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Enthusiasm Builds Momentum|Momentum Conquers Fear|Habit Change Happens

by | Stop Drinking Alcohol | 11 comments

How can your enthusiasm help you quit drinking alcohol?

I think enthusiasm for anything in life – is it a prerequisite? It is something that you need? It certainly helps.

It’s like they say about money.

Money can’t buy you love.

Money is the root of all evil.

Money is shit.

It certainly helps to have money.

Without money, there’s an awful lot of things that you can’t do in life.

I watched an episode of Karl Pilkington ‘the moaning of life’, and in one of these episodes, he talked to a guy who had just renounced money in all its facets in life.

He refused to take money off anyone.

He was living on the streets and stuff like that.

He said he was happy but he didn’t look very fucking happy to me.

The guy was living in a tarpaulin beside the lake and fair enough, on a lovely summer’s evening, it would’ve been nice.

I’m into camping and that kind of stuff.

But when he went round at the end of his day when he went round to have a look at this, it was pissing rain.

Before this, Pilkington was going ‘yeah yeah, I’m up for this.

I don’t mind sleeping out underneath the bushes and stuff’ and then he saw the thing, this bit of big plastic shit and it was pissing down rain, and he got underneath it and said ‘I can’t do this’.

He was like if he had the choice between this and a 3 or 4 star hotel with a lovely bed… ‘I could be in this bed now and be thinking I’m glad I’m here and that’s what I’m going to do.’

So, he basically didn’t do it.

Anyway this guy was getting all his food from skips and he was relying on other people basically, to feed him.

That’s what life is without money.

What’s the point? It’s that enthusiasm is not an essential ingredient but it certainly helps.

It helps to get excited about things.

It’s very difficult to get excited about stopping doing something, especially something that’s been a part of your life for a long time like alcohol.

From my way of seeing things, alcohol has been around since our birth.

Because that’s what the adults all did most of our lives, and that’s how we got into it, because we’re following the adults.

So it’s been around all of our lives and we have to get rid of it.

It’s a necessary discomfort that we have to go through, and it’s never easy to go through any kind of discomfort so it’s difficult to get excited about it.

The only thing that you can get excited about is your future.

Leave the past behind you, you’re not giving up anything great, you’re stopping doing something which is definitely and 100% causing you damage.

The consequences of the drinking are bad for you.

Alcohol and the body are not meant to be in that kind of marriage together.

There is a certain amount of natural alcohol in our lives in the food that we’re eating, if it’s fruit that’s overripe but in general, alcohol is not a natural part of our lives and it shouldn’t be a natural part of our lives.

It’s difficult to get excited about this, that’s why I’m saying point your focus forwards into your future.

What you focus on expands, so if you create big goals for yourself, then you can get enthusiastic about this.

You can show lots of enthusiasm, and enthusiasm is one of the few things that’s going to help you to build momentum very quickly.

If you can build your enthusiasm from Day 1, from before Day 1, from the time that you start this journey, then it will be good for you.

Once you can place a lock on your future goals, it helps you to stay focused on that future.

Your enthusiasm is going to help you to maintain that focus.

Like I said, you’re not missing anything so don’t be looking backwards.

Don’t be looking at what’s come before you except to learn.

Learn from your mistakes and move forward.

Laser lock onto the future goals that you want in life.

That’s what I’m saying.

The bigger the goal the better.

Go for it.

Even if you don’t make these things, go for them because you’re definitely going to be in a better position if you go for the goals than if you don’t go for them if you sit on your ass and don’t do anything.

Another reason for trying to maintain your enthusiasm is it reduces the overall fear.

Fear is a big obstacle for keeping you back, from stopping you from achieving the things that you want to achieve.

Especially for this kind of thing where you’re trying to leave behind a habit, something that is very much ingrained into your life and into your personality.

You’ve got to focus on the future and maintain that focus.

Keep your fear levels down by maintaining an enthusiastic outlook.

We fear a lot of things, fear what people might say or do, what situations we might be in, whatever.

Enthusiasm can help you overcome them or at least keep them pushed down, undercover, under wraps, muffled, like you’re holding your hand over the mouth of fear.

It helps if you plan out big things for yourself.

Fuck these small plans, if you want to quit drinking, that’s the small plan, small thinking.

I want to get to a year without drinking – small thinking.

Think big.

Why fucking not?

What have you got to lose?

Like I say, if you think big, and you spend some serious effort thinking about how you’re going to get to those big plans, break them down into little chunks and do these little chunks, plan how you’re going to get to these little goals.

If you do that with enthusiasm, you’re much more likely to get to your goals.

You might find that a year or two years down the road, you don’t really want to get to that big goal anymore and you want something better, good for you.

You wouldn’t have thought about that, that idea wouldn’t have popped into your head if you hadn’t had that first response of pushing after that first goal.

Most people have such a fear about not achieving anything good in life that they just don’t bother.

They sit in front of the telly – not that there’s anything wrong with watching a bit of telly- , but they sit down and they don’t do anything through fear.

The biggest way, the first way to overcome fear is to get up off your ass and do something.

