Mindful Drinking & Moderation in Midlife: Low No Drinker Podcast

120: Willpower Won't Get You Through Christmas: 4 Steps to Change Your Drinking Beliefs

• Denise Hamilton-Mace • Episode 120

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GET READY FOR YOUR BEST (ADULT) CHRISTMAS YET & GET YOUR FREE MINDFUL DRINKING ADVENT CALENDAR AT http://mindfuldrinkingadvent.com/

The festive season isn't one massive willpower test—it's death by a thousand shots. With six weeks of relentless celebrations from Thanksgiving through New Year's, willpower alone won't cut it.

In this episode, I unpack why beliefs, not willpower, are the real key to changing your drinking habits.

I share a four-step framework for gathering evidence to challenge limiting beliefs about alcohol, celebrations, and what fun actually means.

From assessing your self-talk to testing new behaviours at family gatherings, this episode gives you practical tools to navigate the season's cumulative exhaustion and build a Christmas that serves you on your own terms, not some outdated template from the past.

0:00 Death by a Thousand Shots
1:40 Willpower Explained
3:17 What Are Beliefs?
4:47 Thoughts, Actions, Outcomes, Beliefs
8:07 Gathering Evidence
8:35 Step One: Evidence From The Past
10:53 Step Two: Look to the Future
13:57 Step Three: Field Test
16:49 Step Four: Rebuild Your Beliefs System
20:07 What Truly Sustains Change
21:11 December Dailies And Advent Calendar
22:15 Power Hour Coaching

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SPEAKER_00:

