Ditch the Wine Witch (March challenge)

[change2022]

Hi all

Throughout the month of March I'm going to run a 'Ditch the Wine Witch' challenge on this thread. It's going to be the place for accountability, goal setting, fun and support so you can drink less over the month. How much less? That's up to you!

Sooooo tell your friends, tell your colleagues, tell your Mum, your Dad, boyfriend or husband too. Let's do this.

Are you in?

I'm in.

I'm in. Good gin and the occasional imperial stout are my poisons of choice. Did dry Jan v successfully (and easily) but Feb has been much slippier with three adult birthdays in the immediate family! Drank on average two days every week but still at a reduction in total weekly consumption of 65%. Want to go dry again from today till end March minimum.

Hi to you! Things start this Friday when I'll send out the first post so watch this space!

I’ve been cutting down for ages but then just binge as soon as I open a bottle of wine. It doesn’t serve me at all.

I’m in!

@HighHeelsHurt GREAT!

Here's more info on the challenge that's starting on Friday. Share with friends/family/colleagues who will find this useful:

This challenge is about putting aside all your preconceived notions about your ability (or seeming lack of it!) to change your relationship with alcohol.

It’s about discarding old approaches, discarding all the shame that you “should” be able to do this on your own, discarding all the guilt you feel about past failures.

And letting go of the belief that struggling with your drinking is a sign there’s something wrong with you.

Over the next six weeks we’re putting all that aside to focus on curiosity and experimentation instead.

The point here is that you are in charge of your relationship with alcohol.

This is one of my core beliefs.

I’m not here to convince you that alcohol is poison. I’m not here to sit in judgment of you. I’m not going to pretend I know what’s right for you. I’m not here to force you to go alcohol free for the duration of the challenge. Or to go back to square one if you slip up at any point.

Cue sighs of relief all round! 🤣

My goal is always to provide you with tools, guidance and support so you can:

Get to know yourself.
Press pause on the way you’ve been drinking.
Decide what’s best for you.
Drop all the self-flagellation, judgment, guilt and shame.
Notice how your drinking habit unfolds.
Start rewiring your brain.
Master cravings.
Silence the “will I/won’t I drink?” negotiations with yourself.
Feel at ease not finishing each glass.
Get on the road to changing your relationship with alcohol for good.
While having fun.

Yes, fun! 🤩 And a lot more fun than you might think!

And if, while reading this, you’re still thinking you’ve failed to change your drinking too many times before or you’re too old or the habit’s too ingrained or you’ve always been a drinker or that you come from a family of drinkers or that nothing’s ever going to change … ask yourself what’s the worst that could happen by REALLY giving this challenge a go?

Then ask what’s the best outcome you could create?

We get started on Friday 8 March.

Super idea.
I'm in!
Ditching wine at home forever is my goal but taking things one day at a time .Only having drinks when I'm
Out with friends/ family.
Sitting with the hard feelings.
Changing habits eg sitting in same place in the sitting room, same tv, same shit, different day.
I'm absolutely in !
Thank you.
Timing is incredible!

NOTE: There is a weekly workbook that goes with this challenge. I don't want to get in trouble with MN for posting external links on here, but if you want the weekly workbooks, DM me your email address.

Week 1: Defining success

So, let’s unpack the question of how to define success—starting with an even deeper question: what does success look like to you?

This isn’t a rhetorical question. I encourage you to spend time deciding what you’d like to achieve by the end of these six weeks.

This will look different for everybody. Some of you may want to have a go at only drinking at the weekend, others may want to drink less in one sitting. Some of you may even use this as a book-ended chunk of time in which to go alcohol free. There’s no right answer, just the answer you make right.

This is so important because it’s really hard to be intentional about your actions if you’re not intentional about setting a goal in the first place. It's much more difficult to arrive at a desired destination if you don't know where you’re heading, right? So, we don't want you setting out and embarking on your drinking goals haphazardly. We want you to be really clear.

I see a lot of people have drama about this. They avoid it. They don't do it. Why? A big reason is because they fear they won’t hit their goals. So, the logic follows, if they don’t write down the goal they can’t fail at it. But my take is they just fail ahead of time by not being willing to commit themselves.

If that’s you, this is going to be a safe space to look at failure differently! Consider this: there’s the goal and then there’s the drama. In other words, there’s the stated goal then everything we make it mean about us.

Let’s say you set a goal to drink 2 glasses of wine each night and 4 on Friday instead of your usual bottle. Step one accomplished. Easy. But now the dramatic thoughts begin: Is 2 the right number? Maybe you should aim for 3? Would that be more doable and Anna said doable is important? But you’ve never been able to drink less than a bottle on a Friday so maybe you should increase the amount on Friday just to get used to this process? Or maybe you should make this tougher on yourself and aim to go alcohol free for the duration of the challenge?

