Alcoholism: A Disease of Perception; Staying Sober in Bad Times

Have you ever had a time in your life where you’re trying to stay sober and everything seems to be going okay but then some event in your life or some person in your life just turns everything upside down and you feel like you have to go drink?

That’s exactly how I felt many times!
What I’m going to do in this video is share with you

THE SECRETS that I’ve used for the last three years

TO STAY SOBER EVEN WHEN THINGS GO REALLY BAD.

 

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You see one of the things I’ve learned over the last few years of staying sober and not drinking is the fact that PERCEPTION IS EVERYTHING.

It was once said that “the map is not the territory”
Now what does he mean by the map is not the territory?

Does that mean if I get a map of Colorado, that’s not actually Colorado exactly,

what it means is that the map does not accurately describe the terrain?

The map DOES NOT accurately DESCRIBE WHAT A MOUNTAIN IS LIKE. It’s just a REPRESENTATION and what happens in our minds is we have these maps of our reality.

And these are our EXPECTATIONS, our ANTICIPATION, and PARTICIPATION; the things that we think should happen and in our minds we get things all worked up.

Let’s say you’re going for a job interview and you think you’re going to knock it out of the park. You think your credentials line up. You think the guy already wants to hire you and you find out it gets passed over by someone less competent as you.

We want to look at this and say hey this map, this representation, this notion of what I think should happen in life isn’t really what should happen in life and it’s certainly not something to drink over.

If the eye of teenage kids and teenage kids come home with all kinds of problems and if you’ve ever had a teenager or been a teenager you know that when something happens at school your life is over!

Someone breaks up with you, something bad happens, someone laughs at you and your life is seemingly over!

AND THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I MEAN BY

THE MAP IS NOT THE TERRITORY AND YOUR PERCEPTION IS NOT REALITY.

You see that teenager in that moment is acting his part or her part so dramatically that they believe it and they’re acting this part so dramatically that they believe the social circumstances in their life means their life is over.

And nothing really changes when we get older.

We get a job loss and we think our life is over. In the Great Depression people were jumping out of buildings because they thought the stock market crash meant their life was over. They thought the amount of money was worth more than their very life.

What I’m going to do in this video is
I’m going to teach you how not only did I fall prey to believing those things
but I also came out of it.

You see at some point in our life we have to wake up from the social conditioning that says life is like this, life is this way, this person is valuable, this person is not valuable, this is expensive this is not expensive.

All these things in our life add up to conditioning.

It’s all social conditioning just like that girl in the high school who thinks that everything grumbles when the social element of life goes away or life’s going to be over when that Facebook post gifts out or that thing happens.

My friends I’m here to tell you that YOU CAN BOUNCE BACK FROM JUST ABOUT ANYTHING. It all has to do with the perception in your mind of what you believe is going to happen.

What I’d like to say is the anti buckets thing in addiction you’ll hear them say life is so bad you say fuck it I’m going to drink you see the fuck-its are kind of like the perception of the high schooler saying oh life is over.

There is nothing in your life that makes life over until it’s well actually over.

Everything else is just your perception including the fuckit. There is nothing that happens in your life that is so bad that you have to drink it away because we know that drinking only makes things worse and drinking taints your perception.

DRINKING makes your PERCEPTION even WORSE.

Using whatever drug you use makes your perception even worse and in our lives we need to protect our perception.

We need to change our life philosophy and we need to say what is it that I value most if it’s money, if its fame, if it’s social status, if it’s all this other stuff then you’re probably on the wrong path and I can see why it’s very difficult to stay sober.

However if you start to adopt something new, and this is why in so many support groups they say you need a higher power well is it because we need to go and you know praise the Lord hallelujah? No. It’s because we need something bigger than ourselves.

I got to tell you right now if you’re having trouble finding something bigger than yourself your perception is out of whack and you think you’re the most important thing that God put on the earth but you’re not.

You’re only one of about eight billion people and you’re put here for some reason. Maybe it’s just to go through life and help other people. Maybe it’s just to go through life and enjoy it. Whatever it is you are not the be-all end-all.

That’s just your perception. The fact that you think your life is over because of certain things, jobs, social status, friends, boyfriend, break up, mental issues, whatever is just out of whack perception.

And the key for me is to realize I’m not that important. Doesn’t really matter. Life goes on. Life’s going to go on whether you drink or whether you don’t.

Your perception is the only thing that’s going to change
and your perception is a map, it’s not the territory.

Stop believing the lies that everything is important as important as you think it is in your mind again that’s just the map, it’s not the territory.

I hope this video has helped you and we’re going to talk some more. I’d like to hear your comments below put your comments in the box here on YouTube tell me what you think about this because perception is key.

Right you got to change your perception of life if you want to change the things that you get in life. You got to change your perception if you want to change the way that you feel. You got to change your perception if you want to stay sober.

So put your comments in the box.
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We’re going to talk to you a little bit more about perception about drinking about reality, about feelings, about unwanted thoughts, OCD and all the stuff that comes along with addiction because I got to tell you three years ago if you would have told me that I’d be sober happy living the life that I want to live I wouldn’t have believed you because I was stuck in a pit perceiving that my life was terrible when in actuality it was great.

Thanks again for watching head over to TalkSober.com.
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I’m Marcus thanks for watching and I’ll see you in the next video!