Good morning all,
Beautiful Sunday morning so I am in a great mood. Is anyone else's mood quite so affected by the weather? Thankfully bad weather doesn't bring me down (very lucky living in the UK) but a lovely morning just lightens my heart.
Last night went well. There were jugs of water everywhere so I made sure I never had an empty glass. I see what everyone was saying about dropping friends and know what you mean. Last year there were a number of people I had to avoid because of the drinking. This time although it has only been a month I am further along in my thinking. I don't want to drop nice people just because they drink. The funny thing is many of my friends drink a lot less now because I don't drink. On Thursday and Friday night I went to dinner with different girlfriend's. Thursday night had been with one of my big drinking buddies and Friday night was a friend who admits she wishes I was still drinking but..... over dinner each of them only had one glass of wine. They didn't feel the need to have more if they weren't keeping up with me.
Another strange thing that I want to run past everyone. Does anyone ever feel that they are watching themselves from the outside. Last night at the dinne rpart of the evening I was sitting next to someone I had never met before and he was boring, patronising and generally pretty full of himself. It struck me that in my drinking days I would have gone on a charm offensive to try and make the evening better for everyone. Last night I decided that it wasn't my job, I didn't want to. So I was just very polite and civil and conversed more with the people in front of me and to the other side. It was really odd it was like watching someone else. In the old days I would have been trying to make him like me and be nice. Now I didn't give a stuff, he clearly had issues and they weren't my problem to fix.
Have ordered a copy of Emotional Alchemy from Amazon. Now that I am feeling all the emotions I had been drowning for year's, anything that helps me understand them can't be a bad idea. I love the book Achieving Emotional Literacy by Claude Steiner which is more about communicating your emotions. I have found it really useful for the little things, things that weren't important but mounted up until I became resentful. Now instead of saying something like "It's OK whatever you want" I say something like "wouldn't be my first choice, but if you want to, let's do what you want this time". Puts people on notice that ther will be a 'my' time.
Claude Steiner also wrote a wonderful book called Healing Alcoholism. It contained the wonderful line ... Only those who want to stop being an alcoholic will stop being an alcoholic. 4theboyz used to use it as his strap line. Haven't seen him on the boards for ages. Hope it is because everything is going so well for him.
Well sorry for such a long naval gazing post, have so many ideas running through my head this morning. Shops open in about 10 mins so ned to get up and started on a day full of chores.
Thanks for listening.
Beautiful Sunday morning so I am in a great mood. Is anyone else's mood quite so affected by the weather? Thankfully bad weather doesn't bring me down (very lucky living in the UK) but a lovely morning just lightens my heart.
Last night went well. There were jugs of water everywhere so I made sure I never had an empty glass. I see what everyone was saying about dropping friends and know what you mean. Last year there were a number of people I had to avoid because of the drinking. This time although it has only been a month I am further along in my thinking. I don't want to drop nice people just because they drink. The funny thing is many of my friends drink a lot less now because I don't drink. On Thursday and Friday night I went to dinner with different girlfriend's. Thursday night had been with one of my big drinking buddies and Friday night was a friend who admits she wishes I was still drinking but..... over dinner each of them only had one glass of wine. They didn't feel the need to have more if they weren't keeping up with me.
Another strange thing that I want to run past everyone. Does anyone ever feel that they are watching themselves from the outside. Last night at the dinne rpart of the evening I was sitting next to someone I had never met before and he was boring, patronising and generally pretty full of himself. It struck me that in my drinking days I would have gone on a charm offensive to try and make the evening better for everyone. Last night I decided that it wasn't my job, I didn't want to. So I was just very polite and civil and conversed more with the people in front of me and to the other side. It was really odd it was like watching someone else. In the old days I would have been trying to make him like me and be nice. Now I didn't give a stuff, he clearly had issues and they weren't my problem to fix.
Have ordered a copy of Emotional Alchemy from Amazon. Now that I am feeling all the emotions I had been drowning for year's, anything that helps me understand them can't be a bad idea. I love the book Achieving Emotional Literacy by Claude Steiner which is more about communicating your emotions. I have found it really useful for the little things, things that weren't important but mounted up until I became resentful. Now instead of saying something like "It's OK whatever you want" I say something like "wouldn't be my first choice, but if you want to, let's do what you want this time". Puts people on notice that ther will be a 'my' time.
Claude Steiner also wrote a wonderful book called Healing Alcoholism. It contained the wonderful line ... Only those who want to stop being an alcoholic will stop being an alcoholic. 4theboyz used to use it as his strap line. Haven't seen him on the boards for ages. Hope it is because everything is going so well for him.
Well sorry for such a long naval gazing post, have so many ideas running through my head this morning. Shops open in about 10 mins so ned to get up and started on a day full of chores.
Thanks for listening.
ray:
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