Winning Through Intimidation by Robert J. Ringer | Book Summary
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Winning Through Intimidation by Robert J. Ringer
Why, after more than five decades, is Winning through Intimidation still one of the most talked about personal-development books of all time? Because it teaches you, in straightforward, easy-to-understand terms, how to defend yourself against the intimidators of the world. As you’ll discover from the summary:
- The results a person obtains are inversely proportionate to the degree to which he is intimidated; and
- It’s not what you say or do that counts, but what your posture is when you say or do it!
Every person has the inherent right to “self-proclaim”–to announce, at any time he chooses, that he is on any level he chooses to be on.
THE THEORY OF REALITY:
Reality isn’t the way you wish things to be, or the way they appear to be, but the way they actually are. You either acknowledge reality and use it to your benefit, or it will automatically work against you.
- THEORY OF SUSTENANCE OF A POSITIVE ATTITUDE THROUGH THE ASSUMPTION OF A NEGATIVE RESULT
Prepare yourself for long-term success by being prepared for short-term failure
A person shouldn’t enter a sales situation feeling he can’t make the sale, but he should really assume that he won’t make the sale. If you’re prepared, then you’re able to feel confident that you are capable of making the sale if it is possible to be made. Hope for the best, but realistically assume the worst.
No matter how well prepared you are, only a small percentage of deals actually control, because there are an endless number of factors beyond your control.
Each negative result is an educational experience from which you can extract lessons learned, and then forget about the negative result.
Most people wish that business took place on a nursery school playground, with fairness being enforced. The reality is that the game of business is played in a vicious jungle.
- UNCLE GEORGE THEORY
If you keep your nose to the grindstone and work long hard hours, you’re guaranteed to get one thing in return: Old. Hard work will not, in and of itself, assure a person of success.
- THEORY OF RELATIVITY
Language is relative and subjective; you have to make sure that you define exactly what people’s statements really mean.
- THEORY OF RELEVANCE
The most important factor to consider is whether something is relevant to what you’re trying to accomplish. Work only on things that are relevant.
For example, the builder’s cost is irrelevant to a buyer. All the buyer cares about is cash flow. Also, whether or not a person is “honest” is irrelevant. What matters is what he puts down in writing.
- THIRTY YEAR THEORY
You are going to die. Therefore, you should go after all you can get, as quickly as you can get
You are going to die. Therefore, you should go after all you can get, as quickly as you can get it, because the reality is that your time is limited.
- ICE BALL THEORY
In 50 billion years, the sun will burn out and the Earth will be a frozen ice ball. Nothing you do now could possibly matter then. So don’t take yourself too seriously. Life is a game, and play to win. There’s no reason to be afraid to be aggressive or take chances. The reality is that there’s no way you’re going to get out of this thing alive, so why play conservatively.
- THREE TYPE THEORY
There are only three types of people in the business world
- Type 1: Lets you know that he’s out to get all of your chips. Then he tries to do just that.
- Type 2: Assures you that he’s not interested in getting your chips. Then he tries to grab all of your chips anyway.
- Type 3: Assures you that he’s not interested in getting your chips, and honestly means it. However, in the end, he tries to grab all of your chips anyway.
In business, no one ever does anything for anybody else without expecting to gain something in return.
- LEAPFROG THEORY
A person has no legal or moral obligation or, for that matter, logical reason to “work his way up through the ranks.” The quickest way to the top is not by fighting your way through the pack, it is to leapfrog over the pack and simply proclaim that you’re above it. However, you must be prepared to be above it, or reality will knock you back down.
- THEORY OF INTIMIDATION
The problems most people have in reaching their objectives revolve around the fact that they constantly allow themselves to be intimidated.
The results a person obtains are inversely proportional to the degree to which he is intimidated.
- POSTURE THEORY
It’s not what you do or say that counts, but what your posture is when you say or do it. You need to maneuver yourself into a position of power.
- TYPES OF POWER
Money: The ability to walk away—nice if you can get it
Image: The ability to prompt respect
Legal: The law, plus the Law of Universal Attorney-Attorney Respect. Always have everything in writing. Don’t be afraid to ask for it.
Performance: Be the best at what you do and deliver. Be fanatical about execution. This backs up your Image and Legal Power.
Don’t let anything get in the way of making the deal. If there are questions, dig out the answers yourself if necessary, rather than waiting for someone else to do it.
- THE 5 STEPS OF SALES SUCCESS
- Obtain a product to sell
- Locate a market for the product.
- Implement a marketing method
- Be able to close the sale
- GET PAID.
- GENERATING IMAGE POWER
Ringer used a spectacular, expensive, hard-bound brochure to intimidate potential sellers.
Every interaction was designed to show the buyer or seller that they needed to sell Ringer on working on their deal
When he went to meet them, he brought along everything that he might need, from typewriters to law books, to 2-3 secretaries—so that nothing could hold up the deal, and to intimidate the hell out of people.
- MAKEABLE DEAL THEORY
It’s more efficient to work hard on finding a few makeable deals, rather than working hard on an endless number of unmakeable deals and clinging to the faint hope that you’ll somehow close one. People have a masochistic tendency to work on “pie-in-the-sky” deals that have little possibility of closing.
- PHRASING MATTERS
Don’t say, I can “sell” the property, say I can “do something” with the property.
Don’t call a contract a contract, call it a “one-page understanding.”
- Try to avoid looking legal and attracting the attention of the Deal-Killing Attorney.
- Ringer would have a contract done and signed on the spot, rather than waiting and allowing time to pass.
- FIDDLE THEORY
The longer a person fiddles around with something, the greater the odds that the result will be negative. Time is always against you when trying to make a deal—any kind of deal.
- BOY-GIRL THEORY AND BETTER DEAL THEORY
If a boy plays it cool, then a girl wants the boy. If a boy comes on like a hungry dog chasing a squirrel, then girl doesn’t want the boy. A man will usually want the deal he can’t have, and won’t want the deal he can have.
Before a person closes any kind of deal, he always worries that there may be a better deal down the road.
To combat the effect of these factors, bring the deal as quickly as possible to the point where the money is on the table and the papers are ready to be signed. Then it’s put up or shut up time.
- Don’t let the speed depend on everyone else. If necessary, fly a secretary to the office to pick up the documents and hand deliver them.
- You MUST take matters into your own hands and move swiftly once you smell victory. At the crucial moment, the great quarterback takes control of the game.
- ATTORNEY GOAL LINE DEFENSE
Attorneys are not subject to intimidation like normal people, but if you cower, they will smell blood and strike. Instead of being tough or humble, play it cool. Be calm and matter of fact. Adopt an air that indicates you have no concern over the deal, that everyone knew the deal would happen.
- “Problems” don’t represent obstacles to the closing, but just normal “points” which had to be “handled” as a natural part of every deal.
- “That’s a darn good point. I’m glad you brought that up. Here are many ways we can handle that particular point.” The only reason all are gathered is to “handle” the normal “points” that always come up.
- As a last resort, indicate the willingness to walk away. “Well, I guess that’s it. It looks like we just can’t make this one happen.”
- DIRTY LAUNDRY
There will almost always be several major undisclosed deal-killers that pop up at the 1-yard line. Soften the blow by setting expectations with the buyer ahead of time. That way, the dirty laundry reinforces your posture of expertise.
- BLUFF THEORY
The best way to bluff is not to bluff. Wealthy people are good bluffers because when they threaten to walk away, they mean it. They can’t be intimidated.
If you’re not wealthy, the best substitute is guts. It’s more painful, but it works. Draw a clear line, and stick to it.
Perhaps the most important reason of all for taking action now is that time is finite. No matter how proficient you are, you can only accomplish so much in a lifetime. Every second that’s wasted reduces the totality of what you can accomplish by one second.
Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation by Daniel J Siegel | Book Summary
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Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation by Daniel Siegel
– Is there a memory that torments you, or an irrational fear you can’t shake?
– Do you sometimes become unreasonably angry or upset and find it hard to calm down?
– Do you ever wonder why you can’t stop behaving the way you do, no matter how hard you try?
– Are you and your child (or parent, partner, or boss) locked in a seemingly inevitable pattern of conflict?
What if you could escape traps like these and live a fuller, richer, happier life? This isn’t mere speculation but the result of twenty-five years of careful hands-on clinical work by Daniel J. Siegel, M.D. A Harvard-trained physician, Dr. Siegel is one of the revolutionary global innovators in the integration of brain science into the practice of psychotherapy. Using case histories from his practice, he shows how, by following the proper steps, nearly everyone can learn how to focus their attention on the internal world of the mind in a way that will literally change the wiring and architecture of their brain.
Through his synthesis of a broad range of scientific research with applications to everyday life, Dr. Siegel has developed novel approaches that have helped hundreds of patients. And now he has written the first book that will help all of us understand the potential we have to create our own lives. Showing us mindsight in action, Dr. Siegel describes
– a sixteen-year-old boy with bipolar disorder who uses meditation and other techniques instead of drugs to calm the emotional storms that made him suicidal
– a woman paralyzed by anxiety, who uses mindsight to discover, in an unconscious memory of a childhood accident, the source of her dread
– a physician-the author himself-who pays attention to his intuition, which he experiences as a “vague, uneasy feeling in my belly, a gnawing restlessness in my heart and my gut,” and tracks down a patient who could have gone deaf because of an inaccurately written prescription for an ear infection
– a twelve-year-old girl with OCD who learns a meditation that is “like watching myself from outside myself” and, using a form of internal dialogue, is able to stop the compulsive behaviors that have been tormenting her
These and many other extraordinary stories illustrate how mindsight can help us master our emotions, heal our relationships, and reach our fullest potential.
Mindsight Key Idea #1: Mindsight allows us to learn about the connections between mind, body and attitude.
Have you ever been in the middle of an important discussion when something pushes you over the edge? You might suddenly grow angry, your mind might go blank or perhaps you’ll feel an uncontrollable urge to leave the room as quickly as possible. Sound familiar?
Many of us experience reactions like this. They can be deeply confusing, leaving us at a loss to explain our own behavior. To understand these situations, we need to understand our internal worlds – and to do this, we need mindsight.
Mindsight is the skill that allows us to reflect on the connection between the body and the mind. This is central to learning how to regulate powerful emotions. Mindfulness techniques such as meditation are examples of mindsight, as they increase our awareness of our heartbeat and breathing.
But mindsight isn’t just something to practice when you have quiet time to yourself; it is a tool that you can use when life gets loud, messy and overwhelming. For instance, watching your kids scream and fight over food can make you upset. However, your children aren’t the direct cause of your growing distress – it’s your increasing heart rate.
By turning your attention and awareness to your heart rate, you can learn to regulate its influence on your emotions and get a better grip on the situation before you. By remaining calm and patient, you’ll be able to settle the conflict between your children, rather than exacerbate it by reacting with frustration.
As well as looking into your own internal landscape, mindsight encourages us to see the world through the eyes of those around us. This is something all humans are innately capable of, even though we often take it for granted; without the capacity for empathy, we would struggle immensely.
This is a challenge faced by Barbara, one of the author’s patients. During a car accident, the mother of three suffered damage to her prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that enables us to use mindsight to empathize with others. Having lost her sense of empathy, Barbara has struggled to maintain caring relationships with her kids and friends.
Mindsight Key Idea #2: The goal of mindsight practice is a balanced, harmonic self.
Some of us are addicted to rigid morning routines. Others start to squirm if something feels too “planned.” Whether you’re strict or spontaneous, too much focus on either extreme can make you hard to be around, and unhappier in the long run. Your best bet is to find the right balance by creating a harmonic self.
Having a harmonic self is all about keeping your personality balanced. With a balanced personality, you’ll be able to adapt to external changes, but will also stay stable and true to your core values.
This is a bit hard to grasp in abstract terms, so mindsight-based therapy makes use of the image of a gently flowing river. Rather than clashing with changes in your relationships and environment, simply make room for them while continuing on your original course.
To make your personality flow, you must first accept that it’s normal to act in a range of different ways, to have relationships that contrast with one another and that past experiences will shape you in different ways as you grow older.
A harmonic personality is also tied to creating a balance between rational, analytical thinking and emotional, intuitive thinking. While both modes of thinking are valuable, placing too much emphasis on one or the other can be detrimental.
Take Stuart, one of the author’s patients, a retired lawyer who was suffering from depression. It turned out that because Stuart only accepted rational, logical thoughts, he’d been repressing his emotions for years; this imbalance was at the heart of his sense of emptiness. For Stuart, learning to appreciate his emotional and rational sides in equal measure was the first step to overcoming his depression.
Mindsight Key Idea #3: Mindsight is brain training that keeps us resilient and emotionally healthy in everyday life.
Mindsight can be a powerful part of psychotherapy. With a deeper understanding of how brain activity shapes the way we see the world, you’ll be able to harness the power of mindsight. So how does it work?
Mindsight is like training for your brain. It teaches us how to reflect on thoughts and helps us create new connections between them. The more we associate two ideas with each other as we reflect on them, the stronger the neural relationship between those ideas will become.
Mindsight also trains our brains by boosting memory. Conscious reflection on past or future situations can be as vivid and powerful as experiencing those events themselves. By encouraging our minds to re-enact entire scenes in full detail, we activate the same areas of our brains that would light up if what we were imagining was taking place in real life. Neuroscience has even demonstrated that every single thought we have alters blood flow and neural signal rates.
By dedicating time to training our brains, we’re better able to deal with unexpected challenges. Our neural behavior directly shapes how we manage issues in our environment – so much so that certain physical parts of our brain are responsible for different reactions.
The prefrontal cortex, located just behind the forehead, triggers moral judgments, our attention (or lack thereof), our sense of time and our sense of identity. The insula, on the other hand, is responsible for our emotions, as well as how we respond to the emotional displays of others. Mirror neurons are specialized cells that help us understand the intentions of those around us.
Since mindsight allows us to boost our awareness of these areas of the brain, we’re able to better control the reactions that they create.
Mindsight Key Idea #4: Mindsight helps us train the right side of our brains to acknowledge and manage discomfort.
You might think that talking about your feelings is simply a matter of opening up. Sometimes, we experience emotions that we’re not even aware of. But just like any other skill, becoming aware of our emotions can be learned; practice makes perfect!
This is a central focus of mindsight-based therapies. Mindsight targets the right hemisphere of the brain, which is responsible for our emotional awareness. Though we’re more comfortable exercising the rational capabilities of the left hemisphere, the right hemisphere is the side we should exercise to deepen our understanding of our own feelings. Thankfully, this isn’t too hard to do.
You can stimulate your right hemisphere by taking part in nonverbal communication games, from imitating facial expressions, to trying to read movie character’s emotions with the sound off. You can also keep a diary to record all the emotional sensations and imagery of your experiences, rather than rationalizing them.
When you’re confronted with your own intense emotions, you can use other techniques that focus awareness on bodily sensations. The next time you’re stressed out, try doing the body scan. This entails lying down on the floor and focusing on different parts of your body, one by one.
This can be quite uncomfortable at first, as a sore back or itchy nose might make it hard for you to concentrate. But with practice, you can focus your mind on mental images of safe places to stay in control of your responses.
One of the author’s patients hyperventilated while doing a body scan. After ensuring the patient felt safe with her, they prepared a mental image of a safe space together to try for next time; the safe space, in this case, was a cove at the beach. On her next attempt at the body scan, the patient was able to focus calmly, without letting the intense sensations of her body bother her.
Mindsight Key Idea #5: Mindsight helps us see how feelings are fleeting experiences, not our defining character traits.
While it’s all too easy to tell someone to “keep their temper,” emotions can be very tough to manage. Many people find emotions overwhelming and distressing, but mindsight helps us realize that they’re all just fleeting parts of the human experience, rather than ingrained behaviors that indicate we’re somehow flawed and dysfunctional.
