Caryn G | 17th August 2022 | Self-Improvement

“When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.” -Paulo Coelho There are many reasons why you might decide to cut back or quit drinking. You might want freedom of choice so you can control what you put into your body because you’re working on improving your health & fitness levels. Maybe you crave financial freedom, which means you need to stop wasting your money on booze and put it into your savings or start that business you always dreamed of. If you’re creative, maybe you’ve figured out that if you cut back on mindless drinking time, you would have more time-freedom to turn your dream into reality. Whatever your motivating factor is, you’re going to need some inspiration to keep you on track to achieve your goal. So let’s dive into some great inspirational quotes from people who know what it’s like to face challenges and succeed. “You are never too old to set new goals or to dream a new dream.” - C.S.Lewis It’s never too late to make a change in your life. I was 59 when I finally quit drinking and my friend was 73. We both had decades of alcohol history under our belt. We were masters in the f**cked up art of drinking. If you’re ready to quit drinking, you’re ready to quit! Young or old, age makes no difference. Prioritise your freedom and take your first step by making a decision to improve your health, wealth, & freedom of choice today. “The only way to do great work is to love what you do.” -Steve Jobs Find something that inspires you and use it as motivation to quit drinking. Look for something to fall in love with. This can be anything from jigsaw puzzles to skydiving. When you are engrossed in something you love, your desire for the booze fades. This is also a good time to fall in love with yourself. Recently, I attended a Wildfit coaching call. We were discussing the need to take care of our mind and body. One attendee explained it beautifully when she said, “Selfish is the new unselfish!” So get selfish and fall in love with yourself and life. If you’re passionate about something, then it will be easier to stay committed to quitting alcohol. So find your passion and use it to fuel your motivation! Get passionate about your new life, fall in love with yourself & picture the new you one year from now. Healthy, happy, sober! “The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.” -Ernest Hemingway This is a big one. At some level, you probably don’t trust yourself. Maybe you don’t trust yourself to stay sober. Maybe you don’t trust yourself to make the right decisions in life. This is common amongst drinkers. We often start drinking out of a sense of lack, so it’s not surprising we don’t trust ourselves completely. Trust is built and not manufactured. Start building trust in yourself by taking baby steps. One small wise decision at a time, like a fresh homemade green vegetable juice before you go out to drink and a glass of water between drinks. Remember, the only failure is the failure to try. Everything else is market research. So trust yourself and believe in your ability to change your circumstances, your habits and your life.The more practice you get making wise choices, the better you become. In the future, you will look back and you won’t even recognise the person you are now. “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.” -Winston Churchill For most people, cutting back on the booze or quitting alcohol is a journey. Some people are lucky, they can make the decision to stop and give up the next day. There is no journey. They just teleport themselves into the future and adopt their future personality. People who do this often have the ability to make clear decisions in other areas of their life too. So when it comes to booze, they can make a clear distinction between the old self and the new, improved non-drinki...

Caryn G | 15th July 2022 | Self-Improvement

You want to kick alcohol, but it's just not that easy.    The problem is alcohol has become a regular part of life.    Whether it’s a couple of drinks with friends or a few beers while watching the game, alcohol is often seen as a harmless way to relax and have a good time. Until 1 year, 26 days and 11 hours ago, I was one of those people who thought alcohol was a good way to relax. However, for some people, drinking is a serious problem. And, if you’re reading this, the chances are some part of you knows that you need to make some life changes and better choices when it comes to drinking. When we’re struggling with alcoholism, quitting drinking may seem impossible. The chances are you’ve tried limiting the number of drinks you have or quit for an hour, a day, a week, only to go straight back to our old ways. All of which can really make us feel like a loser. Once a loser, always a loser? Wrong! It is possible to break the cycle of addiction and regain control of your life. I’ve done it and so have some of my friends. We each had a different journey, but we are all healthier, happier and wealthier because of it. It’s important to remember that when it comes to quitting the booze, there is no one size fits all. What worked for me may not work for you. You may find it hard, you may find it easy. Only you can judge because it’s your journey. The important thing is to keep going. If one method doesn’t work, don’t get discouraged. Try another until you find the perfect method for you. Remember, you’re not a loser just because one method didn’t work for you. You have simply completed some valuable research. Learn from it, tweak it and try again either with a new approach or a refined method. To help you on your way, here are 3 of the more unconventional methods you can research to help you quit drinking and stay sober. Permanent Reminder Consider a Tattoo. This may sound a bit extreme, but let’s face it: having a constant in your face reminder is one way to keep you focused. Having a tattoo reminder on your arm that you can see every day could be exactly what you need. This can be a simple visual aid, like a small cross or a date, or something more spiritual, like the words "be pure " or "freedom". The point is to create a visual prompt that means something to you. When you feel the urge to drink, you can look at it, touch it and remember why you want to quit or reduce the booze. In this way, not only will you be reprogramming your subconscious with a positive programme, it will help you to stay focused on your goal of sobriety or reduced alcohol intake. Let Your Subconscious Do The Work Hypnotherapy is another effective option for quitting drinking. Hypnotherapy can help to retrain our brain to think differently about alcohol and break the mental addiction. If you’re like most people, you’ve probably heard of hypnotherapy, but you’re not quite sure how it works. Hypnotherapy is a type of therapy that uses hypnosis to help people change their behaviour. During a hypnotherapy session, the therapist will guide you into a state of relaxation. Once you’re in this state, your brain becomes more receptive to suggestions relating to changes of behaviour. For example, if you’re trying to quit drinking, the therapist may suggest that you no longer find alcohol appealing. You can either find a hypnotherapist to work with or try one of the many audios you can find on the internet. It’s not going to harm you, and it may just work for you. The important thing to remember is to be open to change and just keep trying until you find something that works. Hang On Delayed Gratification is another tool that can be helpful in quitting drinking. This means learning to resist the urge to drink in the moment and instead focus on the long-term goal of sobriety. It can be difficult to stick to this plan, but it’s important to remember that each day or moment you resist the urge to drink...

