To carry on with the discomfort thing, here are 7 uncomfortable habits that will change your life forever.
Today, I want to talk about 7 of the uncomfortable habits that will change your life if you bring them into your life.
The first one is questioning everything.
When I’m talking about questioning everything, I’m talking about things from the perspective of your habit changing.
Not ‘should I put my feet on the opposite foot this morning’, those are stupid questions.
I’m talking about habits, your behaviours, questions you’re asking yourself, your judgments, when you sit there and you’re drinking that drink, questioning, ‘is this the right thing for me to do? What’s this going to do to me?’ think about this.
Think about your culture and question it.
Just because people have been doing something for a thousand years, it doesn’t mean it’s right for you or anyone else in your life.
Question that.
Question your personal culture.
Within the culture, we’ve got the culture of our neighbourhood, friendships, personal culture.
You should be questioning your personal culture.
I do that every day, it’s just the most efficient way of doing this, it’s just the way that will bring me the first benefit.
That’s the first one.
Don’t take anything for granted.
Don’t take anything you’re doing now as the best way of doing things, because most of the stuff that you think is right is probably not right.
There is probably room for improvement in so many areas of your life, and the only way to uncover those is to question and ask ‘is this the right way of doing it? Am I on the right path? Am I talking to the right people? Am I in the right environment?’
A lot of the times you won’t know what you’re doing until you change something about yourself.
I’ve said this about my own drinking, that it was only when I stopped that I started uncovering other things about myself that I didn’t know I had to change beforehand, that were causing me problems.
I did a video about quitting all drugs, and caffeine.
I sort of gave the impression that I quit caffeine because it was a drug.
That was not the reason I quit.
If a drug is going to do me some good, I’m going to take it.
I’m not going to be foolish that way.
If I’ve got a disease and the only way to get rid of that disease is to take a drug, then I’m going to take the drug.
If I’ve got a banging headache and the only way to get rid of it is to take paracetamol, I’m going to take the paracetamol, don’t get me wrong there.
But, I don’t want to continue doing something just because I’ve always done it in the past.
You have to question these things.
I’ve stopped drinking, and because the alcohol took over everything I was doing in my life, that feeling of drinking alcohol, it infected all my other parts.
I didn’t feel what it was like to eat crap food, or get enough exercise, or the caffeine, or the salt – that –as all disguised.
These are all things that you learn.
You peel off one layer of the onion and you get to the next layer.
Take that alcohol away and you feel something else is going on.
Coffee, for instance, I stopped drinking coffee when I went on a juice reboot.
I wanted to reboot from the salt, because I was eating too much salt, and I just wanted to get away from the salt and reboot my taste buds.
So I went on a juice diet.
But I also stopped drinking coffee.
It was after a month of staying away from caffeine that I drank coffee again.
That was when I noticed what it was doing to me.
I noticed the effect and I didn’t like it.
That was the reason I stopped.
But that wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t question the salt.
So that’s the first thing, question everything.
The next thing is to
be completely honest with yourself
There’s no fool like the fool of fools himself.
If you can’t be honest with yourself, then you might as well stop here and do nothing, because you’re your own worst enemy.
You’ve got to be truthful to yourself.
You’ve got to say to yourself ‘this is where I am. This is the reality of the situation’, and as I say, sometimes you don’t know the reality.
But sometimes we hide from the reality.
We don’t want to see the reality.
So, we hide away from it.
We tell ourselves bullshit stories so that we don’t have to face up to the realities.
A lot of the times those stories are underneath the surface and you can’t really help them.
But most of the time, these are stories that we tell ourselves, that we know are not true.
But in this sense, it’s being completely honest about stuff you’re doing. Don’t be making excuses, face up to the reality.
The third one is waking up really early.
In my old life, obviously I always get up early for work, I worked in forestry, and I had to travel a long way.
It was normally half five that I got up to go to work.
But, as a drinker, you have the opposite where you want to stay up late.
But as I said in a previous video, the best laid plans of a drinker are often stymied by his own actions.
You plan to do something at the end of the week and it’s not done because you decided to go on a binge.
You wasted time in the mornings when you should have been doing something, or you’ve wasted time because the next day, you were incapable of doing anything.
Now, for me, I just get up early every morning and know there’s nothing to hold me back anymore.
There’s no hangover, there’s no getting side tracked by an addiction, none of that.
There’s no addiction.
All the addictions I’m trying to get rid of, all the things that are holding me hostage, that I’m holding myself hostage to, I am trying to eliminate.
And I will eliminate them one by one.
The point is that now I get up early every morning, it’s the time when I’m the freshest, my brain is fresh, I can get a lot of things done, I can do a lot of thinking in the morning.
When I’m doing these videos, it’s the first thing I do in the morning.
I get up about half four, I do some work, my morning juice, I have a couple of half litres of water, and I do a little bit of work before I leave the house.
It’s just the best time for me to do anything.
It’s such a boom for me.