Meditation exercises, for instance, train people to focus on one thing and one thing only. Such exercises require that, if you do get distracted, you bounce back and return to your focus. This is a great way to experience how thoughts and feelings are just temporary experiences, rather than the foundations of your personality.
Another exercise to try involves imagining that your mind is an ocean. Your thoughts and feelings are what moves over the ocean’s surface; they can be ripples, or they can be storms. But no matter how big the waves, there is calmness at the bottom of the ocean. Stormy feelings are surface-level and temporary – it’s up to you to find the calmness on the ocean floor!
More broadly, mindsight exercises like the above two examples are built around three key pillars: observation, objectivity and openness. By learning to take all three of these in your stride, you’ll be better positioned to understand your own feelings.
Learn to observe your mind by noticing when distracting thoughts pull you away from your focus. This might be during meditation, or even when negative thoughts slow your productivity at work or make it hard to fall asleep at night.
Next, realize that you can train yourself to objectively follow the path of your attention. You can study where your thoughts carry you and how they make you feel. This, in turn, makes you more aware of how underlying prejudices or instinctive reactions are also thoughts that shape your experiences.
Finally, by staying open and accepting that judgmental, depressing or confusing thoughts are just temporary, you’ll see that emotions don’t need to be cause for distress. They’re natural, and by acknowledging that, you have the power to learn from them and change them.
Mindsight Key Idea #6: Negative childhood experiences might shape how we see our world today, but we can use mindsight to overcome them.
Who were your teachers in the first years of your life? Your parents, most likely! But parents do far more than teach us to read or how to ride a bike. We also learn a great deal from everything that they teach us subconsciously.
For better or for worse, our upbringing shapes how we interact with people today. Kids raised by parents who only showed affection inconsistently often feel that they can’t trust anyone when they become adults – not in friendships, not at work, not even in loving relationships.
Similarly, children who had to take on a lot of responsibility at a young age learned that showing weakness is a failure. This means that they have genuine trouble opening up about their feelings as adults – since childhood, they weren’t comfortable with being seen as vulnerable.
Although these misconceptions we learned during childhood have been with us for a long time, we can, in fact, overcome them with mindsight. A great way to start is to write down as many of your earliest memories as you can, as well as some of the most recent.
This helps you get everything off your chest, and will help you see what narrative you’ve used to make sense of your past as a child. Examine the story that you tell about yourself and consider the possibility that there is no need for one perfectly coherent narrative. Rather, we’re all made up of multiple narratives within each stage and aspect of our lives.
The narrative you tell of your earlier life will reveal how your current difficulties are bound up with how you perceive your childhood. This helps you see these patterns for what they are: harmful. Discovering alternative stories to tell about your childhood and adult life is the first step to knocking down those walls you built around yourself as a kid.
Mindsight Key Idea #7: Use mindsight to be receptive rather than reactive to your partner when addressing relationship problems.
Many of us know what it’s like to have stupid fights with our partners. It starts out with one person addressing a problem, but soon seems to devolve into fighting for the sake of fighting. What prevents these discussions from being resolved peacefully? In the end, it’s a matter of attitude.
The key is whether you’re reactive or receptive toward your partner. This one factor can have a massive influence on the quality of your relationship as a whole – so it’s pretty important stuff! But what does it mean?
Well, being receptive means openly listening to your partner. Receptiveness makes your partner feel like you acknowledge and value their feelings, which in turn helps them open up and share what’s on their mind.
Being reactive, on the other hand, is what we do when all of our partner’s complaints feel like threats to us. We enter fight-flight-freeze mode, and either want to attack our partner, defend ourselves or stop talking and avoid eye contact. This is problematic for both of you, leading to a vicious cycle.
If one person feels the need to discuss an issue while her partner feels the need to flee whenever she brings it up, they’ll just want to push the issue even further away; this, in turn, can lead to endless fights and miscommunication. So what can we do better?
Mindsight helps us be receptive toward our partners and facilitates dialogue in a relationship. Both partners should take the time to reassess the narratives they’ve told themselves about their lives and consider whether they’re accurate, or whether alternatives are possible. They should then share these with each other, which can help each partner understand the other’s motivations and emotional needs.
Other strategies to try include the timeout method. This requires mindsight, as you’ll need to monitor your emotional state when you discuss a sensitive topic with your loved one. Call a timeout when you sense yourself reaching reactive mode – this gives you time to reflect and rejoin the conversation later.
Mindsight Key Idea #8: Mindsight can help us with both past trauma and an uncertain present.
We’ve already learned how our childhood experiences can shape our adult lives. However, even experiences from young adulthood can have an impact on our attitudes today, without us even realizing why.
Blackouts and angry outbursts due to excessive drinking or traumatizing experiences mean that some of our most painful memories are buried and forgotten. Even so, they continue to affect us on a subconscious level.
For example, one woman struggled with back pain for years. As a teenager, she had been sexually assaulted and had her back slammed against a table. She couldn’t remember the assault, but her body continued to remind her of the traumatic experience.
With mindsight techniques such as the body scan, we can regain access to the memories attached to physical difficulties that we can’t quite explain. As the brain focuses in on a particular body part, it activates related memories. This can bring repressed experiences to light, which in turn helps us accept and move on from trauma. The woman’s back pain disappeared after she realized what had been triggering it.
Finally, mindsight is one of the best tools at your disposal when coping with everyday uncertainties. Humans evolved with the tendency to prefer predictability over precarious and threatening scenarios. However, this instinct can also feed into neurotic behaviors like obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Those suffering from OCD know how frustrating it is to have distressing urges that simply won’t go away until they perform a ritual behavior. For example, someone with OCD may feel an intense need to knock on a desk three times when thinking about a relative dying, just to make sure it doesn’t happen.
Thankfully, this disorder can also be addressed with mindsight. Imagine the distressing urge is a person with whom you can start a discussion. You’re able to negotiate whether you really need to check five times that you locked the door, or whether twice is enough. Gradually, you’ll find it easier and easier to deal with these urges.
In Review: Mindsight Book Summary
The key message in this book:
Difficult or troubling emotions aren’t indelible parts of our personality; rather, they’re shaped by the structure of the human brain and the experiences we have as children. Discover the power of mindsight by learning to reflect, train and regulate your emotional responses, which will help you when facing conflict with loved ones, dealing with past trauma and managing everyday uncertainty.
Actionable Advice:
Worried about something? Observe it and name it to tame it!
The next time you can’t stop worrying, whether it’s about yourself, people you know or a bigger situation, take a step back to reflect on your thoughts. You could even try a body scan! Try to pinpoint the real source of your worries, and dissect them to learn more. By acknowledging and accepting your nervous feelings, you’ll be able to manage them with ease.
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Born to Run By Christopher McDougall | Book Summary
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BORN TO RUN By Christopher McDougall
Every year millions of people all over the world run marathons. You might think they’re all completely crazy or that you could never run a marathon yourself. Many of us secretly fantasize about being marathon runners if only this were possible.
However, it doesn’t take a freakish, superhuman physique to cover 26 miles and 385 yards at a clip. You just need some training and the right attitude to get yourself off the couch.
In this summary of Born to Run by Christopher McDougall, you’ll learn
- why dogs can’t run marathons;
- why most running shoes hurt us, rather than help us; and
- why the best runners run like kindergarteners.
BORN TO RUN KEY IDEA #1: THE HUMAN BODY IS EVOLUTIONARILY WELL-ADAPTED TO LONG-DISTANCE RUNNING.
When you think of fast sprinters, your mind probably jumps to cheetahs or horses. But when it comes to running long distances, it’s actually Homo sapiens who take the lead.
The reason? It’s in our physiology.
For one, humans are able to dissipate heat more rapidly than other animals.
Most other mammals don’t have the right glands in their skin to cool down via sweating, so their main method for releasing body heat is through breathing.
When four-legged animals want to run fast, they break into a gallop. This method of running, though quick, restricts their breathing rate because the moving leg muscles squish the animal’s lungs like bellows. As a result, when running fast, most animals can only breathe at a rate of one breath per stride.
This works fine for them – until they reach the critical limit at which they heat up faster than they can cool down. Then they have to stop running in order to survive.
We humans, on the other hand, prevent overheating by sweating through our skin. As a result, the human breathing cycle is not determined by our need to cool down, making it more efficient at procuring oxygen and maintaining endurance.
A second key factor that makes humans master runners is that we move on two legs instead of four.
When early humans began to walk upright – thus freeing their hands to use tools and reach higher hanging fruit – it allowed their throats to open and chests to expand. Though this development came at the expense of sprinting speed, this new posture and the increase in air capacity enabled them to maintain running over long distances.
Finally, our Achilles’ tendon is the third trait distinguishing humans as runners.
Some 95 percent of human DNA correlates with that of our close genetic relative, the chimpanzee, but even these primates don’t have this flexible, rubber-band-like cord of collagen tissue in their lower leg. As it’s stretched, the tendon stores energy until it’s ready to be released when the leg propels the body forward. This maximizes our endurance because it takes us less energy to spring from one step to the next.
BORN TO RUN KEY IDEA #2: RUNNING SHOES ACTUALLY DO MORE HARM THAN GOOD.
As we’ve seen, we have many biological traits that work to our advantage as runners. Sometimes, though, we actually hinder our natural gifts with inventions that are intended to help. A key culprit here is running shoes, which are guilty of stabilizing the foot too well.
When you run, your foot rolls inward in a process called pronation that acts as a built-in shock absorber for the lower leg. Unfortunately, pronation has been demonized as being responsible for runner’s knee, a painful and common ailment.
As a result, we now see a fleet of pronation-alleviating shoes on the market, although a mere three percent of the population have a medical need for special shoes.
For most people, encasing the foot in a shoe is a lot like having a plaster cast on the leg. The shoe limits the foot’s full movement, causing the muscles to atrophy and the foot to lose strength.
The resulting imbalances throughout the body put excessive strain on certain muscles and joints and can lead to injury, which is why taking running shoes out of the equation might actually be better for you.
Consider Alan Webb, the greatest mile runner in the United States, who suffered from foot injuries while still in school. Part of the problem was that Webb had flat feet with low arches, which are not well-suited for running. Thanks to various barefoot running exercises, however, his feet strengthened, and his arches rose dramatically – so much so, in fact, that his size 12 feet now fit into size nine or ten shoes, and his foot injuries abated.
Another problem with running shoes is that they mask the discomfort caused by harmful impacts against the ground.
Thickly cushioned shoes fail to alert runners to the painful shock waves that reverberate through their bodies as they pound the pavement, thus preventing them from adopting less harmful running forms.
Barefoot running, on the other hand, forces the runner to adapt a natural, and ultimately more comfortable, gait.
BORN TO RUN KEY IDEA #3: TO RUN FASTER AND LONGER, RESTRICT YOUR PROTEIN INTAKE AND SWITCH TO A VEGETARIAN DIET.
OK, so now that we’ve gotten rid of the shoes, what’s next?
Sorry to say it, but your bacon habit might have to bite the dust if you want to become a champion runner.
Despite Western society’s current vogue for diets based around lean meats, cutting out meat entirely is probably your best bet.
If you need evidence, just look at some of history’s greatest endurance athletes, many of whom were vegetarians.
Japanese marathon-running monks, for instance, would complete 25,000-mile ultra-marathons on a daily provision of miso soup, tofu and vegetables.
Or take Percy Cerutty, coach to some of the greatest runners of all time, who strongly advocated a vegetarian diet. He often pushed his clients through triple sessions on a simple diet of raw oats, fruits, cheeses and nuts.
Elite ultra-runner Scott Jurek took it even further and switched to a vegan diet. Despite being told that he wouldn’t recover from workouts and would be more susceptible to injuries, he proved his doubters wrong and performed better than ever.
A vegetarian diet is especially well-suited for running long distances because foods such as fruits, vegetables and whole grains help you extract the maximum nutrition from the fewest calories. As a result, the body is spared from carrying and processing any additional bulk.
Furthermore, your body digests proteins much more slowly than it does carbohydrates. That means that when you eat meat, you’re wasting a lot more time waiting for the food to be processed by your digestive system. Think about it this way: less meat means more time to train and fine-tune your running skills.
And don’t worry about being malnourished on a meat-free diet, because a diet of grains, legumes and vegetables possesses the amino acids essential for muscle production. They allow for recovery while keeping you ready to run at any moment due to their comparatively brief digestion time.
Now that we have the right equipment and diet, let’s move on to the next step in becoming a skilled runner: the right training!
BORN TO RUN KEY IDEA #4: FORM AND PACE ARE ESSENTIAL TO LONG-DISTANCE RUNNING.
If you’ve ever watched Olympic sprinting and marathon events back to back, you’ll know that they might as well be two completely different sports.
For instance, the ideal sprinting posture, with a straightened back, steady head, and large, forceful strides, is astonishingly different from the way Kenyan athletes choose to run – and, given that Kenya is an elite nation in long-distance running, we might want to pay attention to how they do it.
Ken Mierke, an exercise physiologist and world champion triathlete, set out to discover the Kenyan secret. After watching hours of footage of barefoot Kenyan runners, he discovered that these world-class athletes actually run like kindergarteners.
The key was moving the legs in smaller contractions to enable quicker foot turnover. This technique increases efficiency and fosters endurance that is ideal for running long distances.
Ken came up with a creative, if unusual, idea to help athletes adapt to this form: he set metronomes to 180 beats per minute and attached them to his athlete clients, instructing them to match their pace to its tempo.
After five months, a 60-year-old client who’d been a runner for 40 years in the top 10 percent of his age group saw significant improvements in his trial time. His running résumé proved that the improvements weren’t simply the gains of a beginner and that anyone could apply the metronome method to their own running.
Once you’ve got your form down, the next thing to master is the art of pacing.
In order to achieve this, start by trying to stay below the aerobic threshold – that is, the point at which you begin breathing heavily.
This will help you utilize your fat stores instead of burning through your sugar reserves.
This is important because the average person has enough fat stored to run very long distances. Unfortunately, the mistake that many runners make is running too quickly and using up their sugar tank, which is far more limited than the fat. Pacing will help you to capitalize on the fat reserves and keep you running longer and further.
BORN TO RUN KEY IDEA #5: THE TARAHUMARA TRIBE EXCEL AT LONG-DISTANCE RUNNING BECAUSE THEY SEE RUNNING AS PART OF THEIR IDENTITY.
The Tarahumara people live in settlements scattered among the canyons of northern Mexico. What’s their connection to running?
“Tarahumara” roughly translates to the “running people.” They’re aptly named, because they are well-known for their ability to regularly run 200 miles in a single session. Not only this, but they also avoid the running injuries typical of the modern world.
This elusive tribe lives in isolation and shuns outsiders, the reason for which stems from their mistreatment at the hands of Spanish colonizers. Since that time, the Tarahumara have preferred to stick with one another and experience the natural joy of running.
To find out more, the author enlisted the help of a local to track down the secretive tribe. After a marathon drive and two-day hike, they finally met face-to-face with the tribe and the most respected Tarahumara runner.
Thankfully, despite his stand-offish reputation, Arnulfo welcomed them in and shared the secret to being an outstanding runner.
The lesson from the Tarahumara was simple: learn to love to run.
By creating a mind-set and culture based on the belief that running is an indispensable human skill, they’ve made it hard to be a part of the Tarahumara and not enjoy running. It’s seen as an ancestral necessity that makes them who they are as a people.
Not only do they run for the sake of their tribe, but they also run for themselves.
But this passion for running isn’t limited to only the Tarahumara people; it’s something many of us can relate to. Do you remember running around with total abandon and delight when you were a child? The fact is, running can be a blast. Although we’re often conditioned to lose this sense of pleasure, the Tarahumara have not forgotten this feeling – and it’s something you should relearn, too.
