Motivation List

Again, I'm going on a journey. For two weeks I'm going to quit drinking. I'm beginning on August 7. If I said a different date before, this is the one I'm going with. I'm just doing it to see if I can. It's just for fun. Well, maybe it's to lose some weight (like 50 pounds, lol). 

So, this is the last of my preparation posts.

Which brings me back to motivation.

September 7. Motivation list

Why do you want to lose weight? Why do you want to quit drinking for 2 months. It's is a list you can take out when you have a weak moments.

• Kids
• Lose Weight
• Diet.
• Reading more.
• Having more energy.
• Asthma better. Save money. 
• Reduce grocery bill. 

Alternative things you can do.

• Go for a walk. 
• Go to a movie. 
• Read one of those books over there. 
• Go to the health club

The Alcohol Culture

So, again, I'm prepping myself for two months alcohol-free. I'm doing it for fun. Like, I've done it before. It actually feels like quite an accomplishment. It also helps me to shed pounds. Hmmm. Maybe that's the ultimate goal.

Anyway.

So, you drink at home. There are no outside influences. So, you want to quit. You just do it. But, that’s not always how it is. You go to the cabin. Guys there drink. You are not drinking. They say, “Have a drink.”

They try to convince you to drink. You give in. That’s how life is. Then you have a couple drinks, and you convince yourself it’s okay to eat that cookie. Drinking does that to you. Then you convince yourself you’re fine being fat. This life is better than the life of not drinking.

Then you wake up the next day. You may not be hungover. You might. But you might not. And you feel regret. You feel guilt. You say, “What if I didn’t do that last night?” But you did. And now this is the consequence.

That’s what you do to yourself.

So, you have to hang out with these people. But you can’t for two weeks. You have to stay away from them. You have to prove to yourself you can do this first. It takes 2 weeks to make a habit. You should stay away from outside influences for two weeks.

During these two weeks, you build up barriers. You have time to build some barriers. For me when I work out and eat healthy, it’s the good feeling you get from feeling lighter. You have endorphins released when you work out. These are like morphine. They are like morphine. They make you feel good. They dull pain.

So many people say, “I don’t have time to work out.” 

I find that when I work out I have even more time. It’s because it increases your energy. These endorphins increase your energy. And, when I get to this point when I feel joy, I don’t want to go back. That’s the point I need to reach.

It takes 2 weeks to make a habit. Then it takes a month until you start feeling what it feels like to not drink. After a month, you start feeling lighter. You start having more energy. You probably look the same to most people. But, you start noticiing it yourself after a month.

After two months, those who see you on a regular basis will start saying things like, “Are you losing weight?” OR, “You look like you’ve lost weight.” Or, “You look nice!”

And hearing those types of words builds up your ego. And, while you don’t want to have too much of an ego, an ego can be good. It means you are happy with who you are. I mean, you should always be happy with you. But, when you feel good, when you hear good stuff, it makes you even more happier.

Then, after 2 months, people who don’t see you on a regular basis start to notice. This is when you hear these types of comments from other people.

The Discomfort

So, again, I am going to quit drinking for 2 months. I'm just doing it because I can. There is no medical need. I just thought it would be cool to try it. So, to succeed, I know you need to be prepared. 

Quitting any habit is hard. There are those moments you want to eat chocolate. There are those moments where you want to have a drink. 

So, you go to the store. You make that decision. You decide to go to the store. You decide to walk down the aisle of the store. You decide to go down the beer aisle. You decide to go down the whiskey aisle. You decide to put the stuff in your cart. You decide to go home and make yourself a drink. You put that drink to your lips. You put the liquid in your mouth. You swallow. And you do this over and over and over and over again. 

You put the poison in your house and you put it in your mouth. It’s your personal choice to do this over and over and over thoughout the years.

Do you want ot stop. Just stop doing it. Just stop going to the store. Just stop putting it to your lips. 

It's just a bottle. It's just a block of chocolate. It's just a cigarette. It has no telepathic abilities. It can't make you eat or drink it. It can't do anything. It will just sit there forever if you don't pick it up. It has no control over you. It has no hold over you. 

In fact, it's the exact opposite: you control it. So you can control whether you eat or drink it or not.

Sometimes, it’s as though a voice in the back of your head says, “Go get some.” You know, you’re 21 years or older. You can just go into any store and get it. No one can tell you not to. This is true even if a court says you can’t drink.

Really, you can if you want. You make the choice, you can do it. You just can’t get caught if you have a contract on your head. 

So, you have to get over the discomfort. You will have those moments. But, they only last a few moments. Go away. Go do something else. Go for a walk on the beach. Go for a walk around the block. Play a game with your kids. The moment will pass. That uncomfortable moment will pass. The urge will go away.

The Goal

So, I'm going to quit drinking for 2 months. There's no medical reason for doing this. I don't think drinking is bad. Still, I thought it would be cool to try going without for a few months' just to see what it's like. I want to see if it offers any benefits. 

So, when you quit anything, it's good to set goals. Mine is to be a better father. That was the guy from Alcohol Mastery’s goal. He wanted to be the best influence that he could possibly be. I want that. But, I also want to be healthier. I want to feel good. I don’t want to waste an entire day recouping. I never get really bad hangovers. 

