Ep. 86 - Why You Keep Waiting Until You're Ready to Quit Drinking

Ep. 86: Why You Keep Waiting Until You're Ready to Quit Drinking

Welcome to Feel Good Alcohol Free, the podcast for high-achieving women who are tired of thinking about drinking. I'm Lindsay Hennekey, an accredited sober coach, habit change expert, and more than six years alcohol-free myself. I left my corporate career three years ago to help women not just quit drinking, but rebuild self-trust through my Identity, Practice, Trust method. Because when I finally removed alcohol from my own life, I experienced changes I never could have imagined, and I knew that I wanted other successful women to experience what was possible for them too.

I want you to know that you don't have to wait for your life to fall apart to change your relationship with alcohol. You don't have to take on a label that doesn't resonate with you or follow a path that doesn't feel right. You get to decide what you want your life to look like. And I'm here to help you figure out how to get there, because you have better things to think about than drinking. So let's get into it.

Waiting Until January to Quit Drinking

Okay, today's episode is all about how we wait to feel ready to quit drinking, or to make any big change. It's really easy to say, I'm not ready to do that. I'm not ready to talk to my husband about that yet. I'm not ready to announce that I'm taking a break from drinking. But readiness is not really a feeling. It's something that you decide.

And I felt like this topic was important right now, because Thanksgiving in the US is two weeks away. And I have a feeling that somewhere out there, there's a woman listening to this episode who has already decided she's going to wait until January to do something about her drinking. Because Thanksgiving is coming, and then there are holiday parties, and then we have Christmas, and we have Hanukkah, and then there's New Year's Eve. And honestly, who wants to quit drinking during the holidays? So you tell yourself, you know what, I'm just gonna enjoy the holidays. I'll deal with this in January.

But here's what I want you to think about. What if January comes around and you realize you've spent another two months doing something that you were already tired of doing in November? What if you spent another six or seven weeks waking up disappointed, negotiating with yourself every single afternoon, and wondering why you can't seem to follow through? And what if you could have experienced something different?

What if this Thanksgiving, instead of waking up on Friday morning feeling tired, anxious, or annoyed with yourself, you woke up feeling really freaking good? What if you enjoyed the whole day? What if you had a wonderful dinner, and you laughed with your family, and you ate way too much, and you went to bed feeling great? And what if you discovered that you didn't miss wine nearly as much as you thought you would? Wouldn't that be interesting? Wouldn't that be useful information?

Now, I know what you might be thinking. Lindsay, that sounds great, but I don't know. I'm not ready for that. And that is what we're talking about today. Because I want to challenge the idea that you have to feel completely ready before you can make a change. And I want to show you what I actually do with women in my coaching when they're standing in this exact same place. They want to quit drinking. They're tired of the way alcohol makes them feel, but they're afraid of what life might look like without it. And the holidays make that uncertainty feel even bigger.

So today we're going to talk about what you're actually waiting for when you say that you're not ready, how to approach the holidays without making some enormous lifelong commitment, and how to start building confidence before you have all of the answers. Because we build confidence through small actions. That's what makes us want to keep going. We don't have certainty and confidence when we haven't done the thing yet. So I want you to give yourself a chance to do the thing and get the confidence.

Readiness Isn't a Feeling: You Can Be Afraid and Still Begin

You can be ready to stop feeling the way alcohol makes you feel and still be afraid to stop drinking. Those two things can exist at the same time. You can hate waking up at three o'clock in the morning. You can hate the anxiety. You can hate thinking about wine all afternoon. You can hate promising yourself that you're only going to have one glass and then having three, or the bottle. You can hate the way you feel about yourself the next morning, and still want wine.

You can still love the idea of having a glass of wine while you're cooking Thanksgiving dinner. You can still imagine sitting around the table with everyone laughing and drinking. You can still feel like something is going to be missing if you don't participate in drinking. And sometimes we interpret those feelings as evidence that we're not ready. But are they? Or are they simply evidence that alcohol has been part of your life for such a long time, and you haven't had many opportunities to experience those situations differently? Because those are two very different things.