IN REVIEW: BORN TO RUN BOOK SUMMARY
The key message in this book:
Many people are unaware that we humans have a host of innate traits that make us excellent long-distance runners. One of the most important things you can do for your inner runner is to make sure you don’t hinder these inherent gifts – go barefoot and remember the natural joy of running!
Actionable advice:
The next time you’re thinking about throwing away $100 on a pair of flashy running shoes, think again. Save the money and your health by opting to go without them entirely. Run on a flat sole like a true Tahamuran if you want to improve your running prowess.
The Relationship Cure by John Gottman | Book Summary
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The Relationship Cure: A 5 Step Guide to Strengthening Your Marriage, Family, and Friendships by John Gottman
From the country’s foremost relationship expert and New York Times bestselling author Dr. John M. Gottman comes a powerful, simple five-step program, based on twenty years of innovative research, for greatly improving all of the relationships in your life-with spouses and lovers, children, siblings, and even your colleagues at work.
Gottman provides the tools you need to make your relationships thrive. In The Relationship Cure, Dr. Gottman-
– Reveals the key elements of healthy relationships, emphasizing the importance of what he calls “emotional connection”
– Introduces the powerful new concept of the emotional “bid,” the fundamental unit of emotional connection
– Provides remarkably empowering tools for improving the way you bid for emotional connection and how you respond to others’ bids
– And more!
Packed with fascinating questionnaires and exercises developed in his therapy, The Relationship Cure offers a simple but profound program that will fundamentally transform the quality of all of the relationships in your life.
“The relationship cure?” It sounds unrealistic. All things considered, no two connections are the equivalent; even to the extent that we can make speculations regarding them, they fall into various classifications. We have associations with our sentimental accomplices, companions, collaborators, family, and kids. There can’t be a one-size-fits-all answer for the issues of all these unmistakable gatherings, can there?
Indeed, yes and no. There unquestionably is certifiably not a sorcery pill that will fix your connections in a single singular motion. In any case, there are some broad techniques you can figure out how to help you manage them better.
Step-by-step instructions to utilize these procedures shift from relationship to relationship and from issue to issue, however, the basic standards are the equivalent. What’s more, they all originate from the examination and thoughts you’re going to find.
Chapter 1 – Individuals don’t shape cozy connections by essentially “opening up” to one another.
What’s the key to having a cheerful, solid, and cozy relationship with someone else?
If you believe it’s a readiness to share your most profound, most close to home contemplations, emotions, and encounters, you’re in good company. Back in the mid-1990s, numerous clinicians thought so as well – including one of the creators. In any case, at that point, he led some examination into the issue, and the outcomes astonished both him and numerous others in the field of brain research.
In 1990, research analyst Dr. John Gottman and his partners at the University of Washington set up an abnormal logical exploration community. They called it “the Love Lab.” within, it resembled a typical studio condo, with a kitchen, feasting territory, cover-up away bed, TV, and waterfront perspectives on a trench.
Over the next year, they welcomed 60 wedded couples to go through an end of the week in this comfortable setting. Each couple was given one basic guidance: carry on with life as you ordinarily would.
There was a trick. The loft was fitted out with four observation cameras and a two-path reflect, behind which eyewitnesses watched the couples for 12 hours every day. The members were likewise manipulated with amplifiers and body sensors that looked for side effects of pressure, similar to increments in pulse or levels of sweat.
Dr. Gottman gathered many long periods of video film demonstrating the couples’ regular associations in moment detail. He at that point checked on the tape, looking for instances of accomplices exposing their spirits to each other. However, he looked constantly, he scarcely found any examples of what therapists call “self-divulgence.” Instead, most discussions went this way:
“Nectar, might you be able to snatch me some espresso?”
“Indeed, dear.”
Or on the other hand:
“Hello, look at this funny cartoon!”
“Shh, I’m attempting to peruse.”
Pretty unremarkable stuff, correct? That is what Dr. Gottman thought, as well. Truth be told, he dreaded the entire test had been an exercise in futility. Yet, at that point, in the wake of investigating the recording for a couple of months, he saw something. The way to framing cozy connections was looking straight at him, not too far off in every one of those dull discussions.
What made a difference wasn’t so much the thing the couples were discussing, however how they were discussing it to one another. What’s more, it’s an exercise that applies to all connections, regardless of whether sentimental or something else.
Chapter 2 – Offers are the most crucial units of passionate correspondence.
A wife requesting her husband to get her a mug of espresso doesn’t seem like the stuff of an extraordinary relationship show. In any case, put yourself in the situation of the wife for a second. Envision that as opposed to stating “Sure, nectar,” your better half reacted by snapping, “Go get it yourself.”
Do you feel the distinction? The primary situation uncovers decent homegrown cooperation – such a thing you’d observe in a caring home. The second is more similar to something you’d find in a playback reel called “Why We Got a Divorce.”
The distinction comes down to what the creators call an “offer” and how your accomplice reacts to it.
As indicated by the author, an offer is any endeavor to build up an enthusiastic association with somebody through verbal or nonverbal correspondence. It very well may be an inquiry, as “Hello, did you see the game the previous evening?” A shout, similar to “Goodness, take a gander at that dusk!” A motion, for example, offering somebody a seat, or even only an outward appearance, similar to a straightforward grin.
However, whatever structure it takes, and whatever its surface-level significance, the basic message of the offer remaining parts as before. It says, “Hello, I need to associate with you.” The other individual would then be able to react in one of three different ways: moving in the direction of, getting some distance from, or betraying the offer.
Envision you’ve quite recently perused a fascinating news story, and you need to impart it to a companion. “Hello,” you state, “look at this present.” That’s your offer. Presently, envision your companion puts down his telephone, and happily asks, “What’s going on?” That’s him moving in the direction of your offer and reacting decidedly to your endeavor to build up an association.
Paradoxically, envision your companion keeps gazing at his telephone, claiming not to get with you. Or then again he attempts to change the subject by asking, “Do you understand what time it is?” all things considered, he’s getting some distance from your offer by disregarding or avoiding it.
At last, envision he reacts by saying, “Ugh, wouldn’t you be able to see I’m sincerely busy something?” A negative response like this is betraying your offer.
Through his examination, Dr. Gottman found that such offers, and the three sorts of reaction, speak to the key structure squares of enthusiastic correspondence and human association. Furthermore, as you’ll see, these offers and offer reactions can represent the deciding moment of your connections.
Chapter 3 – Offers as a rule contain concealed messages.
“How’s your day going? Do you have any plans tonight?” These aren’t significant inquiries. Truth be told, they may seem like simple “casual chitchat.” And yet, as offers to build up an enthusiastic association with somebody, each can assume a significant part in fortifying or debilitating that relationship.
The explanation these inquiries are so significant is that there’s something else entirely to them than meets the eye.
Envision a sentimental couple, Mary and Jeff, sitting on a couch in their parlor. Mary hangs over to Jeff and says, “It’s somewhat nippy in here, wouldn’t you say?” This is her offered.
To start to translate its concealed message, we should look underneath the outside of this basic connection.
It couldn’t be any more obvious, it isn’t so much that Mary simply needs to reveal to Jeff that she’s cold or see whether he concurs with her appraisal of the temperature. Mary has an implicit goal: she’s trusting that Jeff will give her a nestle. All in all, she’s offering him to draw nearer to her, both in a real sense and metaphorically.
So for what reason doesn’t she simply state, “Hello, Jeff, give me a snuggle?” Well, now and again we make clear offers. However, normally, we make them more inconspicuous and ambiguous – and all things considered.
By outlining her offer for actual friendship as an assertion about the temperature, Mary has an approach to hide any hint of failure and feels to a lesser degree a blow if Jeff rejects it. Suppose she says, “Give me a snuggle,” and Jeff answers, “No, I’m not in the disposition.” Ouch.
Then again, on the off chance that he reacts by throwing her a sweeping, she’s as yet not getting what she truly needs. Yet, in any event, she’s receiving something positive consequently, and it’s a ton better than by and large dismissal.
Mary is likewise giving Jeff an approach to easily decrease her offer. Regardless of whether he realizes she most likely needs a snuggle, he doesn’t need to experience the ungainliness of saying no on the off chance that he’d preferably mind his own business. He can decide to decipher Mary’s assertion in a real sense and react in like manner.
As such, the ambiguity of our offers is an element, not a bug, and it regularly serves us well. Shockingly, it can likewise prompt a few issues, as we’re going to see.
Chapter 4 – The shrouded messages of offers can be difficult to decipher, so react to them cautiously.
Up until this point, we’ve zeroed in on a portion of the more direct offers that individuals may toss your direction. Certainly, there are concealed messages behind inquiries like “It’s somewhat nippy in here, wouldn’t you say?” But you don’t require a Ph.D. in brain research to translate them. The shrouded messages aren’t excessively covered up.
If all offers were that basic, connections would be anything but difficult to explore. Be that as it may, truly, offers are frequently hard to react to. Truth be told, they regularly don’t seem like offers by any stretch of the imagination.
To some degree, we all have sentiments and wants that we don’t have the foggiest idea of how to communicate – in any event not helpfully. Also, on the off chance that we don’t comprehend our feelings, it makes sense that we’d struggle to convey them to others.
At the point when a kid pitches a temper fit since her dad will not get her a toy, you may think the fit of rage is a declaration of outrage at not getting what she needs, yet it could likewise be an offer for her dad’s solace.
At the point when a wife asks her husband other a stacked inquiry – “Why not ever call me when no doubt about it?” – it’s not simply an allegation; it’s an offer for more correspondence. Inadequately communicated, however, an offer in any case.
At the point when sensations of misery, outrage, or dread are included, individuals’ offers can seem as though regrets, reactions, or grievances. What’s more, they can be hard to perceive and react to. The key is to recollect this and rather look underneath the outside of what the other individual is stating.
Envision you’re the dad or wife in these models. Rather than protectively clarifying why you won’t accept the toy, give the kid an embrace and recognize her neglected requirement for comfort. Rather than grumbling that you’re excessively occupied at the workplace to settle on close to home decisions, organize a set time when you’ll quickly connect with your accomplice, and recognize his requirement for correspondence.
By zeroing in on the fundamental offer, you’re bound to figure out how to react that will construct associations – moving in the direction of the offer, rather than away from or against it.
Chapter 5 – To comprehend individuals’ offers assists with realizing where they’re coming from.
As we’ve seen, offers are frequently obfuscated articulations of neglected feelings and want, which might be indistinct even to individuals communicating them. Maybe that brain research Ph.D. would be helpful all things considered!
Be that as it may, shy of taking a crack at a graduate school program, you can at present give yourself a significant advantage in deciphering others’ offers – you simply need a superior comprehension of their passionate cosmetics.
In this part, we’ll take a gander at one approach to pick up that.
Have you ever gotten into a battle with somebody and felt that you two were truly contending with a third individual who wasn’t in the room? That is the thing that it resembled for Rick and Sarah, a couple that came to Dr. Gottman for treatment.
At the point when Rick was a kid, his mom left him, thus he was raised by his grandma. She detested caring for him and continually revealed to him he was useless. Thus, he built up a delicate ability to be self-aware regard – which came to torment his relationship with Sarah.
Each time she submitted a question about his conduct, maybe Rick heard his grandma’s voice. Sarah would get frantic at him for turning on the TV as opposed to conversing with her – yet as opposed to hearing a message about disliking the TV, or needing to invest more energy with him, Rick heard her state, “You can’t do anything right!”
Concerning Sarah, one of seven kids, she’d experienced childhood in a helpless family and was instructed to hush up about her requirements. So she did exactly that in her relationship with Rick – in any event for up to 14 days, after which her dissatisfactions would detonate into grievances.
On account of the TV, what she truly needed was to have a closer association with Rick, yet sadly, she communicated this longing in a way that sounded harsh and accusatory.
Like Rick and Sarah, we as a whole convey stuff from our past connections into the present. It’s what the author call our enthusiastic legacy, and it influences our collaborations with others if we understand it. So it makes sense that the more you think about somebody’s experience, the more you’ll comprehend where they’re coming from, and the more fruitful you’ll be at deciphering their offers.
Chapter 6 – When causing offers, to ponder your necessities, and express them through delicate language.
We should recap what we’ve realized up until now. To start with, basic cooperations between individuals are frequently offering for the passionate association. Second, these offers regularly contain shrouded messages. What’s more, third, these hidden implications are regularly formed by an individual’s enthusiastic legacy and past connections.
On the off chance that you recollect this and attempt to study the notable individuals in your day to day existence, you’ll become better at reacting to their offers helpfully.
Yet, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take care when making your offers and ought to depend on others to translate what you mean. There are things you can do to make yourself bound to be perceived, and such that meets your feelings – a mutual benefit for everybody!
At whatever point you’re attempting to get something throughout everyday life, it assists with understanding what you need. The equivalent is valid for offers. Whenever you end up going to dispatch into contention or submit a question, stop and ask yourself: What’s my neglected psychological condition here?
Frequently, it will be established in a principal human motivation, similar to the need to feel that you and your friends and family are protected. For instance, if a wife is doubtful of her husband’s choice to purchase a gun for their family, it very well maybe that she’s stressed over what will occur on the off chance that one of the children gets hold of it.
If that is the situation, as opposed to offering a bare expression about firearms being perilous, she should make an offer communicating her dread. That way, rather than getting into a warmed contention about the option to remain battle-ready, the couple can address her interests and discover a trade-off, such as purchasing a lockbox to keep the weapon put away unattainable.
Mellowing an offer additionally goes far to make it more tasteful. Once, the author was holding back to eat with his family, yet his better half was caught up with working in the cellar. “Hello, Julie,” he yelled cruelly. “Quit working! It’s family time!” Understandably, Julie felt assaulted and scrutinized; and she reacted protectively, saying, “I can’t! I must complete this!”
All things being equal, the author might have opened his offer by calling out, “Hello, Julie, we miss you! Come up and eat with us when you can.” Imagine the amount more certain Julie’s reaction would have been.
Chapter 7 – If you get your underlying offered and offered reaction right, you give yourself a greater open door for the association.
The underlying offer and offer reaction that commencement the main rounds of passionate correspondence between two individuals are somewhat similar to the beginnings of a neighborly round of tennis. You can consider them the services and bring volley back. If either player mishits this previously shot, the game could go to an abrupt end. However, if they’re fruitful, the activity is simply beginning.
To comprehend this better, how about we do a little in-depth examination of some passionate correspondence in real life. Two associates, Jim and Linda, are in the workplace. Jim approaches Linda’s work area and makes his underlying offer, asking, “Things being what they are, do you have any designs for lunch?”
Linda answers that she’s brought something from home and will eat outside. Understanding the concealed significance of the offer, she moves in the direction of it. “Need to go along with me?” she inquires.
“Sure,” says Jim. At that point he tightens the offer up an indent: “I’m going to the candy machine to get a beverage. You need anything?”
“Better believe it, perhaps a Coke,” Linda answers, moving in the direction of Jim’s offered indeed. “Gracious, and I’ll discover those photographs I outlined for you. I need to show them to you!”
“Extraordinary!” says Jim, “I’d love to see them!”
Notice how the positive reactions expand on one another, bringing Jim and Linda closer together. Presently, how about we witness what may if, all things being equal, Linda betrays Jim’s underlying offer.
“Have any designs for lunch?” Jim inquires.
“Lunch?! In this office? Who has the time?” Linda snaps, proceeding to gaze at her PC screen and leaving poor Jim despondent.
Now, Jim may mutter something about eating together some other time, and Linda may react with a short “Definitely, sure.” But in every way that matters, the correspondence between them is finished – just like any opportunity to the interface. In the interim, in an equal universe, the previous renditions of Jim and Linda are perched on a recreation center seat, chuckling at photographs of her canine and building a relationship.
We’ve said it previously, yet it bears rehashing: there’s much more to offers than initially meets the eye. How they are made and reacted to can have an immense effect on how connections unfurl.
