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The 6 Key Skills for Controlled Drinking, It’s a Mind Skill

What are the key skills for controlling your drinking?

This post is part of a short series explaining the key skills for gaining control of your drinking or for that matter your drug use. This post describes the main areas of skill, the mind skills and the psychological skills.  In the following post’s we’ll go into specific skills in order of importance, so you can learn them.

What Are the Skills for Controlling your Drinking?

The skills for controlling your drinking are the same skills that you use for controlling drug abuse, alcoholism or for that matter they are the same skills you use for keeping yourself focused and achieving anything. Whether that be you’re training,  and studies or a career goal or just changing a habit that you’ve wanted to change for a long time.

In fact the skills you use for controlling your drinking are the skills that drive you to achieve anything in life.  When you take a look at them a bit closer they are a combination of mind skills and psychological skills.

What’s the Difference Between Mind Skill and Psychology?

Psychological Skills are all about changing what you believe so you can change what you feel and do. While on the other hand mind skills are the skills you use to focus your, mind on an objective or goal and excluding any other possibility until you achieve that goal.

When it comes to drug and alcohol misuse we use both psychological and mind strategies to control and change our urges and habits. But really at the end of the day why we need to change our psychology and our mind is the more important question.

Why Control Your Mind?

Controlling your mind is the singularly most important skill you can never learn. It is the skilled drives you to create solutions to the problems of life so that you can overcome those problems and go on to thrive. Both skills aim at changing your brains so you can get control of your life.  In short learning to control your mind will help you achieve the life you want.  If you don’t change your mind and psychology and ultimately your brain you won’t have control of your life and you’ll likely lose control of your life and get what life gives you.  You won’t be the master of your own destiny.

Both skills, whether they be psychological skills or mind skills intend to create changes in your neurology, that is your brains wiring. By creating new circuits that drive better habits and eliminate unhelpful habits you in turn become more empowered to get what you want in life.  This includes getting control of your drinking and eliminating illegal drug use. In turn by changing your neurology or the way your brain is wired up you are able to change your habits, your urges, and for that matter anything that needs to be changing.

It’s more of a Question of What Happens if You don’t Control Your Mind?

On the other hand if we look at what happens if we don’t learn to control their mind and our psychology, we see that things won’t likely go our way.  You see all I’m talking about is the process of growing more and more empowered and capable of getting more and more out of life. But the equal and opposite is also true. If we don’t learn how to control what goes on in our minds we are likely to get whatever life gives us. We won’t overcome our problem behaviours. We won’t overcome our problem urges. We won’t be able to develop the kinds of sophisticated strategies that enable us to thrive in life and living.

In short we want you to learn how to control your mind and control your psychology so that you get better and better at getting what you want out of life by developing more and more effective and sophisticated empowerment strategies

In The Next Post

that’s all for this post.  In the next post we’re going to look at how you control your mind and psychology. For now just think about the importance of getting control of your mind so you can control your urges habits and develop more and more effective problem solving strategies that make you a more and more happy, secure, and empowered person.

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Taking Charge, Getting Motivated.

Taking Charge and Getting Motivated

Motivation is Key When it Comes To Taking Charge

Have you ever wondered why you know what to do and you still don't do it.  The answer is often simply a matter of motivation.  It's all well and good having all the knowledge and skills to do something but if you don't have the motivation to do it you simply wont take action.  Motivation comes in two basic forms.  The motivation for getting away from something, eg the motivation to avoid a conflict or to avoid pain.  The other form of motivation is the motivation to get something.  This usually means the benefits of doing something.

If you don't have motivation you wont push through the struggle to achieve the thing your trying to achieve.  When it comes to drugs and alcohol it's really important to be motivated because you have to push back against a bunch of urges and habits that just make you want to use.  This isn't so complicated to understand.  If you have to push back against your urges and habits you have to have the motivation to do that.  This is usually the motivation to eliminate the costs of drug and alcohol misuse such as poor health, low vitality, risks of getting caught, fights and arguments with partners, and a lot more.  The other side of the equation that pushes you through urges and habits and not giving in to them is to have the motivation to receive the benefits that come from not being addicted.  For example our clients routinely feel healthier, have more money in the bank, stop having arguments, get better sleep and a whole bunch more.

It's all about taking charge.

The idea of taking charge is simple, be in control and make good choices.  What you need though is the motivation to make you take charge when your urges and habits are saying the opposite.  You need the motivation and persistence to achieve the state of automatic healthy choices.  You need the motivation to create the kind of life you really want without dependence and addiction.

Control  or Abstinence is About Taking Charge

This is different for everyone.  I would say that it's wise to try and eliminate illegal drug use.  I don't know many people who don't become addicted with any regular drug use.  Perhaps some can but the majority of people just become increasingly addicted over time.  On the other hand I do know a lot of people who drink in a controlled manner and are able to maintain safe levels of alcohol use.  However I must say, not everyone can control their drug and alcohol use.  These people are best advised to eliminate drug and alcohol use all together.

 

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What is Controlled Drinking?

Controlled Drinking and How do Do It.

Controlled Drinking Is

Controlled drinking is as the name implies, drinking using conscious control.  In simpler terms it means drinking in a way that you wont regret it the next day.  This usually means drinking fairly slowly.  The real trick is to get the motivation to drink in a controlled manner. If you are fully enjoying your drinking or if you enjoy getting drunk and don't have any regrets about it you probably wont be able to learn to control your alcohol consumption.  On the other hand if you are starting to worry and regret how much you drink then a controlled drinking program will teach you how.

How do You Get the Control You Need to Master Controlled Drinking

Really it all comes down to education, motivation and practice.  Just about anyone can learn to control their alcohol consumption if they really want to.  The real trick is to have the motivation to control and the perseverance to keep going until you control your drinking without really having to think about it.  I must say however some people are unable to learn how to control their drinking and may have to adopt a non-drinking policy.

Should I learn to Control Or Simply Abstain?

If your alcohol consumption is causing you worries, regrets, actual physical harm, relationship damage, or is making you do other things like gamble and take drugs then you need to learn to control or abstain.  In other words if your drinking is causing you some kind of harm, putting you at risk of harm or generally causing you to be discontent then you need to learn to control your alcohol consumption.

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