And on and so on…. until you’re exhausted before you even get started.

No wonder many people don’t get any further than that.

Instead I encourage you to accept there will be drama whatever goal you choose and just decide that whatever you decide is good.

Second, think of this goal as part of an indefinite spectrum. It’s not ‘one and done’. We’re talking about your life here not a game of football that ends after 90 minutes. You’ll get lots of opportunity to further explore your relationship with alcohol beyond these six weeks. But the learnings you will take with you will shape your future results.

In conclusion: being intentional with your desired goals for this challenge will set you up for success. Because intention plays a huge role in feeling in control. And when you feel in control of your drinking you trust yourself to take more and more action.

So we’re keeping this light, fun and DOABLE. OK?

And for that we’ll use two strategies:

ONE: We’re going to embrace the concept of considering what you are WILLING to do. Why? Because it’s a way of giving yourself a mental leg up. It will ensure that even if the goal feels a little beyond your reach (but only a little!) you won’t give up when things get hard.

For example:

You’ve been drinking a bottle of wine a night for the last ten years. However much you may yearn for this to be 2 glasses a night instead, that probably feels too much of a stretch right now. So to start with, perhaps you could aim for half a glass less than a bottle a night? You’d open the bottle as usual, measure half a glass (in a glass) then pour that away. (Or give it to your partner/friend/neighbour…) You then drink what’s left in the bottle. (And if you’re screaming at me “that’s still too much to drink!”, you’ll be amazed at how different it feels to drink with intention vs. just drinking without any kind of planning.

TWO: We’re going to become super, super CURIOUS. We’re going to ask questions, understand what makes us tick, understand what’s going on beneath the surface. Curiosity is like a super power because it will keep you from wallowing in the shame of what’s not working and focused on identifying solutions instead.

So let’s get some goals written and define what success looks like to you!

Exercise:
Write down your goal for the challenge.
Identify 3 reasons why it's important to you
Assess how you feel on the possibility scale (see workbook)
Identify at least 5 obstacles that may crop up
And at least one strategy for handling each objection

WEEK 2

This week we’re turning our attention to your relationship with yourself. To how you talk to yourself. To what goes on inside your brain … In a loving and supportive way.
But before we jump into our Week Two exercise—where we’ll play with actually talking back to ourselves 🤣—I want to admit that I was nervous about giving such a grounding opening exercise last week. I felt cautious about asking you to focus on willingness and possibility rather than dreaming BIG.
Why?
For a few reasons, actually. But first and foremost, because I care so much about learning how to build the muscle of perseverance and motivation. Being willing to stick with your goals is one of the most important things when changing your relationship with alcohol—but only if you’re willing to actually put pen to paper and do the work.
When the power of believing in future possibility—rather than focusing on past achievements—was taught to me, it changed my view of life in fundamental, permanent ways. It’s where the magic lies. So if you haven’t done week 1’s exercise yet, it’s not too late.
Moving on, this week we’re talking about your relationship with yourself. Enter stage left your inner critic.
Yes, your inner critic. We all have one, chiming away in the background, the carbon monoxide of change, silently squelching your dreams one after the other.

For so many people who feel their drinking isn’t ‘normal’, but who don’t resonate with the doctrines of AA, it’s very easy to stay silently stuck. You don’t talk to anyone about the struggle (especially when no-one in real life understands what you’re going through), so your default is trying to figure it out on your own. Which means talking to your inner critic. A. Lot.
Why does this matter? Start by considering all the rubbishy things you say to yourself, all the excuses and the victim mentality you create… how does it make you feel? Helpless to change is what I hear most often. In fact a hater in your brain is the very last thing to get you taking useful action.
For instance if you don’t know why you gave in last night (“I just did…”) how are you ever going to change? If you’re constantly exhausted by battling cravings or failing to keep your commitments to yourself, how are you ever going to be willing to act? If you think the reason you overdrink is your family tree, your DNA, or your personality, you are making yourself helpless to say no. If your identity and your relationship with yourself are so intertwined with drinking, you’re making yourself part of the problem.
But you’re not—and never have been—part of the problem. You are part of the solution.
In order to be willing to take real decisive action towards the goals you established last week, we need at bare minimum to develop a more compassionate relationship with ourselves.
And that’s what we’ll explore this week. Fuelled by profound curiosity.

I have a separate exercise and workbook that isn't easy to copy and paste here and I don't want to fall foul of MN rules about links. So if you want the exercise workbook send me your email address in a private message and I'll email it to you.