Client Story: Starting With Five Days, Not Forever

I want to tell you about a conversation that I had with a woman that I was coaching during last year's holiday season. She had reached a point where she knew she wanted to stop drinking. She wasn't happy with how much she was drinking, and she'd realized that trying to moderate wasn't giving her the results she wanted, because she continued to think about drinking and she was always breaking the rules she had created as part of her moderation plan. And this happens all the time. This is really normal with most of my clients.

So when we started talking about quitting completely, she admitted that the idea really scared her. And I want you to think about that for a second. Here's a woman who knows what she wants. She wants to stop drinking. She's unhappy with the way things are going. But the thought of actually doing it is frightening.

Now, I could have spent our session trying to convince her that life without alcohol is wonderful. I could have told her how great she was gonna feel. I could have talked about all the benefits of not drinking, and those things are true for me. But that wasn't going to solve the problem she was facing. Because her problem wasn't that she didn't understand the benefits. Her problem was that she was afraid of what she was giving up. Alcohol had become familiar for her. It was something she turned to when she wanted to relax, when she was stressed out, when she was bored, and when she wanted to feel better. And now she was contemplating removing something that had been part of how she navigated her life. So of course that is going to feel intimidating.

So rather than asking her to make a commitment about the rest of her life, we brought the conversation back to what she could do next. What can we do in the short term? What would feel like a meaningful first milestone? So we talked about beginning with five days. Five days. Not forever, not the rest of the holiday season, just five days.

And then we talked about the things that might get in her way, because she had holiday events coming up. There were social situations where she was accustomed to drinking. She was worried about feeling awkward. She was worried about what other people might think. And so we started looking at those situations individually.

Now, this is the part that I want you to pay attention to. We weren't trying to figure out how she was going to live the rest of her life without alcohol. We were figuring out how she was going to approach the next few days. What would she do if she wanted wine? What would she do if she went to a social event? Did she actually want to attend that event? Was she saying yes to it because she felt like she had to, or because there was drinking there? Could she give herself permission to skip it if it felt like too much right now? And if she did decide to go, how could she prepare?

Make Your First Drink Non-Alcoholic

So one of the strategies we discussed was committing to making her first drink non-alcoholic. This is a common tactic that I use with my clients, because sometimes that first moment, when everybody is getting a drink and you're standing there trying to decide what to do, is where the old routine takes over. So we needed to interrupt that pattern. You make the decision beforehand. Know what you're going to order or bring for that first drink, and give yourself the opportunity to experience the situation differently. And this is what I mean when I say practice.

And I think this is where women sometimes make the process harder than it needs to be. They take a decision about tonight and turn it into a decision about forever. They take a holiday party and turn it into a prediction about every single social event they're ever going to attend. They take one uncomfortable moment and imagine an entire lifetime of discomfort. And then they wonder why they feel overwhelmed. Well, of course you feel overwhelmed. You're trying to solve every possible future situation before you even practice the first one.

What Are You Actually Waiting For?

So let's talk about that. Because when you say you're not ready, I want you to ask yourself, what am I actually waiting for? Are you waiting until you stop wanting wine? Are you waiting until you know you can go to a restaurant and not miss it? Are you waiting until your husband decides to quit too? Are you waiting until your social calendar is empty, or until work isn't stressful, or until you feel completely confident that you can follow through? Because if that's what readiness means to you, you might be waiting a very long time.

Confidence Comes From Experience, Not Before It

And I think there's a really important distinction here. Confidence is not necessarily something that you have before you begin. Confidence is something that you develop through experience. Think about the things you've accomplished in your life. Maybe you've built a really successful career. Maybe you've started a business, raised children, taken on something that felt completely outside your comfort zone. Did you know exactly how it was going to go before you started? Probably not.

You learned, you made decisions, you figured things out, you made mistakes, you adjusted. And over time, you developed confidence in your ability to handle those situations. But when it comes to drinking, we expect ourselves to have all of the confidence before we take the first step. And I think that's backwards. Because how are you supposed to know what an alcohol-free Thanksgiving feels like if you've never experienced one? How are you supposed to know whether you enjoy a holiday party without drinking if you've never given yourself a chance to find out? You can imagine it, you can worry about it, you can come up with a hundred reasons why it might be uncomfortable, but you don't actually know.

