I can tell you that change is possible. I can tell you the story of how I turned my life around, quit booze and completely re-shaped my identity as a non-drinker. I can share countless stories from other brave sober warriors about how they got themselves out of the booze trap. We can all shout from the rooftops about how getting sober is achievable.
But it won’t happen for you unless you believe it too.
YOU have to believe that change is possible.
YOU have to know you can get free.
YOU have to trust it’ll be ok.
YOU have to form a mental image in your mind of the person you want to become – sober, calm, together, grounded, real, raw, recovered.
YOU have to have faith that you are going to become that person.
This belief that change is possible has to come from inside you. You are the only person who has the ability to change yourself, so you are the one who needs to really, truly believe that you can change things and get alcohol out of your life.
But I get how hard it is to believe this at first. I get how we are so conditioned to believe that life won’t be fun if we never share drinks with friends. I get how we are terrified that being sober all the time will make us a boring loser with nothing to offer. I get how imagining a life with no booze in it is like looking down a dark tunnel.
I get it because I felt that indescribable fear myself. It was utterly terrifying. But thankfully in amongst that fear I had a tiny kernel of belief that I could change myself and I could live alcohol free and things would be ok.
And luckily I decided to nurture that kernel and grow my belief that change was possible, rather than let the fear dominate and hold me back.
BELIEVE that you can do this. KNOW that thousands of people throughout time have gone before you on this path, facing down their fears, growing their HOPE and belief in change, and eventually reaching a magical place free from addiction. TRUST it will happen for you too.
It will. Just dig deep and believe it will. Prepare yourself for a bumpy ride, because getting sober is hard bloody work at first. But if you keep nurturing and growing your believe that change is possible, and stiffling that fear that it can never happen, and slowly – eventually – things will lift up for you.
Believe it. It’s true.
Love, Mrs D xxx
Believing that is possible to stop drinking isn’t just a ‘nice to have’, it is a mandatory component of stopping drinking and without it we cannot succeed. This seems a very blunt and negative statement to make but it is completely true, because if we don’t believe we can succeed then we are telling ourselves that we are guaranteed to fail sooner or later. So in order to succeed we must first believe that it is possible to do so. But how do we get such a belief when our entire experience thus far tells us that the opposite is true?
I can’t tell you how you can find this belief for yourself, but I can tell you how I found mine: I found incontrovertible proof.
Think about this for a moment. Up until 1953 it was widely thought that climbing Mt Everest was impossible. But suddenly, once Sir Edmund Hillary did it, then lots of people were able do it. Climbing Everest suddenly became achievable for these people because the idea that it was impossible was removed and it was replaced by the absolute knowledge that it indeed WAS possible.
The difference between these two mindsets was EVIDENCE.
In order for me to succeed at stopping drinking then I somehow needed to shift my thinking so that I fully believed it was possible to do so, and it took me years to do this. What eventually worked for me was that in desperation I walked into a recovery meeting and what I saw there tipped my thinking upside-down. In that meeting were a couple of other people like me, people desperately looking for a way out of the alcohol nightmare, but the others had all stopped drinking and this shook me to my core. All these other people had done something that I had thought was impossible… they had stopped drinking altogether!… not just for a day or two, or a week, but completely! This was a previously unthinkable thought for me…. stop completely! I thought it was impossible to stop completely because I had tried so hard and so many times, but I was wrong. It wasn’t impossible to stop drinking, because all these people in front of me had all done it. Not only had they done it but they all seemed a lot happier, calmer, and more relaxed than me. But I think the thing that stood out most of all to me about these people that had stopped drinking was that they were otherwise unremarkable. That isn’t intended to be derogatory in any way, but these people did not seem to possess any special inner drive, motivation, or characteristic that I did not. They didn’t have some special super-power that made stopping drinking possible for them but not me. They were ordinary, normal people, and they had stopped drinking.
That was the proof I needed. I had seen lots of people that had stopped drinking and those people did not appear to possess some special quality that I did not. It was possible, and if they could do it then so could I.
That was the evidence I needed, and that was the change I needed for me to turn years of on and off drinking into a life without alcohol.
Nothing changes if nothing changes. Actively seek out the proof you need to become entirely convinced that stopping drinking is possible… because you need it: it is a prerequisite of recovery.
Thank you for this.
Great growth thoughts thank you for all you give. I’ve read your books, listen to your audio and finally it’s happening. It’s hard… worth everything you gain from it! I gained my family my self respect and my health day 103 xo
Great growth thoughts thank you for all you give. I’ve read your books, listen to your audio and finally it’s happening. It’s hard… worth everything you gain from it! I gained my family my self respect and my health xo
Thank you for this!! It could be helpful if everyone who becomes a member or is starting Day 1 read this. I just wrote a reply to someone that I trust what people are telling me, life will be better sober. Goes along with this blog.
I love this pep talk @Mrs-D!! Wonderful, as is your latest post on the site. Thank-you!
“If you want things to change, YOU have to change. If you will change, EVERYTHING will change for you.” Jim Rohn.