Hello and Welcome!

Looks like you are considering changing your patterns around drinking alcohol, or have already decided to change.

Congratulations!! You've taken the first step!

And this process is STEP BY STEP. Simply take one decision, step or slight shift at a time. Before you know it, you will be feeling good, living in a manner more aligned with your ideal life, and alcohol free.

“Alcohol Free” means being free to do and act as you want, when you want. This happens by being clear on what you want, and keeping that idea front and center in your decision making. Please read that sentence again to see how you will be shifting your choice making.

Over the next two weeks you'll redefine your relationship with alcohol to be one more in keeping with what YOU want for yourself. You'll find and incorporate methods and tactics to use alcohol in a way that is serving you, and how you want your life to be lived.

RIGHT NOW: Simply take a moment to acknowledge yourself.

Congratulate yourself for taking this first step. Give yourself some loving praise.
Feel a sense of gladness? A glimmer of pride?

Focus a moment on any feelings of pleasure you might feel... That's dopamine and other feel-good neurotransmitters at work. They were triggered by your thinking, and your choice to take this moment.

If you didn't sense any positive feeling, but rather had a barrage of negative thoughts like "I'll fail again", felt self loathing, regret or shame, or a sense of helpless victimhood, acknowledge those feelings as part of the patterns you are beginning to change.

That's all perfect.

Your own individual path

This course helps you to create new patterns around drinking alcohol. You can choose which tactics to adopt.

It's entirely up to you (and, by the way, you can do it).

This course will empower you to be your own authentic, brilliant self, and consequently contribute your uniqueness to our world. And we are all unique, all part of this world of ours, and all play a role in how things play out.

For this two week period you...

• might reduce the amount you drink by enjoying a better quality alcohol in a smaller quantities 
• Or you might reduce both the amount and the frequency of consumption through practical planning 
• Or you may choose to take a break for a period just to feel better
• Or, you may stop drinking alcohol all together, and introduce a new way of socialising

IN THE NEXT FEW LESSONS, YOU'LL BE GUIDED TO SET YOURSELF SOME S.M.A.R.T. GOALS, AND TAP YOUR INNER MOJO TO ACHIEVE THEM

This course helps you to make conscious choices about creating healthy patterns around your drinking.

Stopping alcohol consumption will naturally improve health of your body and mind. You'll be nourishing your gut, nervous system, liver, kidneys and blood. You'll be setting down new lifestyle habits that work better for you.

And it's all one step at a time.

“Little Decisions are the kind I can make…Big resolutions are so easy to break…” 

- Paul Kelly, Australian Singer Songwriter

We make choices all the time.

Even when we don't consciously choose something, it's still a choice: The choice to forgo our power to decide. 

Not choosing, IS a choice. 

We don't make choices when we have automatic habits

Habits can be helpful. Through repetition they can become automatic. Brushing your teeth. Putting out the rubbish. Stopping at a red light in your car. All of these are helpful habits that don't require much consideration or thought.

Some habits are harmful. Drinking coffee first thing to get going. Eating sweet food when feeling sad. Drinking alcohol to slow down and relax.

These habits have negative health consequences.

Many bad habits are encouraged and reinforced in our society and culture, through marketing, social expectations, family traditions, convenience consumer culture and so on. So, the way our modern world operates means it's very easy to reinforce harmful habits.

We make unconscious choices. They become so normalized they become inevitable. We generally do them without thinking.

It is important to make unconscious these habits conscious.

We have the power to change the psychological / emotional / biochemical addiction patterns that recreate strong cravings and reinforce the behaviour.

When we pause to consider our action.

When we pause, we can choose a behaviour that's more aligned with what WE really want. Then we can set ourselves up to create healthier habits.

And that's what you are doing here!

At its core, consider that drinking too much, is a strategy.

Joelene Park's has refined this use into three categories, and matched them with specific nervous system chemicals, aka neurotransmitter:

• Drinking to relax - To boost GABA
• Drinking for fun - To boost Serotonin
• Drinking to connect with others - To boost Dopamine

(more on these brain chemicals and how to support balance in them in upcoming lessons)

Alcohol can be the strategy to

• have fun with friends,
• how you get the courage up to meet new people,
• the way you relax at the end of the day,
• your way of dealing with challenging emotions like stress, loneliness, trauma or myriad other difficult feelings.
  

If you have been drinking large amounts for a long period of time, you might drink to just feel normal…momentarily. You're here because you know that this strategy is no longer working for you. 

Drinking is one way of coping with life at any point in time.

The fact that you're deciding to make different choices about how get through life is, in itself, VERY powerful. Even if you don’t feel particularly powerful just yet.

This course will help you use that spark of insight to light your healthier path of being alcohol free

I'm so glad you're here!

So, what's your why?

Let's see if we can clarify why you are doing this program, and what your choices have been.

Grab a pen - or a keyboard - and write down your thoughts. There’s no right or wrong answer here. This is an opportunity to dive in, tease out and better understand your current patterns.

• What don't you like about your relationship with alcohol now?
• What would you prefer your drinking pattern to be?
• What is important to you in your life?
• How does your relationship with alcohol impact these things? 
• How would you change if you were to change the way you drink?
• Can you imagine and describe that version of you?

You can use these insights in the next lesson - Tapping your Mojo!