And I want you to consider how much of your decision-making is based on things you haven't experienced yet. You might be telling yourself, Thanksgiving won't be as much fun without wine. But how do you know? You might be telling yourself, I'll feel left out if everybody else is drinking. But how do you know that's what the whole evening will feel like? You might be saying, I won't be able to relax. But what if you discover another way to relax?

And I'm not saying that every experience is going to be wonderful. You will feel awkward in the beginning. Sometimes somebody will ask you why you're not drinking. Sometimes you might really want wine. And sometimes you might discover that you don't actually enjoy a particular event as much as you thought you did. That is information too. I want you to have those experiences so that you can make decisions based on what you've learned, rather than what you're afraid might happen.

How to Say No to a Drink Without Making Excuses

And this brings me to another conversation I had with a woman I was coaching during this same time period. This one is a little bit different. She had been working on changing her drinking habits, and we were talking about upcoming family gatherings. Wine was a big part of those gatherings, and she was anticipating those familiar moments when somebody would offer her a glass.

Now, the obvious advice might be, just tell them you're not drinking. But that's not always the whole problem. Because sometimes the woman isn't just worried about saying no. She's worried about what saying no means. What are they gonna think? Are they going to ask questions? Will they make a big deal out of it? Will they think I have a problem? Will I have to explain myself?

And what I wanted her to understand is that she could decide how she wanted to show up before she even got there. She didn't have to invent an excuse. She didn't have to make up a story about taking medication or being on some special diet. She could choose a response that felt truthful to her.

And I also want to talk about why it's so important that your response feels truthful and natural to you. It has to feel good to say. We can't even say little white lies here, because even a little lie is gonna make you not feel good. Through this process, we're also strengthening our inner integrity. We say what we mean and we mean what we say. Inner integrity means that we're truthful and honest. But that doesn't mean that you need to blurt out every single reason why you want to quit drinking and why it's important to you.

You could say something like, I haven't been drinking lately and I'm feeling really good, so I'm just gonna stick with that. And that's it. And if someone offers again: no thanks, I'm good. You don't owe everybody a detailed explanation about your relationship with alcohol. But you can practice being the woman who makes a decision and communicates it. And I think that's really important, because sometimes we spend so much time worrying about how other people are going to respond that we forget we're allowed to have preferences. We're allowed to make choices. We're allowed to do something differently.

It's Okay if People Notice You're Not Drinking

Just because something has always been one way doesn't mean that's the way it has to be anymore. We're allowed to change the way we participate in traditions. So let me tell you something. If you've been drinking wine at Thanksgiving for 20 years, people might notice that you're not this year. And that's okay. People notice when we change things. That doesn't mean that you've made the wrong decision, and it doesn't mean that you have to convince them to understand it. You can be kind, you can be friendly, you can be completely comfortable with your decision, even if somebody else finds it surprising. And that comfort develops with practice.

The Calendar Will Never Be Clear: My Yoga Teacher Training Story

I want to bring you into my own experience for a minute, because I remember how much mental energy I used to spend thinking about drinking. I talk about this all the time. You get so much mental capacity back when alcohol is just not running the show anymore. And one of the things that really stands out to me now is how alcohol could become the focus of an experience that was supposed to be about something else.

I went through a nine-month yoga teacher training program when I was still drinking. Nine months. Something I did thinking it would completely change my relationship with alcohol. This was something I was doing because I really cared about my health and well-being. I was learning, I was growing, I was spending time doing something meaningful to me. I was meeting a lot of new, like-minded people. And yet alcohol was still part of the conversation in my head. Oh my gosh, I have my yoga teacher training this whole weekend. When am I gonna be able to drink? What's happening afterward? How will drinking fit into these plans?

