The Truth about Alcohol - How to Get Real

In this video I'm going to talk about a very important topic for really most people but particularly if you're in college, university, you might be there for the first time in your first year or maybe you know it happens throughout your college career but it's alcohol. Please listen carefully. The bar scene, the nightclub scene and what it means, what it does to your success and why people tend to abuse alcohol when you're in college. So I'm going to tell you guys about my story and it's like a lot of stories I've heard from people through you know interacting with people, clients, students who I've worked with before or giving talks in college. A lot of students tell me they have a very very similar experience. So my experience was when I went to college for the first time I think was probably like 18 I went out, I went out a lot and here in Ireland where I'm from there is definitely big drinking culture but it's everywhere. I mean I've traveled to a lot of places, I've been in America quite a lot, I've been to you know Canada, Mexico, all over really and drink culture is not just in Ireland right. Ireland has a problem with it for sure but it's ubiquitous, it's everywhere particularly in college campuses. Now the problem really, I experienced, I started off in college and I drank right, I drank with all my friends. It was this great experience of okay we're free, we can finally do what we want and we're going to go out all the time and we're going to party like rock stars basically right and we did that you know and I see it everywhere, I see it everywhere today. That's kind of a letting loose thing that happens for people when you're in college. So I, throughout my university experience there was alcohol involved but I couldn't ignore the fact that drinking alcohol was having a seriously detrimental negative impact on my grades okay. Oftentimes my grades would be very very poor because I had been out partying, I would even miss classes because of hangovers, things like that and I couldn't ignore the fact that it was having a really really negative impact on my life. So the interesting thing that happened to me was I would kind of lie to myself when I was in college about the impact it was having. So I would do things like I would say to my friends, could be a Thursday night or something and we'd make plans to go out and I'd be telling myself yeah I'll go out but you know I'm going to go to college tomorrow and I'm going to study. What would happen is the next day would come oftentimes I'd skip class or I wouldn't study purely because I had been out the night before. So that was my experience, the same thing would happen again and again and again repeatedly and I kept telling myself this story that well if I go out tonight no I will study tomorrow, I will work tomorrow. Completely lying to myself right. So the first thing I want you to think about is get honest with yourself. Is it having a negative impact in your life right and how do you know it is? You look at the evidence, you don't listen to the voice in your head that justifies things or makes excuses or rationalizes things to suit itself. You look at how you have behaved in the past. If you tell yourself alcohol is not a problem for me but you see in the past that you've missed college, you haven't studied properly, you're tired. The next time an opportunity comes out comes up for you to go out and socialize. I'm not saying don't do it, I'm saying be honest about it, be honest with yourself about what it means and assume that if you do go out the worst will happen. The worst being if I go out tonight I will probably miss college tomorrow at least the first class or two and then I will probably feel lethargic and not want to study for the rest of the day. Then make your decision because I'm not saying that you can't go out, it might be a case where you decide okay I can live with that. If it's this once I can go out tonight and have that day tomorrow of low productivity and I'm willing on this occasion to do that. That's very different, that's making a conscious decision to go out and live that lifestyle for a night and reap the consequences of it afterwards. As long as you're being conscious about it and you know what it means and you can make the decision beforehand and you're not lying to yourself that's fine. That might be okay, you might decide to do that occasionally but it's this thing of lying to yourself about the negative consequences and the impact that it's having on your grades that not only has the negative impact on your grades but it makes you feel like like a phony to yourself. You're lying to yourself and you keep doing things that you say you weren't going to do and that gets your self-esteem. Okay your self-esteem goes really really way down when you do that. So number one is be honest. Be honest about what it's doing to you right and if you decide that the next day you can't afford to miss college or to be unproductive then you can really say to yourself you know what I can't trust myself to go out tonight therefore I'm not going to go out tonight because I know what happens to myself when I do. Okay complete honesty. Honesty, the way to judge whether you're being honest with yourself is not by what you tell yourself or not by what you promise yourself. It's your past behaviours. Best predictor of future behaviours is past behaviours not what you tell yourself. Remember that. Be honest with yourself about it. So you know if you are someone who goes out and you drink a lot and you are super productive the next day and you get things done and it's not a problem for you hats off to you. You know really seriously that's fine and if it's not an issue for you but if it is an issue and you feel lethargic and you feel like you don't want to do anything or you start to eat bad food or something be honest with yourself about it. That's all I'm saying here okay. So there's nothing wrong with going out but is it having an impact in your life that you don't want. Right that is the that is the thing to look at. So I'm going to talk about alcohol and college in more videos and because you know my story that I think I probably forgot to tell you the story. My story was yes I had those problems and then I went through a period of my life where I didn't touch alcohol at all for like six years and in later videos I'll tell you guys about what that experience was like. Then the next phase of my relationship with alcohol which is the one I'm currently in. So I'll talk about those more in other videos. This one is getting a little bit long now so subscribe below for if you would like to see those videos those and if you're in college by the way you can get my ebook on how to be super productive and successful in school stop procrastinating that is in the description below. So yeah like subscribe and if you have a question you can comment below or you can contact me on my website which is at the link for is below and I will make a video response to your question. So guys I hope that helps and I will talk to you again soon.