The simple answer is, you don’t. You might have some ideas about what you want to do, but that’s all pie in the sky until you start experiencing what it’s like to be without alcohol, to live with an alcohol free mind.
I’m not joking with this. You will experience this amazing reality once you’ve been away from alcohol for a while. And most likely, you’ll be blown away.
If you’re anything like me, when I quit drinking, I had some vague notions about what I would like to do with my time, how I would like to spend my social hours, and where I wanted my life to go. As I said in many previous videos, it’s only once the alcohol left my body, once I beat the cravings, started sleeping well, and got a grip on my drinking thinking, that my brain started to work again.
There is no substitute for that.
It’s great to think about the future from the mind of a drinker, but it takes the mind of a nondrinker to really pull off that new life.
I hope you enjoy this video.
How do you know what to do after you’ve quit drinking? The big answer is, you don’t.
A lot of people may have an inkling about where they’re going to go and what they’re going to do, but like with anything when you try and look into the future, a lot of it is just shrouded in mystery. You just don’t know what’s going to happen in or two or five minutes’ time. As I’ve said before, you don’t know what’s going to happen when you step out of your door in the morning, when you get home, when you turn on the news – you just don’t know.
You can have an inkling of what is going to happen and you can make things a lot surer by good preparation, thinking about things and the what if scenarios. If this happens, then I’m going to do that. If this happens, I’m going to do that. If somebody asks me whether I want a drink, I’ll say this. If I can’t sleep I’m going to do this. If I find myself not being able to relax, I’m going to do this.
That’s good preparation, that’s thinking about things in advance to try and not get caught out. The danger for many people is that they wait until they’re caught out and once you’re in the panic state and you’re in the midst of a craving, or not being able to sleep and your tired and not relaxed, it’s too late to think about things because your mind is not in the optimum state to be thinking about it.
You’re much better off doing it before hand, while you’re relaxed, whilst you’ll see drinking even. Think about these things and make a list of how you are going to deal with them. It’s simple. So, that’s one way of pushing yourself forward and making sure you have a good idea about what’s going to happen in certain situations, or what might happen. You will have a better idea, anyway.
Another thing is to keep your eye open for opportunities. When opportunity knocks, open the door. That’s what happens sometimes, life is like that. You could be heading down one path, as happy as Larry and then somebody comes up to you and says I’ve got something you might be interested in or this is something that I’m doing in my life and you might get an idea of something or someway you can apply it in your own life. You may read something or see something on the TV and just get a thought out of the blue.
I know a lot of Writers that talk like this, who say, I’m out walking in the woods and an idea will come to me and it’s my muse giving me an idea. No, it’s just your brain. That’s what I do all the time. I’m out walking and stuff just happens. Ideas come up for the website, or different angles of looking at things, whatever, it’s just a fact of life, but you have to be open for these opportunities. Keep yourself open to them and if they sound good to you, pursue them, take some action on them. There is no point in having an idea and not taking any action on it. It just doesn’t make any sense.
So, there are plenty of places where you can look for inspiration, for opportunities, for what to do next. So, keep your eyes open. When I started Alcohol Mastery at first, I was on the back end of a bad week. I was writing articles for a lot of people and I wanted to move into doing Videos and I really didn’t know what to do, so I thought it was a good idea to start up a blog, just to start chatting about what I was doing.
The whole idea was to hone my skills and to hone and to learn new skills. I didn’t know anything about making Videos. I knew how to turn a Camera on but I didn’t know anything about lighting or editing. So, the idea at the beginning was to set up a channel and to see how it went.
My idea was to do a website called ‘OK Mastery’ which was basically telling people that it was okay to be okay in life, that you don’t always have to be the best, that it’s okay just going through life being yourself and who you want to be and not taking on other people’s tags and dreams and saying a billion dollars is the be all and end all.
That was the idea but I didn’t want to start that, before I had experience and had done a lot of Videos.
So, that’s how it started and my life has been like that. When I was in Ireland, I was fishing for a long time. We had a boat and were out Lobster fishing and if was a hard life, dealing with the vagaries, lobster prices and just the sea.
We were living off the Atlantic and some mornings, we just couldn’t go out. We had to put the lobster pots down by the coastline and our coastline in Kilkeith and Dungannon when we living in the West of Ireland, was very rocky with a lot of cliffs. The sea would come in and you would be taking your life in your hands. Shaun was very young at the time, he was just a couple of years old and I didn’t like it, so we were looking for something else.
I fished for Mackerel and we caught lots of Mackerel. Some days we’d catch ten dozen Mackerel and we’d go around Houses selling them and making money that way. But eventually, I wanted to get a job. I was scraping a living being self employed. I have been self employed for most of my life but at that stage, we needed a regular income, we wanted a better house and stuff, so I started taking Truck Driving lessons to drive an Artic.
I got through my first license, a Rigid license which you have to get before the Artic License. The Artic License is for an articulated truck, I don’t know if that is what everyone calls them, but it’s the Truck that has a detachable front. A Rigid license is for Trucks, where the cab is stuck to the body. So, that’s what I had, like a cement truck license.
I remember one of the first jobs I went for after I got the license was for driving a bin lorry, a refuse truck. I had arranged for this guy to lend me a Car so I could get to the interview which was in the middle of nowhere. And the day before the interview, I don’t know what happened, but I didn’t get the car and the man said he would drop it around in the morning, but I was supposed to be in the interview at 8 o’clock in the morning and so I rang the man from the refuse truck Company and he basically told me to fuck off, and said if you can’t even arrive for the interview, how can you work for us. Fair enough, it was just a Job.
Anyway, I went back down to a local job recruitment agency, it was a government run thing and it was run by a really nice fellow called Mark Hanberry, if you’re listening Mark, this guy changed the direction of my life.
I was in an interview with him and we were talking about different stuff and if there were any opportunities, if he knew of any jobs going and stuff. He said right now all I’ve got is this Forestry Course that’s going and you wouldn’t be interested in that. And it was one of those things that I’d always been interested in – wood and trees – so I said yeah, yeah, I’ll jump at this and on the back of this, I got involved in a government scheme to set up your own business, where they would pay you whatever you would get if you were on the dole for the first year. Three quarters of that money for the second year a half that money, for the third year.
And it just set me up and it got me back into being self employed which I loved doing and there are so many different things that happened within that space, within all that forestry life. During those fifteen years, when I was in the Forestry so many different things that happened, that led me from one thing to another. Opportunities that came up out of the blue that I wasn’t looking for but I took advantage of and just made the business stronger. This was despite the fact that for all those years I was drinking alcohol. But that’s just the way it is.
That’s the way, look out for the opportunities, for new learning, for new things that you want to do, sometimes you have to push yourself up there, you’ve got to allow yourself to be open for the opportunities, if you’re sat in front of the television all the time, or playing video games, the chances of you getting the opportunities in the first place are very slim. So, you have to seek out the opportunities you want to find
That’s it. I hope you enjoyed that video and that the rest of the day is really good.
Until next time…
Keep the Alcohol out of your Mouth
Take Care
Good Luck
Onwards and Upwards!
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