And I remember how uncomfortable it was to recognize that, because here I was doing something that was supposed to be good for me, and I was still organizing part of my life around alcohol. And I think that's a really important thing to notice. Because sometimes we assume that we're going to feel ready to quit drinking when life gets less stressful, or when we have fewer obligations, or when the calendar is clear. But the calendar is never going to be completely clear. There's always something.

There's Thanksgiving, there's Christmas, there's a birthday, there's a vacation, there's a wedding, there's a work event, there's a Friday night, there's a Tuesday when you've had a really difficult day. And if you're waiting until alcohol is no longer associated with anything in your life, you're gonna have a hard time finding that date. Because part of what we're doing when we stop drinking is learning how to experience those things differently. And you can't learn that without having the experiences.

You Don't Have to Attend Every Holiday Event

Now, before we get into what I want you to do for Thanksgiving, I want to make one thing clear. I am not suggesting that everybody should jump into the most difficult social situation they can think of just to prove that they can do it. Sometimes the smartest decision is to not go.

I have coached women who were very early in the process of quitting drinking, and we talked about upcoming events where alcohol was going to be a major part of the experience. And sometimes we considered whether attending the event was actually the best decision for them at that moment. Because you can practice making decisions that support your goals without forcing yourself into every possible situation. Maybe this year you don't stay until midnight. Maybe you go to dinner and leave right after dessert. Maybe you host something smaller. Maybe you skip the gathering where you know you're going to feel pressured. Maybe you decide Thanksgiving is a great opportunity to try something new.

The point is that you're making the decision intentionally. You're thinking about what matters to you, and then you're choosing how you want to participate. This is a major part of rebuilding your self-trust. And if you're drinking heavily or regularly enough that stopping could cause withdrawal, please talk with a medical professional about doing so safely. That comes before any holiday experiment.

How to Prepare for an Alcohol-Free Thanksgiving

So now let's talk about Thanksgiving specifically, because it's November 11th as this episode is coming out, and Thanksgiving is just a couple weeks away. You have two weeks. And I want you to imagine that you decide you're going to experience Thanksgiving without alcohol this year. What would you need to prepare?

Name What You're Actually Afraid Of

So first, I want you to think about what you're afraid of, and be really specific. Don't just say, I'm afraid it won't be fun, or, I'm afraid people will ask. What does that mean? Are you afraid that you're going to be bored? Are you afraid that you're going to feel left out? Are you afraid you'll be uncomfortable around your family? Are you afraid that you'll have to explain yourself? Are you afraid you'll want wine so badly that you won't enjoy the day? Because once we understand the actual concern, we can start figuring out how to address it.

Rehearse What You'll Say When Someone Offers You Wine

Let's say you're worried about being offered wine. Okay, what do you want to say? Practice saying it out loud. I know that might feel a little silly, but do it. Do it in the mirror. I used to say things to myself in the mirror while I was brushing my teeth every single morning in early sobriety, and I still do it today. So I know that might sound silly, but just do it, because when the moment comes, you won't have to figure it out while someone is standing there holding a bottle of wine in front of you.

The brain doesn't know the difference between reality and imagination. So if you're imagining it, if you're doing this mental rehearsal and planning it out, that helps your brain feel like the moment is familiar when you're in the live situation.

So, okay, let's say you're worried about feeling left out. What would help you feel included? Maybe it's having a special alcohol-free drink that you enjoy, not just seltzer water, but something that feels elevated and special. Maybe it's talking to your husband or your partner beforehand and letting him know what you're doing. I'm not drinking tonight, FYI. I'm bringing this non-alcoholic sparkling rosé, and this is what I'm planning to drink tonight. Maybe it's reminding yourself that you're there to spend time with people that you care about, or finding something else about the day to look forward to.

What to Do When You Want Wine at Thanksgiving

Okay, let's say you're worried about wanting wine. What will you do when that thought comes up? Because it might. You might be standing in the kitchen, smelling the food, hearing everybody talking, and suddenly think, oh my gosh, I would love a glass of wine right now. And here's something I want you to remember. You can have that thought and not act on it. You can acknowledge it. You can say, yep, wine sounds good right now. And then you can remind yourself, but I decided that I want to experience Thanksgiving differently this year. And you can move on to whatever you were doing.

