You are listening to the Take a Break podcast with Rachel Hart episode 324.

Whether you want to drink less or stop drinking, this podcast will help you change the habit from the inside out.

We're challenging conventional wisdom about why people drink and why it can be hard to resist temptation.

No labels, no judgment, just practical tools to take control of your desire and stop worrying about your drinking.

Now here's your host, Rachel Hart.

All right everybody, welcome back.

We are talking today about preventing the backslide.

This is a topic that I have a lot of familiarity with in my own personal life and the work that I did to change my relationship with alcohol.

But I also work on this all the time inside Take a Break inside the membership.

So one of the things that everyone will work on at some point when say join is undertaking a 30 day challenge.

Some people are going to start off in that first week they want to get started.

Some people are going to wait a month or more before they feel ready to do it.

But the 30 day challenge is really about going all in on the tools that I teach all in on using the think feel like cycle all in on starting to relate to your urges and excuses in a different way.

And also all in on the process we use inside Take a Break called the one two three process this idea that in order to change the habit you need to repeat the same three steps over and over and over.

You got to get curious you got to try out new tools and you have to always assess and adjust what is working and what isn't.

And it's that step number three where so many people get stuck where I watch people start the challenge and it's going well and they're happy with their progress and then all the sudden they give into an urge.

Maybe they had an unexpected event come up maybe they had a crappy day at work maybe their kids are driving them nuts maybe they're just tired of saying no they give into the urge.

And so often they then are faced with backsliding.

Now one of the pieces that is so important to understand is why that backslide happens because if you don't understand why it happens it's very hard to intervene with it.

And it can look a lot of different ways it can look like you know I'm not drinking this week and then Thursday rules around and you break your commitment and you decide to drink.

And then all of a sudden it's like I drink Friday and I drink Saturday and I drink Sunday you know and then Monday comes around and you kind of decide okay now I got to like get back in the saddle I got to get you know back on track.

It can go on for longer right sometimes people are doing this work and they're like okay well you know it's like the 23rd I'm pretty close to the end of the month and I blew it so let's just wait until we get to the new month.

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