My goodness! What a difference this made! I used to think that the harder I was on myself, the more likely I was to succeed. As much as I hated the mental beatings, they felt like a necessary evil. How was I ever going to get anywhere if I went easy on myself? I had…
Category: 100 Days without Alcohol
Day 89: Lesson 4 from quitting booze and Sugar. Start where you can start.
I’m an all or nothing person. Or at least I was an all or nothing person. I’d set myself these crazy, lofty goals based on something I read in a book or heard in a podcast and tell myself, “If they can do it, I can do it.” More times than I care to admit,…
Day 88: Lesson 3 from quitting booze and sugar. Have a mantra.
I’ve never been one for mantras but wow! They’re pretty handy little things if you have good ones! I had two to help me when I quit drinking. Neither of them is original but as soon as I heard them, they really resonated with me. The first was from “The Unexpected Joy of being Sober”…
Day 87: Lesson 2 from quitting booze and sugar. Use your body to hack your mind.
I’m a serial over-thinker. Seriously. I can turn absolutely anything into a drama. At the moment, my stomach is in a knot about my daughter’s school Easter Egg Raffle! (I’d need a whole separate blog to explain that one but I’m fairly sure most of you would see why I’m concerned.) Anyway, the point is…
Day 86: Fifteen Lessons from quitting drinking and sugar. Lesson 1: Lagom
I have 15 blogs left between now and completing my alcohol and sugar-free experiment and since I’ve learned so much from the process, I thought I’d share some of the best lessons in these last blogs. Here’s the first one: Lagom A Swedish concept, “The Law of Lagom” describes something that is ‘just enough’ or…
Day 85: A chance conversation on the train
I was reminded yesterday about the difference between knowing and doing. On my way home from work, a man struck up a conversation with me. During the conversation, he shared all of these details: he has to review a document sent to him by his legal team, he drinks a bottle of red wine most…
Day 84: The link between numbing and anxiety
This morning I heard something the blew me away – not because I didn’t know it but because I did, and I just hadn’t thought about it this way before. I was listening to Brene Brown talk through the lessons in “The Power of Vulnerability” when she said : In my data, in my research,…
Day 83: Does therapy have to be the next step?
Have you ever felt certain about your ability to achieve something, only to find out half way through that you had no idea what you were getting yourself into – at best you were underprepared, at worst, completely mistaken. I’ve reached that point. I’ve always subscribed to the humanistic approach to psychology – an approach…
Day 82: Out out without Wine
I nearly bailed on going out last night. Actually, I did bail. I texted the babysitter and said I wasn’t feeling well. I haven’t been ‘out out’ for months! So many months, I can’t even remember the last time. It might even be more than a year ago. My husband’s band was playing at a…
Day 81: I’m not wallowing, I’m juicing
A friend of mine once advised me to wallow in negative feelings rather than fight them. I tried it many times – I just didn’t realise I had misinterpreted his advice. When difficult emotions overtook me, I made no effort to do anything to feel better. I let my thoughts bodyslam me and didn’t even…
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