Where am I now?

So it’s been just longer than 3 months and I ask myself the question what am
I getting out of my HSM experience right now? I’m really struggling with this concept.

I am somebody who was historically a heavy drinker but haven’t for more than 12 months. Throughout the biggest social season of the year there were some definate challenges and I learnt alot about myself and others drinking “habits”. The 2 greatest learnings for me has been my confidence when out in social situations and gaining connection and social interaction with people who have had a shandy or two. HSM is an awesome vehicle for these things!

I am on my own journey of personal growth and HSM is just one avenue that I am walking down. I’m ever qualifying the things i do, have, feel, believe and limit myself to.

The real thing that I have struggled with is no choice to have a drink. Because I don’t drink out of habit, and always ask myself whether I really want a drink or I’m just doing it ‘because I can’. I really miss the taste of a nice cold import beer on a saturday afternoon or an aged shiraz when sharing the eating experience with family or good friends. It’s not a crutch, but an experience I choose to have that doesn’t take from me.

My big questions are –

1. Does it serve me to continue my HSM for another 3 months?
2. What will I learn in the next 3 months without alcohol?
3. What are some ways for me to maximise my HSM experience if I decide to continue?

I would really appreciate some feedback and some ideas from my fellow HSMers and readers!

The last few weeks have been an amazing experience of letting go. Allowing myself to let go of expectation, obligation and others hopes for me. Im such a people person and that often leads to me being enlisted in other peoples dreams through their passion and enthusiasm, but it leads me down the wrong path.

I have spent a lot of my life feeling obligated to be a certain person. Or feeling expectation from influential people in my life. My perception of their expectation that I create, even if it doesn’t exist. And I know what your thinking… Why the hell would you do that?

We as people are shaped by the experiences in our lives. Be it good or bad. And we learn in these experiences by the emotion that we feel. And that emotion can create a behaviour that we use to choose to feel or avoid that emotion throughout our lives. And this happens mostly without our concious knowledge.

As a young boy I experienced the feeling of obligation and expectation and created a behaviour in my life that has stayed with me until recently. It took me months to understand how this shows up in my life and how it affects my choices for my life. I can now say that im making choices for myself with the freedom to do whatever I choose, without feelings of guilt, obligation or expectation. Its a freedom that ive never felt before.

I want to use this forum to talk about some of the huge choices that im making over the next few months! Pretty damn exciting. This is a massive journey for me and im so humble to be where I am.

To leave you with some wisdom that I collected from a book given to me to read by good friend Simon Lawry, at the most opportune time.

This is your life, your one & only life. You determine whats possible. Make choices, ask questions, take steps – today is the day.

Either you are living out someone elses dream for you, or you are setting your own course. Dont let people tell you who you are.

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you just like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight – but never stop fighting.

Anonymous.

Stay classy.

B.

This is my first weekly blog from here until the end of my 6 month HSM. I gotta say, that blogging does not come naturally to me. So here we go…

I have had some amazing experiences since my HSM journey began. The truth for me is that i have not drank excessively for 12 months on Australia Day. That was the day i decided to do things differently.

Over christmas and new year, the alcohol consumption increased significantly around me. Family, friends and work colleagues all indulged. But all do so in many different ways. The social dynamic around each situation is different, with things such as peer pressure, love and friendship tied up with the drinking experience. For me i just loved watching it all unfold. And how they dealt with my choice to go without. Some supportive, some disgusted, some wishing they had the balls to do the same thing. But i take my hat off to each of my fellow HSM comrades as it is the want for change that gets us to where we are and that takes some balls.

Over the past week, my journey has been full on. And i love it! Im letting go of expectations, obligations and everything that i thought was my reality and im opening my eyes to the possibilities of the world. Its an amazing sense of freedom that i dont think i have ever experienced before. I was given an opportunity just last night to see how much i have grown in 12 months when i spoke with some old friends and i would like to acknowledge myself for that.

I will be sharing my lessons and learnings from here on in with a brief update every week.

B signing off.

Lets get this straight. I like alcohol. But the accountability (or lack thereof) that I have often assumed when consuming the alcohol has given me some concern over the past couple of years…

We have had a love hate relationship over the past 12 years, alcohol and I. Starting at 10 years old, with my brother and I hijacking the rum from my parents liquor cabinet for my step sisters 21st. Three rum and cokes later and I wasn’t feeling tip top. Ending the night with my head in a toilet bowl. That’s the hate.

And then there’s the love. There’s an amazing sense of confidence and being totally carefree, it helps me to communicate with the opposite sex and I can all of a sudden get my dance on when I would ordinarily look like I’m tripping over a pair of flippers.

I freely admit that I did have a drinking problem for some time. I was a serious binge drinker. And for a long time I thought there was nothing wrong with my behaviour. I became known in my family for being hungover at every single event. I always had to drink to excess every time I had a drink and I managed to do or say something stupid in my drunken state that would require some major patching up the next day. I would hear tales of how funny I was the night before, because I would have the whole night retold to me as I could never remember going out. There’s no telling how much my liver hated me.

Until one night I did something that is completely out of integrity with me and it really scared me. I had just bought a jug of beer and walking through the dance floor, i see a girl coming towards me with intent. Intent to barge straight into me. And she did. I lost it and pushed her. She landed on a group of people and they ended up on the floor. This makes me feel sick to think that i was capable of this as it goes against everything i am as a person. What am I capable of if I don’t remember a single thing? I lost control of being able to say I’ve had enough. I decided the next day that i needed help but i didnt know where to turn.

I have been on an epic journey of personal development this past 12 months. It has been the best investment, to spend the time to get to really understand me through some inspiring courses and hanging out with like minded people, I have been able to learn and grow to a new level of awareness.

I no longer have a problem with alcohol. I am quite comfortable with the choices I make around alcohol and have learnt to enjoy myself without it. I am confident in myself and don’t need liquid courage. But I do enjoy the choice to have a drink. HSM is an awesome way for me to understand how I behave in certain social situations when the choice is removed and how I react to support/criticism/abuse about my choice to stay dry for 6 months.

Through my self discovery, I have discovered my passion. Fitness, health, nutrition and wellness. I am starting the journey of educating myself in these fields, and will be starting my own personal training business early next year, concentrating not only on the body but also on the psychology behind the training.

My commitment to Hello Sunday Morning is to train the other participants taking on the HSM challenge to reach a level of fitness, health and wellness that they have not felt before through training and dietry changes. But more than that, I will help them get clarity around their lifestyle choices, their emotions around the food they eat and why they want to be fit and healthy and what it means to them. Because you can never attract something that you don’t understand. I hope to use HSM as a vehicle to condense everything I am learning in these fields and offer them to the other bloggers and those that are interested.

I am taking on this challenge not only for myself, but also in the hope I can inspire those who feel they can stand up and ‘be the change you wish to see in the world.’

You know who you are…

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