How to Overcome Your Drinking Habit

And Any Other Habit You Choose

By: Justin Qualler

Table of Contents
Compulsive and Addictive Behavior: How it Effects You !3 What do you want for your life?!5 Identify People, Places, Things, Etc. That Attract the Qualities You Want to Possess, Create Distance from People, Places, and Things that Do the Opposite--Take Action!!11 Raja Yoga Subconscious Character Building Exercise!13 A Condent Expectation!16

Compulsive and Addictive Behavior: How it Effects You

Addictions and compulsions undermine consciousness and take away your control of life. There is, of course, a sliding scale. A methamphetamine addiction is going to impact someones life more than a coffee addiction, even though both are stimulants. Yet, still, coffee can exert an extremely powerful inuence on someones life. In America, we have a strong belief about freedom. We want freedom to do what we want, to say what we want, and to be who we want. In a memorable sermon by Stuart Briscoe (a Milwaukee, Wisconsin pastor), he talked about his return to America following 9/11. Everyone was talking about how they took our freedom, Stuart said. He went on to say that what was meant by freedom was this supercial do what we want without consequences freedom. Sure, we want to eat whatever we want, but we dont want to suffer any kind of digestive disorder or sickness. We dont want to accept the negative consequences of our actions, after all, were free! Yet, this is precisely why were not free. Were a nation of addicts, whether were addicted to coffee, caffeine, pills (the medicinal narcotics are quite popular, as are the anti-depressants and antianxiety meds), food, sex, etc. Without going into an extensive social commentary, nearly anyone capable of non-judgmental empirical observation can see that most Americans are addicted to something, whether it is coffee, cigarettes, booze, food, or pills.

Addictions to sugar, drugs, alcohol, caffeine, nicotine not only undercut physical tness, personal appearance, personality, and health, but will steadily diminish a persons self-control, self-esteem, and happiness. Such addictions are rampantly common, yet widely unadmitted. Addictions and compulsions also undermine honesty because they constantly require dishonest rationalizations. That dishonesty, in turn, reduces self-esteem, competence, productivity The Neo-Tech Discovery, Frank R. Wallace Who doesnt want to be calm, in control, and collected? Who doesnt want peace of mind? You cant have it when youre divided against yourself. You cant have it when your behavior is controlled by addictions and compulsions. Addictions and compulsions take you out of the drivers seat and put you in the backseat. This book aims to put you in the passenger seat rst, and then back in the drivers seat where you belong.

What do you want for your life?

Catherine Ponder, in her book The Dynamic Laws of Prosperity writes The amazing thing is that, of the millions of people who think they want to be successful, few of them have any really strong, impelling desires. Before you can cut out drinking, or any other addiction or compulsion, you must have something to supplant it with--something that you want more than you want your next x. Most people are very clear about what they dont want, but that thinking prompts them to focus on the things they dont want, which, ironically, tends to draw those things towards them. First, work on discovering your purpose and desires. This is the most important step. What is more important than working to gure out the reason why youre here in the rst place? Here are a few different techniques for working on this, the rst one from Steve Pavlinas website (stevepavlina.com), the second one from a book called Red Gold by Grigori Raiport, and the third one from Napoleon Hills Law of Success. Following these three techniques are two more: the 30 day technique and the John Rockefeller Secret. Pick one of these techniques to become more clear on your purpose, desires, and goals. Youll need this information to supplant addictions.

Steve Pavlinas Purpose Finding Technique

Heres how Steve recommends nding your purpose: 1. Take out a blank sheet of paper or open up a word processor where you can type (I prefer the latter because its faster). 2. Write at the top, What is my true purpose in life? 3. Write an answer (any answer) that pops into your head. It doesnt have to be a complete sentence. A short phrase is ne. 4. Repeat step 3 until you write the answer that makes you cry. This is your purpose. Source: http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/01/how-to-discoveryour-life-purpose-in-about-20-minutes/

Red Gold Ideal Self Technique

The technique from the book Red Gold by Grigori Raiport involves an exercise where you gure out what you want, what you dont want, and learn to use your mind make yourself desire the things you want more than the things you dont want. Its very powerful.

Dening Your Ideal Self

The rst thing you need to do is to clearly dene what you want to be. Your Ideal Self. Here is where you can write anything down and let your imagination run wild.

Dening Your Goal Self

After you've developed your Ideal Self, then you want to develop your Goal Self--this is the self that you are targeting to become. While the ideal self is a good list, ideals by their very nature are unattainable according to the book. The Goal Self is something you are striving for, something within your means, something you're passionate about.