Chapter 8 – You don’t need to acknowledge an offer to face an incentive to react decidedly.
“Uh-oh” you may be reasoning. “Does this mean I need to acknowledge each lunch greeting that comes in my direction? It seems like on the off chance that I decrease an offer, or even neglect to get on one, I’ll be conceivably harming my connections and driving individuals from me.”
Try not to stress. The circumstance is far less extraordinary than that. Luckily, you can in any case move in the direction of others’ offers and construct associations with them while simultaneously declining the solicitations you’re reluctant, incapable of, or just uninterested in tolerating. Everything boils down to how you react.
We should return to Jim and Linda and their lunch plans. In this rendition, it turns out Linda truly doesn’t have the opportunity to take a break today, so she can’t acknowledge Jim’s offer at face esteem – that is, as an encouragement to eat together on this specific day.
Yet, that doesn’t mean she can’t react decidedly and move in the direction of the offer. “Goodness, I’d truly love to eat with you,” she could state, “yet I’m so overwhelmed with work at present. Possibly tomorrow? Or then again we could snatch an espresso and make up for a lost time after work.”
Notice how Linda confirms her longing to associate with Jim even while she decreases this specific chance. She likewise offers some elective ways for them to associate. As such, rather than closing the allegorical entryway between them with a dull dismissal, she leaves it open and calls Jim closer.
Jim would now be able to continue with his offer, consenting to one of her other options, and expanding on his underlying suggestion. For example, he could offer to carry her something to eat, giving her more opportunity to control through that heap of work.
A similar exercise applies to any offer that requests that you accomplish something that you can’t or just don’t have any desire to do. Rather than stressing over tolerating it at face worth, or saying no and harming your relationship, utilize the occasion to console the other individual of your longing to associate.
Recall the sport of tennis from prior? Saying no in this manner is the thing that permits you to keep that bundle of amicable correspondence noticeable all around and flying to and fro across the net.
Chapter 9 – Our examples of reacting to individuals’ offers can affect our connections over the long haul.
Recall your latest connections with the individuals in your day to day existence. Did you move in the direction of, away from, or against somebody’s offered?
Whatever your reaction, don’t lose an excessive amount of rest over it. Regardless of whether you respond to an offer decidedly, an erratic trade won’t save or devastate your relationship. Connections get developed or worn out over the long haul, through numerous offers and offer reactions.
However, your activities do add up, so while one unforgiving word presumably won’t do a lot of damage, don’t fall into a propensity for cruelty.
If a relationship is set apart by an example of one part of the two individuals reacting contrarily to the next, they’re probably going to float separated. If the example is positive, they will in general turn out to be nearer.
There are two or three explanations behind this. To start with, moving in the direction of one another’s offers prompts more occasions to interface while dismissing or against them does the inverse. As we saw with Jim and Linda, it can spell the distinction between having, or not having, that lunch with your colleague.
Second, similarly, as offers pass on shrouded messages, so too do our reactions to them. If you move in the direction of an offer, you’re certainly saying, “I esteem you. I like investing in energy with you.” But on the off chance that you get some distance from or against an offer, you’re possibly sending unintended messages, as “I don’t like you” or “I need to hurt you.”
Put these messages on rehash and in the long run, you’ll have an example that sinks into the other individual’s brain as an impression of how you feel about them. On the off chance that it’s good, they’ll feel a ton of kindness toward you, which can help when you face clashes. Yet, if it’s particularly negative, they may wind up feeling like you scorn them and abandon making offers for the association through and through. All things considered, why?
It should not shock anyone, at that point, that an example of negative offer reactions is a solid indicator of issues. As indicated by the author’s exploration, relationships made a beeline for separate, wifes contrarily respond to their husband’s offers for association a shocking 82 percent of the time. In stable relationships, that figure drops to a simple 19 percent.
So no, you don’t need to get things right constantly – however, more often than not is certainly an objective worth focusing on!
In Review
If you break down others’ correspondences with you, you’ll see that they’re frequently making offers to associate. These offers may come as obscure language, or they might be veiled as protests or analysis – so you’ll have to decipher them cautiously.
Whatever you do, recall that your decision to move in the direction of, away from, or against an offer is something that can majorly affect your connections.
Try not to pause.
Our individual offers and offer reactions accumulate after some time, however, to get the show on the road you need to begin someplace. Will that lunch with your collaborator lead to a long-lasting fellowship without anyone else?
Likely not – however it very well may be the definitive initial step to a profound and enduring relationship.
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Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation by Daniel J Siegel | Book Summary
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Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation by Daniel Siegel
– Is there a memory that torments you, or an irrational fear you can’t shake?
– Do you sometimes become unreasonably angry or upset and find it hard to calm down?
– Do you ever wonder why you can’t stop behaving the way you do, no matter how hard you try?
– Are you and your child (or parent, partner, or boss) locked in a seemingly inevitable pattern of conflict?
What if you could escape traps like these and live a fuller, richer, happier life? This isn’t mere speculation but the result of twenty-five years of careful hands-on clinical work by Daniel J. Siegel, M.D. A Harvard-trained physician, Dr. Siegel is one of the revolutionary global innovators in the integration of brain science into the practice of psychotherapy. Using case histories from his practice, he shows how, by following the proper steps, nearly everyone can learn how to focus their attention on the internal world of the mind in a way that will literally change the wiring and architecture of their brain.
Through his synthesis of a broad range of scientific research with applications to everyday life, Dr. Siegel has developed novel approaches that have helped hundreds of patients. And now he has written the first book that will help all of us understand the potential we have to create our own lives. Showing us mindsight in action, Dr. Siegel describes
– a sixteen-year-old boy with bipolar disorder who uses meditation and other techniques instead of drugs to calm the emotional storms that made him suicidal
– a woman paralyzed by anxiety, who uses mindsight to discover, in an unconscious memory of a childhood accident, the source of her dread
– a physician-the author himself-who pays attention to his intuition, which he experiences as a “vague, uneasy feeling in my belly, a gnawing restlessness in my heart and my gut,” and tracks down a patient who could have gone deaf because of an inaccurately written prescription for an ear infection
– a twelve-year-old girl with OCD who learns a meditation that is “like watching myself from outside myself” and, using a form of internal dialogue, is able to stop the compulsive behaviors that have been tormenting her
These and many other extraordinary stories illustrate how mindsight can help us master our emotions, heal our relationships, and reach our fullest potential.
Mindsight Key Idea #1: Mindsight allows us to learn about the connections between mind, body and attitude.
Have you ever been in the middle of an important discussion when something pushes you over the edge? You might suddenly grow angry, your mind might go blank or perhaps you’ll feel an uncontrollable urge to leave the room as quickly as possible. Sound familiar?
Many of us experience reactions like this. They can be deeply confusing, leaving us at a loss to explain our own behavior. To understand these situations, we need to understand our internal worlds – and to do this, we need mindsight.
Mindsight is the skill that allows us to reflect on the connection between the body and the mind. This is central to learning how to regulate powerful emotions. Mindfulness techniques such as meditation are examples of mindsight, as they increase our awareness of our heartbeat and breathing.
But mindsight isn’t just something to practice when you have quiet time to yourself; it is a tool that you can use when life gets loud, messy and overwhelming. For instance, watching your kids scream and fight over food can make you upset. However, your children aren’t the direct cause of your growing distress – it’s your increasing heart rate.
By turning your attention and awareness to your heart rate, you can learn to regulate its influence on your emotions and get a better grip on the situation before you. By remaining calm and patient, you’ll be able to settle the conflict between your children, rather than exacerbate it by reacting with frustration.
As well as looking into your own internal landscape, mindsight encourages us to see the world through the eyes of those around us. This is something all humans are innately capable of, even though we often take it for granted; without the capacity for empathy, we would struggle immensely.
This is a challenge faced by Barbara, one of the author’s patients. During a car accident, the mother of three suffered damage to her prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that enables us to use mindsight to empathize with others. Having lost her sense of empathy, Barbara has struggled to maintain caring relationships with her kids and friends.
Mindsight Key Idea #2: The goal of mindsight practice is a balanced, harmonic self.
Some of us are addicted to rigid morning routines. Others start to squirm if something feels too “planned.” Whether you’re strict or spontaneous, too much focus on either extreme can make you hard to be around, and unhappier in the long run. Your best bet is to find the right balance by creating a harmonic self.
Having a harmonic self is all about keeping your personality balanced. With a balanced personality, you’ll be able to adapt to external changes, but will also stay stable and true to your core values.
This is a bit hard to grasp in abstract terms, so mindsight-based therapy makes use of the image of a gently flowing river. Rather than clashing with changes in your relationships and environment, simply make room for them while continuing on your original course.
To make your personality flow, you must first accept that it’s normal to act in a range of different ways, to have relationships that contrast with one another and that past experiences will shape you in different ways as you grow older.
A harmonic personality is also tied to creating a balance between rational, analytical thinking and emotional, intuitive thinking. While both modes of thinking are valuable, placing too much emphasis on one or the other can be detrimental.
Take Stuart, one of the author’s patients, a retired lawyer who was suffering from depression. It turned out that because Stuart only accepted rational, logical thoughts, he’d been repressing his emotions for years; this imbalance was at the heart of his sense of emptiness. For Stuart, learning to appreciate his emotional and rational sides in equal measure was the first step to overcoming his depression.
Mindsight Key Idea #3: Mindsight is brain training that keeps us resilient and emotionally healthy in everyday life.
Mindsight can be a powerful part of psychotherapy. With a deeper understanding of how brain activity shapes the way we see the world, you’ll be able to harness the power of mindsight. So how does it work?
Mindsight is like training for your brain. It teaches us how to reflect on thoughts and helps us create new connections between them. The more we associate two ideas with each other as we reflect on them, the stronger the neural relationship between those ideas will become.
Mindsight also trains our brains by boosting memory. Conscious reflection on past or future situations can be as vivid and powerful as experiencing those events themselves. By encouraging our minds to re-enact entire scenes in full detail, we activate the same areas of our brains that would light up if what we were imagining was taking place in real life. Neuroscience has even demonstrated that every single thought we have alters blood flow and neural signal rates.
By dedicating time to training our brains, we’re better able to deal with unexpected challenges. Our neural behavior directly shapes how we manage issues in our environment – so much so that certain physical parts of our brain are responsible for different reactions.
The prefrontal cortex, located just behind the forehead, triggers moral judgments, our attention (or lack thereof), our sense of time and our sense of identity. The insula, on the other hand, is responsible for our emotions, as well as how we respond to the emotional displays of others. Mirror neurons are specialized cells that help us understand the intentions of those around us.
Since mindsight allows us to boost our awareness of these areas of the brain, we’re able to better control the reactions that they create.
Mindsight Key Idea #4: Mindsight helps us train the right side of our brains to acknowledge and manage discomfort.
You might think that talking about your feelings is simply a matter of opening up. Sometimes, we experience emotions that we’re not even aware of. But just like any other skill, becoming aware of our emotions can be learned; practice makes perfect!
This is a central focus of mindsight-based therapies. Mindsight targets the right hemisphere of the brain, which is responsible for our emotional awareness. Though we’re more comfortable exercising the rational capabilities of the left hemisphere, the right hemisphere is the side we should exercise to deepen our understanding of our own feelings. Thankfully, this isn’t too hard to do.
You can stimulate your right hemisphere by taking part in nonverbal communication games, from imitating facial expressions, to trying to read movie character’s emotions with the sound off. You can also keep a diary to record all the emotional sensations and imagery of your experiences, rather than rationalizing them.
When you’re confronted with your own intense emotions, you can use other techniques that focus awareness on bodily sensations. The next time you’re stressed out, try doing the body scan. This entails lying down on the floor and focusing on different parts of your body, one by one.
This can be quite uncomfortable at first, as a sore back or itchy nose might make it hard for you to concentrate. But with practice, you can focus your mind on mental images of safe places to stay in control of your responses.
One of the author’s patients hyperventilated while doing a body scan. After ensuring the patient felt safe with her, they prepared a mental image of a safe space together to try for next time; the safe space, in this case, was a cove at the beach. On her next attempt at the body scan, the patient was able to focus calmly, without letting the intense sensations of her body bother her.
Mindsight Key Idea #5: Mindsight helps us see how feelings are fleeting experiences, not our defining character traits.
While it’s all too easy to tell someone to “keep their temper,” emotions can be very tough to manage. Many people find emotions overwhelming and distressing, but mindsight helps us realize that they’re all just fleeting parts of the human experience, rather than ingrained behaviors that indicate we’re somehow flawed and dysfunctional.
Meditation exercises, for instance, train people to focus on one thing and one thing only. Such exercises require that, if you do get distracted, you bounce back and return to your focus. This is a great way to experience how thoughts and feelings are just temporary experiences, rather than the foundations of your personality.
Another exercise to try involves imagining that your mind is an ocean. Your thoughts and feelings are what moves over the ocean’s surface; they can be ripples, or they can be storms. But no matter how big the waves, there is calmness at the bottom of the ocean. Stormy feelings are surface-level and temporary – it’s up to you to find the calmness on the ocean floor!
More broadly, mindsight exercises like the above two examples are built around three key pillars: observation, objectivity and openness. By learning to take all three of these in your stride, you’ll be better positioned to understand your own feelings.
Learn to observe your mind by noticing when distracting thoughts pull you away from your focus. This might be during meditation, or even when negative thoughts slow your productivity at work or make it hard to fall asleep at night.
Next, realize that you can train yourself to objectively follow the path of your attention. You can study where your thoughts carry you and how they make you feel. This, in turn, makes you more aware of how underlying prejudices or instinctive reactions are also thoughts that shape your experiences.
Finally, by staying open and accepting that judgmental, depressing or confusing thoughts are just temporary, you’ll see that emotions don’t need to be cause for distress. They’re natural, and by acknowledging that, you have the power to learn from them and change them.
Mindsight Key Idea #6: Negative childhood experiences might shape how we see our world today, but we can use mindsight to overcome them.
Who were your teachers in the first years of your life? Your parents, most likely! But parents do far more than teach us to read or how to ride a bike. We also learn a great deal from everything that they teach us subconsciously.
For better or for worse, our upbringing shapes how we interact with people today. Kids raised by parents who only showed affection inconsistently often feel that they can’t trust anyone when they become adults – not in friendships, not at work, not even in loving relationships.
Similarly, children who had to take on a lot of responsibility at a young age learned that showing weakness is a failure. This means that they have genuine trouble opening up about their feelings as adults – since childhood, they weren’t comfortable with being seen as vulnerable.
Although these misconceptions we learned during childhood have been with us for a long time, we can, in fact, overcome them with mindsight. A great way to start is to write down as many of your earliest memories as you can, as well as some of the most recent.
This helps you get everything off your chest, and will help you see what narrative you’ve used to make sense of your past as a child. Examine the story that you tell about yourself and consider the possibility that there is no need for one perfectly coherent narrative. Rather, we’re all made up of multiple narratives within each stage and aspect of our lives.
The narrative you tell of your earlier life will reveal how your current difficulties are bound up with how you perceive your childhood. This helps you see these patterns for what they are: harmful. Discovering alternative stories to tell about your childhood and adult life is the first step to knocking down those walls you built around yourself as a kid.
Mindsight Key Idea #7: Use mindsight to be receptive rather than reactive to your partner when addressing relationship problems.
Many of us know what it’s like to have stupid fights with our partners. It starts out with one person addressing a problem, but soon seems to devolve into fighting for the sake of fighting. What prevents these discussions from being resolved peacefully? In the end, it’s a matter of attitude.
The key is whether you’re reactive or receptive toward your partner. This one factor can have a massive influence on the quality of your relationship as a whole – so it’s pretty important stuff! But what does it mean?
Well, being receptive means openly listening to your partner. Receptiveness makes your partner feel like you acknowledge and value their feelings, which in turn helps them open up and share what’s on their mind.
