The conversation started at dinner, where I brought up that I finish HSM in two or so weeks!  I explained to them that for the last month or so I had been feeling as though my HSM had been unsuccessful ….

My original thoughts of what a person achieves out any HSM period (naïve as they may be) was that they no longer will need or want alcohol in social situations, especially where alcohol is used in situations were it is used as a significant bonding tool.  This led me to believe that I should no longer need alcohol in the following situations:

-       Going away celebrations,

-       At the football,

-       Sunday afternoons on the deck with house mates,

-       Birthday’s,

-       Etc.

However, the closer I got to finishing my HSM there is nothing more I want to do than to have a drink in these situations. I was also beginning to feel as though I was not completely experiencing my interactions with friends where alcohol is involved.

What my parents helped me realise is that feeling this way is not a failure, more so it was a confirmation of what alcohol is for me and how it adds to my life.

So this begs the question – what was I meant to get out of HSM? The answer to this is simple…..experience!

WHAT I THINK HSM IS

For me HSM is a tool for young people can use in order to gain as much experience around alcohol in the shortest period time.  This experience then gives the youths who have participated the power to make more informed and confident drinking choices!

You may choose to drink and that’s awesome, I couldn’t wait to have a few beers, but there will be times where you will consciously be presented with 2 pathways;

-       Have one more drink and be completely written off or,

-       Not have that drink and be sober enough to ensure you your mates or your partner get hone safely!

Being able to make that second choice only comes with vast experience or potentially HSM

It’s your choice!

This would be the first time you have heard from me in a while,  since the amount of bloggers exponentially grew over night from 10 to approaching 50.  My reason for this being -  I felt my voice had become completely lost and didn’t see the point any more.  I would love to hear the opinions of the earlier bloggers on this point…. is this just something I am feeling or is it something of a common trend??

Before I get back to being over it, I want to make one point clear…. regardless of how I fell about my HSM journey to date, I will see it through until the end.

Anyway…… I am over it but not clear on my reasons why!

• There are times where I just feel like a drink… for no other reason than I want one.
• I don’t think I have experienced/learned anything new for a while now.
• I feel very comfortable not drinking in setting where alcohol is in abundance.

Not drinking feels more like a chore now than anything else….

I feel like I have learned a lot about my drinking beliefs and want to put what I have learned into practice.  I believe that my journey does not encapsulate 6 months of non drinking, I will learn even more than I could imagine when I have that choice againg….. I just want to get there already!!

I have expressed my current feelings with a number of friends, which I am assuming gave them an opportunity to express their opinions.  I have been told by a number of people that they think HSM is a little pretentious as no one has failed yet….no one has shown them selves to be human.

Personally, I don’t completely agree with these views, however, I do believe that HSM as a program needs to experience its own challenge.  How will it deal with someone that does not complete their challenge.

I would love to get your thoughts on my feelings of being lost amongst the magnitude of bloggers and my thoughts of HSM being brought back to earth a little.

C

This theme of questioning has made me think a lot about how I want my drinking behaviours to change when I finish.  Starting my HSM I said that i don’t believe that they will change drastically as I was using HSM as a catalyst for change in other areas of my life.

However, recent activities and being asked ‘how much are you looking forward being able to drink again’ has made me re-think my stance.

What I want to have changed!

- When I have a drink I want it to be because I actually want a drink

- When I no longer feel like drinking I want to be able to stop regardless of what people are doing around me! I don’t want to fall into drinking in order to connect with the people around me and feel as though I need to continue drinking with them to continue connecting.

I noticed that the usual blueprint for my posts have been me defining a issue that I want to address…..but nothing about how I am going to tackle it, nothing that will actually provide others with value or another point of view on similar issues someone may have.  So now I am going to write about it….

To be honest I actually have NO idea how I should go about dealing with these particular issues…. and I know that there probably is a more effective way of going about it than what i am doing.

As a refresher (for me mostly) these are the points I wish to make better:

• Be confident in you ability to make decisions
• Don’t let others opinions affect you!
• To be completely comfortable with my body image as it is now!

So what am I doing??  I am adopting a basic positive self-talk method (like the technical talk)!

Whenever I am faced with a hard decision, feel as though I am letting someone’s opinions affect me personally or just feel like CRAP about my body – firstly, I acknowledge that I am thinking this way and then tell my self; ‘Be Confident’, ‘Don’t care what others thinks’ or ‘Your not overweight, your fine don’t worry’.

That is what I am doing….personally I think that this method is only dealing with the top of the ice berg and not tackling the core of it!!!

I would love to have your thoughts on what I am doing and how I could do it better!

Mental note – Write goals post….

Anyway, the issue that I am referring to is my negative body image issue.  It is something that became quite serious when I was about 10 years old for a variety of reasons.

When I began my HSM one of my major goals was to change this by; getting fit, loosing weight and achieving a more attractive body.  At that point I believed that was the way in which I had to over come my body image issues.