Dening Your Current Self

Next, you want to develop your Current Self. This is what you currently are. Here, list the habits you have that you want to get rid of. For instance, a habit of uncontrolled drinking is incompatible with a Goal Self of being healthy and strong. Make a list of all the undesirable qualities you currently have. Make this list as comprehensive as possible.

Making Use of the Lists

You have several lists, but you'll only be working with two--the Goal Self and the Current Self. For the Goal Self list, begin to form a strong identication with the items on the list. Imagine yourself being these qualities and in possession of these traits each night and every morning. Feel good when you think about possessing those qualities. When you look at your Current Self list, become disgusted with the qualities on it. You want to feel repulsion from the items on that list to encourage the change in behavior. This is called Attraction and Repulsion. You can do this when you look at the list, and you can also do it in real life--if you succumb to your drinking habit, pay attention to how it makes you feel and notice all the negative and none of the positive. When youre sober, notice only the positive and none of the negative. This dual technique is extremely powerful. It helps you stay more conscious about the things you are doing and the thoughts you are thinking. Even if you just have a thought about drinking, immediately work to think about the negative aspect of the activity, and then revert to thinking about not drinking and let yourself feel extremely positive emotions.

Napoleon Hills Law of Success Self Development Techniques

"How may a man be sure that he has attained success unless he has established in his mind some denite object that he wishes?" Napoleon Hill has a famous book called Think and Grow Rich. He has perhaps an even better book, in my opinion, than that one. It's called The Law of Success. Like Catherine Ponder, he quips that most people know quite denitely what they don't want, but when you ask them what they want they can't answer. Of course, if you're going to get what you want, then you'll have to change that. There are three exercises that you can do to begin to gure out your denite purpose:

Figure Out Your Burning Desire

What is your burning desire? What do you want to do more than anything? At rst, if you haven't thought about this type of thing, it might take you a while to gure out what it is. It might take you several revisions before you get down to what your burning desire really is. Once you have it, you'll feel emotionally charged about it. That's how you know it is your burning desire--you have passion an emotion backing it. Write this down and reect on it morning and night.

Figure Out Your Denite Purpose

The next exercise is to create your denite purpose based off of your burning desire. "I want to be rich and famous" is not a denite purpose. A denite purpose needs to be specic and measurable-and realistic. "I want to own and operate a coffee shop and cafeteria so I can provide the local community with a good cup of coffee and

snacks and provide a comfortable life for my family" is better-assuming your area isn't saturated with coffee shops! Write down your denite purpose and put it in a place where you will see it often.

Figure Out What Actions You Need to Take to Accomplish Your Denite Purpose
The next step is to list the specic actions you will need to take to accomplish your denite purpose. If you want to open a coffee shop, you might need to meet with the local government to see what permitting you'll need. You might want to meet with other coffee shop owners to nd out what's worked for them (assuming these people aren't in your area and would therefore see you as competition). You might look for books about starting a business and talk to other business owners in the area. Maybe you'll join a meet up group. As you move farther down the road, your specic actions will change, but you need to constantly be thinking about what actions you need to take to support your denite purpose.

The 30 Day Technique

30 days isnt much time, but if youre dedicated and practice something for 30 days, youll work to start forming a habit. Pick one of the techniques above and follow it. Then, for 30 days, review the results of whatever technique you picked. Every morning, review the results and visualize yourself as if youve already attained what you want to attain. You should allow yourself to feel amazing about this fact. Wow! Youve done it! If youre following the Red Gold technique, for 30 days youre active nearly all day long watching your thoughts and correcting them. It took me six months of working the Red Gold technique to stop drinking. Im certainly not insinuating that youre drinking will magically go away, but have faith in the process and continue until it does.

Reinforcing the technique with AA or some other outlet might be advised depending on your situation.

John Rockefellers Secret

I dont know about you, but I wanted to have control over my drinking. Maybe I still wanted to drink at a special occasion. To achieve this, I employed John Rockefellers Secret--anything that is watched and measured improves. I kept a spreadsheet and monitored my drinking (among other things) to make sure I never strayed. I set the intention that I only wanted to drink on special occasions. Depending on the severity of your addiction it might not be advisable to attempt this. Eliminating completely might be better. Im not a slave to the spreadsheet, either. Ive since stopped putting a 0 in the Alcohol column for each day because I just havent been drinking nor do I have the desire.

