Pink Cloud Coaching with Teresa Rodden | April 2016 - Pink Cloud Coaching with Teresa Rodden

Beliefs can sentence us to drunkenness

Beliefs can make you or break you. It’s from where they are born that make the difference.

“Why am I still here?” It was late fall 2002; I rolled over and reluctantly opened my eyes. I don’t know how long I had been asking this question, but I know it was becoming part of my morning ritual. I wasn’t suicidal and had no interest in taking my life. But I was tired, so very tired.

I felt trapped. Powerless. I had hit a dead end and couldn’t imagine how on earth anything could change my circumstances, except death. I don’t mean to sound bleak, but it’s my truth. My heart breaks that I ever felt such hopelessness.

What we believe is not always the truth.

I had always been such a fighter. From the depths of horrific childhood events to teenage single mommyhood and relying on government assistance, I rose with pure ambition and fierce tenacity to change the outcome. I sought out every opportunity to become better. I was terrified and intimidated, but my want for better trumped my doubt and fear. What happened to that girl? That fear stalker who even with criticism and critique over her lack of skills and business etiquette, crying from embarrassment in secret, but took note and kept moving forward, where did SHE go? I felt I had no connection to that power any longer. It’s as though the fire had been smothered.

If you want to change your drinking behavior, start with your beliefs.

And on a dreary winters morning, I discovered a small subtle spark was still there. It was oh-so-faint, but it was there. All it took was a decision to change that stoked the flame. Just as compounding one bad decision after another put me in that space of hopelessness, compounding one good decision after another adjusted my belief system and set me free.

Through years of drunken self-neglect and outsider abuse, I learned to believe there was no hope and that I was powerless. Alcohol reinforced my beliefs keeping me imprisoned.

If you want to change your drinking behavior, start with your beliefs. Get a notebook and start writing down common thoughts and feelings. Start by writing, “I believe” at the top of a page and write unfiltered. If you want to turn it up a notch, Conscious Drinking is specifically designed to expedite the process.

So, what do YOU believe?

Don’t let your struggle become your identity

Is alcohol hurting your career?

Just because you’re not hiding a bottle of booze in your desk drawer don’t ignore the possibility that alcohol is hurting your career.

When most people think of struggling with alcohol the first and only possibility that comes to mind is alcoholic. There’s no thoughts or consideration that there is something in-between “normal drinking and alcoholic drinking.” And unless you’re drinking on your bathroom breaks or breaking into detox during the work day rarely is there any thought to addressing drinking behavior.

Your career could be in jeopardy.

I’m hoping that this article will entice you to consider and maybe even start a discussion about alcohol abuse well before alcoholism develops. There is a continuum of alcohol use, and the struggle doesn’t begin at the end.

You may be finding yourself having a drink or two, or three most nights when you get home from work. But you’ve never had a DUI, you rarely or never black out, and you get up and go to work every day.

However, you may find yourself running late, a little sluggish, and not as sharp. You know it’s the drinking that’s contributing to your less than stellar performance at work. Most people don’t pay a lot of attention to this type of drinking behavior. But going unchecked it will more than likely continue and can progress further along the continuum, moving further away from healthy behavior and having more severe consequences.

Along with the drinking progression, your appointments, sales quotas, reports, and projects, are starting to be missed or negatively compromised. Even if your boss doesn’t seem to recognize what the exact problem is or hasn’t said anything yet, they are usually aware something is amiss. Your career could be in jeopardy.

I have found most people who use alcohol excessively; their conscience is intact. The more they slip, disappoint, and screw up the more they turn to their coping agent, alcohol to ease the discomfort. And their intuition, that little voice inside, is screaming for help.

Don’t make the mistake I did and ignore it. Get honest, make a plan, and recruit some help for accountability. If you want to take it a step further with complete confidentiality check out ConsciousDrinking.com – Just because you struggle with alcohol, it doesn’t make you alcoholic.