Here at the DUI Foundation, we’re excited to partner with Carrie Armstrong, with the How To Be A Sober Girl blog. You can check out her blog here. Over the next thirty days, she has committed to a How To Be A Sober Girl 30 Day Kickstart campaign and we’ll be sharing her stories right here.
And without any more time, here’s Day Eight:
Today’s tool is a visualization technique to overcome any feelings of being overwhelmed or struggling, without looking for relief through a drink.
I want you to think of someone. Someone who seems to have it all figured out. Someone you admire. The full package. The way they look, the career they have. How they handle themselves socially. Their lifestyle. Finances. Their relationships. The whole lot. Not somebody you know massively well. Just someone you admire. Can be a regular lass or someone famous, doesn’t matter.
If you are a girl. Pick a girl. If you are a boy? Then pick a boy!
I want you to close you eyes and in your mind see them straight in front of you. Then I want you to step into their body so you literally become them. see life through their eyes. Feel what their body feels like. Know what they know. Have what they have.
Take yourself through a day in their life. Feel how they approach life, how they handle people. What it is like to have their material wealth. All of it. How do they spend their weekends? What does their house look like? Their hobbies?
When you’ve done it for a few minutes, slowly step out of them again and open your eyes. Note how you feel. Any changes in your own mood or physicality.
Do it as many times, with as many different people as you like. It never gets old. And it never loses it’s effectiveness.
It doesn’t matter if this person drinks or not. There is so much more that defines a person than that. Alcohol is such a tiny part of the equation. It’s just our struggle with it and fixation on it that warps alcohol into becoming this huge part of our thoughts. Which is not the same as it being a huge part of life. This belief we have that alcohol consumption defines a person is not accurate, it’s just a handy way to pigeon hole ourselves. The point is that any time we choose to, we can alter our physical, mental and emotional state, become more relaxed or more happy. More optimistic or more powerful, just by stepping into someone else’s shoes.
No mood altering liquids required.
And the moment I genuinely understood the truth of this for myself? That I had discovered something that could actually help me consistently dictate how I wanted to feel? That actually let me effectively control how I felt, minute to minute? That actually did what I had spent so many years wishing alcohol could do for me consistently? My life was never the same again. And alcohol lost it’s control over me.
Carrie x
