Wine, Work and Stress
Wine and work, that’s what I used to use to blot out the reality that all was not well in my relationship.
I still use those as my coping mechanisms today but realise that’s exactly what I’m doing before they become problematic.
When I’m highly stressed in any area of my life I traditionally do one of 3 things;
- Pour a glass of wine
- Work harder and longer in my day job
- Create more programmes and write more, never to be seen blogs and social media posts, for my coaching practice
Once upon a time that glass of wine would extend to the whole bottle, sometimes two! The long working hours would last until the very early hours often for weeks at a time, and the writing would become more and more wild and rambling.
These days I really do stop at just the one glass of wine. I still work harder and longer in my day job but I’ve learned how to recognise when it’s no longer effective. And I write but keep it to bullet points to return to another day if I want to expand on what I was saying.
By creating my own Blockbuster Life I haven’t stopped being me, I’ve just learned to stop the behaviours that don’t help me, and how to adapt them to create the results I want.
We all have patterns of behaviour that have become habit. But when those patterns and habits stop working for us, and become damaging or dangerous, then we need to find other ways of coping.
It took me a long time, and way too many bottles of wine, before I woke up and realised that I was the only person who could control how I was feeling, how I was coping and how I could shape the rest of my life.
I work with my clients to help them identify their patterns and either stop them or change them to create a Blockbuster Life that works so well for them they rarely fall back into their old ways of coping.