37 weeks of Sobriety- How sobriety has taught me to slow down and take things one day at a time.
And how I'm going to apply that knowledge to my goal setting.
Today I have been sober for 37 weeks. 259 days. Welcome to the First Sobering Thoughts of 20-fuckin’-23!
Sobriety
Well, that’s Christmas and New Year’s Eve done. It was much easier than I thought it would be. That said, I safeguarded myself pretty well. As I mentioned last week, Christmas was very low-key. New years was the same. When you have a four-month-old and don’t drink, New Year’s Eve is just another night. That said, I’m still proud that for the first time in 18 years I didn’t wake up with a raging hangover. I was up for sunrise, but this time it was after a full night’s sleep.
I set myself a little goal at the start of the holidays to burn 1000 active calories a day to help me stay focused on something positive. It sounds like a lot. But I felt it had to be a little more than what I usually do, given I wouldn’t have the distraction of work for two and a half weeks.
I’m pleased to say that as of right now, on day 13, it’s been largely successful. There’s been a couple of days where I didn’t quite reach 1000, however, I am averaging well over 1000 per day.
What does this have to do with sobriety? I’ve never struggled as much with drugs and alcohol when I am busy. When I have things to do. So I needed to give myself something to do each morning. A reason not to drink. Even though I haven’t drunk for over eight months now and I’m starting to feel really good mentally, I still thought it would be a good idea to safeguard myself. Plus it meant I could enjoy some extra food over Christmas without being too concerned about piling on the weight.
I’m actually pretty proud of this little effort. I’ve been up before 5 am all morning except for one where I took my young fella to the hospital the night before. In the past, I’d go on an almighty bender to kick the holidays off and fall straight into a 2 am-10 am sleep pattern then struggle to break it to go back to work.
Feels a little silly to be proud of doing something that other people might manage with ease. But I’m not other people. We all have our own unique circumstances that make certain things more difficult than others. I’m proud of myself for why I set this target and for (so far) hitting it each day.
How Sobriety has taught me to be patient
I have less patience than a dodgy doctor… ok forget that. I have ADHD. There’s something that I want and I don’t even know what it is yet, but I want it and want it yesterday.
Anyone who knows me would tell you that I am always in a rush. I don’t like being impatient. I don’t like how irritable I get when I’m waiting on someone or something. My lack of patience has served me well at times in the past. It’s helped me in my career. When I would be waiting on a piece of information or similar at work, instead of waiting for it, I would go and ask for it, if the said person couldn’t give it to me, I would ask if I could get it for myself. Some people would have found that annoying. Some people would have thought I was trying to take their job from them. I never wanted to be annoying, I’m too self-conscious to do that intentionally. I never wanted anyone else’s job either. I just wanted to do my job, NOW.
I don’t like being stagnant. I could hide behind some bullshit mantra like “if you’re not moving forward you’re going backwards” but I don’t think that was the case. I have always been pretty efficient in what I do and never liked wasting time, particularly at work. I even used to say to myself that I just wanted to get everything done so that I could go home sooner.
I think though, there is something deeper at play here. Whenever I wasn’t busy, I was at risk of being stuck with my own thoughts. I would do anything to avoid being stuck with my own thoughts. This explains the excessive substance abuse, excessive exercising, excessive eating, and excessive anything that involved distracting myself from my thoughts.
This kind of mindset led me to want everything and want it now, so I could keep busy and get on with it. I’d tried and failed at a lot of things, a lot of times. I’m realising now it’s because I had no patience. I wanted the results… yesterday. Weight loss campaigns, sobriety campaigns. exercise routines. I was too focused on the end goal.
If you talk to just about anyone in sobriety, they will tell you that the goal is to be sober today. That’s it. Most won’t claim that they will never drink again. Most don’t have a time-sensitive goal to reach. People in genuine sobriety or recovery, quite literally do it one day at a time. Being sober for one day is way easier than being sober for a week, a month, and so on. Anyone can do that.
