You’ll be surprised at how much you can learn from your own words.
“Journal writing, when it becomes a ritual for transformation, is not only life-changing but life-expanding.” — Jen Williamson
The decision to put one’s thoughts to paper is one of the best anyone can actually make.
In a world filled with tremendous complexity, we often wonder why we do things and what compelled us to make decisions that don’t seem to serve us in any capacity.
This realization has confused many since the beginning of time, and it was probably upon some luck that some wise elder of the neanderthal version of ourselves decided that we would have a much better chance of not making the same mistakes twice if we wrote down our decisions and could actually remember them.
Fast forward to today and this simple truth still remains true and perhaps even more so in the journey to alcohol-consciousness.
For anyone looking to realize sobriety and to put the struggle to control their drinking behind them, there are a number of tremendous values that writing about your journey will give you.
IT HELPS YOU REMEMBER THE REASON YOU MADE THE DECISION.
Writing about your alcohol-conscious journey can serve as a defense mechanism in a lot of ways, as it will allow you to stay focused on the reason you decided to give up drinking in the first place.
Often, the decision to quit drinking is an emotional one made after a particularly bad night out or incident that may have served as a wake-up call. It may have been a major argument with a loved one or a feeling of despair one morning that you could not quite shake.
By writing about this, in the moment, and getting these feelings down on paper, you will give yourself something to come back to when you may be having a moment of questioning whether or not you should continue with your alcohol-conscious journey.
This is important because of something called the faded-effect bias, in which the further we get away from something, the more we have a tendency to forget about all the bad things related to it and only remember the good things in a nostalgic way.
This is one of the reasons that many people find themselves back in bad relationships when they swore that they would never go back.
And alcohol often is such a relationship.
By writing about this, you can revisit the emotions that you felt during that time and revisit the raw, clear reasoning that often only comes from being in a state of such despair. This will you stop believing the lies you’ve been telling yourself and look in the mirror at the truth of the situation.
Writing about this will ensure you won’t forget this feeling and will have something to turn to for reinforcement if a weak moment ever presents itself.
IT HELPS YOU ANALYZE WHAT HAS AND HASN’T WORKED.
From a practical standpoint, writing is a great way to understand where you may have made mistakes in the past and how you can prevent them in the future.
As shared, due to the faded effect-bias, we have a tendency to remember most of the good things about a situation and forget many of the bad things.
Writing about these situations will prevent that.
The journey to alcohol-conscious is just that — a journey. This means that there can be many starts and stops along the way. There can be good days and there will be not-so-good days and writing about times in which a mistake was made and what you learned from it will help if this same situation ever presents itself.
From a scientific standpoint, it can help with the identification of triggers or negative self-talk that isn’t helping your journey.
On the flip side, writing about the days that have worked well for you and yielded positive results can equally give you parameters to follow to ensure that you have more of those positive experiences in the future.
By recording these episodes and giving ourselves a history to return to for analysis, we then put ourselves much more in control as it relates to making decisions for what works for us and what doesn’t.
Everyone has their own idiosyncrasies, as it relates to how they are able to achieve and maintain their alcohol-conscious, and writing down what has worked for you will increase the chances that you will be able to discover and adhere to yours.
IT GIVES YOU A NEW IDENTITY THAT MAKES IT MUCH MORE DIFFICULT TO GO BACK
This is probably one of the strongest reasons that I personally have recognized from my writing. As I begin to write about my alcohol-conscious journey, it became a part of how I now identified myself.
By sharing my thoughts and feelings on what has worked for me in an attempt to help others, I began to see this as something that was more important than just me and my decision but a way to help so many other people out there who may also have been held back by alcohol who could use help.
Much of your writing can definitely be private and meant only for your eyes, as you continue to learn from your mistakes and analyze how to become concrete in your sobriety.
However, as you continue to see success and get to a point in which you feel that you are gaining positive momentum and strength on your journey, it would be a great idea to write about it publicly to get the word out.
This will accomplish two things.
First, it’ll make you feel good to help others by sharing the knowledge that you’ve gained over time and allow the lessons that you’ve learned to save someone else the time and energy of having to go through a particular situation themselves.
And second, as you write more and more publicly, it will make the decision to go back to drinking harder because of the feeling of not only letting down yourself but letting down others who have found strength and guidance in your words.
In a world in which there can be so many things encouraging us to drink every day, we can use as many different reasons as possible to stay vigilant, and not wanting to let down others is often a very good one.
CONCLUSION
I highly encourage all people on an alcohol-conscious journey to write about it.
Much of it can be private as you navigate your way through what works and doesn’t work to get to a place of confidence.
However, once you get to a good point in which you feel good about being able to help others learn from your mistakes, I would suggest submitting articles to our publication, as we are always looking for new writers to give a fresh perspective, strategy, or insight to help other on their journey.
We all have a story to tell and you never know how telling yours can change someone else’s life…and maybe your own.