Cultivating Confidence

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One of the things that people often feel reluctant to let go of when they quit drinking is the quick confidence boost that alcohol seems to offer them.

Confidence is an important thing to have in life. It allows us to go for the things we want. Plus, confidence feels good. Who among us doesn't like to feel that sturdy sense of certainty and self-assurance?

But the tricky thing is, confidence is not the natural feeling for most of us when we face something new or uncertain. Instead, most of us experience self-doubt; we worry we’ll fall short and no matter how hard we try, there seems to be little we can do to get rid of the butterflies in our stomachs.

Don’t we wish that there were a potion that we could just take a big sip of, and it would magically give us the confidence boost we need? That’s why it can almost feel like a Christmas wish came true when we discover alcohol and the quick confidence boost it seems to offer. And even when we decide to let go of alcohol, we miss the confidence boost we get from it.

Unexamined Belief: "Alcohol helps me feel more confident"

Behind the things we miss about alcohol, there is often a spoken or unspoken belief we hold about what alcohol can do for us. In what I call the Invisible Drinking Loop, these unexamined beliefs are one of the hidden forces that often keep pulling a person back to an unhealthy drinking pattern.

These beliefs are often formed through observation and personal experience. For example, perhaps you’ve learned to associate alcohol with liquid courage after watching your favourite character on TV take a big swig of whiskey before walking up to an........

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