Sober Short - Changing your Thinking - about Drinking

Tribe Sober - inspiring an alcohol-free life! Welcome to our fourth "Sober Short" - an interim mini podcast to supplement the weekly Tribe Sober podcast. I’m going to kick off this series by taking you through our Tribe Sober Toolkit – this toolkit is just one of the things that we share with you during our regular Zoom workshops – click here for more info. Our workshops have been a gamechanger for so many people so if you want to kickstart your sober journey then sign up today In this episode During the first 3 Sober Shorts we looked at the first 3 Tools in our toolbox Tool one was of course CONNECTION “Connection is the Opposite of Addiction” and if you’re serious about getting sober then you need to connect with others on the same path – So if you’re not yet a member of our tribe please check us out on tribesober.com “join our tribe” to read about the benefits of membership Tool number 2 was “Get Moving” We all know is that exercise is “good for us” and many many people exercise daily but they also drink on a daily basis – sometimes excessively – ditch the drink and keep exercising and you will be amazed at how much fitter you will get! Tool number 3 was all about:- BUILDING YOUR EMOTIONAL STRENGTH All about “learning to sit with our feelings” – instead of trying to chase them away with alcohol – alcohol is the “easy button” and enables us to bypass difficult emotions We have to “get comfortable with being uncomfortable as Tribe Sober coach Lynette says or as Glennon Doyle says:- “First the Pain, then the Rising” Todays tip from our Toolbox is all about MINDSET It’s about changing your thinking – about drinking The global alcohol industry spends trillions on marketing every year to convince us that we need their product.. The wine industry in particular has done a stunning job marketing to us ladies during the last 2 decades– Many women now believe that drinking wine is essential for a full and happy life. Add to that the fact that alcohol has become so normalized in our society that if you don’t drink you are considered a bit strange — alcohol really has become the only drug we have to justify not taking! Somehow we have to de-program ourselves — a nice analogy is to think of our subconscious mind as a computer — we need to reboot and load some new software. Our subconscious is full of false beliefs that we have picked up over the years — for example:-- we need alcohol to socialize- we deserve a drink at the end of the day- we need a drink to cope with our stress The first step is to identify your limiting beliefs.. Somehow we have to overturn those beliefs – one by one we can do that in two stages — intellectually and then by our behavior which will build new neural pathways in our brain. Here is an example:- If you are convinced that you will never be able to socialize without alcohol and you are going to lose all your friends…. Overturn that belief intellectually — write something like “I can enjoy time with my family and friends without drinking alcohol” in your journal. Sadly it’s not quite that easy — now you have to “do the work”.. You have to actually do it - socialize without alcohol — again and again.. Spoiler alert — you will probably hate it but you must keep going so that it will stick as you build a new neural pathway See each event as a challenge. Write it up in your journal — how did you feel, how long did you stay, did you manage to enjoy any part of the evening? If you have been drinking/socializing for years then it will take months to convince your subconscious that you can have fun without it — but it’s definitely possible. You can believe it because I did it myself It just takes courage and perseverance. It means pushing out of our comfort zone We give alcohol far too much credit for the good times and now you have to “uncouple” that alcohol/fun association. After all when we were children we didn’t need alcohol to have fun, we didn’t grab a beer from the fridge when we got home from sch