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Should You Be Tough on Yourself if You Fall Off the Wagon?

by | Stop Drinking Alcohol | 2 comments

If alcohol is causing problems in your life, you ultimately want to get rid of that alcohol altogether. That’s the end goal.

Many people talk about tough love, and we all need a dose sometimes. It helps us to refocus on what’s real for us.

But I think self-tough-love can often be detrimental to your well-being, your self-confidence, and ultimately you aim of quitting drinking. You have to choose the time for tough love and the time for allowing yourself to be a normal imperfect human being.

I hope you enjoy the video 🙂

The topic for today is, should you be tough on yourself if you fall off the wagon? If you have a so-called relapse, or anything like that.

If you’re a problem drinker and you want to get alcohol out of your life. If you find that alcohol is causing you problems – which the fact that you’re watching these videos would indicate – the ultimate aim is to get alcohol out of your life. That’s the golden fleece.

Where you are now is not where you don’t want to be. The ultimate aim is to have no alcohol in your life. So anywhere in between that is an improvement.

At the end of the day. what does being tough on yourself do for you?  I suppose it depends on what you define as being tough on yourself. It doesn’t do you any good at all if you beat yourself up about falling off the wagon.

Especially when the alternative is to stand back, look at what you’ve been doing and look at the mistake you made, in order to see how you can rectify that mistake.

If you don’t do that, if you beat yourself up and think, well I just failed because I’m a bad person or because I’m just shit at this habit thing and that you’re never going to be able to achieve your goal – then what does that do for you?

You have to separate the habit from you as a person and not bring it all down upon yourself and treat it as a reflection on your abilities, because your abilities change.

Learning new skills and how to do them has a lot to do with your success in quitting drinking alcohol, for example:

  • How to be with other people.
  • How to relax.
  • How to put yourself in these difference situations with alcohol.

The fact is that you have been using alcohol as a tool and if you don’t find a replacement, you’re always going to be drawn back to that one tool.

So, you’ve got to find a replacement for relaxation, you’ve got to find a replacement for socialising. You’ve got to find replacement people, for those in your life that are causing you problems and difficulties. For example, if they’re trying to get you back on the alcohol again, you’ve got to think about that and get rid of them – at least for a while – until you’ve got over it and you can deal with that sort of thing again. Until you are strong enough and have the self-confidence, to deal with those situations.

I’m not telling you to carry on drinking. I’m not telling you to deliberately go back to drinking, just because you can’t be arsed to do this.  I’m not saying it is a good thing.
If you want to quit drinking you’ve got to:

  • Put in some time and effort.
  • Put up with the unpleasant feelings.
  • Think about the alternatives.
  • Think through those alternatives and consider how you can bring those alternatives into your life.

Battering yourself about these things is not good. Calling yourself names or downing yourself as a person is not good.

Positivity always wins out.

It’s better to be positive about a failure, about a mistake, learn about it, get back up again and try something different. The more you do this the more you learn, the more positive you are with yourself, the quicker you will grow as a person.

I don’t mean that in a facetious way, we all have to grow. I’m growing every day and if I don’t grow to a certain degree – from when I get up in the morning to when I’ve gone to bed at night – I feel disappointed.

I want to learn something new about myself, or about my habits, or my life, whatever it is, I want to learn something.

I want to grow in some way. The more you grow the more:

⇓

Self confidence you’ll have about life in general

⇓
The more you’ll be able to stay away from these habits

⇓
The more you’ll be able to control yourself

⇓
The more you control yourself, the better the life that you’re going to have.

It’s just a figure of cycle.

If you have any questions at all, leave them in the comments, go over to the website https://www.alcoholmastery.com and sign up for the alcohol mastery newsletter, it’s a daily email to your inbox with videos on many different subjects related to alcohol and habits, inspiration and that kind of thing. Go over there and sign up, it’s absolutely free. Just leave an email and a first name.

“Mistakes have the power to turn you into something better than you were before”

Stay safe, keep the alcohol out of your mouth,

Good Luck

Take Care

Until next time…
Onwards and Upwards!

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2 Comments

  1. Jeanette Finlay

    Hello I am a 69 year old widow struggling with alco hol. I have three sons and your grandchildren who I love dearly but I have let them all down. Could you help me please

    Reply
  2. julie rynn

    Thank you Kevin just what I needed failed again but after seeing this
    don’t feel like a total loser. Just have to keep trying cheers Julie.

    Reply

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