Being reactive, on the other hand, is what we do when all of our partner’s complaints feel like threats to us. We enter fight-flight-freeze mode, and either want to attack our partner, defend ourselves or stop talking and avoid eye contact. This is problematic for both of you, leading to a vicious cycle.
If one person feels the need to discuss an issue while her partner feels the need to flee whenever she brings it up, they’ll just want to push the issue even further away; this, in turn, can lead to endless fights and miscommunication. So what can we do better?
Mindsight helps us be receptive toward our partners and facilitates dialogue in a relationship. Both partners should take the time to reassess the narratives they’ve told themselves about their lives and consider whether they’re accurate, or whether alternatives are possible. They should then share these with each other, which can help each partner understand the other’s motivations and emotional needs.
Other strategies to try include the timeout method. This requires mindsight, as you’ll need to monitor your emotional state when you discuss a sensitive topic with your loved one. Call a timeout when you sense yourself reaching reactive mode – this gives you time to reflect and rejoin the conversation later.
Mindsight Key Idea #8: Mindsight can help us with both past trauma and an uncertain present.
We’ve already learned how our childhood experiences can shape our adult lives. However, even experiences from young adulthood can have an impact on our attitudes today, without us even realizing why.
Blackouts and angry outbursts due to excessive drinking or traumatizing experiences mean that some of our most painful memories are buried and forgotten. Even so, they continue to affect us on a subconscious level.
For example, one woman struggled with back pain for years. As a teenager, she had been sexually assaulted and had her back slammed against a table. She couldn’t remember the assault, but her body continued to remind her of the traumatic experience.
With mindsight techniques such as the body scan, we can regain access to the memories attached to physical difficulties that we can’t quite explain. As the brain focuses in on a particular body part, it activates related memories. This can bring repressed experiences to light, which in turn helps us accept and move on from trauma. The woman’s back pain disappeared after she realized what had been triggering it.
Finally, mindsight is one of the best tools at your disposal when coping with everyday uncertainties. Humans evolved with the tendency to prefer predictability over precarious and threatening scenarios. However, this instinct can also feed into neurotic behaviors like obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Those suffering from OCD know how frustrating it is to have distressing urges that simply won’t go away until they perform a ritual behavior. For example, someone with OCD may feel an intense need to knock on a desk three times when thinking about a relative dying, just to make sure it doesn’t happen.
Thankfully, this disorder can also be addressed with mindsight. Imagine the distressing urge is a person with whom you can start a discussion. You’re able to negotiate whether you really need to check five times that you locked the door, or whether twice is enough. Gradually, you’ll find it easier and easier to deal with these urges.
In Review: Mindsight Book Summary
The key message in this book:
Difficult or troubling emotions aren’t indelible parts of our personality; rather, they’re shaped by the structure of the human brain and the experiences we have as children. Discover the power of mindsight by learning to reflect, train and regulate your emotional responses, which will help you when facing conflict with loved ones, dealing with past trauma and managing everyday uncertainty.
Actionable Advice:
Worried about something? Observe it and name it to tame it!
The next time you can’t stop worrying, whether it’s about yourself, people you know or a bigger situation, take a step back to reflect on your thoughts. You could even try a body scan! Try to pinpoint the real source of your worries, and dissect them to learn more. By acknowledging and accepting your nervous feelings, you’ll be able to manage them with ease.
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Dopamine Nation by Anna Lembke | Book Summary
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Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence by Anna Lembke
This book is about pleasure. It’s also about pain. Most important, it’s about how to find the delicate balance between the two, and why now more than ever finding balance is essential. We’re living in a time of unprecedented access to high-reward, high-dopamine stimuli- drugs, food, news, gambling, shopping, gaming, texting, sexting, Facebooking, Instagramming, YouTubing, tweeting… The increased numbers, variety, and potency is staggering. The smartphone is the modern-day hypodermic needle, delivering digital dopamine 24/7 for a wired generation. As such we’ve all become vulnerable to compulsive overconsumption.
In Dopamine Nation, Dr. Anna Lembke, psychiatrist and author, explores the exciting new scientific discoveries that explain why the relentless pursuit of pleasure leads to pain…and what to do about it. Condensing complex neuroscience into easy-to-understand metaphors, Lembke illustrates how finding contentment and connectedness means keeping dopamine in check. The lived experiences of her patients are the gripping fabric of her narrative. Their riveting stories of suffering and redemption give us all hope for managing our consumption and transforming our lives. In essence, Dopamine Nation shows that the secret to finding balance is combining the science of desire with the wisdom of recovery.
Summary of Dopamine Nation Written by Anna Lembke
Introduction
The Problem
We’ve transformed a world of scarcity into a world of abundance that delivers dopamine 24/7.
You should know that:
- Dopamine is the “universal currency” to measure the addictive potential of an experience.
- The brain processes pleasure and pain in the same place.
- Pleasure and pain are the opposite sides of the same balance.
- When we want a good experience to continue, the balance tips to the side of pain.
Part I: The Pursuit of Pleasure
Chapter 1: Our Masturbation Machines
Addiction broadly defined is the continued and compulsive consumption of a substance or behavior (gambling, gaming, sex) despite its harm to self and/or others.
The first cause for the development of an addiction is the availability of the addictive product. The less of it there is, the smaller the risk of getting addicted.
While alcohol thrived in the black market during the prohibition in the US, there were much fewer alcoholics than now.
When it became legal again, alcoholism increased.
In our society, technology made everything
- More available.
- More addictive.
Eg:
- Morphine, heroin, and fentanyl
- Cigarettes
- Weed
- Food (fried, sweet, etc)
- Digital products: videos, porn, games, gambling, etc.
The act of consumption itself has become a drug.
Seventy percent of global world deaths are attributable to smoking, physical inactivity, and diet.
The poor and undereducated, especially those living in rich nations, are most susceptible to the consumption of addictive products.
They have easy access to high-reward drugs whose consumption is indirectly encouraged by the lack of access to meaningful work, safe housing, quality education, and affordable health care.
Whatever the product consumed, addicted people’s stories are all similar: they just want to feel good.
Chapter 2: Running from Pain
The second factor that creates addiction is the obsession with maximizing pleasure and decreasing pain.
Religious man was born to be saved; psychological man is born to be pleased.
We mostly focus on getting pleasure while trying hard to avoid all of the pain that goes with it.
Today, parents raise kids without any willingness to put them through difficult situations that fortify them. As a result, kids become lazy and afraid every time they need to go through a tiny bit of pain.
This makes them soft.
In the past, doctors believed that pain healed patients faster (they were hence unwilling to prescribe painkillers).
While this has never been proven, the opposite has: painkillers make for a slower recovery…
Today, it’s the opposite of the past. Pain is bad and must be alleviated directly. As a result, the use of anti-depressants has exploded in recent decades.
Beyond extreme examples of running from pain, we’ve lost the ability to tolerate even minor forms of discomfort. We’re constantly seeking to distract ourselves from the present moment, to be entertained.
Eg: most people cannot eat or walk without listening to or watching some sort of entertainment.
The “pain” of boredom is too strong.
Unfortunately, avoiding being miserable is making us miserable.
Both psychological and physical pain have been rising since we have been measuring them.
Chapter 3: The Pleasure-Pain Balance
By better understanding the mechanisms that govern pain and pleasure, we can gain new insight into why and how too much pleasure leads to pain.
The brain is made out of neurons that communicate with each other by sending electric signals and neurotransmitters along cables called synapses.
An extremely basic drawing of a neuron communicating with another.
Dopamine is one of these neurotransmitters. It’s the most important one when it comes to rewards and motivation.
In fact, it plays a bigger role in the action that leads to the reward (wanting. Eg: getting up to get an ice cream) rather than the reward itself (liking. Eg: the ice cream).
Labs mice modified not to make dopamine did not seek food and starved to death, even if the food was located right next to them…
The more dopamine the brain releases upon doing something, the more that thing becomes addictive.
Here’s how much increase in dopamine the following activities lead to for rats.
| Activity | Increase |
| Chocolate | 55% |
| Sex | 100% |
| Nicotine | 150% |
| Cocaine | 225% |
| Amphetamine | 1000% (aka 10 orgasms) |
The Pain-Pleasure Balance
Scientists discovered that pain and pleasure work like a balance.
The pain/pleasure balance.
The problem is that this balance wants to constantly remain in equilibrium.
As soon as it tips on the side of pleasure…
The pain/pleasure balance, on the side of pleasure
It automatically comes back into equilibrium by manufacturing pain to do so (this principle is called homeostasis).
The pain/pleasure balance reequilibrating.
Then it further tips towards pain (of course).
The pain/pleasure balance, on the side of pain.
This effect is called the opponent-process theory.
“Any prolonged or repeated departures from hedonic or affective neutrality . . . have a cost.”
That cost is an “after-reaction” that is opposite to the stimulus. “What goes up eventually comes down”.
The natural solution to avoid the pain is to repeat what initially gave pleasure.
The problem is that the brain builds tolerance to what gives it pleasure. As a result, the amount of pleasure we experience weakens, but the amount of pain increases.
The amount of pleasure we experience then gets weaker and weaker, and the amount of pain bigger and bigger.
Therefore, you need more and more of the pleasurable stimulus to achieve equal pleasure.
If you go too far in your consumption, the balance gets permanently tipped on the side of pain.
The balance gets permanently tipped on the side of pain.
Prolonged consumption of high-dopamine substances eventually leads to a dopamine deficit state.
-> nothing feels good anymore.
The pursuit of pleasure for its own sake, leads to anhedonia, which is the inability to enjoy pleasure of any kind.
When addicted people reach this point, they stop feeling anything when they take their drug, which makes them feel miserable. And they feel equally miserable if they don’t take it.
Side note: the balance is a metaphor. We can experience both pleasure and pain at the same time (eg: eating spicy food). Furthermore, not everyone starts off with the same balance. For some, it’s inherently tipped to the side of pain.
Symptoms of withdrawal from any addictive substance are anxiety, irritability, insomnia, and dysphoria.
People who relapse into their addiction have their balance tilted to the side of pain. They suffer, so they feel the need to tip the balance the other way.
This is called dysphoria-driven relapse (avoiding pain rather than seeking pleasure).
If you wait long enough, the brain eventually resets and the balance comes back into equilibrium.
People, Places, and Things
The pleasure-pain balance is not only triggered by the drug itself but also by cues that existed in the environment where the drug was consumed
This is Pavlov’s principle: the brain triggers dopamine when it receives the cue. Right after receiving the cue, the brain decreases the level of dopamine which compels us to seek the reward (this is how craving works).
Dopamine in the brain.
If we get the reward, dopamine increases. If we don’t, dopamine plunges even further (it’s the letdown to unmet expectations).
In gambling, players experience as much dopamine when they both lose and win. The more they lose, the stronger the urge to play, the better the reward when they win.
The same principle likely applies to social media, where both negative and positive attention is pleasurable.
The problem with some addictions (like cocaine, alcohol, opioids, or even cannabis) is that it seems you never really get rid of them.
Eg: When rats were injected with cocaine after running, they went from running a nice chilled jog to running faster every day, until sprinting.
After one year of sobriety (a long time for a rat), the scientists gave them cocaine again. They directly went back to sprinting.
The more addicted to a substance you are in general, the less pleasure you will feel in other situations.
Every pleasure exacts a price, and the pain that follows is longer lasting and more intense than the pleasure that gave rise to it.
With prolonged and repeated exposure to pleasurable stimuli, our capacity to tolerate pain decreases, and our threshold for experiencing pleasure increases.
Why is that?
Because our reward/pain neural path was adapted to a world of scarcity. It was so well adapted that we have transformed this world into a world of abundance, with the problems that we know today.
The net effect is that we now need more reward to feel pleasure, and less injury to feel pain.
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Grow Up | Becoming the Parent Your Kids Deserve by Gary John Bishop | Book Summary
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Grow Up: Becoming the Parent Your Kids Deserve by Gary Bishop
The New York Times bestselling author of Unfu*k Yourself helps cut through our anxieties about being a “good parent” so we can take charge of our lives and show our kids how to take charge of their own.
Gary John Bishop has helped millions of people break free of self-sabotaging behaviors. Yet we all seem to feel like we’re failing at this thing called parenting. Common wisdom isn’t working—our kids are struggling. Gary argues we don’t need more tips, tricks, and techniques, we need an overhaul of who we are. We’re never going to measure up to the “perfect parent” model we’ve built up in our heads—a Frankenstein version of mom and dad cobbled together from our childhoods, our parents, cultural ideals, social media, and everything in between.
We want to be good parents, but our pasts hold us back. If you’re thinking: “I can’t be a good parent because I had a shitty childhood, bad parents, or a traumatic experience”—stop! Let go of what came before and start taking action in the present to be the person that nurtures their child from a place of love, forgiveness, and integrity. By doing so, you are modeling and equipping your kids to confidently face the world and thrive.
Whether you are a parent, want to be a parent, or simply have parents, this book will cut to the heart of who you are and how you show up in the world—to fully take charge of the direction of your life and show your kids how to follow theirs.
Key Insights
Rethink Your Childhood Narrative
“You are not a direct product of your past. And while it is true you were born (thrown) into an already existing conversation of family and values and morality and so on, you are in fact a predictable, repetitive emotional expression of what you have come to believe as true about all of that past. And no, what you have come to believe about back then is not the same as what actually happened. […]
Therefore, what you now believe about your childhood is your biggest problem. What happened is just what happened. Them’s the facts. What people believe about all of that is where they begin to disconnect.
Your “story” of the past often produces overwhelming fear, confusion, anxiety, frustration, anger and a host of other negative patterns that fool you into thinking you urgently need to solve the symptoms when in fact you never really get to the heart of the matter. The story. Not the past.
And if you are striving to become a fundamentally better parent, you need to realize you are in a tired matrix that really needs to fucking go. But it won’t go without a fight, and be left in no doubt, you’ll fight for that shitrix without even realizing that’s what you’re up to.
That’s when you need to wake up.”
Here’s another take on how our own past sneaks up on us when we become parents. We all leave childhood with a few things we’ll need to unpack and work through. But here’s the catch—if you want to be the best parent you can be, you always have to start by unpacking your own emotional baggage. And that begins with awareness.
“So much of what we have inherited sits just outside of our awareness. That makes it hard sometimes to know whether we are reacting in the here and now to our child’s behaviour or whether our responses are more rooted in our past.”
I’ve always been fascinated by how two siblings can interpret the same childhood events so differently. Here are a couple of real-life examples:
Sibling 1: “Our dad didn’t allow us to climb trees.”
Sibling 2: “Actually, he did. But if we got hurt or dirty, we’d be in trouble. So I just knew we had to be extra careful.”
Sibling 1: “I loved that our parents trusted us to make our own decisions.”
Sibling 2: “I found it frustrating and stressful.”
Same experiences, different interpretations. And the same goes for how we recall major life events like a parent’s divorce, financial struggles, etc.
So here’s a question: what beliefs about your childhood have become foundational for who you are today? Are these beliefs lifting you up, or are they getting in the way of being your best self?
With that, let’s move on to the next insight.
Stop Blaming And Start Living
“Finding someone to blame for the situation you were born into or were even raised in is bankrupt. It just isn’t workable for you to blame this life on that one, and at some level you already know this. Drawing a straight line between the pain of then and the life you have now is over. It has to be or the life you have will always be tainted by the one you believe you had no matter how many mantras you chant.”
That’s a powerful idea. True maturity and living authentically start when we stop blaming our past and take full responsibility for our lives, our choices, and our actions.
Blame is what anchors us to the past. We can blame ourselves, others, or our circumstances, but holding on to blame keeps us stuck. It prevents us from growing, changing, and showing up as the parents our kids need.
