Today, I wanted to do a little wrap up for the preparation mini course.
The first thing that I want to talk about is replacing what you’ve lost.
When you’re quitting drinking, you have to fill in the gaps.
Make sure that there’s something there for cravings.
Most cravings are basically there to…it’s an emptiness in somebody.
It’s an emptiness and they want to fill the gap and the only thing that they know to fill the gap with is the old behaviour.
It’s the easiest thing to fill the gap with.
You’ve got to think about this before you stop.
Think about how you’re going to fill these gaps.
Put those things in action before you stop drinking.
Put those little pieces into place so that by the time you do quit, you’ve got something there.
There are a lot of ways you can do this, with implementation intentions, if certain things happen then that’s going to happen, a lot of things like that.
That’s the first thing: make sure the gap’s covered.
Make sure you replace what you’ve lost.
At this stage, you’re not losing anything in quitting alcohol.
You’re gaining so much.
You’re replacing something which is toxic and poisonous to your life hopefully with something that is not.
That’s one of the points here, is to replace it with something that is going to give you something back.
Something that is going to add to your life instead of take away from it.
Don’t try and fill the gap with coke or horrible stuff, or manufactured shit.
Get something good if you have to.
If you’re going to replace it with a drink and I don’t suggest that, I suggest another behaviour altogether.
Because when you’re talking about this, it’s not the drinking that’s the problem, it’s the behaviour of drinking.
The alcohol can do what it wants as long as it’s outside of your body.
But it’s the behaviour.
It’s the time that it takes to drink, all that kind of stuff.
That’s all matters.
It’s that behaviour that you have to replace.
The second part of this is to tell the people that you love.
Make sure you tell them well in advance of you stopping drinking.
These are the people that matter in your life.
These are the people that are going to help you.
These are the people that are going to be there for you when you need their help.
It’s good to think about this and what you’re going to say to them, how you’re going to say it to them.
If you focus on the alcohol, then they’re going to focus on the alcohol.
You don’t need to do that.
You don’t need to say ‘I’m an alcoholic. I’ve got a problem with alcohol. I’m nothing else’ because you know as well as I do that that’s not the truth.
The truth is that alcohol is hung on a behavioural framework.
You cannot drink alcohol if you haven’t got this framework already.
And that framework probably includes a lot of other behaviour which are detrimental to your life.
So, you’ve got to address the framework.
There’s no point in addressing one tiny part of the problem when there’s a much larger problem that you have to deal with.
I only found out a long time after I’d stopped drinking, in the beginning, that’s all I was focusing on.
The alcohol.
This is where I thought my problem lay.
This is where I thought all the issues were, and I got rid of the alcohol.
And that’s it.
Everything’s done, but this is where I know that it’s not just the alcohol.
You have to replace the behaviour of drinking alcohol.
You have to replace that with something better and forward thinking.
Something pulling you forward instead of back.
You have to overcome that thinking that alcohol is the problem, and telling other people that that’s the problem because it’s not.
If you tell people that you’re quitting drinking alcohol, they’re going to think about alcohol and put you in this little box.
I’ve spoken so many times about this in the past.
It’s a box society’s making to excuse people’s drug taking.
And this is a drug that people are taking and any excuse to fire off the attention from them and put it on you.
It’s a dangerous thing.
So, when you’re telling other people, make sure you give them advance warning.
Make sure to tell them to expect change.
Change is going to happen.
You can tell people that alcohol is one of the things that you’re stopping but at the end of the day, it’s not the be all and end all.
The third video I did on this mini preparation course was to find some leverage on yourself.
This is important because you have to make sure that the outcome is inevitable.
You have to make sure that you’re putting things in your path, whether it’s obstacles or incentives that you’re putting in your own way that make the journey inevitable.
What I talked about in that video was writing a cheque out to a charity that you absolutely abhor, and that’s not some money that you can do without; writing a cheque out that you can’t do without.
Maybe a cheque for some people is not a good idea.
When I was younger, I used to write cheques like they were just pieces of paper which is what they were.
I knew it was useless because they wouldn’t honour the cheques.