Caryn G | 18th June 2022 | Self-Improvement

Never drinking & staying sober is a skill. No one ever tells you the real truth about drinking when you’re young. There isn’t a class in high school, college or university where a professor stands up and says, “Understand this one big point: learning about alcohol is vital if you want to be a success in life. Everything important you do in life requires research. What university to go to? What job? What shirt goes with what jeans? What’s the best phone? So doesn’t it make sense to research alcohol first?” Instead, alcohol remains this massive unknown in most people’s everyday life. They don’t know how to control it. They don’t know how to secretly drink more of it. They don’t know how long it will be before they can’t function at work. They don’t know how to get more money to spend on it. They don’t know how to give it up. They don’t know how to live without it. And that’s a massive problem for anyone to live with. 11 months, 25 days and 13 hours ago, I gave up drinking. I did this because I wanted to but also to support my friend, who was having a hard time giving up. Not for the first time, I made up my mind to quit. But this time I asked a Wildfit coach for help and he suggested the book by Annie Grace, This Naked Mind (I highly recommend this). It turned out that making a concrete decision, taking positive action and having a non-drinking friend were exactly the 3 things I needed to get started successfully. I would later discover that getting started wasn’t the hard thing. As time ticked by, I realised that I needed a foundation of knowledge and strategies to put in place. Which is what I’d like to share with you today. Knowledge is power which is why I'd like to share three important points that will help you navigate giving up alcohol. The quicker you understand these points and plan for them, the easier it will be for you to stay sober. 1. Alcohol Endings and Sober Beginnings One of the first things to expect is that your old alcohol infused drinking life will end. If you've been drinking for a long time it will have a big impact on you. It’s like losing a loved one. You’re going to go into a period of mourning because the love of your life- alcohol is no longer around. You will want your ex back. And you are going to be given constant reminders and prompts to start drinking again. Every time you watch TV, you’re going to see your ex. Every time you go out you will think about your ex and if you meet up with your drinking buddies, they will really push you to drink again. The best way to get over your ex is to get under a new one. The more you can focus on a new hobby or building a new you, the better it will be. Life is about choice. You can choose where you focus. 2. Friends or Frenemies? When you give up drinking you quickly discover that your best friend was the booze. Your second best friends were the people you drank with in the pub. When you quit, you will be faced with the reality that you have nowhere to hide from yourself. You’re going to discover that you have built your daily habits around your ex and it’s going to be a shock. Focus on building new habits that support the growth of the new you. Remember, you want to plan for the long run. We’re not talking about change for a few days, we’re talking about the rest of your life. Get serious about it! 3. Planning For Success If you want lasting sobriety you have to plan for it. This is a huge mindset shift, and it took me some time to understand it. As a drinker planning for life wasn’t a concept I was really familiar with because drink takes care of everything. Drink is always the finale. Got a problem? Solve it with a drink. Feeling happy? Celebrate. Matthew Childs gave a Ted talk called 9 Life Lessons From Rock Climbing. Lesson number 3 is, have a plan. He says, “Often what happens is you’re planning so hard for like, “How do I get through the hardest part?...