Here’s a question Gary poses that cuts right to the heart:
“If you were free from your past, what kind of parent could you be? If you were free from the past, what kind of parent would you have? It’s all tied together by blame. Freedom lies on the other side of all of it.”
This is such a powerful reminder to let go of blame and start living fully.
If you had a painful childhood, try viewing it from your parents’ perspective. Maybe they were young and figuring things out, or perhaps they were carrying their own wounds from a difficult upbringing. Try to rewrite your narrative and make sense of your experiences.
“Without a coherent narrative, we’re likely to repeat the mistakes our parents made, passing down the painful legacy they learned from their own caregivers. But when we make sense of our experiences and work to comprehend our parents’ own woundedness, we can break the cycle and avoid passing down the inheritance of insecure attachment.”
When we let go of blame and make sense of our past, we can break the cycle and start a new legacy for our children.
Three Heirlooms
“I wanted my children to have something, a set of personal life skills, a range of talent for mastering their own humanity, but I absolutely knew none of it would make any difference for them if I did not first deal with how I was going to “give” them anything.
I mean, how do I give them something such as love or patience or any one of a number of the intangible tangibles we live our lives by?
Then it hit me: by living it myself. With no expectation or pressure that they follow suit. They either will or they won’t, but as I am sure you will uncover for yourself, the kind of things I’m talking about here have real impact and not just with your kids but also with everyone else in your life.
Your parents included. […]
For eighty hours a week, thirty-three weeks of the year, week after week, month after month, year upon year committed myself to delving into the darkness with people. Human beings laid bare, vulnerable, and determined to change. And they did.
Why am I telling you all of this?
I don’t say anything here in a vacuum. I’m not anesthetized to what human beings are capable of.
I am in no doubt as to the levels of cynicism, lying, cheating, hating, bullying, violence, intimidation, manipulation, and whatever other horrible and shameful things you may care to throw in the mix that human beings are capable of exacting upon one another.
Maybe you’ve done it, or it has been done to you.
This is a harsh and cruel world at times. People do shit things to other people.
And your children will have to make it through all of it.
And sometimes our efforts to protect end up taking them in a direction we never anticipated. I go the other way. I don’t want my children equipped with emotional survival skills. I want them to be bigger than life, to have a deep well of expression and an unmessable sense of self.
A robustness that’s a match for the world and does not need them to look to anyone or anything to help them through it.
And so, through all of this coaching experience, I noted three things that continually caused people to fall. Three characteristics that, if they had mastered, would have seen them through just about every trial and tribulation of not only their young life but the rest of it too.
I call these three things “heirlooms” because that’s exactly what they are. Three treasures that are at the center of everything we do here. Live by these and you can work through just about anything life cares to throw at you. Keep doing what you are doing and… well, we know how that turns out.”
I love the idea of giving kids “an unmessable sense of self”—what many call resilience. It’s a crucial life skill.
So, how do we teach it to our kids? The best way is by modelling it ourselves.
In the book, Gary shares three core qualities, or “heirlooms,” that we can nurture in ourselves and pass down to our kids to build resilience. Let’s take a look:
- Heirloom No. 1: Being Loving. You can teach your kids to be loving by showing them unconditional love and commitment every day.
- Heirloom No. 2: Being forgiving. “Forgiveness is when you let go of the desire to punish either yourself or another by holding onto an emotional position over something.” Powerful skill.
- Heirloom No. 3: Being someone of integrity. Walk the talk and stick to your values.
So simple and so powerful.
Be An Authentic Parent
“…what does it look like to be authentic as a parent?
Simple.
You tell the truth, and while that’s the case for every area of your life, it’s a critical aspect of being the kind of parent who actually makes a difference.”
Gary emphasizes that one of the secrets to being the best parent is being authentic, which starts with telling the truth (with the important caveat that the truth should be developmentally appropriate for your child). Your words matter—so pay attention to what you say and how you say it.
Here are two rules from Gary to keep in mind:
“1. Speak like your words mean everything.
- Listen without making it mean anything.”
“Tell the truth—or, at least, don’t lie.” Focus on your personal truth.
Appreciate The Time You Have With Your Kids
“This all happened when my oldest son was about six or seven. We spoke daily, at least twice. He gave me updates on his life, and I shared (responsibly) about mine. One of the first things I did was remove the language about “missing” him. When I looked at that in the cold light of day, I realized we were using our moments together to lament the moments we were not together. It seemed such a waste of our very precious time. Instead, I focused on enjoying whatever time I did have with him, laughing, telling him of my love for him and what I had planned for my return, with plenty of room for him to communicate anything that was on his mind or bothering him.”
Here’s a solid parenting tip for all you working parents (and grandparents out there): focus on the time you actually have with your kids. Stop wasting your energy dwelling on the moments you missed.
Action Steps For You
- Take Responsibility for Your Life: Shift your mindset from blame to accountability. Acknowledge your choices and their impact on your life. Instead of pointing fingers at your past or others, ask yourself what you can do differently moving forward to create the life you want for yourself and your family.
- Cultivate Resilience: Focus on nurturing the “heirlooms” of love, forgiveness, and integrity in both yourself and your children. Model these qualities in your everyday life, and encourage open conversations about emotions and experiences. This will help you all build a strong sense of self and navigate life’s challenges with confidence.
- Focus on Authentic Parenting: Commit to being an authentic parent by aligning your words and actions. Be transparent about your feelings and experiences, and show your children that it’s okay to be vulnerable. This sets a powerful example for them, encouraging them to embrace their true selves and fostering a deeper connection between you.
Quotes From The Book:
- “What upsets people is not things themselves, but their judgements about these things.” © Epictetus
- “What’s the job of being a parent? That your kids come out of this robust and equipped. While they, like all people, will have their scars and bumps (as they’re supposed to), they are grounded in who they authentically are and why they are because they witnessed you handle it too.”
- “Freedom begins with giving up the idea of who is to blame.”
- “Blame is the catalyst for keeping you tied to what has been.”
- “Life is simple when you are authentic. There’s nothing to hide, nothing to pretend. It’s not without difficulty but it will be without complexity. But what to do with your children? Love them. Forgive them. Show them what integrity is.”
- “You don’t get stuck with just events. You get stuck with what you said to yourself about them.”
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The Alcohol Experiment | The 30 day self-help guide to stop drinking | Annie Grace | Book Summary
GET THE 500+ BOOK SUMMARY BOX SET IN PDF & MP3 here
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The Alcohol Experiment: How to Take Control of Your Drinking and Enjoy Being Sober for Good by Annie Grace
It’s YOUR body…
It’s YOUR mind…
It’s YOUR choice…
There are a million reasons why you might drink. It tastes great. You feel more sociable. Sex is better. It helps you relax.
But are you really in control?
Whether you’re reading this because you know you drink too much and want to quit, or whether you just want to cut back for a while, this book is for you.
The Alcohol Experiment is a 30-day programme with a difference. Each day, it will show you a new way of thinking about booze, and ask you to look a little closer at why we drink, what we get out of it, and whether it’s really the alcohol that’s giving us what we want.
In the bestselling This Naked Mind, Annie Grace offered a completely revolutionary solution to dependency, and a path to sobriety. Now, let Annie give you the tools you need to understand alcohol – whether or not it’s a problem. Packed with humour, patience and the latest research, try The Alcohol Experiment today, and take control of your drinking for good.
THE ACT TECHNIQUE
AWARENESS. Name your belief. In the context of alcohol, this is your conscious reason for drinking, simply put it into words: Alcohol relaxes me.
CLARITY. Discover why you believe it and where it originated. You do this by asking questions—both of yourself and of the external evidence—and uncovering truths about your belief.
What have I observed that supports this belief?
TURNAROUND. This is where you allow your subconscious to let go of the belief, deciding if after exploration it is indeed true for you. There are two steps here.
First, you turn the initial belief around and find as many ways as you can that the opposite of your initial belief is true. For example, if your belief is “alcohol relaxes me” the opposite becomes “alcohol does not relax me” or “alcohol stresses me out.”
ACT: Awareness. Clarity. Turnaround. It’s an effective, scientific way to shine a light into your subconscious and figure out what’s actually causing your behavior.
When we’re tired, stressed out, cranky, or upset, we don’t need alcohol. What we need is to change our emotional state. We need to do something to go from tired to energized, from cranky to happy. And we turn to alcohol.
Here are a few things you can do to help the process along.
- Make a firm decision to commit to this experiment 100 percent.
- Tell someone you trust about what you’re doing and
- Drink plenty of water to flush out all the toxins in your
- Get some exercise.
- Eat healthy foods, especially protein.
- Start a
- Take a photo and weigh yourself.
- Stay social.
- Be positive!
- Join this book’s online social challenge at alcoholexperiment.com.
Day 1: What’s Your Why?
The best day of your life is the one on which you decide your life is your own. No apologies or excuses. No one to blame. The gift is yours—it is an amazing journey—and you alone are responsible for the quality of it. This is the day your life really begins. —BOB MOAWAD
We’ve talked about how you’ve been unconsciously conditioned to believe alcohol is a vital part of life for relaxing, socializing, and everything in between. And you know there are competing desires inside your mind. Your conscious mind wants to drink less, or even stop drinking completely. And your subconscious mind believes you need to keep drinking for some very good reasons. Before we dive into those beliefs and stories and deciding if they’re true, we need to know what those beliefs actually are.
WHY DO YOU DRINK?
Write down a list of every reason you drink.
WHY THE ALCOHOL EXPERIMENT?
Write down all the reasons you want to take part in this experiment.
Act 1: The Taste of Alcohol
Taste is an innocent reason for drinking. After all, no one thinks twice about eating ice cream or nachos. They taste good! And our favorite alcoholic beverages are the same way.
So ask yourself, what observations and experiences have you had in your past that might have made you believe alcohol tastes good?
Imagine we could remove all the physical and emotional effects of alcohol. If it couldn’t actually make you drunk, would people still drink it? There’s a body of pretty convincing research suggesting they wouldn’t. It tastes bad. It’s poisonous. Drinking for the taste is a convenient, innocent excuse. At the end of the day, is it a possibility that there’s something more going on with your drinking than just the taste? Humans are incredibly adept at lying to themselves and believing their own stories.
TURNAROUND
This may be the most important part of the ACT Technique. Here you want to dig into the turnaround, or the opposite of the belief. You’ll want to take the time to come up with as many ways as you can (at least three) that the turnaround is as true or truer than the original belief. In this case, the opposite of “I drink for the taste” is “I don’t drink for the taste”
Day 2: It’s Not What You Give Up, But What You GAIN
One reason people resist change is because they focus on what they have to give up, instead of what they have to gain. —RICK GODWIN
As a participant in this experiment, you’re obviously giving something up. You’re giving up alcohol for 30 days. But there are two ways to look at it. You could focus on how hard it’s going to be and all the things you’re going to have to give up and go without. Or you could think about all the amazing insights and experiences you’re going to gain as a result of the experiment.
You don’t have to do this experiment. You get to do it. You have the opportunity to do this. You are excited to do this. You are choosing to participate. Recognize your old, disempowering, words around alcohol and replace them with new, empowering, words. This is important. The brain loves anything that gets you out of pain and into pleasure. It loves that shift both consciously and subconsciously, so choose the words you want to use. When you start consciously choosing your words, you’ll even start to get a little buzz, especially if you reinforce your statements afterward. If you say, “I’m going to enjoy some iced tea tonight,” reinforce it by actually feeling it. “Wow, I did enjoy that iced tea tonight!” The brain will latch on to the experience and repeat it more easily the next time.
Labeling
Another type of language you’ll want to pay attention to is how you’re labeling yourself and others. There’s a ton of research showing how labels can limit your experience. When we put a label on something, we create a corresponding emotion based on our beliefs and experiences. That’s especially true when we label ourselves and say we’re depressed or we’re alcoholics. It’s true that we might be suffering, but by labeling ourselves that we are those things, we ingrain the negative feelings and end up believing them subconsciously.
Day 3: Why We Think We Like to Drink
True happiness comes from gaining insight and growing into your best possible self. Otherwise all you’re having is immediate gratification pleasure—which is fleeting and doesn’t grow you as a person. —KAREN SALMANSOHN
DOPAMINE AND SEROTONIN
ACT 2: Alcohol and Sleep
Day 4: Dealing With Discomfort
Day 5: What Are Cravings, Really?
Knowledge renders belief obsolete. —NANA JANE
I’ve found there are two kinds of cravings you have to contend with at different times: physical cravings and emotional cravings. Physical symptoms such as anxiety, restlessness, and the inability to sleep show up while the alcohol is still in your system. We know they’re cravings because they go away if you give in and have a drink. It can take up to a week for alcohol to completely leave your system, so that’s about how long you can expect those physical cravings to last. After that point, you’re most likely looking at mental or emotional cravings. (Fortunately, you probably know exactly the last time you had a drink. When people try to get over a sugar addiction, they sometimes consume sugar without even knowing it because it’s hidden in so many food products!)
CRAVINGS AND STRESS
For example, if you used to handle work stress by drinking, like I did, then every time you experience work stress, you’ll likely trigger a psychological craving for alcohol. You’ve already wired your brain to do this. It’s a learned response. Your subconscious believes drinking reduces stress, even though science has proven that alcohol actually increases stress over time. And even though you’ve made the conscious decision not to drink, your subconscious didn’t get the memo. So it sends up a desire—a craving.
Day 6: Why Willpower Doesn’t Work for Long
If you don’t sacrifice for what you want, what you want becomes the sacrifice.—ANONYMOUS
Willpower can also be defined as the ability to resist short-term temptations in order to meet long-term goals. Some people think it’s a skill that can be honed and perfected. Or a muscle that can be built up and maintained. But it doesn’t seem to work that way. New research shows it’s more like an energy reserve, and when the reserve is low, there’s not much you can do until you top it back up.
Every decision you make requires you to expend a certain amount of energy, and that includes energy you might prefer to save up for exercising willpower.
Act 3: Alcohol, Relaxation, and Stress Relief
AWARENESS
If you’re drinking to relax, like I used to do, you are not alone. Relaxation and stress relief are some of the main reasons people drink. After all, who can deny that a few drinks totally relaxes you and relieves everyday pressures, stress, and anxiety? There’s a reason it’s called “happy hour,” right? You can’t use willpower to grit your way through and ignore the idea that alcohol relaxes you. Let’s name this belief: “Alcohol relieves stress and helps me relax.”
True relaxation is the absence of stress and anxiety. It’s not ignoring the stress or numbing it—real relaxation removes it completely.
It’s ironic that we drink to relax, because drinking actually adds stress to our lives. I’m not going to deny that alcohol definitely provides the illusion of relaxation, especially at first. But here’s what’s actually happening. That drink is simply numbing the senses and slowing the mind. For a short time, we truly don’t care about our problems, and we feel relaxed. But we’re not actually eliminating the problem or concern. Instead of solving the issue and removing it, we’re actually postponing it and prolonging the pain.
Remember that alcohol takes about a week to completely leave your body. So if you’re a regular drinker, you are in a constant state of withdrawal. Which means you have consistently elevated levels of cortisol and adrenaline. Which means you’re always stressed on a physiological level. Add on the everyday stressors of work, health, and relationships, and it’s no wonder you want to escape for a little while! One drink and that anesthetic takes over, decreasing your senses and slowing your brain function. The more you drink, the less you feel. And if you drink until you pass out, you get to feel absolutely nothing for a short time.
TURNAROUND
The opposite of “alcohol relieves stress and helps me relax” is “alcohol does not relieve stress and help me relax” or “alcohol adds stress to my life.” Come up with as many ways as you can that the opposite is as true as or truer than the original belief.
Day 7: Your Experiment and Your Friends
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).
—MARK TWAIN
ARE PEOPLE STARTING TO NOTICE?
At this point, some of your friends might be noticing that something about you has changed. Maybe you’ve been out with them and turned down a drink. Or maybe they’ve noticed a change in your behavior or even your physical appearance.
