Drinking with the boys

# Chapter 121

What is holding you back? For many people that would be bad habits and systems that are creating negative traction in their lives. I see it all the time and frankly I still experience it sometimes. When negative traction starts holding you back, you need to discern the sticking point - and honestly that is abundantly clear 95% of the time because of direct correlation. You see the negative results immediately following this poor decision, habit or process. I love beer, or at least I used to love beer. But 30 years of stepping on the scales the morning after drinking with the boys irrefutably proves that drinking adds weight. 30 years of impacted sleep after drinking with the boys (and it got worse as I got older) irrefutably proves that drinking affects my sleep in a negative way. This may be a silly example because drinking is socially expected and is incremental in its effects, and some of the smartest people I know in the world regularly abuse it!

But for me, the regular consistent negative traction that drinking with the boys was giving me, screamed “give it up!” for 30 years. There is no upside to continuing, other than the small social benefit of how others see me in a given context. Everything else about it is negative in some fashion, and still it took me 30 years to start setting aside drinking with the boys, even though it was holding me back in so many ways. Don’t be dense. If something is consistency providing negative traction, then stop. Today is always preferable to tomorrow and easier too.