After almost 3 months of dealing with issues and trying to get fit I still find it really confronting and hard to; admit to my body image issues and also to walk around shirtless in front of anyone that is not my family or girlfriend (however I still find it hard sometimes around her).  The reasons I find it hard is because it is like letting down my force field (that being my shirt) and allowing people to see what I really look like – which I think is not attractive!!

However, since starting some intense training with fellow blogger Brendan I have realised that I am approaching this issue in the wrong way – I NEED to be 100% comfortable in my own body right now before I can achieve the traditionally attractive male body.   Until I can do that and be comfortable and happy with my body I wont get anywhere.

“I think that he finding is journey really rewarding and he reported to me that the 3 month mark was one of the most challenging stages…”

When I used to tell people this i really didn’t give it much thought or significance, however, as I am fast approaching my 3 month point I have a deeper understanding and appreciation for what he said.  Although for me I am not finding this 3 month point challenging so much, rather  – A Defining Point!!

3 months in and I have finally started to feel empowered about what I am doing again, like i felt in the first few weeks.  However, the difference between the beginning of my HSM and now is that my empowerment came from doing something that will influence others, where as now i feel empowered to be tackling my own issues and growing as a human being.

I think that anyone that takes on a challenge like HSM will have different experiences at their defining point, but I believe that everyone needs to do at least 3 months in order to make any difference….

Recently, while Chris Raine an i were escaping the clutches of our business course, we were discussing HSM in general and my personal journey! In that conversation he made me realise something about myself and my journey so far….

That is – I am too comfortable and not inspiring others around me!

I have Fantastic family, a beautiful girlfriend and good things always happening for me!

However i am just letting these things happen to me, and if I continue along this path or line of thinking only good things will happen in my life and my success will be limited! If I want unlimited success, to become a leader, to push the boundaries and only GREAT thing to happen to me i need to;
- Push myself further and not settle for comfortable!
- Also, strive for more in order to push others around me and not rely on others to push me!

From this realisation I have though about my journey and how I write my blogs – from now I am going to change my tactics! My blog posts will be smaller but more frequent! Each week I will look for a lesson I have learned or an issues I need to address – then blog about them!

Rather than waiting for something interesting to happen for you to read about, I am going to write for me – so I can look back over my posts at the end of my journey to see how I addressed different things and the lessons I learned!

Here are the first two points I have identified that I need to work on to push my boundaries;
- be confident in you ability to make decisions
- don’t let others opinions affect you!

Keep you posted

Chris out!!

Despite this I bite the bullet and went out to a club in the valley, alloneword.

As I was driving in I was quite worried about how the night was going to pan out, obviously cause I was not drinking but that was not the only reason. I had organised to meet a mate of mine out, as we had not spent much time together in months. In the past this mate and I were very close, we travelled to Canada together and partied with each other almost every week. However, unfortunately our lives grew apart after I returned from Canada, as my drinking and partying behaviours slowed down while he was still away. Naturally I became concerned with how our night would be seeing as up to this point I was beginning to believe that we were only really friends because we partied a lot together.

I am glad to report that my concerns were truly unwarranted! The friendship that my mate and I shared was NOT solely formed on a mutual love for writing ourselves off. Biting the bullet and going out with on New Years eve was probably the best decision I made over the holiday’s with regards to my confidence not drinking in social settings.

I had one of the best new years in ages!

In the video blog that I recently posted I concluded that Christmas was a lot easier than I expected but it brought to the issue of ‘what is there to celebrate with other than alcohol’ to light.

Over the weekend was my birthday and I can now safely say that I was completely wrong about there being nothing special to indulge in for celebrations.

This insight came about while I was food shopping with my Mum on Saturday. Towards the end I asked mum ‘ what else do we have to get?’ she rattled off a few things that I didn’t pay attention to but what she said last caught my attention – A special water for you! That caught me by surprise, looking back on it now it would have been very easy for me take that as she was teasing me. She wasn’t though she was making a special effort to ensure to I had something special to enjoy on my birthday, but more importantly she wanted to make me realise that there are alternatives to alcohol in celebratory times!

As well as celebrating my birthday with my family I had a small BBQ at my place with my close mates! I must say that it is such an honour to have a bunch of friends that are so supportive and value my friendship regardless of whether I am drinking or not.

I believe that anyone that begins a similar journey will realise the same thing!!

A couple of days ago, I was invited to an industry function which involved bringing together the best Brisbane’s design graduates with industry leaders.  The night involved a networking, music and a lot of alcohol.

The start of my night was fantastic, I was really enjoying myself, loving being apart of an industry which houses some of the coolest and creative people.  I felt really confident, talking and meeting a lot new people, connecting with guys that I know but have never had chance to connect with before hand – all in all I was thinking ‘tonight is going to be awesome!’

