Today I wanted to talk about this moment and how it can shape the rest of your life. How you can use this moment – how you can only really only use this moment – to shape the rest of your life.
I’m talking about this from an alcohol drinking perspective whether you decide to quit drinking alcohol or you decide not to quit drinking alcohol.
Just think about your life. Every choice that you make in your life, every decision you make in your life, brings you down a certain roadway. It takes you in a certain direction. You make a choice that takes you off in a separate direction and then takes you off in one direction or the other direction.
So this knock on effect of whether you stop drinking alcohol or you don’t stop drinking alcohol, has a direct effect on whether you are going to build your habit, whether you are going to reinforce the habit or whether you are going to destroy the habit and deconstruct it.
On a day by day, drink by drink basis. Whether you take that drink or don’t. Do don’t ever think that the one drink doesn’t matter, the one drink that goes into your system.
I hear a lot of people say that they have gone all the way back to day one again, if have a slip up one week after not drink alcohol for say months or for however long it was.
You’re never going back to day one again, because you have had two months where that alcohol hasn’t gone into your body. Two months where that habit has been deconstructed day by day. It’s been chipped away at.
Your alcohol drinking habit may have taken a long time to get to where it is today but it doesn’t take that long to deconstruct it once you start to fill the behavioural gaps with something more positive, something more vital in your life.
Every time you time a drink it reinforces the thinking drinking, rituals, behaviour and habits. Every time you refuse to take a drink it deconstructs that thinking. It chips away at that thinking, the rituals, behaviours and habits.
There no point in looking back at your past. Forget about the all the drinking you’ve done in the past and the things that you’ve said and done. Forget about the future to a certain degree, because you’ve got no real control over it, the only real control that you’ve got control over is now.
So, you can make all the plans you want for the future but at the end of the day the only way you can make those things happen is by taking things moment by moment, step by step and forwards.
I used to say to myself that “I wish I never started drinking in the first place or I wish I stopped drinking ten years ago, or I wish I’d have stopped drinking when my Son was born“, that was one of my biggest regrets in life.
But for most things in life we don’t regret the things that we’ve done. If you do something you don’t regret it because at least you tried to do it.
You might have regretted some things about it or the general direction that you took but mostly you’re going to only regret the decisions that you didn’t take.
So, make the choice now to make the decision, take the decision now to stop drinking alcohol, in this moment, because if you don’t, imagine where you are going to be in ten years’ time or a years’ time.
How many times have you said to yourself, I wish I had have done it X number of years ago?
Alcohol is pure self destruction at its finest. It’s a waste of life, it’s a waste of your present moment.
I’m going to read you a quote by Henry David Thoreau, who said
The meeting of two eternities the past and the future … is precisely the present moment.
So, you’ve got the eternity of the past and the eternity of the future and where those two things meet is right here and now in the present moment.
Buddha said
What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday and our present thoughts build our life for tomorrow, life is the creation of our minds.
I always remember the Dalai Lama quoting something I think from the Buddha and he said “what we are today is the sum total of all our thoughts and actions from yesterday”
All of those things are what have brought us here today and our thinking, today’s thinking and actions are what are going to bring us to a better tomorrow or worse tomorrow, it’s up to you.
So, as I say you’ve only got this moment, right here and now to stop drinking. To not put the alcohol in your mouth.
You don’t have to worry about stopping drinking tomorrow or the next day or forever, you can think about that when you are a year down the road when you’ve built up a lot of passion about not drinking anymore, when you’ve built up a lot of different things in your life because you have stopped drinking alcohol.
When you have built relationships that are surrounding not drinking any more and you’ve built a life around not drinking any more then you can concentrate on forever and start to say to yourself “Maybe that’s something I can do.“
But for now, think about, I’m not putting that alcohol into my mouth now.
The alcohol that’s in the house now, I’m going to take it now, I’m going to open it now and pour it down the sink, now. I going to take all the alcohol shit from my life, all the glasses, corkscrews, bottle openers, all the T Shirts that say Guinness on them – I’ve still got them by the way.
All those things that are in your life that are reminding you of alcohol, that are tempting you to drink alcohol now, you can take those now and put them in the bin, or put them in a bag, walk down to local charity shop and hand them over.
These are some things that you can do now. Don’t drink now. Don’t put the alcohol in your mouth now and then when you get to tomorrow, you are in the new now for you, then you can take another decision then not to drink, but the place that you can do anything is right now.
“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave and find your eternity in each moment”
Until next time…
Onwards and Upwards!
Really helpful Kevin. Thank you.