Like, I don’t drink that much. But, still, it makes it difficult to stay in shape. You are usually fatigued to some extent the next day. I find that I’m unable to write as much or as good as I want. I sleep in longer than I normally do. It makes me feel lazy

This limits my ability to be as industrious as I want to be plus, when my kids are here, I’m not spending as the quality of time with them as I can. I am not influencing them as good as I can. Now, certainly, you can do good things despite drinking.

But, it takes away from your energy. So, a motivation to quit drinking is also to be more industrious. It’s also to be healthier. I know that energy from eating healthy and working out is a huge motivator. When I get to that point, that point when you can feel lighter, everything feels so good. That’s where I want to get. When I get to that point, I will know that I don’t want to go back. I

Burning Bridges

So, as a reminder, I'm watching Vlogs because I want to do one. Or, at least I'm thinking of it. So, that's how I met Kevin O'Hara. He talks about quitting drinking. After listening for a while, I thought, "What would it be like to quit for 2 months." I decided to give it a try. 

Okay, so, in today’s video, Kevin talks about burning bridges. You want to go forward. You don’t want to go back. So, the best way to do that is to burn the bridges. He said the best example used in counseling circles is Cortez. He landed in Mexico in 1517. He landed with his flotilla of ships. 

He didn’t want his crew to have any motivation to go back. So, he ordered them to burn all his ships. So, they couldn’t go back even if they wanted to. Well, they could build another ship. But, Cortez knew that wasn’t going to happen. It took years back then to build ships.

So, in that same sense, if you want to quit drinking, you have to burn the bridge. A good way of doing that is to dump out any alcohol left in your house. That way, every time you think about buying alcohol, you will have that vision in your head. You took the effort to waste $20 worth of alcohol. So, that’s a symbol of what you don’t want to go back to.

“Move forward. Conquer the land. Get on with it.” He said. There is no way to retreat. There is no way to go backward. This is how you move forward on the path you want. This is how you quit any bad habit. This is how you make yourself better. “Burn your bridges.”

Planning Ahead

I started listening to video blogs. I did this because I wanted to make some of my own. I want to make videos for my work. So, the best way to motivate yourself is to watch how others do it. So, this is how I met the guy from Alcohol Mastery. I can’t think of his name extemporaneously. Oh, I know, it's Kevin O'Hara.

But, I started listening to many of his videos. They are meant for alcoholics. Actually, he doesn’t like the term alcoholic. He says that makes it look like a disease. And, he says, it’s not a disease. It’s a bad habit. You choose to put the alcohol to your lips. You choose to do this over and over and over until you get drunk. Well, that’s usually the goal.

So, I thought it would be neat to follow his plan. That wasn’t the intent, but his videos were so inspiring, I thought I would try them out. I don't necessarily want to quit forever. But, who knows. Maybe I'll enjoy being sober every day so much I'll keep doing it. But, for now, the goal is 2 months. 

So, today, August 1, I set as my start date. I set my start date for September 7.

Today’s video was pretty neat. It was called “How to make the decision to quit drinking alcohol stick.” It was a fitting video for day #1. I didn’t plan on listening to it today. It just popped up in my feed. And I did listen to it before. In the Video, he says you have to pick a motivation. Why is it that you want to quit drinking. What is it that will motivate you more than anything else.

What is the one thing that will motivate you in the direction you want to go? You must look forward. You must look forward toward what you are moving into. You don’t have to sacrifice the present for the future. No guarantee you will get tomorrow. But, you have to live your life like there is tomorrow. This is one way to get yourself to quit drinking.

Look into the future and see who you want to become. If you want to alter your own destiny, you can. Your past decisions made you who you are today. Those decisions plus the ones you make today will make you who you will be in some future point. That’s how he explained it.

You have to push yourself forward into something that you think is worthwhile. You’ve got to build a love for the things you are replacing alcohol with. What do you want to replace it with? When you eat junk food, when is it? When you drink alcohol, when is it?

You must find something else to do during those weak moments. I think it was Dr. Phil who talked about that once. You must plan ahead. You must decide what you are going to do instead of drinking alcohol, or whatever you want to quit.

I tried this last week. I know I usually drink after working my three day weekend. I work all day Sunday. It’s a 12-hour shift. I always work 12-hour shifts. When I’m done I’m exhausted. Drinking a cold beer sounds so good. I go to the store. I buy beer. I drink one. But, you can’t drink just one. So you crack open a second and a third. You know how it goes from there. Then all of a sudden you’re waking up the next day knowing you drank too much.

So, instead of doing that, I planned on going to a movie after work. I texted Callie if she wanted to go with me. We had a great time. She was very happy. She told me that. And it made me happy. So, I learned that day that my children can be a great motivator without them even knowing it. I could have stayed home by myself and got drunk. But, instead, I made a huge impact on my daughter.

So, I think, my children are a great motivator for me. I spend more time already than 99% of dads do with their kids. But, I can do even better. I can spend even more time. But, to do that, I have to quit drinking. So, here we go.