More importantly I was not missing alcohol at all!

That was until a really good mate of mine came up, right at that tipsy stage where you’re feeling loose but totally in control! That’s when the night went downward!

Once that happened I had it in my head that in order to make my night that much more enjoyable, I needed to drink! It was that conflict between really wanting a drink to make my night even better and not letting my self, which caused me to ‘sulk away’ and loose a lot of confidence.

However, this initial conflict was a really weird feeling; I really wanted to be at the event as it had such a good vibe but I also didn’t think I could last much longer!

It was at about 9.00pm when I had the chance to leave and get a lift home. However, for a number of reasons I thought that I really should stay and continue to throw myself into the deep end to see I could swim.  So I stayed fir a while longer.

This is the part that I tell you that staying was the best decision and the night turned out great. However this was not the case! What actually happened was very similar to how the night began; I started to have fun again! That did not last long though, this time I believe it was because the people that were left over were past the tipsy loose stage and started to get drunk!

Contrary to my previous experience interacting with drunken people, it was surprisingly very hard to interact and connect with the people remaining at the event, as the drunker they were there interest in me and there conversational ability decreased dramatically.

I finally left the event at about 10.30 feeling really depressed and quite annoyed at a few things;

• Why did I let the thought that alcohol would make my night better ruin my night?
• Why didn’t I leave an hour before hand and make my decision on what I wanted to do nit what u think I should be doing?
• Why did I let my self-get depressed over all this?

This night definitely made me realize that I have a long way to go until I will be totally comfortable not drinking in such situations.

However, it is the memories that putting up the Christmas tree evoke which brought on the inspiration for this post.  Some of these memories are from my childhood and how excited I used to get in the lead up to Christmas.  Where others are more recent memories which involve the whole family sitting around the tree late at night all enjoying a coffee and some kind of after dinner drink – a port for me, a whiskey for my dad and a Cointreau for the women in the family.

When this more recent memory came to mind, it was the first time in my HSM challenge that I thought ‘damn I really wish I hadn’t stopped drinking’ and felt that I was missing out on something.

To date I have not found my HSM experience hard at all.  I have been out a few times sober where I have noticed a massive difference in the way my nights turn out; a little less dancing, a little less interacting with random’s, get very tired much quicker and feel a lot better on my Sunday mornings.  However, I have still always had a really good time and more importantly not missed alcohol or felt as though I was missing out on something.

Although, tonight I really miss that added togetherness which sharing a drink with your family around a Christmas tree can create.

It is going to be a very interesting festive season, but still looking forward to the journey!

I have been involved in HSM since January and it is now day 12 days into my own personal 6-month challenge, throughout which I have received nothing but overwhelming support.  However, recently I experienced my first negative feedback about this project and me taking 6 months off drinking….

There is a facebook page floating around which is a petition against locking down the valley at 2am.  I became a member of this group and posted a comment saying that I was in support of this cause, that I was going to be taking the Hello Sunday Morning Challenge – who would like to join me along the way?

What I received from this comment was far removed from what I expected…. I received about 5 quite derogatory comments from different members of the group attacking me personally (see the link below my comment is quite a way down).   Initially took these attacks on board and really took it quite hard, but after about an hour or so of not being able to concentrate on study I was able to get over it.

Coincidently I was actually in the middle of studying for my last Psychology exam, which was a Social Psychology subject focusing on intergroup processes and relations.

Whilst going through my notes after this incident I found something really interesting, that what I was learning was actually playing out right in front of me.

Essentially I believe that those people reactions comes back to a theory of intergroup behaviour called the Social Identity Theory.  What this theory basically says is that individuals form a social identity through the group based behaviours and attitudes, which make them different from other groups. Individuals then view this social identity as apart of their self-concept, which ultimately controls how they feel about themselves (i.e. their self-esteem).

It is easy to assume that people in general want to feel good about themselves, which leads to people being motivated to protect any threat to their group and think of themselves as being better than other groups.  Also, it is the high identifiers to these groups, which will exhibit the most negativity towards threat to their group.

Relating this back to what happened to me, it is obvious that this portion of youths that commented highly identify with the stereotype which Australian youths are given and form part of their self-concept around going out to the valley until 5 am binge drinking.  Having this in mind it is quite obvious why I received such negativity, having me come into their social group supporting different behaviours and attitudes was actually detrimental to their own self-esteem, and their reaction was to defend they only way they could… by attacking me.

I have taken this experience as a massive learning curve in how to talk about and handle my own association to the Hello Sunday Morning program.  Essentially, for me it is not about challenging the masses beliefs or attitudes towards the binge drinking culture it is about providing an alternative to those individuals that are looking for it.  Also, I should not use this blog to comment on the difference in attitudes and behaviour that others hold but rather to give you an insight as to how I am dealing with the challenge…

Please give me your thoughts…

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/group.php?gid=163145252559&ref=mf