Page 27 - How to play life to your advantage -print

Last year I decided to take a year off drinking alcohol. Shortly into my adventure I had

an experience where I totaled my car and when I got home that night, I just thought I

just wanted to drink. I just wanted to have a drink and just shut off from what was

happening. But I wasn't drinking so I realised I had to find another way to deal with it.

Which then got me thinking, what is it that I'm dealing with?

I sat there that night. I sat with myself. What I realised was that I was feeling

discomfort. Since that initial night of discomfort, I came to realise that pretty much

most of our emotional issues arise from avoiding the feeling of discomfort. We don’t

like to feel uncomfortable. In fact, most of us will do just about anything to avoid

feeling uncomfortable.

That's all it is. The thing that makes you feel like drinking. The thing that makes you

feel like shopping too much. The thing that makes you feel like eating too much. It's

called discomfort and the truth is you have a choice. You can choose to embrace your

discomfort.

You can choose to sit with your discomfort. You can give your discomfort space. You

can listen to what your discomfort is telling you.

It is amazing when you start listening to your discomfort, you'll start hearing what

message it is telling you. In fact what you might be surprised to find is that through

the act of holding yourself and self-soothing, that's right, self-soothing is something

that many of us have never learnt how to do, but if you choose to sit there with your

discomfort and hold it in your mind. Look at your discomfort and tell your discomfort

that you're there for it. That you see it, that you hear it, that you are listening to what

26