Tribe Sober – Inspiring an Alcohol-free Life!
SOBER SHORT 8 – Keep a Journal!
Our Sober Short series takes you through our Tribe Sober Toolkit – this toolkit is just one of the things that we share with you during our regular Zoom workshops – just go to this link and you’ll find all the info about our workshops. You can do a group workshop or a private workshop to suit your schedule and time zone.
These workshops have been a gamechanger for many people so if you want to kickstart your sober life then sign ...
Tribe Sober – Inspiring an Alcohol-free Life!
SOBER SHORT 8 – Keep a Journal!
Our Sober Short series takes you through our Tribe Sober Toolkit – this toolkit is just one of the things that we share with you during our regular Zoom workshops – just go to this link and you’ll find all the info about our workshops. You can do a group workshop or a private workshop to suit your schedule and time zone.
These workshops have been a gamechanger for many people so if you want to kickstart your sober life then sign up today.
During the first 7 Sober Shorts, we looked at the first 7 Tools in our toolbox. Before we move on to tool number 8 let’s do a quick recap…
In this Episode
Tool number 1 was “Get Connected”
- Connection is the Opposite of Addiction” and if you’re serious about getting sober then you need to connect with others on the same path.
- If you’re not yet a member of our tribe please check us out on tribesober.com – just hit “join our tribe” to read about the benefits of membership.
Tool number 2 was “Get Moving”
- We all know is that exercise is “good for us” and many people exercise daily but they also drink daily – sometimes excessively. Ditch the drink and keep exercising and you will be amazed at how much fitter you will get!
Tool number 3 was “Building Emotional Strength”
- All about “learning to sit with our feelings” – instead of trying to chase them away with alcohol – alcohol is the “easy button” and enables us to bypass difficult emotions.
- We have to “get comfortable with being uncomfortable as Tribe Sober coach Lynette says, or as Glennon Doyle says, “First the Pain, then the Rising.”
Tool number 4 was all about Mindset
- It was about changing your thinking – about drinking.
- We talked about overturning those false beliefs that we have picked up over the years — for example, we believe that we deserve a drink at the end of the day!
- We talked about overturning those beliefs – one by one.
- “Do the work” and you will never see alcohol in the same way and…
- You will never suffer from FOMO which is the key to sticking to your sobriety.
Tool number 5 – was about Visualisation
- We talked about some powerful ways to use visualisation.
- One of them was to “Play the movie forward” – if you get the urge to drink, then just think it through – what will happen after that first glass. Do you really want to wake up at 3 am full of anxiety and regret?
- Do you really want to keep going back to Day 1 – and do the hardest bit - again and again?
Tool number 6 – Information is Power
- It’s hard to believe it these days but not that long ago we had NO IDEA that smoking was bad for us.
- Even if you decide to carry on drinking then make sure that it’s an informed choice. The information is out there and just a quick google search will connect you with scientific research proving that alcohol is linked to 7 different types of cancer and more than 60 diseases.
- That’s a good place to start and there are many QuitLit books out there and of course podcasts – almost 100 episodes of the Tribe Sober podcast are available now, all packed with advice inspiration and information.
- If you’d like a QuitLit Reading list just email janet@ts.com – you can also go to tribesober.com and hit the Inspiration tab where you’ll find a wealth of information that will inspire you to get started – and motivate you to keep going.
Tool number 7 was “Be Accountable”
- Many people try (and fail) to give up drinking on their own – I should know as I was one of them.
- Most of us are surrounded by people who are “normal” drinkers and just tell us to “drink less” or heavy drinkers who assure us I was “fine” and that “everyone drinks a bottle of wine a night”.
- Even if they really care about us, those people don’t really care if we are struggling.
- When we embark on this journey, we need a community of people who actually care – people who have been where we are now and can advise and encourage us - people who are thriving in their alcohol-free lives and can inspire us that it really is worth doing this thing.
- WE NEED TO BE ACCOUNTABLE – we need to know that we can share our ups and downs with other people who really get us.
- So, if you are looking for a sober community to inspire you and keep you on track just go to tribesober.com and hit join our tribe.
- If you’d like to sample the kind of support we offer then email janet@tribesober.com and request our Sobriety Battleplan pdf which is packed with great advice, charts and trackers.
So today we are going to TOOL Number 8 - which is “Journaling”
- A quick google search on the “benefits of journaling” will highlight the many advantages of keeping a daily journal – and keeping a journal during your recovery journal is even more valuable.
- At our workshops, we advise people to buy a beautiful notebook that will become their sobriety journal throughout this life-changing journey.
- Sobriety is a journey of self-discovery and recording your thoughts, emotions, struggles, and accomplishments is so beneficial.
- In the front of the journal, it’s always a good idea to write your WHY list – why do you want to give up alcohol?
- People rarely struggle with this question and the reasons are usually important ones – for their children, to save their marriage, to perform better at work to improve their health, etc.
- When we embark on this journey, we are usually full of motivation but that often fades after a few weeks – we haven’t quite settled into our alcohol-free lives, we haven’t experienced many benefits yet and we are not quite sure what to do with ourselves. That’s when we need to refer to our WHY list – to remind us every single day why we are doing this thing. If you’d like an exercise to help you create your WHY list, just write to janet@tribesober.com.
- So, write your WHY list in the front of your journal – and in the back cover you could write your A blacklist is quite simply a list of the things that went wrong when you were drinking. Arguments, blackouts, hangovers, bad decisions, etc. It’s SO easy to forget just how bad our drinking got – our brains trick us into remembering the good times rather than the bad. Keeping a blacklist in our journal will remind us that yes, things did get pretty bad, and we don’t want to go back there!
- I certainly had a substantial blacklist – it’s not as if every time I drank bad things happened but when bad things DID happen alcohol always seemed to be involved!
- So, once you’ve got the front and back covers filled in what else is that journal useful for:
- Early sobriety is a very emotional time and for most of us it really helps to process emotions if we can write them down.
- We can note our triggers – we can apply the HALT test and decide if our craving was caused by Hunger, Anger, Loneliness, or Tiredness.
- We can list strategies for coping with our cravings – every time we resist a craving, we’ll get stronger.
- Journaling will give us perspective – reading back on the early weeks of sobriety will remind us just how hard it was – and make us realise it’s getting better and easier every day.
- We can also notice patterns of behaviour – if we did have a slip up then can we spot any reasons leading to it.
- We can allocate a couple of pages to list the benefits we are feeling as we progress further into our sobriety.
- Writing down three things we are grateful for at the end of the day has psychological benefits – apparently even searching in your mind for things to be grateful for will trigger those happy brain chemicals.
- So that was TOOL number 8 from our workshop toolbox - all about Journaling
- If you want to learn more about our workshops just go to tribesober.com/services.
- Thanks so much for listening – I’ll be back with our main podcast on Saturday and another Sober Short next Wednesday…
More Info
Subscription membership – you can join up HERE.
- To access our website, click HERE.
- If you would like a free copy of our “Annual Tracker” or our e-book 66 Days to Sobriety, please email janet@tribesober.com.
- If you would like to come to our Saturday afternoon Zoom Cafe as a guest and meet our community, just email janet@tribesober.com.
Episode Sponsor
This episode is sponsored by the Tribe Sober Membership Program. If you want to change your relationship with alcohol then sign up today
Read more about our program and subscribe HERE
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Till Next Week
Janet x
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