Unbottled Potential: Break Up with Alcohol and Break Through to Your Best Life - Softcover

Kuda, Amanda

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593538676 ISBN 13: 9780593538678

Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2023

Inhaltsangabe

A life-changing guide for going alcohol-free, manifesting success, and planting the seeds for an extraordinary life.

As sober personal development coach Amanda Kuda can attest, you don’t need to have a drinking problem for alcohol to be holding you back. Like a lot of successful young professionals, her life was a carousel of opportunities to drink that ultimately left her feeling unfulfilled in her spirit, relationships, and career. She didn’t hit “rock bottom” or need a recovery program, but she did need a change. It was only when Kuda tried Dry January that she realized sobriety was the linchpin for a better life. In a culture that treats alcohol as a cure-all to subdue anxiety, grieve, and celebrate, she found that cutting it out helped her—and later, her clients—feel truly well and finally reach her full potential.
    Whether you are looking to break up with the bottle or just find a less volatile relationship with alcohol, this meditation manifesto will set a solid foundation for you to:

• renegotiate how you feel about drinking
• connect to your inner child
• set new boundaries
• finally achieve your relationship and career goals

    With an approach rooted in psychology and spiritual study, Unbottled Potential will challenge you to open your mind to the extraordinary possibilities of an alcohol-free life.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Amanda Kuda is a coach and speaker who helps high-achieving women renegotiate their mindset around drinking so they can start living the life they deserve. In her business, she provides one-on-one and group coaching, courses, and workshops. She holds an M.A. in communication from Missouri State University and lives in Austin, Texas.

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Introduction

I woke up on New Year's Eve (not New Year's Day, mind you, New Year's Eve) of 2016 with a ferocious hangover. The night before, I'd planned to go out and have just a few drinks. As often happened, my plans were thwarted, and I ended up having a few too many.

I played back the scene in my head. I should have gone home after dinner. Instead, I was persuaded to go barhopping and dancing downtown. I love dancing. I remember bopping around joyfully to 2000s hip-hop and guzzling a novelty spiked drink served in a children's juice pouch.

The next morning, I dragged myself from bed and called an Uber to take me back to my vehicle, which was still parked safely at a restaurant it was never intended to stay at. My stomach turned in the stuffy car. From the rearview mirror dangled a sinfully pungent air freshener, clearly intended to camouflage the car's musty odor. The combination was nearly the undoing of me.

I gasped for fresh air as I sat unsteadily back in my own car. I tried to settle myself as I wondered if I was doomed to vomit in a restaurant parking lot as innocent families were making their way in for brunch. I immediately canceled my brunch plans with friends, lacking both the willpower and the stomach to socialize. I spent most of New Year's Eve day wallowing on the sofa, wondering if this-an endless string of happy hours, hangovers, boozy brunches, and Sunday Fundays-was all there was to life.

The vibrant social life I was living had once seemed so glamorous. From this particular vantage point, my social obligations felt more like a burden. For the life of me, I couldn't understand where I'd gone wrong.

From the outside, it certainly looked like I was living the good life. I was a young, healthy, single, attractive woman with a thriving career and active social life. I had spent the better part of the last decade building my lifestyle to be exactly what it was: a shallow, repetitive merry-go-round of ladder climbing and elbow rubbing that was sold to me as "the dream." Surely, to someone else this was a dream; I should be satisfied, right? Yet as I sat there, nearly catatonic on my sofa, too hung over to think clearly, I realized I was, in fact, living some sadistic, self-imposed nightmare.

When I took a good look at the life I'd built for myself, it wasn't difficult to see that most of my friendships lacked depth, my romantic life was unfulfilling, I was working myself ragged punching the clock for someone else's dream, and my life was void of the spiritual connection that I desperately desired.

