You are listening to the Take a Break podcast with Rachel Hart episode 44.

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.

Hello everybody! If you are in the US, if you're listening in the United States, this is Thanksgiving Week.

Yes, it is my favorite holiday. I love Thanksgiving. We get to sit down and be with our family and be grateful for everything we have in life and be thankful and get into a ton of arguments.

I mean, I really do love Thanksgiving. But you know, the holidays, it tends to be a time where we're very excited for the holiday season and we're also a little apprehensive because you put all the family in the room together.

And sometimes you don't leave the room unscathed. And I have so many people that I work with who will say, I cannot imagine not being able to drink or taking a break during the holidays.

How would I possibly deal with my family? What would I do? That would just be torture. Right? I have to have a glass of wine or I have to have a beer if I'm going to make it through the holidays.

So, what I want to offer to you is that, of course, a decision to drink is always yours and you can certainly rely on a drink as your way to deal with family stress and tension and arguments during the holidays or you can try something different.

And if you right now are taking a break, trying something different is going to be incredibly important. So, what most people do in preparation for the holidays is they sit back and they think, I really hope that this year is different.

I really, really hope that this year is not a repeat of what has happened in the past.

And then the holidays happen and normally things turn out to be the same. So, why is that? Why does that happen? Why do so many of us sit back and be like, oh, I really hope this year is different?

Look, please let it be different. And then it's the same. Now, the reason that it happens is because there is a very big difference, a huge difference in fact between hoping and planning for a different outcome.

Now, I want you to think about this, hoping for a different outcome and planning for a different outcome. When it comes to the holidays, how often have you been in the first camp, how often have you been hoping?

Really hope it goes differently. Versus how often have you been planning, how often have you been taking action for a different outcome? That is a very different camp to be in planning versus hoping.

Hoping, it's kind of like dreaming, right? Dreaming that something different will happen or wishing for a different outcome. And the problem with this is that hoping and dreaming and wishing, they're all super passive.

Now, you may feel like you're taking action because you are looking into the future in your mind and thinking thoughts where you hope that it could be different or you dream it could be different, but you aren't really taking action.

Like, what are you actually doing other than just crossing your fingers? You're really just spending that split second of a moment every time you think of the holidays and thinking to yourself, yeah, I hope this year is different and then you move on, right? And then you go about your day.

So the other problem is that hoping and dreaming and wishing, they're all safe, they're super comfortable, there's no risk involved because you're not really doing anything.

You're just crossing your fingers and hoping, gosh, I hope my habits don't kick in. Now, planning is different. Planning is active. It requires action. If you are making a plan, you have to on purpose identify obstacles and on purpose identify solutions and then try those solutions out and see if they work.

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