:40--How you can self-assess where you are right now and thinking of the desire behind the habit, or is it the habit behind the desire?
24:01--Chad tells his story of his relationship with alcohol.
29:10--Chad's approach is a little different than Shelley's.
29:48--Quote by Dostoevsky about habits in the second half of life.
32:15--How the habit may start first.
37:31--If you want to start taking it to the next level and other ideas.
40:20--The final takeaway.
Show note links for further inquiry:
New genetic study confirms that alcohol is a direct cause of cancer
A ‘factory reset’ for the brain cures anxiety, drinking behavior
What sudden insights look like inside the brain
Follow up with us and check out our Burnout Coaching Package here.