I get most of my work done before midday, and the work I get done after that is sort of pissing around work.
It’s no serious work.
It’s changed my life.
Not to get up early every morning but to consistently get up early every morning, and to do it without the hangover.
I remember going to bed 2 o’ clock in the morning, lying down and going into a coma and then waking up at 5.
That was waking up early, but I was in no mental state to do anything, I’d just curl up on the couch or in front of the computer.
So, consistently getting up every morning without the hangover will change your life.
Anyone who gets up early every morning knows this.
I know there are people who say they are not a morning person.
Well, obviously.
If you don’t get up early in the morning then you’re not a morning person but it’s just because you don’t do it, not because you’re not built for it.
We’re all built for it.
You think there was any caveman that said ‘no morning person, I get up when it gets dark’, no.
Every single human being got up when they fucking got light.
Because they had to do things during the day.
They had to get out there and get things done.
That’s what we’re designed to do.
Wake up when the sun comes up and go to bed when it goes down. It’s how you function at your peak.
If that’s what you want to be,
if you’re trying to get to this self-actualized person, then get up when the sun comes up and go to bed when the sun goes down.
Live your life around those principles.
The next one is being a creative person.
Everyone is a creative person.
If you can dream up your future, or think about how things ought to be, or should be or could be, then you’re creative.
I used to always think I was no good at panting, at math, at music, I couldn’t play an instrument.
I remember picking up a guitar and I went for some lessons on classical guitar, and I only went for 3 weeks because I was a chronic drinker at the time, and nothing was ever going to last for me because the beer always won over the mind.
But I loved it, and I was getting good at it.
I got pretty good at playing 5 or 6 different songs at my repertoire.
I loved it.
It was really relaxing and I felt so chilled out when I was playing.
I’m proud of myself.
That’s creativeness.
There are so many different areas in life for creativity.
If you don’t know how to be creative, think of something in your life that you want to do, and learn how to do it.
There are so many different opportunities to be on that wavelength, to learn how to do these things.
It will give you back far more than you put into it in terms of personal satisfaction, building up your self-respect, your ego if you want.
It’s just something that everyone should do, create something personal.
The next one is exercise.
I can’t tell you how much this means to every human being.
We’re built to move.
You’re given two legs so that you can move around with them, two hands so you can do shit with them.
So, get up off the couch and do something.
Exercise.
It’s not just about hitting the gym or going for a run.
You can just exercise by walking, dancing, so many different things.
As I said, I can only talk from a personal point of view.
This is my thing.
I get so much out of it.
When my dad was 50, he had arthritis in both of his knees, especially around one knee, and a lot of that was because he was a bus driver for many years before that, and he drove his car and didn’t get much exercise.
Also his diet, which I’ve spoken about on many occasions.
But a lot of it was down to his exercise.
You use it or you lose it.
That’s one aspect, the other aspect is that it boosts your immune system, boosts your energy levels, changes your emotions, gets you to a place where you want to be in terms of emotions.
Next one is eat foods that are nutritious and not just entertaining.
What I mean is make it a habit to only eat nutritious food.
It’s a long term thing.
It’s not something that is going to change overnight because these tastes are built up over the years.
You’re not going to eradicate them overnight.
It’s the same with the salt for me, it’s taking me a long time to overcome it.
There’s salt in so many fucking things, it’s unbelievable.
I thought I’d just get rid of the salt and I’d be fine and dandy.
When I first had rice or potatoes without salt, it’s horrible.
But it’s because I’m not used to that.
I’m not used to eating rice and potatoes without salt.
But the salt was not only doing shit to my body because I was eating a lot of it, and it was like a drug and my body was getting immune to the effects, so eventually I needed more to satisfy the same urges.
That’s what it basically boils down to, the urges.
Your body is going in a different direction, your mind is going in a different direction, it becomes used to these foods without salt.
Salt is not a natural thing.
It’s a natural thing in the food but not to put on the food, and if you eat processed foods, have a look at the labels, these are going to be laced with salt.
I’ve seen some that are 15-20% salt!
The salt that is good for you is 0.4%.
And yet there are some salts that are 20%.
So, eat foods that are nutritious first and entertaining second.
You can still eat food that delights the taste buds, you just have to learn how to cook it.
That’s where a lot of process sis going to be, a lot of pain is going to be finding the foods that you like because when you first try this, you’re going to hate it.
Because it’s not the food that you’re used to and doesn’t taste the same.
But persevere with it.
I got a comment on the website that said ‘this is alcohol mastery. What are you talking about food for?’
This is alcohol mastery.
I’m talking about food because alcohol is only one small part of this whole thing.
Normally people who are heavy drinkers are also doing damage to their body through their nutrition and through other areas of their lives.
I’m talking about my own personal improvement and how I’m doing.
That’s the only thing that I can talk about.
I can’t talk about somebody else’s journey because I’m on my journey and not theirs.
I can only share my experiences, and if they help you, I’m totally glad.