Yes, the holidays are coming. You cannot avoid them, even if you wanted to. But the real problem with this season is not Thanksgiving or Christmas Day itself. It's not even the big blowout on New Year's Eve. It's that over the next six weeks, every single week has several oh go on, it's Christmas, but it's a special occasion type moment. And by New Year's Eve, you are running on fumes, and there is still another party to go. It is the cumulative exhaustion, both physical and emotional, of never getting a break. This season is not one big test of willpower. It is death by a thousand shots, and there is only one way to defend against it. Hello, hello, and welcome to this week's episode of the Mindful Drinking and Moderation in Midlife podcast with me, Denise Hamilton Mace. I am your mindful drinking mentor, and I'm here to help you design and build a life less intoxicated on your own terms. So, how do you pace yourself through the season that never bloody stops? It all starts with what you believe about the season, about celebrations, about what fun even means. So let's start with willpower because what even is willpower anyway? What exactly do we mean when we say willpower? The first thing to note is that willpower is a finite resource. We do not have an endless supply of the stuff. Rather, it peaks in the morning and slowly drains away with each withdrawal throughout the day. That is why you often find it's so much easier to make better, uh healthier, dare I say, wiser decisions in the morning, but by the end of the day, you are inhaling the leftover crispy creams from lunch on your way to the bar for just one GNT instead of taking your ass to the gym like you promised that you would. Willpower fades. Each time you use it, your willpower depletes. And depending on things like how much you drank the night before, how good a night's sleep you've had, how cooperative the kids and the dog and the travel was in the morning, you might not even be starting your day with uh both barrels of the willpower that you would have otherwise have had. This is why you will hear me and many other people in this space tell you that willpower alone is not a viable long-term route to behavior change. Because as soon as your willpower is gone, so is whatever new behavior, new habit, new you that you are trying to build. But your belief systems, now that is here for the long run, and that's where real change has the power to take place. But making changes here is no walk in the park. Changing your belief system is not an easy task. So, where do beliefs fit in in all of this? Starting at the beginning, I want to ask you, it might seem like an obvious question, but I bet if you gave it some real thought, you'd find that it's a lot harder to put into words than you first expect. So, what are beliefs? Go on, have a think. I'll wait. Well, I won't wait, actually, but you can press pause if you want to. Um so, what did you come up with? Like, what do you think beliefs are? You might have said something like, My beliefs are how I know wrong from right, uh, they're what helped me get through the hard times. Or maybe even just more simply than that, beliefs are the things that I think are true. The clearest definition that I can uh share about what a belief is is that our beliefs are the systems of thoughts and behaviors that we have built up and reinforced over time to protect the version of life that feels most comfortable. Now, you might not necessarily agree with that, but there is a framework around beliefs that I've um I heard a really long time ago to help put this into perspective. Uh, and it goes like this our thoughts drive our actions. Our actions generate outcomes. Those outcomes reinforce our thoughts, and those thoughts solidify into beliefs. So when it comes to things like where, why, uh, the when and the how of how we drink, it has very little to do with willpower and has everything to do with our beliefs. Let me give you an example. We are talking about Christmas and the festive season. So the first line is our thoughts drive our actions. So that would be something like it's Christmas. Everybody has a drink at Christmas. It would be rude not to have a drink at Christmas. Then that leads to our actions, and those actions generate outcomes. So you start drinking, you match everyone else's drink, drink for drink. Uh, you say yes to one more, even when you don't really want to. Then that outcome reinforces our initial thought. Yeah, I'm hungover, but so is everyone else in the office today. See, you're supposed to drink at Christmas, even the boss told us to keep our glasses topped up. And then those new thoughts solidify our original beliefs. So I believe I'm doing Christmas wrong if I don't have alcohol. And it's not just for Christmas. Okay, we're we're uh two weeks, I think, from Thanksgiving. And this might be the first sort of big bash of the season for you. As I mentioned before, you know, from my accent, I am not an American, but I have a lot of listeners over there and a lot of new listeners in general as well. I'd like to take this moment to say thank you very much and welcome to all the new people who have found the show lately. It's great having you here and on the Substack. Um, I really enjoy writing and producing this show for you. But enough on that, let's focus on the topic. Um, so yeah, so Thanksgiving is the first big bash of the season for a lot of people. And that comes with a ton of family pressure. You've got your parents, and we all know the parents are just annoying. Um, you've got uh maybe annoying in-laws or demanding kids, or your spouse who maybe doesn't get it, or cousins that don't want to drink alone, whoever it is, the pressure from family, as I've said before, is so different. It's so unique. Um, you've always had a drink with them at Thanksgiving, and you've always been the first one to crack open the wine or the champagne or get the beers, and you've always been the one uh to share wild stories and crazy adventures that start with sentences like, so we were in this bar, right? Um but just because every memory that you think you have about this sort of high-pressure family get together has always gone the same way, you start to believe that it always has to go the same way, but it doesn't. What you need to do is find a way to change that belief pattern so that it works for you and not against you. So, how do you do that? In one word, you need evidence, okay? Evidence is what makes it possible to see that change can be achieved. So I've got four steps for you as to how to garner that evidence so that you can start to move towards a festive season that serves you more than it has done in the past. So, how do you