As I write this I am 13 months and 5 days sober.
What the actual F*CK?! I don’t have an app that counts my days anymore.
I got rid of it when I got to 100 days. That might sound a bit cocky but I wanted to redirect my focus on living every day instead of counting everyday and by then I felt fairly comfortable in my sobriety.
Wow! For someone not trying to sound cocky I’m coming across like a right cocky twat! I promise, I really am not like that!
FFS! I may as well put down the spade and hire myself a JCB!
Anyway....
As an ambassador for Bee Sober and someone quite immersed in the sober community on Instagram, I hear a lot about other people’s sobriety journeys.
Firstly, if you are someone on that journey, bloody well done. You are quite literally going against the grain, bucking the trend, sticking two fingers up to society and that is not to be sniffed at. Seriously, good on you!
But secondly I wanted to share my thoughts on what I think helps to make the journey a slightly easier one. If your consumption of alcohol has led you to chose a life of sobriety then chances are your drinking levels or patterns are, or were problematic. The severity of the problem is irrelevant because giving up the booze is just plain hard!
Admittedly I haven’t had to tackle socialising without alcohol thanks to lockdown, but a year of sobriety has meant I’ve had my first birthday, holiday and Christmas without a drop of alcohol.
And here’s why I think I didn’t find it difficult. Hold up...cocky Shaena is back.
Mindset.
That’s it. If you can find a way to shift your mindset and the way you think about alcohol it’ll go a long way to helping you bin the booze for good.
Making the decision to stop is just the first step. A bloody huge first step but there’s a lot of work to do once you take that step.
The importance of your mindset in changing behaviours and patterns is big. I’m fully obsessed with how the mind works (hence why I’m now a mindset coach) and without understanding this key component I’m not sure I’d be writing this blog post on sobriety today.
So as not to bore you with all the details here are some of the main things I think will help you on your sobriety journey.
- Understanding why you drank. What’s the deeper reason as to why your drinking became a concern. Were you drinking to relieve stress (that never really went away), cope with kids, make you feel confident, numb some sort of pain...fill a void? If you can figure out why you drank the way you did and work on that you’ll find the cravings go away much quicker and you’ll not miss it as much.
- New habits. This one is tricky because it’s about replacing the old drinking habit with something new. So, you want to look at ways you can keep your mind occupied during what would have been your usual drinking hours. The difficult part is finding the right kind of things and stopping yourself from falling into the trap of a new addiction.For me, my new addiction was my business. This doesn’t sound so bad, but an addiction is an addiction and eventually, that started to show up as me overworking and not taking care of myself mentally or physically.So find something new but be mindful about getting unhealthily obsessed with it.
- And finally...stop romanticizing it! If you genuinely got anything positive or beneficial from it you wouldn’t be trying to stop. Think of it like that good for nothing ex...in the past where it belongs!
So there you have it...a few mindset tips to help you on your journey.
Keep going and keep bee-ing sober!
Shaena Jasmat is a Bee Sober Ambassador for The Black Country and a Life Purpose Coach who works with women to help them uncover their true potential so they can create the life they want and deserve.
Follow Shaena on Instagram and Facebook
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