Okay. One-third of the way in. That’s progress. Granted, one slip up. But, back on the horse now. The weekend approaches, which of course is the real challenge but… determined to get to the end of the month and hoping it gets easier.
I would like to take this through December as well all the way to Christmas but to be honest, it’s pretty fucking tough at the moment. A couple of really tough weeks at work. I have not been sleeping great and that is one of the things that I usually notice when I stop drinking during the week.
But, I am not out the woods yet and everything I have read indicates the magic happens after about 90 days. Which seems like a long time to commit to at the moment. So, 30 days done a day at a time is the mantra at the moment. And then review at the end of November and see how I feel.
Habit Formation
There is this thinking that habits can be made or broken in three weeks. But from what I have read that only relates to enjoyable or easy things. So, in three weeks you can create a habit to go on Facebook first thing in the morning or have a few beers after work. But, when you have to break a habit that is a really well-worn groove over 20 years or so, three weeks will not cut it.
Hopefully, it gets easier after three weeks. And then hopefully, when I review at the end of November, I will be able to refer back to these posts, remember how I felt and think that I don’t want to go back there – I would rather move forward.
Responsibility debt
I read an interesting post by a health and fitness dude called Aadam on how it’s all too easy to make promises for our future self to live up to. You have to deal with things in the here and now and it’s best to not make huge promises you can’t live up to and then send yourself into a failure spiral.
You have no empathy for your future self, so it’s easy to heap things up without realising your future self is going to have all kinds of shit to deal with as well.
My wife put it well. She tends to do that. And I tend not to listen. But, a good way to look at this when making promises for your future self is “would I do that tonight? or tomorrow night?”. If the answer is no then you likely won’t want to do it then either.
Ultimately, you just have to deal with what you can in the moment. And that’s what I am going to do here. Get through this weekend and stop piling up this responsibility on my future self for now. Will review again on Monday hopefully after a 100% dry weekend!
Once more unto the breach!