Maybe you get yourself something else to drink. Maybe you step outside for a few minutes. Maybe you help with dinner. Maybe you have a conversation with somebody. Maybe you text somebody who's supporting you. You're practicing responding differently to a familiar thought. And the more often you practice, the more evidence you collect.

Play the Tape Forward

Now I want to give you another strategy that I use in my coaching. This is a very common practice when you're trying to quit drinking, and it's called playing the tape forward. This worked really well for me when I was quitting drinking. Because when I wanted wine, my brain was usually focused on the beginning of the experience. The first glass, that feeling of relaxing, the shoulders dropping, the anticipation, the idea of having a nice evening. But I knew what usually happened after that. I knew that one glass always turned into more. I knew how I would feel when I went to bed. I knew what the next morning would look like.

So rather than only thinking about the first 20 minutes, I would think about the entire experience. The fight that would inevitably happen with my husband. Waking up on Black Friday wanting to shop, but having a splitting headache and not being able to. And so I want you to try that with Thanksgiving. When you're imagining that glass of wine, don't stop the story there. Keep going. What usually happens next? Do you usually have another glass? Do you keep drinking throughout the whole afternoon and evening? How do you feel after dinner? How do you sleep? How do you feel Friday morning?

And then I want you to imagine the alternative. Imagine you enjoy Thanksgiving without drinking. You have dinner, you spend time with your family. With the people that you normally fight or disagree with, maybe there's just a mild bicker instead of an all-out blowout. You go to bed, and you wake up on Friday morning. How do you want to feel? I want you to really think about that. Maybe you want to wake up early and have coffee in a quiet house. Maybe you want to go for a walk. Maybe you want to go shopping. Maybe you want to spend the morning relaxing, or enjoy the fact that you have a long weekend ahead of you.

Whatever it is, I want you to consider that you're making a decision for Friday morning too, not just Thanksgiving Day. Because the experience doesn't end when Thanksgiving dinner is over. And I think that's something we can easily forget when we're focused on just the first glass of wine in front of us.

Identity, Practice and Trust This Holiday Season

So now let's connect all of this to my Identity, Practice, Trust method, because this is exactly how I approach this work. We start with identity. Who are you becoming? And I don't mean that you need to wake up tomorrow and announce that you're a completely different person. I mean that you start considering how the woman you want to become makes decisions.

Maybe she's a woman who prioritizes feeling good. Maybe she's a woman who follows through on the commitments she makes to herself. Maybe she's a woman who doesn't need wine to enjoy Thanksgiving. Maybe she's a woman who can say no without explaining herself to everybody. Whew, I know that one's tough. Maybe she's a woman who is willing to try something new, even when she isn't completely certain about how it's going to go. What does that woman value? What matters to her? How does she want to feel? Because when we're constantly focused on what we're giving up, we can really lose sight of what we're actually moving toward. And I want you to have something meaningful to move toward.

Then comes practice, and this is where we get highly specific. You're not just thinking about the woman you want to become. You're giving yourself opportunities to act like her. You make a plan, you decide what you're going to drink, you think about the situations that might be challenging, you decide how you're going to respond. You practice having conversations. You practice saying no. You practice being uncomfortable without immediately trying to change how you feel. And you practice noticing what happens when you follow through. That's the best part.

And I want to emphasize this word, practice. Because I think successful women can be really hard on themselves when they don't immediately know how to do something. You're used to being competent. You're used to figuring everything out. You're used to people relying on you. And then you decide that you want to do something about your drinking. You want to quit for good, or you want to start by taking a break. And suddenly you feel like a beginner. You don't know how to handle certain situations. You don't know what to say. You don't know how to relax without that glass of wine. You don't know whether you're going to enjoy things. And that can feel incredibly uncomfortable. But being a beginner is part of learning something new. You're developing skills, you're collecting experiences, you're figuring out what works, and you get better through practice.