I, like most, struggled a lot in early sobriety. Naively, I thought I would just quit drinking and everything would be better. It wasn’t. It was harder. As the fog cleared from my mind, the negative thoughts I’d been avoiding for my entire life would present themselves and I had limited healthy coping mechanisms to deal with them.
Okay, I had none. Zero. Setting out for a 30k training run and deciding mid-run to do an under-fuelled 50k run looks impressive from the outside, but in reality, it means I didn’t want to deal with whatever was in my head at the time. Pretty fuckin’ cool that I did it, but what was that really telling me?
So there I was, hungover, day one, splayed out on the lounge, eating lemonade icy poles and drinking blue Powerade. No doubt thinking about what Chinese takeaway I would order that night. Back then, the goal was to just be sober. I was too unwell to consider a time-sensitive target and to be honest, highly doubted my ability to do it at all. I just knew I had to make it through today, then the next day, and the next day, without a long-term target. Long-term targets add pressure. If you don’t want to drink until a certain date, you become fixated on that date and start mentally salivating over all the fucked up shit you’re going to do to yourself on that date. kind of like people who do bullshit eight-week challenges with 20-year-old personal trainers who put them on a diet of oxygen and water for eight weeks. They’re going to binge eat at the end of that shit.
Without realising it, the one-day-at-a-time approach slowly started teaching me so many valuable lessons. It’s only now that I feel like I’m coming out the ass-end of all this shit that I am capable of reflecting and realising how much I have changed. Last week I did my recap of the things I achieved in 2022 to remind myself that I wasn’t a complete piece of shit. In doing so I realised just how much this one-day-at-a-time approach had changed the way I was doing things.
Initially, it was just about sobriety. I realised that time goes fuckin’ fast. I also realised that each day I was sober made the next day easier. Most of you would be familiar with the idea that it takes 21 days to create a habit. Well, according to some shit I found on the internet that’s not quite true. According to this study, it takes 66 days to form a habit. That sounds like it sucks, but it also just is what it is. My first blog on substack was after 77 days/11 weeks of sobriety. Up until then, my weekly update was a Twitter thread. So by the time I started blogging properly, I was in the habit of not drinking. I didn’t have to focus so consciously on sobriety as much.
It was still hard, but it was easier than it used to be and getting easier all the time. Now at 257 days, it’s still something I need to work on every day, but it takes up far less mental energy. I’ve built trust in myself and trust in the process. That is something that only comes with time. Every time you do something you get that tiny bit better at it. It still doesn’t feel like my last drink was 257 days ago. It doesn’t feel like I have been sober for very long at all. It also doesn’t feel like alcohol is a problem for me anymore. For the most part these days, I forget how long I have been sober. In fact, most weeks I have to refer to last week’s blog to remember how many weeks I have been sober.
This is a result of taking it one day at a time. Training myself that the end goal doesn’t fucking matter. I can’t control what is going to happen when I hit one year, 500 days, and 1000 days sober, certainly not at the moment anyway. I can only control right now and today. What’s the point in having a goal of going 500 days sober, if I still want to be sober after 500 days?
Milestones are nice. They’re worth celebrating, with water or tea or some shit. But if you focus solely on the milestone, you miss all the amazing things you learn along the way. Switching from a long-term goal to a daily, process-based approach has enabled me to be so much more present. Breaking things down into bite-sized pieces has made dealing with my negative thoughts so much easier. Learning to worry about what’s in front of you and nothing else is hard, but fuck me, once you do it your life will be so much easier.
Sure, we have to worry about our bills, Aunty Dorris’ 70th birthday in six weeks or whatever. But that’s what calendars and reminders are for. If we focus on doing what needs to be done today, those things down the track will be easier to navigate because we are spending our days wiping our slate of the shit that needs to be done each day.
