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Welcome to your mindful drinking audio advent, day six from the mindful drinking and moderation in midlife podcast with me, Denise Hamilton Mace. I am your mindful drinking mentor here to help you design and build a life less intoxicated on your own terms. It is Saturday today, the first weekend of the festive season. Do you remember the time before Saturday morning hangovers became the norm? Before getting legless on Friday and recovering on Saturday was the only thing you did. On the weekends, particularly in this festive season, those days can all tend to blur into one. They all bleed into each other as the Friday night office do leads to Saturday morning recovery, which just about gives you enough time to rally for Saturday night out with your friends, which leaves Sunday as a damage control kind of day, pulling yourself back together before you begrudgingly go back to work on Monday morning and start all over again with a go on it's Christmas Monday afternoon lunchtime drink. Now, I want you to have great weekends. I want you to enjoy yourself, I want you to have fun, uh, whatever that looks like for you. And waking up on a Saturday morning with one less hangover is a great way to do that. It means that the weekend can actually feel like a break instead of a write-off. And in uh December, when the weekends are already packed, when they are precious cargo of time, a clear head is the ultimate luxury. We often say, don't we, that oh, there aren't enough hours in the day. I know I say that all the time because there really aren't. But a hangover-free Saturday morning is kind of like a cheat code in this uh little game of uh weekday, weekend, back and forth. You can claim back so much time in the morning after if you just make that more of a priority when you're in the throes of the night before. So maybe you need a little bit of motivation, a little bit of inspiration. There are some easy hacks here. Plan something special with someone you would really hate to let down. I don't just mean uh you're your best mate and you're just gonna go, you tell each other you're gonna go for a morning walk. I mean with someone that you can't get away with letting down. Maybe the kids who you've promised to take them to some god awful um kids' day out, some uh kids' theatre, uh a kids' museum, anywhere where kids are gonna be there, making a lot of noise because we all know there's nothing worse than a hangover with noisy kids. Um maybe book yourself something, forget the kids, forget about them, but book something for yourself, but make it really expensive so that if you cancel it, you lose a lot of money that you don't want to lose. Um, or maybe just commit to something that requires clarity in the morning. Um, maybe, I don't know, uh a driving test, uh, care in the community, uh donating blood, brain surgery, maybe if you do that. Um, but whatever it is, uh, you get the idea. Okay, so committing to something that really needs you to stay clear-headed. You don't have to do this every weekend, of course, but it's just that little extra incentive that sometimes we need to help us with our decision-making processes the night before. Now, don't forget to go and check out today's Advent calendar email. When you open that door, you'll find my recommendations uh for those morning after drinks that you can enjoy when you don't need it to be the hair of the dog. You can still access the mindful drinking advent. Uh, just go to mindfuldrinkingadvent.com or click the link in the show notes. I'll see you tomorrow for day seven. And until then, cheers to a Christmas less intoxicated.