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ARE YOU FEEDING THE RIGHT WOLF?

ARE YOU FEEDING THE RIGHT WOLF?

08 Sep 2022

ARE YOU FEEDING THE RIGHT WOLF?

With Macmillan Cancer Support’s ‘Go Sober This October’ just around the corner, the sober curious of you may be deciding to give it a go this year and raise some money for people with cancer at the same time.

If you do go for it, then I recommend you take a few leaves out of my new book WALKING BACK TO HAPPINESS: THE SECRET TO ALCOHOL-FREE LIVING & WELL-BEING.

One of the biggest challenges in the early days of going sober is tackling cravings.

I’m now 630+ days sober and cravings are a distant memory. But in the early weeks I had loads of them.

I looked at cravings and willpower as two voices inside my head. Two wolves. The craving voice was telling me, ‘A drink would be great!’ – on a hot summer’s day, after work, with a meal or at the airport. This is my primitive brain, my ego, telling me it’s OK to do what I want and to go ahead and satisfy a short-term desire.

This craving voice is very much part of the habit loop. It is triggered by many things, such as a location (walking past a pub), time (end of the working day), or my emotional state (stressed, happy, celebratory).

The willpower voice, or self-control, was saying the opposite: ‘No, you have a longer-term goal’. It was telling me not to drink. It was my determination. It was my self-discipline. The willpower voice was the voice of the new belief, the new pathway I was building.

So there we have it, two voices, two sides having a discussion, a fight in my head – a battle between two wolves.

And which wolf wins? Simple, it’s the one you decide to feed.

Have a great day.

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