Put your plans into action.

If you put your plans into action, then you’ll overcome the fear.

You start building enthusiasm for where you’re going to go the closer you get to your goals.

You’ll get excited and go ‘I’m nearly at that first goal’.

It’s good to get excited about it, get into that first gear.

Don’t get me wrong, I think it is a milestone that people should be aiming for.

It is a great feeling when you get to the first year.

My third year has just passed and it’s like yeah, I got past my third year.

Probably in five years I’ll go ‘yeahhh I got to 5 years’ and stuff like that, but it’s incidental.

It’s not a big deal.

It shouldn’t be the big goal that you’re aiming for.

The big goal that you’re aiming for should be ‘I want to stop young people from drinking. I want to stop as many young people from starting drinking as much as I possibly can’.

That’s my goal in life.

If I can get people to think about the drinking then in that way, it’s going to stop a lot of people from starting out with the habit.

You stop the parent, you stop the grandparent, then they can be a good influence on their own children.

But, my ultimate goal is to just put that mind-set into young kids’ minds that fuck this,
I’m not poisoning my body with cigarettes, with booze, and I’m not doing it with food either.

I want to live a healthy life, I want to get to 100 years of age being healthy.

YouTube is a brilliant resource for me, to put my videos out and to get my own message out, but anybody can put their own videos up and there’s a revolution going in the food industry and more and more people are turning vegan.

I’m not talking about vegan alone, I’m talking about healthy food choices. What you put inside your body is what you create.

You are what you eat.

Hippocrates the father of modern medicine, the Hippocratic Oath is based on his name. It’s what all doctors take.

He said that ‘food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food’.

Or the other way around.

Most of the people that are into this plant based diet and all that kind of stuff, most of these people are young people who look fit and healthy and they’re preaching good life and they’re telling good stories, giving great examples.

But there are older people coming out now and saying this is what I’ve done, this is my example.

This is who I was five years ago when I was eating meat, dairy and all this kind of stuff, this is who I am now when I’ve stopped doing that to myself.

Same message that I’m putting across with this is who I was 3 years ago, this is who I am now.

Just 3 years after I stopped.

I’m going through some of the old videos on the website now and just trying to reorganise things.

I noticed massive changes not only in my physical appearance, but in who I am as a person, my confidence levels, the way I think about alcohol, how that has evolved my message, all that kind of stuff.

That’s progress.

The more I get into this, the more enthusiastic I get about the whole thing, and the more concrete I am in my aim, and my aim is to prevent as many young people from starting out drinking alcohol through education.

I’m not talking about ‘drugs are shit, ban all drugs and you shouldn’t be doing that’.

I’m all for legalising a whole lot because there’s too much money being spent on locking people up for just using something because somebody else says you can use it.

I’m not talking about that.

That’s forcing people without giving them a proper explanation.

You’ve got to tell people why they shouldn’t be doing this.

You’ve got to lead by example: do you want to be this person here who staggers out of a night club, doesn’t achieve anything in their life, ruining their body.

There are two ways to try and educate people, there’s the way that’s kind of force fed or there’s the way that is teaching people by example.

That’s what I’m trying to do.

I’m not there yet, not anywhere close to doing that.

I want to write a book about this, I want to do this video course on this…like I said, not anywhere near doing this because I just can’t do it just yet, but I’m heading in the right direction.

Everyday I’m learning something new.

I’m learning how to communicate this, and that’s what it all boils down to, communication.

No matter what my message is, if I can’t communicate it properly to young people and speak in a way that they want to be spoken to, speak in a way that gets through, and that makes the change.

Education is fucking useless if it doesn’t make a physical change in a person’s life.

Like I said in the previous video, 3.3 million people dying every year from alcohol and 25% of all our young people from the ages of 20 to 39.

25% die from drinking alcohol, and that’s the one that they can pin it down to.

I suppose it’s a bit easier for that age group to know it was alcohol that caused it.

It’s just such a bad stain on the people that leading us, that this is allowed to go on.

They care about money more than anything else, and that’s why I don’t have any trust in what the government can do.

It’s all down to us as individuals to bring our children up with healthy respect for these things.

Not to ban them and to say this is against the law and if you’re caught doing this you’re going to prison.

I’m not in for that kind of punitive bullshit, that doesn’t encourage anything.

I’m into educating people so that they think for themselves.

It’s much more likely that if a person makes a decision themselves not to do something, then that decision will last for a lifetime.

It’s not until, despite your looking and watching them…

At the moment, it’s illegal before a certain time they have to be a certain age before they can get a hold of alcohol.

You and I know that’s bullshit.

They get their hands on alcohol.

When you’re young, you’re not being held down by the same kind of shit that we’ve got to deal with.

As you get older, you get freedom in a certain way, you’ve got a mind that is fairly open and it’s thinking of all these ways around.

Most of our progress in life happens through individuals; and a lot of the big changes that have happened in the past few years, if you think of google and computing and Facebook, these are all youngsters, children that are doing this, that are thinking of ways of changing the way we think about things.

And, regardless of what you think about it yourself, the values you put onto those things, kids are innovative.