Caryn G | 01st December 2022 | psychology

You don’t know you’re fighting for your life because you’re an idiot and you’ve lost the ability to see what a complete and total loser you have become.   You think you’re just fighting for another drink because that’s the only movie playing in your head.   There’s a bloody loud voice that’s screaming insistently in brutally blunt language “Drink!” “I want a drink!” “Will somebody please just give me a f*****ing drink!”   Too sad. You chose to ignore reality and the giant warning signs along the path to the bottle of booze AKA poison. You forgot to read the small print that said, 100% guaranteed “End Your Life Hack.”   Come on, let’s get honest here.   You did ignore them, didn’t you?   You chose to get drunk. You chose to have a hangover, you chose to wash, rinse and repeat and to become an alcoholic. Ttatty   Was that a little harsh?   I don’t think it was. I don’t think it was harsh enough.   What I really should have said was wake up, you bloody idiot! What the hell are you doing to yourself?   You are choosing alcohol over life. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, good about what you are doing.   Sliding into that bottle every night is just a lack of imagination on your part and a huge act of cowardice!   Wake up and grow a pair of balls for god’s sake. Develop the self-care skills you need to change your life and deal with problems in a way that doesn’t kill you and poison the lives of everyone around you.   Stop telling yourself that your life sucks. Get out of the cage of fear and get some real help and real support. Find some people you can trust. People who don’t drink and who can see the world from a different perspective.   Your Friends Suck   Don’t hang around with the enablers. The people who are drinkers. Drinkers can’t give you any guidance. They drink for god’s sake!   They can’t be honest with you because they don’t want to be honest with themselves. This is the brutal reality.   You can’t trust them. They can’t tell you that you are drinking too much because then they would have to question their own drinking habits.   They have a secret, vested interest in keeping you a drinker. It makes them feel better about themselves and their habits. They can only be superior if there is someone below them. You are that someone! The dirt beneath their feet.   You make them feel normal and superior.   They don’t want you to change because then they would have to look at their own drinking habits and no one wants to do that! use this mindset shift if you want to quit drinking The Alcohol Ladder   Whether you like it or not, life is all about hierarchies.   Other drinkers need you to have a drink problem. Hell, they secretly want you to have a big drink problem so they can maintain a higher position on the ladder.   They need alcoholics so that they can distinguish themselves and pretend they don’t have a problem with alcohol.   That’s why all drinkers need the dirty, smelly guys in the streets clutching their sad little bottle; the only cold comfort they have to stave off the harsh realities of life.   The down and outs — God bless ’em. How we love them for being in the gutter and clutching their bottle of strong liquid meths. How superior they make us feel.   They keep the whole damn pyramid scheme  propped up.   If it wasn’t for them, the heavy drinkers and the binge drinkers would have no one to look down on and everything would get a little more scary, a little more nasty and a little more real.   So take a good long look at the person in the mirror.   Then take a deep breath, thank them for all the valuable lessons they have taught you and then say goodbye to them because you’ve got work to do and it means you have to kick alcohol into touch.   Walk away, pick up your pen and paper and write these ...

