EPISODE 4: Why Thinking About Your Hangover Won't Help You Cut Back on Drinking - Dry July, No Drama

Dry July, No Drama: Daily Tips for a Take It or Leave It Relationship With Alcohol Why Thinking About Your Hangover Won't Help You Cut Back on Drinking - Dry July, No Drama When we are taking time of alcohol we tend to spend a lot of time focusing on the hangover and anxiety post-drinking, and not enough time focusing on the issues in the moment. Our craving doesn't care about tomorrow. It just wants to ease our discomfort right now. If you start trying to sell tomorrow's hangover as a reason not to drink, you’ve lost it - that’s a future you problem. Whereas if we start to think about the impact in the here and now, and in the few hours after the first drink, that can be really convincing. Fear of the future, a bit like willpower and restriction, is a short-term strategy and will only last so long. What we need to is: 1. Start to become the craving, need and trigger investigator. 2. Understand what is going on in the moment. For example, if we want excitement, confidence, fun, what do we believe we or the situation will be like without that? This is the shift that makes reducing your alcohol intake feel natural rather than like white-knuckling it through the evening. This episode is part of Dry July, No Drama - a daily MidlifeAF podcast mini series with tips for cutting back on alcohol without willpower, labels or forever. My Awareness Worksheets - perfect for exactly this kind of noticing - and my Grounding Audio, which will help you identify the unmet need underneath the craving before it reaches for a drink. See links below:  FREE TOOLS - four beautiful resources to help you drink less and feel fabulous:  1. 7 Steps to Take Back Control of Alcohol - the exact steps I took when I started out on this journey nearly five years ago. hoperisingcoaching.com/7-steps 2. Awareness Worksheets - if you do nothing else, working through the answers to these questions will change your relationship with alcohol for the better. hoperisingcoaching.com/awareness-worksheets-opt-in 3. Your North Star Visualisation - stops your brain freaking out about doing something unfamiliar. hoperisingcoaching.com/northstarvisualisation 4. Grounding Meditation - you know that feeling when you have a drink and the body goes "aaaaaaaahhhhhhh" and everything seems to relax? What the body really needs is to ground - to come back home to self, and for self to feel lovely. That is what we work on in my live programs. We start every session with a grounding and connect with ourselves to find out what our body really needs when it thinks it wants to drink. hoperisingcoaching.com/grounding READY TO GO DEEPER?  Ready to make alcohol a non-issue? Watch my free one-hour masterclass: 5 Surprising Ways Taking a Break from Booze Can Be Effortless and Change Your Life. One hour. Five shifts. Your take it or leave it relationship with alcohol starts here. WATCH NOW FOR FREE: hoperisingcoaching.com/masterclass Are you tired of the mental back-and-forth about drinking? I am running a FREE 3-Day Alcohol Reset on 23, 24 and 25 June, 7pm Melb/Syd (replays available). No willpower talk. No abstinence pressure. You can even drink while you do it. A judgement-free space to learn the tools to step into a take it or leave it relationship with alcohol. REGISTER FREE: hoperisingcoaching.com/3-day-reset Want a take it or leave it relationship with alcohol? Want to stop all the "will I, won't I" internal conflict around wine? I am running the Great Aussie Alcohol Experiment LIVE from Wednesday 1 July. 30 days. Small group coaching. Only 25 spots. Small, intimate and private. Rewire your brain and nervous system so you no longer have to reach for a glass to quieten your busy brain, calm your overwhelmed soul or socialise when your social battery is spent. Early bird pricing open now - $500 off the full price, plus two 1:1 counselling sessions with me and 3 webinars included (worth +$1,000). We won't run this live again until October. YOUR NEXT RIGHT MOVE STARTS HERE: hoperisingcoaching.com/the_great_aussie_alcohol_experiment Change happens in a moment, my friends - the preparation for change takes a little bit of time. Take the time. You will be amazed at the difference it makes.