Welcome To The Advent Series

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Welcome to day one of your mindful drinking audio advent calendar with me, Denise Hamilton Mace, your mindful drinking mentor. It is day one of December. We are officially inside the madness and mayhem of festive frivolity. Now, if you have signed up to the mindful drinking advent calendar, you will have received your first door this morning. And if you haven't, there is still time to sign up. But as I've mentioned before, the podcast, the Mindful Drinking and Moderation in Midlife podcast, is going daily in December. This is your audio advent to help you through the biggest drinking season of the year. Now, each day between now and Christmas Day, I will be sharing a shorter episode with you to go through some of the stuff that we're all going to be facing this December when it comes to wanting to drink more mindfully through Christmas, to perhaps take a sober curious approach to the festivities, to maybe just wanting to not put a label on it, not have to give it a name, not have to set any rules, but just know that we want to drink a little bit less, or we want to drink a little bit differently, or we want things to be a bit different this year. Because if you're anything like me, and because you're listening, there's a chance that you are, you've had some pretty wild Christmases, right? Because it is just three to six, depending on when you start, where you are in the world, and how intensely you go. Comes the eating badly, comes the not getting good sleep, comes the sex, drugs, and rock and roll of all of it. So there's so much going on at this time of year that sometimes, sometimes, you just need a little bit of space to take a breath, to take a moment, to have a think about what you're actually doing, why you're doing it, and what you want to get out of this time. Now, as you know, this podcast is not about telling you that you're not allowed to have a drink. If you want to raise a glass this December, have at it. I want you to have the best Christmas, but I want you to have it on your own terms. And that means drinking when you want to drink, not because you feel like you have to drink, or because you're doing it on autopilot, or you're doing it because everybody else is doing it and you don't want to feel left out. So, day one today, uh, that's the introduction. I won't do that long introduction for every day, but just in case you had missed the previous episodes that told you a little bit about what's going on, now you know where we're at. So, day one on our mindful drinking advent is all about setting our intention for the season. Now, as I just mentioned, I want you to have choices this Christmas. I want you to be able to have a festive season on your own terms. So before December sweeps you up into its uh its chaos and it's it's relentless ongoing of events and parties

Why Intentions Matter This Month

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and friends and family and restaurants and dinners and drinks and late nights and all the other things that you should and shouldn't be doing. Um, I really want you to take a moment today to set your intention for how this month is going to play out for you. Now, it's up to you how you want to set your intention. You might be the kind of person who likes to meditate on things. You might be the kind of person who likes to journal and write things down. You might be the type of person who likes to go for a long walk in the park and just think things through. Whatever it is that you do doesn't matter. The format in which you do this isn't what's important. What's important is that you do do this. So, what I would like you to do, either at the end of this episode, or you can press pause now, whatever feels most comfortable to you, is I want you to take some time to have a think about how you want to show up and how you want to be present over the next few days. This isn't just about alcohol, this is about you and making sure that you have the best time because you understand what you want to get out of the season. So I want you to take a couple of moments and have a think. This isn't about setting yourself rigid rules, this isn't about punishing yourself, this is not about restricting yourself, but I do want you to make a quiet agreement with yourself right now, today, in this moment, about how you want to move through the next few weeks. Maybe you set yourself some guiding mantras, maybe you set yourself some frameworks, maybe it's just a general understanding of what's really important to you. Because if you understand what's important to you at this time, it's much easier to keep it in your field of vision and to work towards it than to just put it in the back of your mind and never think about it. So maybe your guiding thoughts are things like being present is better than being perfect. Okay. If you have an event to go to uh and you don't have the perfect outfit, you don't have the best Christmas jumper, which was always, for some reason, always a big stress for me is making sure I had the right hilarious Christmas jumper. Uh, and it was so inconsequential. I have no idea to this day why I put so much pressure on it. But being present is so much more important than being perfect. Maybe it's for you that you do want to set some guidelines around how you'll be drinking when you go to certain events. Perhaps you know that your company workdo is a hotbed of uh craziness and uh illicit kisses under the mistletoe and all sorts of other uh Christmas shenanigans. And so maybe you want to set yourself some uh guide rails about how you participate in those events.

Craft Your Personal Guiding Sentence

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And maybe it is zebra striping where you alternate between an alcohol full and an alcohol-free drink each time. Maybe it is bookending where you start and end your evening with an alcohol-free drink, but you allow yourself a couple of alcohol full ones in between. Maybe it is coasting, where you stick to mid-strength drinks throughout the evening. Maybe it's pacing, where you say to yourself, I'm only going to have uh one alcoholic drink per hour, and the rest of the time they'll be alcohol free. There are lots of ways for you to do this. I can't tell you which one is going to be best because everybody is different and we all have our own path to a life less intoxicated, even at this busy Christmas time. So I want you to think about how you want to show up over the next few weeks. I want you to write it down somewhere. Like I said, either in your journal, you can put it on your phone, stick it to the mirror, uh, wherever is good for you. But write it down in one sentence. Don't make this overcomplicated. This isn't about writing out your personal manifesto. But one sentence, this December, I want to feel and stick it somewhere that you're going to see it. Then I want you to create some space for yourself that you are going to allow yourself to occupy every day on your own so that you have a moment to think for yourself about how things are going and how you're feeling, and to remind yourself of your sentence, of your your your guiding thought, of what you're trying to achieve. Remind yourself of what you want and how you want to feel this December and how you want to come out the end of it feeling. And every day, just take some time to sit in that moment and recognize if you are serving yourself, if you're working towards what it is that you want, or whether you are making choices that may be taking you away from what you want. Now, some people will call this meditating, uh, I just call it thinking. You might decide to do it in a yoga moment, you might decide to do it when you're having your coffee. The point is, it doesn't really matter. Find a way to do it your way. I I'm I'm definitely not one of those everything has to be done a certain way, because what's successful for me isn't gonna be successful for you, and what's successful for you might not work for me. So find your own space, find your own time, find your own thoughts, sit in them, acknowledge them, action them, and treat yourself like you deserve to be treated this year because the only way you're gonna get through a December the way you want it is to recognize that you deserve it and you are the only person who can give it to you. Okay, that's it for today. I will see you tomorrow for the Mindful Drinking Advent day two, and until then, cheers to a Christmas less intoxicated.