Then comes trust. And this is what I really want for you, because self-trust develops when you start collecting evidence that you can follow through. You make a decision, you prepare, you follow through, and then afterward you recognize what you did. Maybe you go to Thanksgiving and you don't drink. And when you wake up on Friday morning, you think, oh my God, I did it. Not because you survived some horrible experience, but because you made a decision that mattered to you and you followed through.

Maybe you discover that Thanksgiving was actually really enjoyable. Maybe you discover that the first hour was awkward, but then you relaxed and settled in. Maybe you discover that nobody cared what you were drinking. Maybe you discover that someone did ask you about it, and you handled the conversation. Maybe you discover that you preferred leaving earlier. Whatever happens, you learned something, and that becomes evidence. And the next time you're invited to a dinner party, you're not starting from zero. You're no longer a beginner.

My First Alcohol-Free Thanksgiving

I will share that on my very first alcohol-free Thanksgiving, we went to my in-laws'. I typically had a lot of stress going into visiting my in-laws and going into Thanksgiving. It's three days of my husband and me visiting his family, and it's go, go, go the whole time, and I would be so tired. And that very first time, I actually found myself more relaxed, because the alcohol was out of my system and I just felt a lot less anxious about it. So much more calm.

And coming home, my husband said to me, you seemed a lot more at ease this Thanksgiving. And it's because I used to be so uptight all the time, feeling like I was walking on eggshells, or just trying to check out of moments that were really important. So I promise you, it's not going to be however bad you think it's going to be. I want you to knock that down by about 85%.

And then at that next dinner party, remember, you're no longer a beginner. You have experience to draw from. You can say, I've done something like this before. And this is how self-trust grows: one experience at a time.

Afraid to Try Again After Drinking Again?

Now, there's another part of this conversation that I want to address, because I know there are women listening who have tried to quit drinking before. Maybe you've done Dry January. Maybe you've taken 30-day breaks. Maybe you've gone weeks or months without alcohol, and then you started drinking again. And now you're afraid to try, because you're worried that you'll disappoint yourself.

I understand that. But I want you to consider what happens when you allow that fear to make the decision for you. You stop giving yourself opportunities to do something different. You keep drinking because you're afraid that you're not going to be able to stop again. And then every morning that you wake up frustrated, you have another experience that reinforces the belief that you can't trust yourself.

Now, that is a very difficult place to be, and I don't want you to stay there. Because self-trust isn't something that you have to wait around hoping will magically appear. It's something that you can work on. You can make smaller commitments. You can prepare, you can practice, you can notice your progress. And if something doesn't go according to plan, you can look at what happened and learn from it.

I was talking with a woman in one of my coaching sessions the other day about this very idea. One of the things we discussed was measuring progress against where she had been, rather than comparing herself to some imagined future version of herself who never thinks about drinking anymore. Because if you only measure yourself against that future version, you can overlook all of the progress that you're making right now. Maybe you went to a social event and had your first drink non-alcoholic. Maybe you made it through an evening you would normally have spent drinking. Maybe you spoke up about what you wanted. Maybe you asked for support. Maybe you made a decision that felt really uncomfortable and followed through. All of those things count. Those are experiences that you can build on.

And this is why I don't want you to get caught up in the idea that you have to do everything perfectly, because you don't. You just have to be willing to learn. And I want you to think about how different that is from the way you may have approached drinking in the past. Maybe you've been telling yourself, I'm going to quit when I know I can do it. But how do you get that evidence if you don't give yourself a chance? Maybe you've been telling yourself, I'm going to quit when I stop wanting wine, or when my social calendar is clear. But what if learning how to respond to wanting wine is part of the process? Maybe you've been telling yourself, I'm going to quit when the timing is better. But what if the timing doesn't have to be perfect for you to start making progress?

I think that's the opportunity we have right now. Because Thanksgiving is coming whether you drink or not. Christmas is coming whether you drink or not. The holidays are going to happen, and you get to decide how you want to experience them. You can spend the next several weeks doing what you've always done, and if that's what you choose, that's your decision. But if you're listening to this because you're tired of the way drinking is going, I want you to know that you have another option. You can start exploring something different now.