gather that evidence? So, step one is about gathering evidence from the past. There was, believe it or not, there was a time before you drank the way that you do now. And even if you can't quite remember that time clearly, perhaps you've been drinking since you were a teenager, like many of us did, like I did, uh, there is still plenty of evidence out there in the here and now that contradicts the beliefs that you have been protecting so fiercely. So I want you to think have you always, always had a drink at your Thanksgiving dinner or at your Christmas dinner? Or can you remember times when you enjoyed your family's company without booze? Now I caveat this by saying that I know that all families are different and and I have to make certain assumptions in in this instance so that I can speak to as many of you as possible. But in general, I bet that if you were to think back honestly and fairly, you can find times when you enjoyed being with your family and you didn't have booze involved in that. Think, have you really never had a good time without booze? Maybe something to do with music or enjoying the arts, culture, sports, time with your kids, time with your nieces and nephews. Uh there are so many moments that we let slip by unnoticed. Now is the time to pay attention to those, to recall those memories and to look out for them. And thirdly, think do you really look at the evidence? Do you really enjoy that being drunk feeling? One or two drinks feels lovely, right? But after that, we're usually chasing a feeling that moves further and further and further away with each and every drink. That is why so many of the functional drinks out there, brands like Impossible and Sentia, build their brand on replacing that one or two drink feeling because they've discovered that that's the sweet spot, that's the bit that we really like. And that anything after that actually is just us trying to get back to that place or to stay in that place. But what we're doing is taking ourselves further away from it. Step two is to, so we've just looked at for evidence from the past or the here and now, and step two is to look at the future that you actually want. So you've got two choices here. You can keep defending your old habits, or you can build a life that actually matches the person that you say that you want to be. Okay. And I know that might sound like a bit of tough love, but I'm doing the bit of tough love today because we've got a big season coming up ahead of us, and I want you to be prepared for it, and I want you to be able to have the most incredible time on your own terms. So look into the future that you actually want. I want you to think about in the moment that you're having a drink or you're about to have another drink, think how do I want to feel tomorrow? And how will my choices today impact that? Now you'll hear lots of different variations of this. And I think one of the ones that I like, which isn't necessarily just about drinking, but just in general, which is don't let joy today be the thief of joy tomorrow. I'm paraphrasing here. But it's such an essential message because the choice that you make to have a drink in that moment might seem like a great idea at the time, but it has consequences. Okay? It has outcomes. Now you might be perfectly fine with those outcomes, in which case, have at it, go for it. But if you're not, then think about how your choices and how your actions can impact you having a better life tomorrow rather than not having as much fun today. The second thing in this step is that this time of year is about friends and family. Okay. It is about presence as well. Um, but it's it's time to consider the message that you want to send to the people that you love about how you want to show up in their lives. What is it that your patterns of drinking, your habits are saying to the people that you're spending time with about how you want to spend time with them? And then the third point in this step is what kind of person do you want to be? And this is completely personal, this is internal. Do you want to be someone that holds on to uh a past that limits them? Uh, I've always drunk this way. I I I've always believed that you need to have a glass in your hand to have a good time. I I've never had a great time without alcohol. Do you want to be the person that holds fast to that belief? Or do you want to be the type of person who can continue to learn and to grow and to develop and become a better version of themselves by their own standards with every opportunity that comes along in such a high-intensity drinking season? I know, I know it's a bit deep. I know we don't always go this deep, but I think it's really important that we have these conversations with ourselves because this is the only way that we make the changes and that we get them to stick. Step three in finding out how to change our belief systems to make them work for us is to test and gather new evidence. Okay, so we've looked at the evidence of the past, we've looked at what's happening in the present. Now it's about building a future. So it's time for a field test. Now, this doesn't have to be a big deal. I don't mean you need to do some big scientific uh experiment with lots of variables and spreadsheets and that sort of thing. Have a night out. Grab a good friend, somebody who you feel comfortable with, somebody who you know will support you in your choices, and go for a drink with them. But it just so happens that your drink might be alcohol-free or it might be low alcohol or mid-strength alcohol, whatever it is that you're trying to achieve here. And see, see, can you still have a good time with that person? Can you still have a laugh at their really bad jokes? Can you still take the mick out of their terrible taste in, I don't know, clothes and shoes and boyfriends or whatever it is. But see if you can still enjoy yourself and be honest about it. You know, give it a real chance. Don't do that thing that we do when we're trying to prove to ourselves that something's really bad. So we purposefully go out and have a bad time. But actually give it the good old college try, as they say, and see what you find. Or it could be that you've got a family gathering coming up, maybe not Thanksgiving, maybe it's just dinner round at your mum and dad's house or around at your brother or sister, something like that. And on that occasion, you take some low-no drinks with you, or you drink alcohol-free drinks throughout the meal. And watch and see how long does it actually take for your family to acknowledge it, ask you some questions, and then move on to something far more interesting to talk about. Because I promise you, it's not that interesting after