How many times have you heard this:

“Well if you want to stop drinking, just stop drinking?”

Ok smarty pants, here’s why your statement is irrelevant to most of us:

First of all, since before we were even able to walk we heard the pop of the cork, the psst of the can or the glug glug of a nice rouge over Sunday lunch. Our parents, friends, aunties, uncles have been celebrating commiserating and congratulating with alcohol.

We have been watching, listening and understanding this throughout our lives. Later in life, we’ve dealt with peer pressure at school to drink, at college & university to binge drink, or at work to be successful.

To interview,

to meet the boss,

to get that promotion,

to be one of the team.

How many times have you heard “Let’s go for a beer?” or “Let’s have drinks, let’s celebrate!”

Now the brain is hard-wired to take repetitive, mundane tasks and to code them into neural pathways, these are shortcuts for the brain to use to reduce the amount of conscious thought it requires to perform. Take driving a car for example, in the first instance it’s almost impossible, but very soon driving is a learned process, you don’t think about it anymore. That’s those neural pathways at work, that’s habit. Your brain is facilitating habit.

So bringing this back to drinking, if you don’t change your neural pathways, if you don’t unlearn all that marketing, social conditioning, peer pressure then you are HIGHLY likely to go back to drinking just like you were.

But you want to change that, right?

This is where the OYNB challenge comes in. We’ve built a framework that helps you to rewire your brain. We have worked with some of the finest minds in habit change and incorporated cutting-edge tools and systems to make the transition from a bad habit to a conscious decision & good habits much much quicker.

How?

TRIBALISM:

You will hear me talk a lot about this. Inside all of us is an innate tribalism, it’s the need to belong. We want to have our family around us, our friends, our tribe.

If our tribe is regularly drinking, then we want to belong to that tribe. Plus all of them – and you – have been conditioned to believe that alcohol is a part of our society, that we need it to have fun, be cool, relax, unwind, be successful.

So if you stop drinking… suddenly it feels like you are no longer in the tribe. Your decision not to drink gets met with strong defence. “What do you mean you are not drinking?” “Is there something wrong with you?” ”Oh I didn’t realise you had a problem…?” etc. etc.

Those in the tribe, with that conditioning, just can’t fathom why you would want to stop drinking. Plus they are defensive of their tribe as they feel like you have left it.

This is why we created the OYNB tribe, a tribe that for now lives in your pocket. Whenever you feel a craving or peer pressure, or worry, you can reach for your phone and link back into your tribe through our forum or facebook groups.

You can post a worry, fear, judgement and you will get responses from real people living through exactly what you are going through, and more.

Soon we will have meetups all over the globe – so you can take it one step further and meet the tribe.

The opposite of addiction is connection, and that’s what we want to facilitate more of….people connecting.

RE-WIRING YOUR BRAIN

Committing to the challenge means changes so many of your current life habits – from restocking your shelves with alcohol-free alternatives to ordering alcohol-free drinks to finding new activities like spin classes or barry’s boot camp.

We help you to live life and still feel like you achieve all those things you want – to have fun, to be cool, to be successful, to hang with mates & to live a happy and fulfilled life – without pouring a carcinogen down your throat.

In fact, once you change your drinking habits, you start to realise that you have a much better chance of achieving all these things when you are not drinking.

PUT YOU IN THE DRIVING SEAT

When you just stop drinking, without re-wiring your brain and your habits, you hold back on something you desire.

A bit like TRYING not to eat cake, but still working in a cake shop.

Can you imagine how hard that must be?

Well it is hard, but not for everyone.

When we create meaning, purpose, mental resilience, healthy routines, mindfulness, take steps every day to improve our mental health through techniques like gratitude, what went well, giving & supporting others etc. etc. – we build a foundation that makes breaking bad habits easy.

You simply do not want them anymore and prioritise more important things in life.

Do I want to drink tonight?

Well no, not really, I’ve got the kids all weekend, and it makes me anxious and snappy, and that’s the last thing I want around my girls.

So ANYONE can stop drinking for a month, for three months. But can you change your relationship with alcohol, and more importantly…. As I think you all realise about the OYNB program, are you living the life you want?

If the answer is no… then Step 1 is to sign up to our challenge

The other steps will all appear as we work with you on this incredible journey called life.

I hope you are having a fabulous weekend, and if you have any questions for me pls do hit reply, but I won’t be able to answer them till Monday as I’m with my girls this weekend.