I’m going to keep doing these videos for the people that I’m helping.
If they don’t help you, then they don’t help you.
Everyone is going to get something out of the videos.
Not everyone is going to get something out of every video, but that’s not the point.
The last thing I want to talk about is just to focus on changing one habit at one time.
Don’t try to do too much at once because you’ll burn out.
You’ll hear people saying ‘I’ve changed my diet now and stopped drinking now and going for a marathon now, and giving up cigarettes’.
They pile everything up at one time and it becomes too much.
You don’t want to do it, and you crash, and everything goes back to the way it was before, or even worse than before because you start to think of yourself in a defeatist way.
You start thinking you’re a failure.
You might not be saying it to yourself in consciousness, but in the back of your head, that’s where all the damage is done.
So, give yourself time.
Get off the alcohol, give that a month, and then go on to something different.
Change something else in your life.
You can focus on quitting the drinking or on what you want to do in your life.
So obviously when you do quit drinking, a certain amount of your time is going to be focused on getting rid of the old behaviour.
It’s going to leave these big gaps in your life which you need to fill.
That’s why you have to focus on the new habits that you want to bring into your life. That can’t be a twin focus.
But only focus on one area at a time.
So you’re focusing on quitting drinking and what you’re going to replace the drinking with.
You’re focusing on your nutrition and how to replace the food you were eating for just entertainment with eating nutritious food.
So, just don’t do too much.
That’s about it.
There are 7 different habits that will radically change your life.
As I said in the last one, don’t do all these at once, but think about them and keep them in the back of your mind.
Question everything, be completely honest with yourself, get up early, get your creative hat on and start creating something, exercise – movement is the key here.
Motion to alter emotion.
Eat for nutrition and not entertainment.
Focus on one area at a time, try and do on change at a time.
Hope you got something out of that.
If you have any questions or comments, leave them down below.
I’d be only too happy to answer them.
Come on over to the website for the audio, we’re also on iTunes and Stitcher.
Until next time, stay safe, keep the alcohol out of your mouth, all the time aim your focus on habit growth and being the best person that you can be, and only you know who that person is.
These are common skills that I’m going to teach you.
These are things that I’m developing.
So, I don’t know what video is up tomorrow but I’ll see you on that one.
YOUR LIFE GETS BETTER BY CHANGE, NOT BY CHANCE.
Until next time…
Onwards and Upwards!
thank u for those great 7 new habits i am just starting out my new journey of not drinking alcohol i am 51 with two teenagers life is stressful
did u ever go to any support meetings such as celebrate recovery or AA? thank u for all the great videos
Hi Michelle, I didn’t go to any support groups. Never really thought about it. I had quit smoking a few years previous to quitting drinking and that gave me confidence that I could do this…smoking was worse for me…:)
Kevin,
This is one of the best vids so far. Thank you for all you offer those of us who are quitting and seeking a healthier life! I’m going to tackle something creative this weekend. Not sure what. We will see!
Mo
Not much new territory here but nice to see it reinforced.
f
Kevin
So thankful for all you offer.
You are like a mirror to us.
Peace, Gail
Another great insightful video Kevin. Again, thank you for your dedication and your passion to share your story and aide others with your platform. Cheers.
“If you can’t be honest with yourself, then you might as well stop here and do nothing, because you’re your own worst enemy.”
How true this is. I am surrounded with people like me. How could you ever admit to something when everyone around you called it “normal” to get drunk, maybe fight with the bartender, and then wake up with a hangover that you’d have to nurse while at work? I had to admit to myself that if I didn’t stop now, it would be much, much worse later.
Hi Kevin, I am so grateful for your daily videos. They are probably the difference between failure and success, not only for me but lots of others.
Checking back on my phone I can see I have been alcohol free for 84 days.
I kick started this process by walking and listening to your audio books.
Because you have such a great accent, I found your voice kind of stuck in my head.
I had read and listened to every book I can find on stopping drinking, The Alan Carr book is also a great book, but its not the same as being able to get those daily positive reminders that you provide. I am not the sort of person who leaves reviews or comments etc.
But if anyone is unsure how to start an alcohol free life and can handle an hours walk every day, down load the book Alcohol Freedom to your phone, I highly recommend it. I am not saying this is a magic cure, I still have days where I struggle, but not all day and not everyday and I do think I can keep off alcohol and start to rebuild a life motivated by something greater than getting inebriated. no offense intended if thats what your looking forward to today. (i did it for over 20/30 years and every day for at least the last 10 of them)
Great stuff Kevin,
Its been hard going but i have finally made it to day 10 without alcohol (even tho ime up to day 70 on the videos).
Everything u say is bloody damn true and your videos are so great at even convincing the bid dopey fool inside me to stop drinking.
Thanks very much your advice is the iron i need to find to keep on this upward pathway and to kill my alcoholic fool.
Just keep doing what you do – you are an inspiration to us all. Thank you