You are listening to the Take a Break podcast with Rachel Hart episode 57.

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.

Alright everybody, we are talking about a good topic today because we are talking about how to have a good time and what makes for a good time.

We're talking all about enjoyment.

Right? And the enjoyment is just a condition of having a good time of enjoying yourself.

Now here's the thing, whether or not you are enjoying yourself, whether or not you're having a good time, depends on the thoughts running through your mind while you are doing something.

Now most of you do not think about enjoyment in this way. You believe that an activity itself is either inherently enjoyable to you or it isn't.

But I want to show you that's not quite how the thing feel like cycle works.

And this is a big issue for everybody really, but it's in particular a big issue if you want to change your drinking because of course drinking and enjoyment are so often linked together.

So I have two examples that I want to give you. Examples that I think will help show you that it's not about an activity being inherently enjoyable or not, but it's about what you're thinking while you're doing that activity.

So my two examples are dancing and painting. I think both of these are perfect examples. I hear so many people say, oh I hate to dance. I don't dance. Dancing is not my thing.

Or I'm just not artistic. I've never been any good stuff like that. Like that's not something I do. I don't like it.

But here's the thing. Have you ever really watched little kids dance and paint? Right? Like when you see little kids that are dancing or painting and sometimes doing both of those at the same time, they are just like, yes, let's do this.

Moving my body is fun playing with colors is fun. Right? enjoyment is available to them because they don't yet have all these thoughts running through their mind that adults do or even older kids do.

They aren't thinking, how do I look stupid? Am I doing this right? I feel ridiculous. I don't know what I'm doing. That painting is so much better than mine. This is ugly. I'm no good. Right? Really little kids are just like, yeah.

This is great. I love it. I love moving my body. I love painting. And I know some of you will come back to me and say, yeah, but the reason I have all these questions doubting my ability, the reason why I'm questioning whether or not I'm a good dancer or whether or not I can actually paint something that looks okay is because I'm not a real dancer. I'm not a real artist.

But here is the thing that I want you to consider. A dancer is just a person who moves her body to express what she is feeling. And I'm pretty sure that all of you listening are capable of moving your body in some way to express how you are feeling.

And the same is true with an artist. Right? An artist is just a person who uses materials around her to bring her ideas to life. Now listen, you have ideas. I know you do. There are materials around you to express those ideas.

But whether or not you are willing to use them to create something, whether or not you are willing to move your body to express how you feel. Now that is a whole other story. But there is no doubt in my mind that you are capable of doing both.

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