That was my old days.
You get the idea.
Go watch the video for more information about this one.
But it’s finding something that you can have over yourself.
This is why I talk about goals all the time.
You need something in the future that is something that you really want to do, something that is going to pull you forwards into the future and drag you away from the alcohol.
But also something which is mutually exclusive from alcohol.
So you can’t do both.
You can’t drink alcohol and do this.
It’s just impossible.
Be realistic and honest with yourself.
The fourth video is staying out of your own combat zones.
This means avoiding the places where you know there will be drinking.
Avoid the people you know are going to be drinking, and will try and push you into drinking alcohol again.
Avoid those people.
Avoid the atmosphere that you’re trying to get away from.
Because this is a toxic atmosphere.
It’s not down to the alcohol, it’s down to the behaviour, the people, the environment that causes all these to happen.
You’re not going to think about drinking when you’re down walking in the mountains, or on the beach or in the library, or in the gym.
It’s making me sound very prudish, but you know what I mean.
You have to engineer the environment and find the environments in your life which are going to bring you forwards into your new life.
That’s why I say planning is such an important part of this whole process because if you don’t plan, you’ve got no idea where you’re going.
And knowing where you’re going is everything.
If you set out on a round the world trip and you don’t know your first destination or the next destination after that, you’ll just be walking around in circles.
You just can’t do that.
If you walk out of your house in the morning and have no idea where you’re going, that’s what the tramp does.
He gets out in the morning…I suppose even a tramp knows where he’s going.
He knows he has to go out and look for some food or money or whatever.
He’s got a purpose in mind.
But if you don’t have your long term purpose and your long term goal, something pulling you away from alcohol then it’s going to be an impossible task for you.
Because you’re always going to be dragged back to what you know.
The future might be unfamiliar, it might be something that changes.
It’s painful and it’s going to bring you a little discomfort, but at the end of the day, the more you get into that future, the less discomfort it’s going to be.
You get used to it.
You get used to your new life.
That was the thing about this one, just to avoid those toxic environments as long as possible.
Avoid those combat zones.
You don’t have to go in there anymore.
The fifth video was about staying consistent with yourself, your new goals and your habits that you want to develop.
You can look at it and go ‘I need to stay consistent with not drinking’, but it’s one of those things where you always want to be focusing on the positive.
Never the negative.
Staying consistent with not drinking something and focusing on not doing something, it doesn’t really work that way.
Your brain doesn’t think that way.
Your brain focuses on the positive.
Even though you are thinking ‘I don’t want to drink’, all your brain can focus on is the drink, or the pub.
We think in pictures.
Words are just abstract.
You might think in words when you’re trying to construct a sentence, so you’re thinking of something to say.
But in general, we think in pictures.
If I say to you ‘don’t drink alcohol’, then you think about alcohol.
Or you might think of yourself going ‘no! Stop!’, but it’s the alcohol that’s in your mind.
It’s that situation where you’re thinking about drinking alcohol, but you have to be in that position.
So, you focus on what’s pulling you away from the alcohol, from your old life.
Not just from your old life but from the whole behaviour.
Focus on that instead.
That’s what you need consistency in.
Find something that you want to do, stick to one thing at a time, one goal whether it be something to do with your life, your finances, your health, your wife, whatever it is.
Focus on that one thing and do it over and over again.
Try and keep to the same thing, do it in the same way as much as you can.
That’s it for this video.
If you want to get a course on this, I’ve just done a course on Udemy, and you can get that by clicking the link down below.
You can get that at 40% off.
Until next time, stay safe and keep the alcohol out of your mouth.
BY FAILING TO PREPARE, YOU ARE PREPARING TO FAIL.
Until next time…
Onwards and Upwards!
Hi Kevin a good summary I have already eliminated all my toxic environments with the exception of one. I’m a huge celtic and Scotland supporter and get to as many games as I can but I always either go or watch them with other alcohol drinkers. I simply cannot quit filling my club or country I know you said you are an arsenal fan and still go to bars for games so u never gave that up either. Do u have any advice? What did u do in the beginning?