Young minds are innovative and they will find ways of doing these things.

So, forcing them with punitive jail sentences or fines or getting into trouble for doing these things, that’s not the way to go forward.

The way to go forward is to educate people.

Educate young people’s minds so that they make the decision to do this.

That’s my goal, that’s where my enthusiasm lies now, that’s my end goal in the distant future.

Just to gradually, slowly and inexorably move towards that one single goal.

And that’s not going to change because I think it’s a worthwhile goal for me to follow.

I remember making a video two years ago and my goal was to be a worldwide expert on alcohol and that’s changed.

I don’t have that goal anymore.

I’m fully prepared to stand in the background if everything else changes.

That’s how your goals can change.

Enthusiasm and making your goals and heading towards your goals and moving away from the shit in your life and moving towards something good in your life, that’s where all the magic happens.

If your goals are something you decide later that you don’t want to do, then fair enough, you change the goal.

If you want to change direction or you want to change parts of the goal, then do that as well.

The enthusiasm is the thing that spurs you on, and gets you started, gets you going, gets you moving, and builds up momentum.

The more momentum you get with anything in life, the more willing you area to put in the time and the effort and the patience that you need to see the results.

To push through any obstacles or hard times that you find.

So, that’s all for today, I’m going to continue my walk now.

I’ve got juice in my bag and I’m going to drink that now.

Until next time, keep enthusiastic.

Find something that you’re enthusiastic about and push forwards.

You’re not going to be enthusiastic about quitting drinking so don’t bother.

Be enthusiastic about your 1 year, 3 year, 5 year goal but don’t let that be your end goal. Choose something worthwhile, something big that you want to do.

We’re the creator of our own destiny at the end of the day, just go for it.

SET YOUR GOALS HIGH AND DON’T STOP TILL YOU GET THERE.

Until next time…
Onwards and Upwards!

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11 Comments

  1. Rachel

    Thanks for the enthusiasm today. I needed that. I’ve has 5 healthy days in row now. I’m trying to focus on that. Getting healthy… getting something…. not giving up something

    Reply
  2. Kay Dewar

    I actually work with young people and I often talk to them about alcohol & drugs……drugs are becoming more available to youngster and is becoming a very worrying trend. I enjoyed your video on enthusiasm and it has reminded me why I should carrying on talking about the dangers of these drugs to the kids so hopefully they will one day realise what it really is all about. I’m 16 days Af…getting healthier, fitter and happier

    Reply
    • Kevin O'Hara

      Thanks for your valuable work, Kay

      Reply
  3. Linda

    I listen to ypur videos while going for morning walks. You are very inspiring. I am excited everyday to feel great and work towards my best life ever. I have passed your name along to some people on fb where I learned of you. I am very thankful for your words and your knowledge on living healthy. Also want to thank ypu for the time you put into helping and educating others!!

    Much love,
    Linda

    Reply
    • Kevin O'Hara

      Thanks Linda, you’re very welcome 🙂

      Reply
  4. Louise

    Kevin, I am a 76 year old woman. Today is my 7th day in. I AM enthusiastic about quitting, but I know realistically that this will fade. I’ve quit many, many times before. What takes me to go back to drinking is BOREDOM. My husband and I always drank together in the evening; sometimes at lunch over the weekend. It has always been fun, but for me, it gets more and more. You talk about a life plan. Well, at 76 I’m not going to start a new career. I just have to be very careful not to romanticize drinking into something it’s not. I’m optimistic.

    Reply
    • Sue

      Louise, your a 76 year young woman who should get enthusiastic about getting to know herself without the drink. Do any of us know our own identities without the poison?? I think not, anyway that my enthusiasm and thought I’d share. Day 9 for me !! Yea?☺️

      Reply
    • Kevin O'Hara

      At 76, you still have a lot of life left…Not too late to start anything 🙂

      Reply
  5. Julie

    I love your enthusiasm Kevin. Really enjoying your daily dose of inspiration,motivation and thoughtfulness as you roam the Spanish landscape. I do hope your message reaches as many young people as possible too. In recent days I seem to have tuned in to how surrounded we are by messages to DRINK ALCOHOL !! Greetings cards, wall plaques, glamorous TV ads all telling us how much we need alcohol to either enjoy or survive daily life. Even in conversations I’ve tuned in to how often we all tell each to…go and have a glass of wine to feel better about something/anything. I think your rewiring my brain. What’s happening to me? ?X

    Reply
  6. janet loontjer

    Kevin!! your body and brain needs animal protein!!

    Reply
    • Kevin O'Hara

      No they don’t. We are the same biologically, for all intents and purposes, as cows, elephants, horses, gorillas, and so on and so on…. They are vegetarians with huge muscle masses to support. Where do they get their protein from? For instance, a cow gets its protein from grass. Humans can get all their protein requirements from plants, without all the negatives. Eating animal flesh and other products is responsible for much of the heart disease, cancers, diabetes, and other killer diseases that we face today. This is another form of brainwashing we are forced to believe because of big business first policies, people policies second.

      Reply

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