Why You Need To Eat That Frog for a Better Sober Life

When I quit drinking and began my new sober life, I was a 60-year-old still running the operating system of a wounded 5-year-old.

Naively, I thought if I just stay sober, my life will finally be perfect. You might be thinking everything in your life will be better if you quit drinking. 😏 Spoiler alert. My life isn’t perfect!

I’m now two years, two months and 14 days sober and I think it’s fair to say that I’m finally coming to terms with just how catastrophic drinking has been for me. So I’d like to share my lessons to help you understand how you could be storing up a world of trouble for yourself by continuing to drink.

Cultivating Bad Habits

Drinking allowed me to develop incredibly bad habits.

I handled my life and any problems that I had with alcohol. I used it as the go-to, cure-all remedy. Have a drink, feel better, forget about the problem.

Reality check: Alcohol cures nothing. Deep down we all know this. We’ve just been brainwashed by the big booze companies and the ‘drinking society to ignore it.’

Over the course of my 40+ years of drinking, I developed many systems. All of them helped me to drink but didn’t help me to thrive or look out for my future self.

Most of my drinking career went like this:

Have a problem to face? Take a drink and chill first. Don’t worry about the problem, just relax. It will all be better tomorrow and you can face it with a fresh perspective.

However, as we all know, tomorrow never comes, and you can’t change your perspective and live a sober life if you are still clinging to your old ways of thinking, feeling and drinking.

Now that I’m sober, I can look back and see exactly how damaging alcohol was in creating and reinforcing unhelpful habits. If I want to live a sexy sober life, I have to change those habits and move forward. I’m starting with the two most destructive ones.

1. Perfectionism, AKA Fear of Getting Started

I wouldn’t have described myself as a perfectionist, but it turns out I am a perfectionist in one very important area. I am always waiting for the perfect time to start things. It’s always tomorrow or next week. The point is, it is never now.

When you drink, it’s ALWAYS the right time to drink because every conceivable life event calls for alcohol. Whether you’ve lost $5 or $5 million, broke a nail or an arm. They are events that call for the consumption of alcohol.

Whether you drink a little or a lot, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you drink alcohol as a consolation for your misfortune, as a prize for your good fortune and as a prop for your emotions. It’s a mindset that makes living a good sober life impossible.

It is never the right time to do anything else but drink. It doesn’t matter what the other thing is. It could be starting a diet, changing jobs or going on an incredible adventure.

“People who take a long view of their lives and careers always seem to make much better decisions about their time and activities than people who give very little thought to the future.” -Brian Tracy

Drinking always comes first. You condition yourself into believing there is never a perfect time to get on with the plans for your life.

Once I started living a sober life, I realised that I was still waiting for the perfect time to do things. It was always tomorrow and never now. When I probed a little deeper into my behaviour, I recognised that I was simply afraid of stepping out of my comfort zone and starting something new.

When you don’t have alcohol holding you back, you have to stop hiding and be more honest with yourself. You have to face your self-doubts and the whiny little voice that says, “Hey, you can’t do this, it’s new. You might screw up, you might fail.”

When I started to hear this voice of doubt, it took me by surprise.

I felt paralysed and unable to move forward.

Fortunately, I now have a more supportive coach inside my head that helps me live a better sober life, (check this article about changing your inner voice). My helpful coach has given me a new set of guidelines to live by:

It’s ok to screw up, you can get it right next time.

You can ask for help. There’s no shame in asking for assistance.

No one is perfect and you are no unicorn, so just go for it.

Having these useful prompts helps me to take that first step forward, and one step is all you need to get started.

“Rule: Continuous learning is the minimum requirement for success in any field.” Brian Tracy

2. Procrastination the Killer of Dreams

Drinkers get in the habit of putting things off. Society has encouraged us to just have a drink first.

Have a beer, then you’ll be able to deal with the family problem. Open that bottle of wine and the argument with hubby won’t seem so bad. You can calm down and deal with it. Stressed at work? Don’t worry, have a few cans and then you can decide what you’re going to do about it.

The point is there is always a delay. There’s always a drink before the action. Drinking encourages you to procrastinate instead of stepping up, taking control and being the protagonist in your own life.

Brian Tracy, author of “Eat that Frog,” a book about overcoming procrastination and dealing with difficult problems, encourages us all to “eat that frog.”

The frog being the most difficult task/thing you have to do. He gives some great advice on being proactive and how to tackle problems/projects. From preparing your mind and everything you need in advance to scheduling time.

I recommend his book to any of you who want to make more progress and live a better, sober life. Read it for free on SCRIBD, I’ll get an extra month of reading if you follow my link.

When you are a drinker, you never learn to eat the frog. You’re too busy drinking to even notice there is a frog.

Life goes by in a blur until one day you get sober and realise you’ve got a dirty, great big pond in your garden that’s full of giant frogs you have to deal with.

Once I got sober, I recognised that I had to learn how to eat frogs if I was going to thrive. Things are changing for me, and I’m now investing in myself and my education. I am finding the right help and learning how to build a better life for myself. You can do this too.

As the old Chinese proverb goes,

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”

It’s a proverb worth remembering.

Final Thoughts

As a drinker, life revolves around alcohol. It takes centre stage and everything else becomes unimportant. In reality, you always have two choices:

Choice one: Have a drink and wait for the perfect time to start your sober life.

Choice two: Start your sober life and don’t let alcohol control you.

Harsh but true!

Live Strong, Love, and Stay Sober

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