And you can do it one decision at a time. You don't have to figure out Christmas Day today. You don't have to figure out New Year's Eve today. You don't have to figure out every vacation, wedding, birthday, and anniversary for the rest of your life. You can start with Thanksgiving. Or you can even start with tonight.

3 Questions to Ask Yourself Before the Holidays

So here's what I want you to do. I want you to ask yourself these three questions.

First: what am I waiting for? Be really specific. What do you think needs to happen before you're going to feel ready? And is that something you can actually know before you begin?

Second: what is one experience I'm willing to try differently? Maybe it's Thanksgiving. Maybe it's dinner out with your husband. Maybe it's just a Friday night at home. Maybe it's a holiday party. I want you to choose something, and I want you to think about what you need to do to prepare for it.

Third: what do I want to learn from that experience? Not just whether you can get through it. Anybody can get through one thing with willpower, okay? So I don't want you to think about it that way. I want you to think about what you want to discover. Do you want to know whether you can have fun without wine? Whether you can relax? Whether you can say no, whether you can wake up feeling good, whether you can follow through? Because I want you to approach this with curiosity. You are learning something about yourself. And I think that is a much more useful place to begin than demanding that you feel completely confident before you take the first step.

Give Yourself an Alcohol-Free Thanksgiving to Find Out

Okay, I want to bring us back to Thanksgiving really quick, because I think there's something really meaningful about giving yourself the opportunity to have a different holiday. You already know what it's like to drink on Thanksgiving. You already know what it's like to pour that first glass of wine, and you already know what it's like to have another. You know what it's like to spend the afternoon drinking. You know what it's like to go to bed afterward, and you know what Friday morning feels like. You've had that experience, probably more than once.

But what you might not know is what Thanksgiving feels like when you don't drink. What's it like to be completely present? What's it like to enjoy the food and the conversation without thinking about the next glass? What's it like to go to bed feeling good? What's it like to wake up Friday morning and realize you followed through on something that mattered to you? And I think you deserve the opportunity to find out. Not because you're supposed to have some perfect alcohol-free holiday, and not because you need to prove anything to anybody. Because you're curious about what your life could feel like, and because you already know what the alternative feels like. You already have that information.

I want you to think about the woman you could be on Friday morning. Maybe she's sitting with her coffee, looking out the window. She's getting ready to go for a walk, she's giggling with her family over breakfast. Maybe she's doing absolutely nothing, but she feels good. And she knows that the day before, she made a decision and she followed through. That's evidence, my friend. That's the beginning of building trust in yourself. And that is something worth exploring.

So if you've been waiting until January, I want you to reconsider. What are you really waiting for? Because you might not need another two months of thinking about this. You might need an experience. One that gives you information that you do not have yet. One that helps you see yourself differently. One that shows you what's possible when you do something that you've been putting off. And maybe that experience is Thanksgiving. Maybe it's tonight. Maybe it's this weekend. You get to decide.

But please don't assume that you have to feel completely ready before you can begin. You can start with uncertainty. You can start with questions. And you can start while part of you still wants wine. You learn as you go, because confidence develops through experience, and self-trust develops when you practice following through. So this Thanksgiving, give yourself a chance to find out. You might just feel good AF.

Get Support Inside Feel Good AF

Okay, my friend, if you're listening to this and you're thinking, I know I want something different, but I keep talking myself out of getting started, this is exactly the kind of work that I help women do in my coaching. Through my Identity, Practice, Trust method, we look at what's keeping you stuck, figure out what you need to navigate the situations where you keep changing your mind, and start building the evidence that helps you trust yourself again. And we do it in the context of your actual life: your work, your relationships, your family, your holidays, all of it.

If you'd like to explore working together, you're gonna find information about my group and private coaching programs in the show notes. And if you know a woman who's already decided that she's going to wait until January, send her this episode. Maybe she'll decide to give herself a chance this Thanksgiving instead. Make sure that you're following Feel Good Alcohol Free. And if you've been enjoying the show, I would so, so appreciate it if you would leave a rating and a review. And don't forget to subscribe. I will see you next week. And remember, you have better things to think about than drinking.