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Identify People, Places, Things, Etc. That Attract the Qualities You Want to Possess, Create Distance from People, Places, and Things that Do the Opposite--Take Action!
Action, action, action! - Bruce Lee He who walks with wise men will be wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm. Proverbs 13:20 That friend you have who is always encouraging you to drink? Maybe not so much of a friend. It might be that the alcohol is all that is holding you together. Hey, it happens. Going to a bar might not be advisable if youre trying to stop drinking, either. Similarly, if youre trying to lose weight, you wouldnt want to head to a family restaurant where all the patrons are overweight and the portion sizes are huge. As I said in the rst chapter, when youre talking about addictions and compulsions, youre really talking about consciousness. As you gain control over your addictions and compulsions, youll begin to be more aware--more conscious. Youll notice different things about places you used to frequent. You might notice a particular establishment has a low energy and every time you leave there, you feel worse. Time to move on. Youll develop different interests and potentially shed your old ones. Its a transition phase. Youre vulnerable here.

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You might lose friends here who were never really your friends. This is where support can help. Keep up with the exercises. Youre embracing something higher and moving away from something lower, but right now you might be caught in between. It could go either way. Stay strong and pick the correct course of action. Surround yourself with people who can help. If you dont have people like that, nd them! By the way, if youre cutting out alcohol--get it out of your house! Limit your chances to exposure.

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Raja Yoga Subconscious Character Building Exercise

The average person recognizes his strong and weak points of character, but is very apt to regard them as xed and unalterable, or practically so. He does not realize that he himself is really the maker of himself, from the raw and crude material given him at his birth. First of all, what is your character? It is nothing more than the sum of your habits. So, how do you change your character? You change your habits through auto-suggestion. Or, I should say, it happens through autosuggestion because whether you do it consciously or unconsciously, it happens either way. The rst step is to form a desire. You must desire to change. The desire to change must be higher than other desires. If you want to get drunk more than you want to be sober, then youll drink. I can hear the question already. What if I dont want to give something up? What if my desire for sugar is really high? You can build up desire for something else. You dwell on the subject until desire is created. To use the example from the book: A young man has no desire to indulge in the excesses of a fast life. But after a while he hears, or reads something about others leading that sort of life, and he begins to allow his mind to dwell upon the subject, turning it around and examining it mentally, and going over it in his imagination. After a time he begins to nd a desire gradually sending forth roots and branches, and if he continues to water the thing in his imagination, before long he will nd within himself a blossoming inclination, which will try to insist upon expression in action.
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The process described above was unconscious. How often has that happened to you? You desire a sundae, even though youre full. Youve eaten already. But you imagine that sundaeoh, itll taste so good! The waitress asks if youd like dessert. Before you have a chance to stop yourself, youve said yes and now you nd you cant stop yourself. Thought, word, deed... Change the thought, nurture a different thought, and get different results. Pick a desire, and indulge it. See yourself exhibiting the desirable traits you want to have. Imagine people complimenting you on your new self. You will begin to feel a stronger desire forming. While youre going through this process, you might slip up and enact a habit you want to rid yourself of. Relax. Dont beat yourself up. Youre not trying to engage in a monumental battle of willpower that you have to ght all the time. So you slipped up. So what? Go back to cultivating a higher desire and refusing to dwell on your other lower desire, whatever it is. Dont allow yourself to experience the frustration, just view it as something that happened, and go back to work on the process. Therein lies the secret. You have higher desires and lower desires. You want to replace your lower desires with higher ones. Heres what you do: starve the lower desires of any thought whatsoever. Dont even think of them. Lavish the higher desires with all sorts of positive attention. Thought control is very difcult so it is likely youll experience some difculty keeping your mind off your lower desire. I nd that for me, it works well, if I accidentally start thinking about the lower desire, to

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think only of negative qualities about it. For instance, with drinking, I would just think of the hangover, of getting sick, or of making a fool out of myself. This is the technique from the book Red Gold, called attraction and repulsion. Youre attracting yourself to the positive desire and repulsing yourself from the negative one. Remember, each victory gives you strength, each defeat weakens you. So far youve formed a desire and youre promoting it over some other, lower desire. The only other ingredient you need is faitha condent expectation. Youre going through a process, the process is based on psychological law, and it works. Let it work. Expect it to work. Continue the process and you will nd that you are easily, and happilyjoyfully, evenmaking the correct decisions and your old habits are a thing of the past. Youll feel great. Youll be calm. Youll feel in charge of yourself because you have consciously worked to make a positive and wonderful change in your life. Youll look back at your old self and wonder just how you allowed that to happen. Youll be on a whole new conscious plane of existence.

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A Condent Expectation
Be diligent. Be assiduous in your practice of guring what your purpose is, what your goals are, and what habits youll need to eliminate to reach it. Then expect good things. Have a strong faith. Youre doing the work, you know where you want to go, you will succeed. If thoughts drift, as they do, gently put them back in order. If you make a mistake, no sense in beating yourself up over it, just recognize what happened and continue to proceed with your work, condently expecting the best possible outcome.

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