I’m starting to realise that I am really fuckin’ glad I have been through all of this shit. I feel like I am a better person for it. I have learned so much from all of this. It’s given me the opportunities to learn that I would never have had had I not hit rock bottom and then gotten sober.
The main one is to let go of the stress associated with things we can not control. Everything will be fine if we just focus on what we need to do right now and today. We can only be in one place at a time. When we are in that place, we want to be present, or we will miss out on what that moment in time has to offer us.
It’s a tricky balance, for sure. We can’t just wander about not giving a fuck about the future at all, but I think most of us are spending too much time worrying about shit that will never happen and we’re not able to enjoy right now because of it.
Be patient, let go a little bit, and trust that by doing the right thing today, you are looking after tomorrow as well. I think that this is the mindset that sent me into a downward spiral in the first place. Don’t fall for the trap. Life’s not that bad. Practice gratitude, be kinder to yourself, and allow yourself some time for what’s important to you. Do the small things right each day and everything will be just fine. Just have some trust and be patient. You’ll be where you want to be before you know it.
How what I have learned will change my life moving forward
There’s a whole lot of goal-setting going on all over social at the moment. It’s great. But I wonder how calculated some people’s goals are? How considered are they? Do people just have goals because they think they’re supposed to have them? Do they feel obligated to set goals because they are worried they will look lazy if they don’t? Do they think they will look arrogant if they don’t reveal to the world that they have something they need to work on?
I’m reluctant to set metric-based goals for this year. I’m big on goals. I’m big on accountability. There are things that I want to achieve this year, for sure. I will share more on that later in the week, probably, maybe. But why aren’t we focusing on getting better at what we are already doing? Why do people feel like setting bigger, more unrealistic goals, instead of smaller, more regularly checked-off goals?
I already wrote a blog about trusting the process so I won’t go on too much. Learning through sobriety that the small things that we do every single day have the greatest impact on our progress has been massive for me.
I have been working really hard on nailing my daily routine. I know that by doing the right things each morning, I set myself up for a good day. That’s all I have to do. Then it’s just a matter of tying those good days together. Before you know it you’ve had a good week, then a good month, and so on.
So when I figure out what my ‘big goal(s)” is for the year, here’s what I will be doing. Let’s say, for example, I want to spend 365 hours this year with my son, one on one. First I’ll ask myself why? Because it’s important to me that we develop a close bond in his infancy so that as he grows older he feels completely comfortable and safe with me. It also allows my partner 365 hours a year to do something for herself or something she wasn’t able to do while looking after him.
So how do I do it? I can just try to be conscious of my goal and try to remember to add up the hours I have spent with him when I get a chance. But Imagine if you wanted to work from home for 10 hours a week and presented your case to your boss like that? “Oh, I reckon I’ll just kinda remember. Might jot it down on a scrap piece of paper here and there”. That’s not going to fly.
I also want to be present in the time I spend with him. I can easily carry him around while I’m doing other shit. He can sit on my lap while I do work on the computer or watch some dumb shit on TV. But I don’t want that, I want to be present and he deserves as much.
I said 365 hours because that’s how many days are in a year. So I want an average of an hour a day with him, just me and him. I want to be present for him and that’s what he deserves. I want to make sure I’m free from physical and mental distractions. How do I do that?
I identify that when I get home from work each afternoon is the best time for everyone. My partner has had him all day and could use the break. She loves the shit out of him, of course, but any parent out there will know that sometimes you need a fucking break. So with the parameters I’ve mentioned above, it’s no longer as simple as spending an hour with him each afternoon.
For me to achieve my goal, of spending 365 hours of one-on-one time with him this year, it starts the night before. I want to go to bed eight hours before I need to wake up. This gives me the best chance of getting over seven hours of sleep, which seems to be the magic number for me.
Then I get up at 4 am every? morning. I get up and do 10 minutes of breathwork. Sit in a dark room, eyes closed, no sounds, just focusing on my breath. I’m not trying to mediate or get myself into the 4th fucking dimension. I’m just trying to influence the mental pace of my day. Start the day calm, with no tension or rush.
