Our monthly habit-changing list is now two months complete:
- January - no alcohol - way easier than anticipated!
- February - read for an hour each day (that should be easy, shouldn't it?)...
Soon after starting this challenge we introduced a proviso: read for an hour each day quickly turned into "... each weekday" as neither of us wanted to prioritise the time for reading during our weekends. We discovered that to each of us, weekend time was more precious than reading time, so we couldn't make ourselves sit down and read (not that we tried very hard).
So after that immediate scale-back we then piously turned off the TV at 8.30pm each night, in order to give us time for an hour of reading before bed. This was a habit I quickly came to enjoy, but Mike found that an hour of reading at night was too long for him (especially from no reading at all). Mike had to start with about 20 minutes of reading before increasing this length of time over the month.
I don't think Mike ever made it to reading for a whole hour but I've come to realise that isn't the point. The "hour" was arbitrary, it was the taking the time out of our day to read, to prioritise it as something important that was REALLY the purpose of the challenge, and that is something we succeeded in doing.
The real surprise that came out of this challenge was the large effect on the amount of TV we watched over the month. We expected to watch about an hour less television (while we read instead), however the habit of turning off the TV to read, lead us to turn off the TV at other times too!
When we wanted to talk, we would turn the TV off. When we were in the kitchen together, we would turn the TV off; instead of the television being on as background noise we found we would turn it ON to watch a program (usually during dinner), then turn it off again as it was time to read. Although I didn't specifically measure it, I would estimate our TV viewing time was reduced from about 3 hours per night to 1 hour per night (on average).
This was certainly an added bonus to the challenge and we have agreed to continue with reading-time before bed from now on, although the 1-hour time specificity has been dropped.
You may recall that, inspired by Leo Babauta, Mike and I are doing "one habit changing practice each month", which started with no alcohol for the month of January. For complete honesty, we did not start this challenge until January 4th, however we completed the month PLUS some.
So to round-up January before moving onto Feb's challenge, drinking no alcohol for the month has gone remarkably well! In fact, I still haven't had an alcoholic drink since I started this challenge.
There was only one day where I felt like having a 'drink' after work so I went and bought myself a bottle of ginger beer (non-alcoholic) as a treat, which was so lovely I didn't have the urge for alcohol after that. One of my friends also tried to push me into breaking the challenge because she wanted a drink and didn't want to drink alone (she did not prevail).
I definitely think that the challenge went so well because we had mentally prepared ourselves and had been drinking less and less before January anyway. The obstacles I had foreseen were:
1. Friday afternoon drinks at work
2. Pressure from friends and family to drink during certain occasions
I prepared for Friday afternoons at work by putting a reminder in my calendar for each lunch time Friday; this reminded me to go and get something nice to drink for after works 'drinks'. That way I had something nice to look forward to drinking (such as coconut water, lemon lime and bitters) instead of just having water as my only option.
Friends and family were managed in a similar manner - the best way to prepare family and friends that you aren't drinking with them, is to give them advance notice and a reason. As expected, everyone I spoke to took this well (even my mum who was also forced to drink alone on Australia Day!) apart from the one friend mentioned above.
So what's our plan for February? Reading one hour per day. This one sounds easy but we have already missed the opportunity to do this both on February 1st and 2nd, so not the greatest start. However now it is Monday and we will start this habit afresh this evening. I'll let you know how we go!
I was not planning on making any new year's resolutions this year, however when I read Leo Babauta's post on making 1 habit-forming change a month I leaped at the chance to fully focus on one 'resolution' at a time.
For me, it was obvious what January's focus needed to be: alcohol. For the last year I have been physically unable to drink very much; after a few glasses of any alcohol I feel sick, if I keep drinking then I vomit (with little notice - very embarrassing!)
You would think this would stop me from drinking anyway, however the social pressure I felt meant I continued to drink each Friday after work and every time I went out with friends. I had learnt to cut down my drinking, but not cut it out.
So for the month of January 2014 I have decided not to drink any alcohol at all (for full transparency this actually started on January 4th). Bizarrely I'm actually looking forward to Friday 'drinks' at work this week, as I've prepared to bring a soft drink and still stay as long as usual socialising.
For me, alcohol has often been used as a social 'lubricant'; because I'm shy I thought I needed a drink to be funny/outgoing etc. however the honest truth is I just become loud and boorish after a few drinks - not quite as funny or entertaining as I hoped.
Last year's discovery that being shy is just an excuse to stay in my comfort zone helped me to realise that I was using alcohol as a social crutch, and it was one I no longer needed.
The one thing I immediately missed was a cold drink on ice (it's the middle of summer here), and water just didn't cut it. So Mike and I played around with a variety of fruit juices and soda water to create different mocktails and I think we've found the perfect recipe:
- 1 quarter pineapple juice
- 1 quarter apple juice (with a hint of passionfruit)
- half soda water
Yum! It's amazingly fresh and tasty. Good bye booze! Hello sobriety. I'll let you know how I go.