We’re Often Hesitant to Tell Our Friends
You might be a little hesitant to tell even your friends, and I believe there’s a pretty good reason for that. I think the crux of the problem is that we treat alcohol differently than we do any other addictive substance. For example, we don’t have “cigarette-aholics” or “heroinism,” but we do have “alcoholics” and “alcoholism.” When we say “cigarette addiction” or “heroin addiction,” we’re talking about the addiction, not the people themselves. But the word alcoholic defines a person. The word itself blames the person rather than the substance.
As a Society, We Don’t Seem to Realize That Alcohol Is Addictive
We don’t talk about the fact that when we party on a Friday night and end up puking, that physical reaction is our body’s way of saving our life because we literally poisoned ourselves.
We have successfully separated alcohol out from other toxic substances. We even say “alcohol and drugs,” as if alcohol weren’t also a drug, in spite of the fact that alcohol kills more people every year than prescription and illegal drugs combined. In fact, according to two independent studies about what is the most dangerous drug, alcohol won the prize.
Alcoholism has been defined as a lifelong disease for which there is no cure. Alcoholics must completely abstain from drinking forever. They have to label themselves as alcoholics for the rest of their lives, even if they manage to stay sober. Alcoholism is portrayed as a never-ending fight for control. A fight that, if people lose, could cost them their marriage, their job, their children, or even their life. That is so scary! No one wants to think about that when all they’re trying to do is unwind after a long day at work.
Day 8: How Alcohol Affects Your Senses
All our knowledge begins with the senses.—IMMANUEL KANT
Alcohol depresses the central nervous system and slows down your neurotransmitters, which are the chemicals responsible for moving information back and forth between your body and your brain. When your brain can’t process the information as quickly as usual, your senses are affected. They’re sitting there staring at that “buffer bar,” saying, “Come on .. . come on . . . why is this taking so long?” that a body in balance craves what will keep it in balance, whereas a body out of balance will crave what keeps it out of balance.
Day 9: The Power of Self-Talk
I AM. Two of the most powerful words; for what you put after them shapes your reality.
—GARY HENSEL
Becoming aware of how you speak to yourself is the first step. The second step is actually changing how you speak to yourself. Most people think this is difficult, because they’ve been beating themselves up for so long that it’s become a habit. And you can’t “get rid” of a habit easily, because it’s a neurological connection in your brain. It’s an unconscious loop that repeats itself over and over. By definition a habit happens without thinking. It’s unconscious behavior. Once you wake yourself up and become aware of the habit, you have to make a conscious decision to change it. And to do that, you have to rewire the neurological connections in your brain with new behaviors. It does take effort, but it’s completely worth it!
We aren’t always aware of our self-talk, and that is why emotions, even the negative ones, are such a gift. Emotions are the signal that something in our thinking is causing stress. Your job is simply to listen to your thoughts, identify the thoughts causing you stress, and question them.
Act 4: Alcohol, Our Culture, and Society
Humans evolved to fit in with others. Think about it. When a prisoner has the harshest punishment inflicted, it’s solitary confinement. Being separated from the group is the worst thing we can think of to punish a criminal. Let’s name this belief:
“If I don’t drink, I won’t be part of the group.”
So it makes total sense that to fit in with an alcohol-obsessed society, we must be drinkers.
We’ve also experienced that feeling of fitting in when we drink with our friends, right? It’s fun. We feel cool, at least for a little while. Whether we’re pounding beers at a baseball game or sipping champagne at a classical music festival, it doesn’t matter. When our friends are gathered around us, we’re all drinking and having a great time. We fit in. The advertising works so well because it mimics our everyday behavior.
Society’s view of nondrinkers is that they’re boring. They’re buzzkills. They aren’t any fun to be around.
One of the main reasons people say that they can “take it or leave it” is because they’ve never tried to leave it.
Once I was honest about my drinking, suddenly others felt like it was okay to question their drinking, too. They worried about the effects on their health and their families but were too afraid to talk about it. In the years since I wrote that book, I’ve discovered that the people who defend drinking the loudest are often the most worried about how much they drink. They desperately want to have the same amount of fun while drinking less, but they just don’t see how it’s possible. The cultural conditioning is that strong.
I also want us to ask, What kind of culture are we creating by choosing to be a part of it? It’s not popular to talk about, but there is a lot of evidence that an alcohol-saturated culture is actually a culture of violence.
FITTING IN DURING THE EXPERIMENT
Let’s talk about how to get through this experiment while keeping your friendships intact.
Don’t preach.
Be a positive example.
Be creative.
Day 10: Dealing with Sugar Cravings
Be gentle with yourself, you’re doing the best you can! —ANONYMOUS
It might surprise you to learn that you may experience heightened sugar cravings during this challenge. This can happen for a couple of reasons. First, most alcoholic drinks contain more than alcohol; in fact, they contain quite a bit of sugar. So your brain is accustomed to the sugar rush from your drink of choice, which will create an intense craving for sugar. Second, both sugar and alcohol create a similar kind of response in the brain.
Addictive substances cause the brain to flood with dopamine. That is true for alcohol and for sugar, which is also addictive. The dopamine is triggered by the substance, in this case, rather than by something important for survival, but the flood of dopamine tricks the brain into believing that alcohol is vital for survival. Just think—because of the flood of dopamine, your brain is learning that alcohol is important for your very survival. No wonder it’s so addictive!
When I was drinking regularly, I was consuming close to two bottles of wine per day. A bottle of red wine is about 600 to 800 calories, so just by cutting out the drinking, I was saving myself over 1,000 calories. For someone drinking the equivalent amount in beer or mixed drinks, the calorie count is much higher.
Allowing myself the extra sugar worked for me. However, if you don’t want to go that route, here are some ways you can keep the sugar cravings at bay.
Elevate your heart rate.
Eat fruit when you feel the need for sugar.
Drink lots of water.
Keep your blood sugar stable.
Consume naturally fermented food and drinks.
BABY STEPS
Focus on this one goal of eliminating alcohol for 30 days, and then you can revisit your other goals next month.
Day 11: The Alcohol Culture Is Shifting
Don’t be afraid of being different. Be afraid of being the same as everyone else.—ANONYMOUS
I first noticed the shift in some of the super-athletes and people who are deeply involved in the fitness and health world. They realized that while they were eating all-organic food, exercising, and doing yoga, they were also drinking a known toxin in excessive amounts. People are waking up, and they’re starting to question that behavior.
YOUNG PEOPLE ARE DRINKING LESS
CUTTING BACK IS A GLOBAL PHENOMENON
Children are the happiest people and they don’t drink.
Act 5: Alcohol and Happiness
For so many of us, alcohol has been central to so many meaningful and fun events in our lives that we blend the two together without thinking. Holidays, birthdays, weddings—celebrations of all kinds practically require alcohol in some form or another. So it’s no wonder we feel like alcohol makes us happy. It seems like it’s always there when we’re having fun. Let’s name this belief: “Alcohol makes me happy.”
Did you always need alcohol to be happy? When you were a kid, did you need a six-pack before every Little League game? Or did you and your girlfriends play hopscotch with real scotch? The average four-year-old laughs hundreds of times a day, no alcohol required. Think back and recall the years before you started drinking. Remember those friendships and activities that brought you joy.
Happiness is at the very heart of advertising, especially alcohol advertising. But there’s no balance in advertising. Alcohol actually causes far more unhappiness than happiness. It slows our minds and chemically depresses us. The ads never show the unhappiness that alcohol causes.
Children of alcoholics are up to four times more likely to develop alcohol addiction later in life.1 It’s a terrible cycle all based on the false belief that drinking makes us happy.
Maybe it’s the occasion and not the alcohol providing the happiness. It’s hard to separate the occasion from the drink, though, because drinking is completely intertwined with every social event we attend.
After alcohol has completely left your system can you fully realize that, yes, you can feel joy and happiness and incredible energy levels on a consistent basis.
Research has shown that only 10 percent of our overall happiness depends on external things, whether that’s a new car, a relationship, or alcohol. Things don’t make us happy. Ninety percent depends on our internal environment. How relaxed are we? How confident? How peaceful?
Day 12: Your Incredible Body and Brain
Take care of your incredible body. It is the most amazing thing you own, and it is the only place you truly have to live. —ANONYMOUS
Most of us don’t take the time to think about how amazing our bodies and our brains are. Think about all the incredible physical and mental feats we can perform. Our brains are more powerful than supercomputers; in fact, we created supercomputers.
Your brain and body’s function is to ensure you survive and thrive. Consider that for a moment. This amazing living computer is not meant to ingest large amounts of alcohol every single day.
Comedic actor Jim Carrey once said, “I’m very serious about no alcohol, no drugs. Life is too beautiful.”
Act 6: Is Alcohol Healthy in Moderation?
Our brains are excellent at rationalizing. And the alcohol industry counts on that when they promote this kind of pseudoscientific reporting.
The fact is, there are a handful of studies claiming that alcohol is good for you. Some of them were even funded by the alcohol industry itself. And there are thousands of studies that prove the exact opposite. The difference is that the positive studies get far more attention than the negative ones. Why do you suppose that is?
According to the World Health Organization, “alcohol can damage nearly every organ and system in the body. Its use contributes to more than 60 diseases and conditions.”The WHO also reports that alcohol has surpassed AIDS as the leading risk factor for death among males between the ages of 15 and 59.
Global study came out in 2018 stating that there is in fact no safe level of drinking; even a single drink, even on occasion, is detrimental to your health.
In a study of the harmful effects of 20 different drugs, alcohol came in as the most dangerous drug.9 It’s more harmful than heroin or crack cocaine when you look at the “ratio between toxicological threshold [or how much it will take to kill you] and estimated human intake.”
The International Agency for Research on Cancer declared alcohol a carcinogen in 1988. Not only is alcohol pure ethanol, which is extremely toxic, but it can contain at least 15 other carcinogenic compounds, including arsenic, formaldehyde, and lead.
We’ve also known alcohol causes cancer for 30 years, and yet it’s news to most drinkers. No matter how little or what type of alcohol you’re drinking, you’re increasing your risk of cancer of the breast, mouth, throat, rectum, liver, esophagus, and other organs. Cancer Research UK says, “There is no safe limit for alcohol when it comes to cancer.” Why don’t we know this? People just don’t talk about such things.
The term “drink responsibly” came from the alcohol industry itself.
Day 13: Let’s Talk About Sex
Sober Sex Is Truly Better Sex
Day 14: Staying Mindful in the Midst of Chaos
In the midst of movement and chaos, keep stillness inside of you. —DEEPAK CHOPRA
DISRUPT THE CYCLE
Neurologically, you’re physically disrupting the craving cycle in your brain. It is possible to separate yourself from your addiction. And the more often you do it, the easier it becomes and the less tightly the addiction will grip you. And it works even if you give in!
TODAY, think of your craving as a wave. It builds and builds, applying more and more pressure, until it peaks. Then it gradually subsides until it disappears for a while.
Act 7: Alcohol and Parenting (a.k.a. Mommy Juice)
Let’s name this belief:
“I need a drink to handle my kids.”
But whether you’re a parent or not, this section is incredibly powerful because what we’re actually talking about is stress. Drinking to relieve intense stress. Parenting happens to be one form of stress that millions of people share, and the alcohol industry has latched on to that and targets parents, especially moms, as a market segment.
Like all drinkers, you think you’re totally in control and can leave at any time. But the slope gets steeper and steeper, and the darkness closes in around you. You try to stop drinking and fly away, but it’s too late. The pitcher plant has you completely in its grasp. Eventually you stop drinking long enough to look down and make out a pool of dead bodies floating in the liquid. You’re not drinking nectar—you’re drinking the juice of other dead creatures. You are the drink.
Alcohol is addictive, not only to some people—to all people. And we need to understand that something as innocent as having a glass of wine to get through making dinner for the kids can end up becoming a huge problem. The only way to get out of the trap is to avoid it altogether. And the only way to do that is to understand that alcohol is, indeed, a trap. Oftentimes addiction takes hold when we use a substance to relieve stress. And in our society today, there aren’t many things more stressful than parenting, especially when the kids are young.
Wine was more than just a fun way to relax; it became my friend and ally. It wasn’t something I wanted. It was something I thought I needed.
Day 15: Social Life and Dating
Day 16: The Power of Belief
Beliefs have the power to create and the power to destroy. Human beings have the awesome ability to take any experience of their lives and create a meaning that disempowers them or one that can literally save their lives. —TONY ROBBINS
You’ve heard this before, and you’ll hear it again: Your mind is incredibly powerful. It can be a staunch ally or your worst enemy, depending on how you use it. The good news is that once you learn how the mind works, you can take control and use its power to change anything in your life. If you believe that you’re going to be miserable without a drink in your hand at a social occasion, sporting event, concert, or even home alone, you will be. If you believe you’re going to be lonely, you will be. If you believe you’re going to be bored, you will be. If you believe this experiment is miserable, it will be.
CONDITIONING
Let’s talk about conditioning for a moment. Neuropsychologists agree that we spend our lifetimes being conditioned. We’re teaching our brains what to expect in any circumstance. Whether what we expect actually happens doesn’t matter, because we will manufacture circumstances that deliver exactly what we expect. This phenomenon has been studied over and over again.
One mistake people make is to think about and visualize what we don’t want. But the mind doesn’t necessarily understand the word don’t—you get whatever you think about. Which, in this case, is the opposite of what you do want. So if you imagine, I don’t want to just sit there being miserable, but you’re thinking of yourself sitting there miserable, that’s what your brain works from. It tries to make that scenario a reality. But if you think of yourself going out and having a great time, your brain tries to make that scenario a reality.
Act 8: Alcohol Is My Friend
Drinking often starts out as a social activity, but then it becomes something that we do alone and sometimes even in secret, driving us further and further away from true human connection.
TURNAROUND
The opposite of “alcohol is my friend” is “alcohol is not my friend” or “alcohol is my enemy.” Come up with as many ways as you can that the opposite is as true as or truer in your life than the original belief.
Day 17: Relieving Boredom Without Drinking
Boredom leads to creativity. Imagination is more important than knowledge. —ALBERT EINSTEIN
Boredom is an incredibly uncomfortable state for many people. Scientists studied this by putting people in a room for 15 minutes to be alone with their thoughts.
So we have this feeling that we don’t know what to do about, and our parents, teachers, and other authority figures tell us we shouldn’t be feeling it. That sets us up for classic cognitive dissonance. We feel bad or embarrassed that we’re bored, so we seek out ways to change our state of mind. Some people eat. Some people mindlessly scan social media. And many of us reach for a drink. For a short time, alcohol numbs the boredom and the guilt we feel about being bored in the first place.
People who are easily bored are more prone to addiction. Teenagers who report being easily bored are 50 percent more likely to try drinking, illegal drugs, or smoking.
While it’s true that alcohol does temporarily relieve boredom by slowing down your brain, it also numbs your ability to experience and appreciate the things that bring you joy.
TODAY, remember that boredom has a purpose. Turning it off robs you and the world of something beautiful and important that only you can offer. Try, just for now, to sit with your boredom. Let it wash over you. Allow the discomfort. And see what happens.
Day 18: Why Tolerance Is Literally a Buzzkill
Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.—THOMAS MERTON
THE SCIENCE BEHIND TOLERANCE
It’s a neurological fact that the more alcohol you consume, the lower your pleasure dips until you are much worse off than you were when you started. Does that sound like fun to you?
Dynorphin affects the pleasure you get from everything. That means when you build a tolerance for alcohol, you’re also building a tolerance for sex, and laughter, and ice cream! Anything you used to find pleasing doesn’t do it for you anymore. You have to return to using alcohol (or whatever your drug of choice is) in higher and higher quantities until you become more and more focused on your next drink. Eventually, everyday pleasures don’t even register anymore. That IS a big deal.
