This video is about some of the mistakes that you can avoid when quitting alcohol…

The first mistake to avoid is to understand that this is not about the alcohol. Alcohol has very little to do with this, it is just the vehicle by which you get to the end result that you want. Whatever it is, relaxation, socializing, it has nothing to do with the alcohol. Because if it wasn’t for the alcohol, it could have been anything else, it could have been another problem, right? It could have been another drug. It could have been heroin, could have been cocaine. What this is all about is behavior, lifting the glass, and taking that instant gratification way out, taking the easy route out of your problems, taking the easy route out of socializing, of relaxation. It’s down to you, it’s 100% your responsibility.

The second mistake is that people listen to the gremlin inside their heads, they listen to the part of them that makes excuses for them drinking, that makes excuses for them to moderate, and to think that moderation is a good thing to have, right? That they can drink moderately and there’s going to be no problems. And once they get further and further into this journey, their abilities to moderate because they’ve quit drinking for a month or two months that they can now go back and moderate their drinking, is by giving this inner voice more power than it should have, right? Because at the end of the day, this inner voice is you. It’s a part what you say to yourself. So the mistake is to think that the voice is anything that is separate from you. You can name it and say, “Well, yeah, it’s a part of me, it’s the gremlin, it’s the horrible little thing inside of me that I’m watching die and it’s part of the behavior, it’s part of the alcohol drinking behavior that I want to get rid of, it’s part of the habit that I want to get rid of.”

The third mistake is to treat your quit drinking as a loss, like you have lost a friend, like you’re mourning somebody, or something that has had some great impact on your life. It’s generally an impact which has been very detrimental to you, and on both your physical and mental health to you think of any area in your life which alcohol hasn’t had a detrimental impact. And almost in every case, it’s the longer you drink, the more the alcohol behavior has stretched its tendrils out and has enveloped many more areas of your life. So don’t mourn the loss of this as a friend, this is your enemy.

The fourth mistake people make is not preparing, you wouldn’t do most important things in your life without at least doing some form of preparation. Right? Even going away on a simple vacation requires a lot of preparation in advance… and planning, what you’re going to do planning where you’re going to go, where you’re going to stay, and how you’re going to get there. Also planning what you’re going to do when you get there, you know, all of this requires some thinking and preparation. Now this what you’re doing now, the actual quitting drinking part is easy. It’s simple, right? You don’t put any alcohol into your mouth anymore. And it’s as simple as that. If you do that, and you never put in the alcohol in again. You’ve quit drinking. Nothing can be more simpler than that. And you don’t have to do any planning for that. But the problem is that the behavior itself, which you’ve got to extricate, you’ve got to deconstruct. And in that deconstruction, it’s going to take time, and you need to plan because when you get to the end of the day, you would normally drink, what are you going to do then? At the end of the day, you’re going to go into your normal mode where you would normally drink but you have no drink, and you’re going to think then while you’re under pressure, while you’re having this discomfort, exactly what you’re going to do. That’s a mistake, right? You should think about these things. While you’re not under the discomfort, you’re not under the pressure, while your head is straight, while you’ve got that determination and that commitment to quit.

The fifth mistake that people make is believing that somebody or something outside of themselves is going to save them. Right? That they can take a course, they can read a book, or they can talk to somebody and automatically, it’s going to change something in their lives, which shoots them down a different direction and makes it easy for them to quit. That’s just not the way that this happened. And as I said, this is a massive journey ahead of you, right? It’s not a massive journey of discomfort, the discomfort only happens at the beginning. If you get yourself into the right frame of mind, and you focus your mind on the future, instead of the past, focus your mind on something that you want to achieve in your life, instead of something that you want to leave behind which is the alcohol drinking, then that will drive you forwards, it will give you lots of momentum, and it will be a pleasure to live your life. It will be a pleasure to push yourself and to have that toughness about yourself; that mental resilience. If you on the other hand, decide that you’re going to focus all your attention on what you’re missing out, as I say, mourning the loss of a dear friend companion, this divorce that people talk about that. It’s like having a divorce from somebody that they were with, that they loved and they hated them at the same time. This is setting yourself up for a lifetime of misery, because you never leave in the alcohol behind you. You’re never leaving that behavior behind you.

That brings me on to the sixth mistake, which is that people tend to think that quitting drinking alcohol is enough, just getting the alcohol out your system is enough, that stopping drinking and never drinking again is enough. It’s not. You need to build on that, you need to put as much distance between you and who you are now and the behaviors that you have now, alcohol drinking behavior that you have now, and the person that you want to be and that is my message..