Moving from Judgment to Curiosity

I think sometimes we wake up with a terrible hangover and then we feel like, "Okay, that's it I'm going to get serious about this." Then as time goes by we become less and less serious about it.

This is something to take seriously and there's two ways you can do that.

One of the ways is with a lot of judgment: this leads to a lot of quitting, a lot of stopping, and a lot of starting. That tends to lead to...nowhere.

The other way is with practice and curiosity. I really want to encourage you to approach all of the techniques that I provided to you with practice, practice, practice and curiosity.

Remember: one of the first things I asked you to do is to start practicing how to feel an urge. That will be something that will feel totally awkward and you'll feel like you absolutely can't do it in the beginning. I want to encourage you to keep practicing, keep going at it. Do not quit. Do not say it doesn't work for you. Do not blow it off. Do not say that it's not important. Absolutely pay attention to the process of allowing an urge and keep practicing it until you do it 100 times.

The second thing you need to know is that you have to keep on top of this with your prefrontal cortex. You have to use your human brain to plan when you are going to drink.

You may tell yourself, "I like to be spontaneous." That is the kiss of death. If you let your animal brain take over, that's when you're going to get locked into that pattern of desire that makes you feel like you're drinking against your own will. Do not do that. Stay in your higher brain, stay in that brain in your prefrontal cortex and take control of your drinking on purpose and concisely.

The next thing you want to do is become aware and stay aware of how you think about alcohol and how you want to think about alcohol. Make sure it's concise. Make sure you decide what you want to think.

Do not let your brain think stuff without your permission. 

Do not let your brain believe something that doesn't give you the ultimate result you ultimately want.

As you go through this you will also need to learn how to make a mistake. You will go through the process of drinking when you didn't plan on drinking. This doesn't mean that there's something wrong with you. This doesn't mean that you've done something wrong. This is just a pattern that happens when we're learning. We make mistakes.

I've created a worksheet for you, it's called, "Write it down, learn and move on." I really want to encourage you to use this worksheet when you drink against your own will, and when you do things that you don't want to do. This is a great worksheet for you to learn how to learn from your mistakes instead of using them as a reason to beat yourself up. 

Here are the questions:

1. What and how much did you drink that wasn't planned?
2. What was the circumstance that triggered it?
3. What was the thought that created the desire or the urge?
4. Did you try and resist it or did you just react to it?
5. Did you try to allow the urge?
6. What worked and what didn't?
7. What did you learn and what will you do next time?

Please do not just respond to an urge and let it go. You want to be able to take that as an opportunity to learn. If you take it as an opportunity to learn and you write down all those questions, it is more useful than had you not done it at all and just beat yourself up.

You need to approach this entire process with a real seriousness, but it also needs to be curiosity and deliberate practice. I really want you to know that it is possible to release this unwanted desire to over drink. If you follow these quick-start processes that I've given you, you will absolutely be able to change this for yourself.

If you can't, the only thing that means is that you haven't learned the skill yet. You can't ride a unicycle because you haven't practiced enough, you haven't failed enough times. It doesn't mean you can't or you won't be able to ever, it just means that you need to practice more.

I highly encourage you to get right back on the unicycle.

Keep failing until eventually it becomes effortless.