a while. Uh, you know, maybe it's at the office party uh that you're going to leave before the the mayhem ensues without making a big announcement. You know, don't have to make a big fuss about this. Uh, and see if you genuinely feel left out the next morning when everyone's nursing their hangovers, uh, and you finally do get your ass to the gym, like you promised yourself that you would. So test this and gather new evidence. And this is a really important stage because I am planning on doing an episode about this for you um soon. But moderation doesn't work for everybody. I'm under no false pretenses that mindful drinking is the correct path for everyone, and perhaps it's not the right path for you. But the only way you're going to know is if you test it and try it and review it and see what works, what feels right, what makes you comfortable, what's giving you what you want and helping you build something in return that means something to you. The final step, step four, is to reevaluate your beliefs with thoughts and facts that you now know to be true. So looking back at our beliefs framework and see where you've got the power to get out of your own way. Because a lot of this, and you might not like this, but a lot of this is about you standing in your own way. So our thoughts drive our actions. I want you to assess your self-talk. What do you tell yourself over and over and over again about how alcohol fits in your life? Do you keep saying things like, I can't have a good time without alcohol, or I'm not going there, they've got no booze? Or what's the point of having this drink if it's got no alcohol in it? That is all negative self-talk that is not helping you to achieve what you want. You're fighting against yourself. Instead, your self-talk needs to be more positive. And I don't mean it should just be blind affirmations that have no meaning to them. I mean it needs to be based in reality and factual and helpful and practical. Things like I can go out and drink less on the occasions when I decide it's better for me. Or I do want to prioritize tomorrow morning with the kids, with the boss, with whatever. So I will drink less this evening. Or I can have a life where there are times that I drink less and times that I drink more based on what I want to get out of the evening. So assess yourself tool. The next line was that our actions generate our outcomes. So what actions can you take today, tomorrow, right now, to generate the outcomes that support the life that you want to live? Is it a case of looking at your diary and deciding which events are worth you attending and the ones that you do attend, how you're going to attend them? Is it about getting other important activities going in your life beyond just drinking so that you have something else to look forward to, something else to work towards? What actions can you take? Who can you talk to? What friends can you enroll? How can you communicate with your partner? What can you do today to generate an outcome that will help support you in what you're trying to achieve? Because those outcomes reinforce our thoughts. So what can you learn from the times you choose to drink differently? Action without learning is futile. Okay, remember that. It's great that you take the actions that I suggested before, but if you don't learn from them, then it was pointless. And finally, those thoughts solidify into new beliefs. Now that you have assessed your self-talk, you've generated new actions for new outcomes, you've reinforced new thoughts, you can now believe that a life less intoxicated is possible. So what's left to hold you back from achieving it? Over the next few weeks, I've got more episodes coming for you on managing through and mindful drinking Christmas. But before we get to any of those, it was really important to me to put this episode out for you because I want you to understand that the path to successful moderation or mindful drinking, sober curiosity, abstinence, whatever you're striving for, won't come from willpower alone. But that is okay because it will come from you being brave enough to do what other people won't do and unpack and then rebuild the limiting belief system that's holding you in this pattern of saneness, of repetition, of not getting where you want to go. Once you take that step, you can let go of that negativity, that limitation, and move on to a Thanksgiving, a Christmas, a new year, a 2026 that serves you on your own terms, not one where you're drinking to some long-standed template of a past that doesn't serve you anymore. Okay, I've got two things to help you before you hit the festive season hard. One, whatever app you're using to hear my voice in right now, make sure you hit subscribe because the Mindful Drinking and Moderation in Midlife podcast will be going daily in December to help you with that bit of extra support in the one time of year when almost all of us will be faced with the biggest season of relentless temptation and drinking and parties and events and family and everything going on all at once. And two is to make sure that you've signed up for your free mindful drinking advent calendar. This will go alongside the December dailies, but as well as my oh so wise words behind each advent day, you'll also find Christmas low, no, and light drink recommendations and discounts for you to enjoy Christmas on your own terms and save a few pennies while you do. You can sign up to that in the link in the show notes below, or of course go to mindfuldrinkingadvent.com. Now, if you do want a little bit of extra support and you would like some one-on-one time with me, I have recently launched uh what I call my one-to-one power hour. And this is an hour between you and I where we can go through whatever is blocking you most at the moment, whether that is to do with specifically mindful drinking and moderating, or some of the other areas in which I can help you. If you want to know a bit more about that, just click the link in the show notes, or you can drop me an email at any time. I love getting emails from my listeners, from the readers of my Sub Stack, and I reply to absolutely everybody. So if you do want a bit of one-on-one coaching before the festive season hits you full throttle, drop me an email, Denise at lono drinkermagazine.com. That's it for today. I hope you found this episode helpful. Um, if you have, I highly recommend that you save it to your download so that you can listen again when you might need it during this super busy time. And until next week, my dear, cheers to a Christmas less intoxicated.

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Denise Hamilton-Mace

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