Caryn G | 21st August 2022 | psychology

You are the dumbest, smartest person you know. And when you quit drinking, you are going to realise just how dumb you have been. You’re going to realise what a complete and total moron you were for opening the door to alcohol. You might think this is a bit harsh. It’s not. The truth is once you quit drinking, reality is going to come knocking on your door and you’re going to have to face it. It won’t be easy. Your Drinking Life Revealed You’ll have to take a long, hard look at how you got where you are now. Some of you won’t want to do it because you know deep in your heart that it won’t be pretty. Trust me, I know I’ve been there and there’s a damn good reason they call it the ugly truth. If you want to move forward, you need to take a long, cool look at your past. It’s the only way to learn and grow. So take a moment and sit down to think about the choices you have made about alcohol and then make a list. What you discover will shock you & upset you as you write things like: Wasted a shed-load of money. Hell, I could’ve bought a house by now. Lost my memory when I blacked out. Had hundreds of conversations about things I couldn’t remember the next day. Said countless things I shouldn’t have. Drank so much that I damaged my body and needed to take time off work. Loved alcohol more than I loved myself. Prioritised booze instead of my life. Didn’t perform well at my job. Played small when I should’ve played big. This is not an inclusive list. Once you get started you will find it grows as you finally get honest with yourself and confess those deep dark drinking secrets. The Emotional Roller Coaster When you start to realise how alcohol screwed up your life, you’re going to feel angry. You’re going to feel mad at yourself for not quitting sooner. You’re going to feel so bloody angry that you lost so much of your life to some goddamn crappy, poisonous, chemical concoction that society conditioned you to believe was glamorous and necessary. That’s ok. Feel that anger. Really experience it and then do something you probably haven’t done before. Forgive yourself for not being the person you wanted to be. Put the old you firmly in the past and welcome the new you. Let the anger go and start to build a new, better future. It’s going to be emotional.   Freedom From Alcohol No one wants to see how badly they have screwed up, but you got this. You’re a different person now, with a new perspective and a new life, and you have one thing you never had before. Freedom. When you quit drinking, you gain freedom of choice. You can choose what you put into your body. You are no longer a slave to alcohol. And because you don’t need booze, you don’t need all those unhealthy snacks you used to eat to soak up the drink. It’s not only your body that’s going to get healthier. Your emotions are going to stabilise, you’re going to feel more in control of your life and even better news your bank balance is going to improve too. Let your anger work for you, so you can move forward and create a better, brighter future. You can’t change the past, but you do have the freedom to design your new alcohol-free life. Start by taking a look at that list you made. Where you were playing small, take decisive action, be bold and play big. If you’ve let people down in the past, make a conscious effort to show up and keep your word. Respect yourself and respect your body. Focus on the change you want to be, understand that you may be a victim of the alcohol culture but also know it’s your responsibility to fix it. If it gets too much, reach out for help and everything else will flow from there.   Live Strong, Love and Be sober Join the Sober Revolution and Sign Up HERE       for more Quit Lit. Searching for more Quit Lit to help you quit drinking, be sober and enjoy sober living? Check out these popular articles on quit lit. 1 thing you notice once you sto...

Caryn G | 21st July 2022 | psychology & Mental health

Self-medicating with alcohol? When we feel like life is shit, the easy thing to do is reach for a drink. Just one glass and all our troubles will disappear. Alcohol, our saviour.   Except it isn’t. If you’re reading this, there is a part of you that wants to change your toxic relationship to drink. Intuitively, you know that there is a better way and that you need to wake up because alcohol is not going to change your life for the better.   Face it! Accept it and then take steps to change it.   First things first, when life is crap and it’s not where we want it to be, we have to accept that no amount of beer, wine or whisky is going to change that. Only you can. Self-medicating with alcohol will hurt you more than it will help.   hen you are drinking, you are only focused on the drink. You don’t care about anything else. You don’t care about your health, your family, or your future. All you care about is getting that next drink, getting high or forgetting about your problems.   The fact that we are the source of our own problems is something that we drinkers overlook.   As an ex-drinker and daughter of an alcoholic, I’ve had decades of experience with alcohol. As an ex-drinker, I know that most of us are able to ignore the fact that alcohol has helped turn us into an emotional retard that is unable to process & manage emotions.   This is all perfectly understandable given the drinking culture we are born into. But just because something is understandable doesn’t make it right.   Feeling happy? Celebrate with a drink. Problems at work? Forget about them with a drink. eeling bored? Get over it with a drink.   Sooner or later, you have to decide you are ready to stop hiding from your fears & failures, make a change for the better, and face the monster under the bed. You can stop self-medicating     When we have made that decision, we can take a step towards a brighter future. If you want to quit or reduce your alcohol intake, there are 3 important areas to invest your time and energy developing. A Shoulder to Cry On Birds of a feather flock together. Take a look around at the people you are choosing to hang out with. Do they drink the same or more than you? In both cases, you need to get a new support system. We can’t rely on the people who drink the same as us for support because they won’t or can’t see drinking as a problem. We can’t ask anyone who drinks more than us because by saying our drinking is out of control, we are also implying they are an alcoholic. Whilst it may be true, they probably don’t want to hear it.   One of the most important things you need to do when quitting drinking is to change your support system.   If your current support system consists of other drinkers, then it’s time to find new friends who don’t drink. These new friends can help you stay on track, provide a different outlook on life, and achieve sobriety. They will be there for you when you’re struggling and want to give up. They will never encourage you to have a drink to get over your problems because that’s not how they solve their problems. New Horizons In addition to changing your support system, you also need to find a new direction for your life, which means getting guidance. We often discuss our problems with other drinkers who are really in no position to give us guidance on how to quit or reduce the booze or how to change our lives and make better decisions.   Many of us who drink have simply lost the ability or never had the ability to make good decisions and life choices, especially when it comes to emotional decisions.   As drinkers, we rarely take the time to figure out what to do with our emotions.   For most of us, we have sought guidance from alcohol. We say things like, I can’t decide now. I’ll have a drink and think about it. Except, we don’t think about it.   We drown our emotions with alcohol or react inappropria...