Day 19: Dealing with Depression
Stars can’t shine without darkness.—ANONYMOUS
Often it feels like depression and alcohol are linked in this chicken-and-egg scenario. Which comes first? Alcohol itself is labeled as a depressant, meaning it suppresses your arousal levels and reduces excitability. It’s capable of causing both sadness and depression, as well as making a sad situation worse.
When you use alcohol to numb your sadness, you’re also numbing anything that makes you feel happy. And that only worsens your depression.
When we’re depressed, we obsess. We blow the thoughts up and make them true inside our heads until the thoughts become a compulsion.
Depression is incredibly complex. And every person experiences it differently. One thing that I know to be true, though, is that alcohol doesn’t help. It only masks the problem and makes it worse.
Day 20: Our Headline Culture and the Science of Sharing
The science of sharing says that people share content that gives them social currency. That means we share things that we think will make us look good in other people’s eyes. As we’ve discussed, anything that confirms our own personal biases or makes us look smart or hip or funny—that’s what gets shared. Anything that makes us feel bad or uncomfortable gets ignored. Consequently, positive articles about alcohol are shared far more often than ones about its negative effects on our lives.
Day 21: Hey, Good Lookin’!
Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you. —RALPH WALDO EMERSON
ALCOHOL MAKES YOU FAT
You might be surprised to learn that alcohol is more quickly stored as fat than excess calories from sugar, carbohydrates, or protein—or even from fat itself. Alcohol has 7 calories per gram (fat, for example, has 9 calories per gram), but alcohol does not require as much time or effort for digestion; it is quickly absorbed. Not only does alcohol provide a dense source of calories —which is quickly stored as fat—but because alcohol is poison to the liver, the liver prioritizes processing alcohol over digesting other foods (and all other tasks) and stores it as fat.
Day 22: Drinking Due to Unmet Needs
Human happiness and human satisfaction must ultimately come from within oneself. —DALAI LAMA
In 1943, Abraham Maslow published his now famous “hierarchy of needs” (illustrated on the next page). He was interested in human motivation and what made people behave the way they do. He proposed that people must meet their lower needs first before they will be motivated to move up to fulfill their needs at the next level.
Act 9:Alcohol and Sadness
Does drinking make you happy or sad? Alcohol does give us a little reprieve from our feelings, but not for long. If you’ve ever had a drink to help you escape from sadness, you know it never lasts.
Tragically, there’s a strong link between alcohol and suicide. In fact, drinking is the most common factor with all suicides. More than one-third of victims were drinking prior to death. And statistics show that people who are dependent on alcohol are 120 times more likely to commit suicide—120 times! That’s because alcohol causes depression and makes us act impulsively.
Depression lies to us, and alcohol makes those lies believable. So when life drags you backward with hardship and sadness, it simply means that you’re getting ready to launch forward into something great! Out of the pain and sadness, you can find the courage and strength to truly heal yourself instead of masking the symptoms with alcohol’s temporary lift.
Something great is waiting for you. I know it!
TURNAROUND
The opposite of “alcohol relieves my sadness” is “alcohol doesn’t relieve my sadness” or “alcohol makes me sad.” Come up with as many ways as you can that the opposite is as true as or truer than the original belief.
Day 23: Alcohol’s Effect on Your Health
YOUR BRAIN
Alcohol slows the pace of communication between neurotransmitters, the chemical messengers that transmit messages between different parts of your brain and body. It interrupts your brain’s pathways, literally reducing the speed of delivery of information between parts of your brain and body by slowing down your brain’s neural highways. It slows communications from your senses, deadening them and decreasing your responsiveness.
YOUR HEART
Your heart beats over 100,000 times per day to carry 2,000 gallons of blood through your body. That’s a big job. Alcohol weakens the heart muscle so that it sags and stretches, making it impossible to continue contracting effectively. When your heart can no longer contract efficiently, you are unable to transport enough oxygen to your organs and tissues, so your body is no longer nourished appropriately.
YOUR LIVER
Two million Americans suffer from alcohol-related liver disease, making it a leading cause of illness and death. Your liver stores nutrients and energy and produces enzymes that stave off disease and rid your body of dangerous substances, including alcohol. When your liver metabolizes alcohol, it creates toxins, which are actually more dangerous than the alcohol itself. Alcohol damages liver cells by causing inflammation, and it weakens your body’s natural defenses. Liver inflammation disrupts your metabolism, which impacts the function of other organs.
Further, inflammation can cause liver scar
Drinking also causes steatosis, or “fatty liver.” Fat buildup on your liver makes it harder for the liver to operate. Eventually fibrosis (some scar tissue) becomes cirrhosis (much more scar tissue). Cirrhosis prevents the liver from performing critical functions, including managing infections, absorbing nutrients, and removing toxins from the blood. This can result in liver cancer and type 2 diabetes. Twenty-five percent of heavy drinkers will develop cirrhosis.
ALCOHOL AND CANCER
Occasional drinking couldn’t possibly cause cancer, could it? Yes, apparently it does. In a meta-analysis of 222 studies across 92,000 light drinkers and 60,000 nondrinkers with cancer, light drinking was associated with higher risks for many types of cancers, including breast cancer. A seven-year study of 1.2 million middle-age women highlights the direct and terrifying link between drinking and cancer. According to this study, alcohol increased the chance of developing cancers of the breast, mouth, throat, rectum, liver, and esophagus.
“There’s no ‘safe’ limit for alcohol when it comes to cancer.” It also doesn’t matter what type of alcohol you drink. It’s the alcohol itself that leads to the damage, regardless of whether you imbibe beer, wine, or hard liquor.
Although many of us are not aware of the relationship between alcohol and cancer, it should not come as a surprise. Again, alcohol was officially declared a carcinogen in 1988. Alcohol itself, ethanol, is a known carcinogen, and alcoholic beverages can contain at least fifteen other carcinogenic compounds, including arsenic, formaldehyde, and lead.
ALCOHOL AND DEATH
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, alcoholism reduces life expectancy by 10 to 12 years.
Act 10: Alcohol and Anger
There’s a well-documented link between aggression and alcohol consumption. Drinking is involved in about 75 percent of all child abuse deaths and half of all violent crimes. On college campuses, 95 percent of all violent crimes and 90 percent of sexual assaults involve alcohol. Why? What is it about alcohol that fuels all this anger and aggression? The biggest reason is that alcohol gives you tunnel vision.
Day 24: Are Addictive Personalities Real?
THE WAY IN IS THE WAY OUT
Take my case: I’m decisive. I have a strong will. I take commitments seriously. All those traits likely caused me to become addicted to alcohol. I was strongly committed to my decision to drink. However, once I decided to stop drinking, I was equally strong-willed and committed. The way in was also the way out.
Day 25: Setbacks and the Way Forward
You never fail until you stop trying. —ALBERT EINSTEIN
Day 26: Liberation vs. Fixation
Liberation is when I can take the substance or leave it. I’m in control, and I will have a great time whether I choose to drink. Fixation is when the cravings and addiction have taken hold and I am losing my power over my own choices.
One of the most painful things for us as humans is to feel powerless. Ironically, we give away our power to alcohol without even realizing it is happening. Today’s ideas will help you recognize where you are inadvertently giving up your power to booze so that you can consciously decide to take it back.
Liberation is being offered a beer and truly feeling like you could take it or leave it. Fixation is waiting to be offered a beer. It’s walking into a party and wondering when someone will offer you a beer.
Liberation involves no internal dialogue. There’s no “other voice” in your head arguing with you. Fixation is talking with yourself about whether you should have a drink, if you will feel bad in the morning
Liberation means you can have one drink and not give it another thought. You’re perfectly content. Fixation means you’re thinking about your next drink, often before the one in your hand is even finished.
Liberation does not come with a jonesing for the substance after it leaves your system. Fixation often means withdrawal symptoms and cravings begin as soon as the substance begins to fade away. Someone who can handle themselves around chocolate can have just a bite. But someone addicted to chocolate has to finish the whole bar that’s in front of them, and then strategizes how to get more.
Liberation puts the focus on the people and the environment. There’s little or no focus on the substance. Fixation puts the focus on the drink, not the party, even if that focus is how not to drink.
Liberation lets you be around the substance without a problem. Fixation means you can’t have it in the house without temptation.
Liberation is rational. You can decide not to drink because you have to get up early in the morning. Fixation is irrational. Even though you have that early meeting, you still want to drink.
Day 27: Is Alcohol Really Poisonous and Addictive?
How you think about a problem is more important than the problem itself. —NORMAN VINCENT PEALE
Before we discuss alcohol as an additive substance, let’s talk about what addiction actually is. It’s nothing more than an up-and-down cycle. You consume something (sugar, drugs, alcohol—doesn’t matter) and you feel better temporarily. Then the feeling goes away. You want that feeling back, so you consume the same substance again. But this time it doesn’t feel quite as good as your subconscious mind remembers, so you need a little bit more. Then the effects wear off, and you consume it again. It’s literally a high-and- low cycle that keeps you coming back to whatever substance you subconsciously believe makes you feel better.
There are four types of alcohol: methyl, propyl, butyl, and ethanol. If you consume even tiny amounts of the first three types, you’ll either go blind or die. They are extremely toxic. Ethanol is the only type of alcohol humans can consume without dying. However, it’s still so toxic that if you take even just a sip or two of pure ethanol, you will instantly vomit the poison out of your body. Ethanol is a general anesthetic. If you inject two or three milliliters of ethanol per kilogram of body weight, you will anesthetize the human body. That means you’ll go completely unconscious. Ethanol was used as a general anesthetic in Mexico, London, and Germany in the 1929–31 era, but was abandoned because of its toxicity.
When we drink, we’re consuming pure ethanol in tiny amounts. A strong beer is about 6 percent alcohol by volume. Wine is generally 12 to 16 percent alcohol by volume. Even hard liquor is only 40 percent alcohol, and people usually add mixers, which dilute the percentage even more. We’re masking the poisonous ethanol with a lot of other stuff that makes the drinking taste better. But the anesthetic effects remain.
Anesthetic and Depressant
In addition to being an anesthetic, alcohol is a depressant. It depresses your feelings and your nervous system. Depending on how much pure alcohol you consume, you might pass out completely or just feel nicely numb for a while. But our brains react to stimuli, and they are designed to maintain balance, or homeostasis.
Let’s say you had a hard day at work and you just want a drink. Happy hour it is! You head to your favorite watering hole and have a drink. Within a short time, everything slows down. The alcohol’s natural depressants dull your senses, and you subconsciously interpret that as relaxation. You feel better, for about 20 to 30 minutes. Then it’s time for your brain to kick into action and regain balance. There are depressants in your system, so your brain releases more stimulants to bring you back up. The problem is those stimulants make you even more uneasy and anxious than you were to start with. Well, one drink was good, so two must be better, right?
You have another drink in an effort to counteract the chemicals your brain released in an effort to counteract the alcohol. Confused? So is your body! It releases more stimulating stress hormones to battle that second drink. Back and forth. Depressants. Stimulants. Depressants. Stimulants. This cycle might continue on and on until you pass out from the sheer amount of poisonous ethanol in your system. And thank goodness, because blacking out gives your body a chance to metabolize the poison and detoxify your blood as best as it can.
Alcohol is addictive because you wind up worse off after each drink. And you mistakenly believe that another drink will bring you back up.
It’s the problem and the solution at the same time. It’s the chicken and the egg.
Detoxing from Alcohol Is Even More Toxic
Here’s the kicker. In order for your body to process and get rid of the alcohol, it has to create the chemical acetaldehyde. The amount of acetaldehyde that is released into your body from just one unit of alcohol would never be allowed in any food because it would be deemed too toxic. Acetaldehyde is actually more toxic than the alcohol itself! So, we drink. We build tolerance. To get the same feeling of relief from everyday stress, we need to drink more. We produce higher and higher levels of acetaldehyde to process the alcohol. And we don’t even realize how much poison is circulating in our bodies at any given time.
Once we consciously realize what we’re actually putting into our bodies— ethanol and acetaldehyde—we can’t go back to blissful ignorance. Now that you know what happens and why alcohol is addictive, you can’t unknow it.
Day 28: The Truth About Moderation
Don’t bother just to be better than others. Try to be better than yourself. —WILLIAM FAULKNER
We’re coming to the end of this experiment, and you’re going to have to decide what to do next. Will you stay alcohol-free for another 30 days? Or 60 days? Or indefinitely? Or will you decide to carry on as before but become more mindful of your behavior?
moderation is possible. Either alcohol just isn’t important to a person because they have not developed an emotional or physical addiction and can truly take it or leave it. Or they are willing to put in the effort to pay attention and moderate how they drink. This means constant vigilance and regular assessment.
THE POWER OF DECISION
But there is incredible power in making a decision. Once you’ve truly made a decision about something in your whole body and mind, there is no plan B. There’s no turning back. And that’s a good thing because it lets you escape the “maybe” trap.
When you make a decision that you’re not a drinker anymore, that’s it. You’re free from the hamster wheel. Alcohol no longer has a hold over you because you are of one mind. Your conscious and subconscious want the same thing.
The ins and outs of moderation are complex both physically and psychologically. So before you make a decision to moderate, consider these ideas.
- Moderation means you’re always making
- Moderation doesn’t make sense from a physiological
- Alcohol impairs your ability to stick with your
- Alcohol makes you
- Alcohol numbs your response to normal stimuli.
- Alcohol increases cravings but not
“I’ve tried moderation so many times and besides being exhausting, I hated being a slave to alcohol.
Day 29: Tough Love
The golden opportunity you are seeking is in yourself. It is not in your environment. It is not in luck, or chance, or the help of others. It is in yourself alone. —ORISON SWETT MARDEN
We spend so much time thinking, I would drink less if my life weren’t so stressful. Or If my husband hadn’t left me, I wouldn’t be drinking so much. Or If my kids were nicer to me . . . Or Maybe when the kids are out of the house . . . There’s always a reason or an excuse for drinking too much. The truth is, this train runs only one way—forward.
If you go back to mindless drinking, you could be headed somewhere you don’t want to go. Self-medicating with alcohol is not a long-term answer to anything. In fact, it’s the opposite. It only increases stress, depression, and anxiety. If you’ve got real-world problems, drinking is only going to mask them in the short term and make things worse in the long term.
The longer you’re on the train, the harder it is to get off. So ask yourself, Where are you headed? What does your future look like if you don’t make a change? What’s life going to be like for you a year after this experiment? How about in 5 years? Or 10? Whatever alcohol is costing you now, it’s going to cost more in the future.
Day 30: What’s Next?
Destiny is not a matter of chance; it is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for; it is a thing to be achieved. —WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN
Completing this 30-day experiment is a big accomplishment, and you should be proud. No matter where you go from here, you will never lose this time of learning, self-reflection, and empowerment. And while you may not realize the enormity of your accomplishment, I promise you that powerful shifts have happened. You have embarked on a path of awareness, and you will naturally and effortlessly be more mindful of your drinking in the future.
Another non-negotiable for me was drinking as self-medication. If I simply “had to have a drink” because I was stressed out for some reason, that was not okay. I was totally committed to finding other healthy ways to deal with stress and uncomfortable emotions. I couldn’t keep going back to the bottle every time I had a bad day or things were tough, because I knew where that train was headed, and I did not want to be on it when it crashed. Before I started drinking, I used to run or read a book to handle negative emotions. I knew without a shadow of a doubt that alcohol was making things worse.
Understand That Maybe Means Yes
One Final Word
Your brain is amazing, and you can program it to do what you want by repeatedly succeeding. If you make the target too hard to hit, you’ll consistently fail. When that happens, your brain gets the message that you’re a failure. And you start to believe it! When you believe you’re a failure when it comes to alcohol, that belief makes your life SO difficult. Train your brain to believe you’re successful instead, and you can do anything you decide to do.
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