What I learnt when I gave up alcohol for a month
By: Kim Tang
Tags: Self Improvement, Habit Building, Habits, Goals, Productivity

What I learnt in the process:

There are no excuses for not starting in January. It’s not a blank new page in a notebook; it’s a massive white wall for you to do whatever you want with, which means you should take the opportunity to rewire bad habits and start afresh.

I stopped believing in new year’s resolutions a while ago. The goals I used to set myself in the new year were ones I’ve now learnt should be lifestyle changes with no end date in mind e.g. ‘get fit and healthy’, ‘see my family more’, ‘stop buying things I don’t need’… Those changes can only happen when you adjust your patterns of behaviour and learn new habits. Here’s how:

1. Have a bloody good reason why

People around you will try to sabotage your efforts, because not drinking in January makes you incredibly susceptible to ridicule and peer pressure. If you don’t know why you’re making the change, how can you convince someone else that you’re for real? You can’t. And they will break you!

When you’re constructing the why, make it personal to you. For example, it would have been easy to say I’m doing dry January because everyone else is and I feel like it’s a good idea. Instead, I thought about why *I* specifically wanted to do it. I did dry January because I wanted to prove to myself I could be sociable and have an enjoyable time without alcohol.

Knowing your why also makes it a lot easier when you’re on the brink of quitting. Reminding yourself of why you’re doing it brings to attention the positive benefits.

2. Make time for your new habit by scheduling it into your calendar

Obviously you can’t schedule not drinking into your calendar every day. What I did instead is I thought about the activities I’d be able to enjoy while not nursing a hangover e.g. going to a gym class on a Sunday morning (let it be known this is unusual territory for me, but I immensely enjoyed it. If you haven’t tried 1 Rebel Ride classes — go, go, go. It’s like some cult… that I desperately want to be part of, if only it was a more affordable cult.)

This is 1 Rebel Ride in Victoria. See, it’s literally like a club. There are strobe lights, visuals and a smoke machine.

Otherwise, for most habits I think this tip works. I wanted to start writing more, so I set a calendar appointment to remind me at 8pm to write one sentence a day. I started off small and now I don’t need the scheduled slot to remind me to write. I now just write a load of crap when it comes to me.

If you find it doesn’t work at first, try scheduling it in for a different time. Think about the best or most convenient time to do your new habit. For example if you want to start going to the gym in the mornings, a habit you might want to bring into your routine is packing your gym bag the night before. If you leave packing until the morning, you’ve created an extra barrier for yourself. On the other hand, if you’re already packed, you have one less excuse for not making it to the gym. (Disclaimer: there were days where my bag was packed and I still did not make it to the gym in the morning. I can be a slut for snooze sometimes too. However, the fact I’d already packed my stuff made me more likely to go either at lunch or after work instead.)

If you don’t like calendars, try reminders on your phone. You’re not getting out of this one! If you don’t like reminders… well, maybe you’re just not ready for the life-changing magic of habits.

3. Track your habits — what gets measured gets done blah blah blah

This sounds really dry. Believe me I know, but it honestly makes a difference especially for visual people. I have a habit tracker in my bullet journal so I got to colour in a little block for every time I went a day without any alcohol and every gym session. There is something so satisfying about this. I can’t explain it, but I’ll try to.

Partly, I get to use pastel coloured gel pens to do this, which takes me back to being 12 and geeking out over stationery. But it’s probably more because seeing a chain of blocks makes you feel good about yourself. It’s like the adult equivalent of a gold star, except you’ve given it to yourself and it’s not for managing not to wet yourself in class.

A peek at my monthly bullet journal layout and those pastel coloured gel pens I love dearly. If I could marry anything, it would be those or peanut butter.

Even if it doesn’t get done, tracking your progress has a wonderful ability to make you feel guilty if you see it physically written down. Unlike the gold star, it’s like a ‘Good Try’ sticker in your school workbook. You feel as though you’ve let yourself down. Disappointed with a capital D.

4. Change one habit at a time

I think I tried to bite off more than I could chew. Effectively, I was attempting to stick with 3 habits — not drinking, gym-ing regularly and doing the keto diet. There’s conflicting research out there, but apparently it takes about 66 days to form a new habit. I haven’t tried not drinking since 2018’s dry January so I can confidently say this was a new habit. While going to the gym regularly is something that’s been an embedded habit for about a year but slipped at Christmas, the keto diet definitely wasn’t something I’ve committed to properly.

Trying to create two new habits while reintroducing a third is simply unmanageable and also really not that fun. Willpower is a limited resource, so restraining myself from alcohol AND carbs was simply too much. Give one new habit a go at a time, instead of overhauling your life completely with multiple ones. It’s more sustainable, practical and you won’t drive yourself insane.