Have you considered the whole picture?

"The only people who see the whole picture are the ones who step outside the frame" Salman Rushdie

For the most part, my drinking was "normal". No one looked at me and thought that I had a problem. My life was/is great. I am happily married, have two great kids, beautiful home, everyone is pretty healthy and I had an exotic sounding global marketing job.

But my outsides didn't match up with my insides. I knew that something was just not quite right.

I believed that I loved drinking. What's not to love about going out and letting loose with my friends, or relaxing at home with the family, or having a wonderful bottle of wine with dinner?

But I wasn't considering the whole picture.

I hated waking up with a headache or feeling sluggish. I hated assuming that my husband's silence meant that I had said something wrong the night before. I hated the McDonalds Big Mac part of "the hangover cure." I hated the exhausting effort of pretending that everything was fine when all I really wanted to do was crawl back into bed.

Then I decided that I needed to try something different. I pulled back and looked at it wholistically. This allowed the whole picture to come into focus.

This different perspective enabled me to see what I would gain from cutting back. Now all of a sudden, it was a completely different game.

With that flip, drinking less became liberation (from hangovers, shame, extra calories) not depravation.

Have you ever gone through this exercise? EYE OPENING!

This is the power of mindset coaching in action. 

I was able to successfully moderate for 3 years. I eventually got bored with the mental chatter over my drink plans. I decided to focus that energy towards creating a life that brings my insides and outsides much more aligned and am loving it.