Then it’s exercise. Exercising before work makes me feel like I am in control of my life and that I’m not just getting up to go to work. It releases positive endorphins in my brain and I don’t spend the day either talking myself out of exercising later or feeling like a lazy piece of shit. It also gives me a little bit of freedom with my nutrition later in the day.
I get to work early. I’ve put myself in a good position to have a good day at work by doing all of the above. I fill out my daily habit tracker and look for any trends to identify where I have been good or could improve just to be mindful of how I’m going, then I get into my work. Usually, if I’ve done all of the above, I have a good day at work. I don’t get snowed under, I respond better to high-pressure or unexpected situations where I have to work re-actively.
When I finish for the day, I’m a better chance of having a clear mind because I have done all the things that I need to to have a clear mind. When I get home, I’m not thinking about exercise because it’s already done. I’m not thinking about work because I did everything I needed to do to have a good day at work and usually I’m far enough in front that anything I have to do can wait until tomorrow.
When I get home, my phone goes on do-not-disturb (there are a few people who can still ring or text me) I grab my son and off we go.
This might seem over the top to some. But how important are your goals? How badly do you want to achieve them? To me, this approach sounds a lot more likely to work than setting the goal, then just trying to kinda do it when you remember. Write your progress down when you remember. Lose the piece of paper, and forget where you were up to.
The things that I do each day to ensure I am present for my son in the afternoon are equally as important to me as the time with my son itself. Because if they’re not done, I’m not presenting the best possible version of myself to him. I want to be the best I can be for him and myself.
This year my goals will all be routine/process based. Each goal I have I will break down in the same way. Set the goal, break it down backwards into daily habits that will get me there, implement the daily habits into my routine, and forget about the big goal. The daily habits will look after that for me.
Pull back a little, and look at your daily routine. Where can you find time to do the small, daily work that will get you to your goal? If you have no space, how can you work towards your goal whilst doing something else? Listen to podcasts or audiobooks on your way to work. Combine your trip to work with exercise if you can. Go for a thirty-minute walk during your lunch break to get your steps up.
Your goals will be easier to achieve if you can break them right down into small, achievable pieces and find clever ways of implementing the work into your daily routine.
I know that people are busy, I’m fuckin’ busy. I don’t have a whole lot of spare time. But we owe it to ourselves to at least try to reduce the friction between us and what we want to achieve. Why does it the hard way, get down on ourselves for falling short, when there is an easier way to do it that is so incremental that it hardly feels like work at all?
If the goal is important, find the easiest way to spend a little bit of time on it each day. See if you can do it on the way to work, during lunch, or early in the morning. Do it for 66 days, then it’s automatic. Set reminders, write lists, or create a habit tracker.
Don’t lie to yourself and say it’s too hard or you’re too busy. Don’t be scared of failing. You can’t learn without failing. If you fail, look at your process objectively, identify where you went wrong, make the relevant changes to your process and go again. You might fail again, but now you’ve identified two things that you know to avoid. More learning.
When you get the time, think about your goals properly. Break them right down. Be realistic with the time frame. You don’t want to set an unrealistic goal and end up sad when you don’t achieve it in the allotted time. Conversely, don’t avoid setting the goal because the end seems too far away. Slow progress is still progress and every bit of work you do along the way will be beneficial. The journey is as or more important than the destination. Ask yourself what you have to do each day to make this easy and how do I implement that. Don’t try to implement too much change at one time. Don’t overwhelm yourself. Just find a spot to squeeze in a bite-size piece of work you can do to get yourself closer to your goal. Make it a habit, trust the process, and you’ll be there in no time.
Let’s stretch this year’s ears and get this fuckin’ bread, or whatever they say.
Cheers Wankers.
X.
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“I think most of us are spending too much time worrying about shit that will never happen and we’re not able to enjoy right now because of it.” - 100%