3 Keys to Making Alcohol Small And Irrelevant

This is a guest post by Wendy McCallum and is part of my 2022 Non-Diet Resolution Challenge. If you’re reading this at any time in January, click this link to sign up and join us! It’s never too late and I’m always happy to have you. You can also listen to the bonus podcast episode here.

Here’s the thing: We do what feels good. We don’t do what doesn’t.

If you’re anything like I was, you’ve done more than one 14-day cleanse, Dry January or Sober October. And every time you take a prescribed break from alcohol, you know it’s going to be hard, and you’ll feel deprived. You white-knuckle your way through it, counting down the days until you can have a drink again. And maybe, if you’re like I was, being “able to take a break” is just evidence that you don’t have a problem and it’s OK to keep drinking. But within weeks (sometimes just days) of these “breaks”, you find yourself right back where you were in your drinking patterns.

Taking a break didn’t feel very good. It was so hard. And drinking is easier. So, you keep drinking, making rules for yourself you can’t keep in an attempt to moderate. But still, you’re miserable and frustrated. The cognitive dissonance (the wanting to drink less but still wanting to drink), is making you crazy.

To make lasting change around alcohol, we need to figure out how to make that change feel good. Because if it feels good, we’ll keep doing it. The not drinking needs to feel better than drinking does. And that requires a completely new approach and perspective.

There are 3 keys to flipping your perspective:

Get curious: Treat this like an experiment. The truth is you don’t know how this is going to turn out. What if it goes right? What if not drinking or drinking less is the best thing that you ever did? What if it impacts all areas of your life? What if your sleep, mood, energy, skin, productivity, and parenting skills all improve? (Spoiler alert: they will.)

Stop beating yourself up: Lean into self-compassion. This can be hard because we’ve all become such pros at judging and trash-talking ourselves over the years. But if you start getting mindful and listening to what you’re saying to yourself about your progress, you can consciously work on changing the language. Replace “I’m a failure” with “I’m still learning” and “I can’t do this” with “This will take time”. The cycle of shame and blame just adds to our stress and makes it more likely we will want to escape with another glass of wine. Lay off yourself, get curious, and gather some data around whether this new mindset makes it easier to keep going!
Re-frame your goal: Remember, we keep doing what feels good. If your goal is rooted in deprivation (“I can’t/won’t drink for 30 days”), it’s going to feel like you are missing out and that doesn’t feel good. But if you can focus in on what you stand to gain from this alcohol-free experiment and frame your goal around how you want to feel instead of what you need to do, that can be incredibly helpful. For example, if you decide that you want “to feel in control, like alcohol is no longer running the show” and visualize how that will lead to less anxiety, the ability to be more present with your kids, more energy and personal confidence – that all feels good, so you’re more likely to keep going!

The next step is to start noticing the underlying thoughts and beliefs you have about how alcohol serves you. These are the beliefs that are keeping you stuck in your drinking patterns. The three most common beliefs I hear from my clients are the same ones that kept me stuck for years:

1. Drinking helps me relax,

2. Drinking makes life more fun, and

3. I need alcohol to cope.

If any of these feel true to you, I encourage you to take advantage of my FREE coaching video series where I dismantle each of these common beliefs and turn them around one-by-one, and show you how to do the same. You can start watching the videos anytime, by going here: www.wendymccallum.com/myths

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