As I sat there, disillusioned by it all, I asked myself a question I'd been pondering for months: Would everything be better if I just stopped drinking? It seemed almost silly. How could one small decision like abstaining from alcohol make everything better? Yet I knew in my soul that I was meant for something big and important in this lifetime. I'd actually known this since I was a little girl. I believed that enriching friendships and true love were possible, even though I hadn't fully experienced them. I sensed that joy and happiness were available to me, although I'd spent almost ten years trying to figure out if something was wrong with me. I knew that abundance and fulfilling work were not mutually exclusive, and at this point, I had neither. On one hand, my desires felt so familiar, and on the other, they all seemed slightly out of reach. I wondered again if maybe, just maybe, alcohol was the thing holding me back.

There was only one problem: I didn't have a problem. I asked myself multiple times if I was powerless over alcohol. Each time, the answer was a resounding no. I wasn't in denial. I was, in fact, nothing more than a normal (albeit heavy, at times) social drinker. As I looked around, it was clear that there was nothing abnormal about my drinking habits. Every other young, social woman was drinking just as much as if not more than I was. So, no, I didn't have a problem, but in that miserable moment lying on my sofa, I decided I was curious enough to explore what life could be like without the hazy veil of alcohol clouding it.

I began my journey with an intentional thirty-day break and extended that break to ninety days, then six months, then a full year. As I abstained, I also committed to investing the time and money I used to spend on partying on my own personal, emotional, and spiritual development. Quite unexpectedly, I came to a place where alcohol was no longer good or bad, right or wrong. Alcohol became an option that merely existed. From this perspective, it also became an option that I was no longer interested in. Through my journey, I stopped thinking about drinking entirely. The result was not instantaneous. Nonetheless, it was miraculous. After months of abstaining, praying, meditating, journaling, and studying, I began to understand alcohol, and myself, differently. From this place, alcohol seemed completely insignificant.

My new realization about drinking was this: alcohol is our socially acceptable solution-a cure-all for ailments large and small. We consume alcohol with the hope of subtly shifting our disposition or elevating and exaggerating an existing personality trait. Yet the persona we create with alcohol is false. The more I looked closely at my relationship with drinking, the more I realized alcohol was the root of a system of other behaviors, habits, and beliefs I was using to keep myself small.

Unwittingly, I used alcohol to dull my brightness and dilute my potential. Alcohol kept me safely tethered to the ground, where I continued marching in unison with everyone else. But I was not meant to be tethered tightly to the ground; I was meant to soar. I believe you, too, are meant to soar.

I know the possibility that is available to you, and-even though we may not have met-I want that for you so badly. I want you to experience joy and happiness and bliss and success beyond your wildest dreams. I want you to realize your fullest potential, live as your most authentic self, and connect to your soul. If you are even the tiniest bit curious about what life could be like without alcohol, keep reading. This book is for you.

Come with me as I guide you through a discovery of just how wrong we've got it when it comes to alcohol. I'll guide you to become aware of all the ways we've allowed alcohol to invade our lives, stifling our birthright to be fully self-expressed. When we allow alcohol to enter our lives in this way, we lower our sense of self-worth and block our ability to self-actualize, achieve, and connect to our internal wisdom. Deep down, we each crave this type of life, but we get lost in our pursuit. We end up doing ordinary things yet expecting extraordinary results.

Drinking becomes both a symptom and a self-prescribed treatment. We imbibe to fit in and play safely within the bounds society has constructed for us. We drink again to numb our dissatisfaction with the mediocre life we've built.

Throughout my twenties, I played out the story that drinking was normal and "cool." I drank to hide my insecurities and reveal my outgoing side. I drank to cover up the fact that I'd lost touch with my authentic self and built myself into a lifestyle I was incredibly discontented with. It was a vicious cycle, and I saw no easy way out. Perhaps you've been there, too.

When we allow our potential to be bottled up in the drinking culture, we fail to achieve the emotional depth, personal success, professional excellence, relational fulfillment, and spiritual connection that are available to us. Rather, we settle for what appears to be "good enough." If you're reading this now, I hope you're over and done with settling for mediocrity. I hope you're ready to live a life that, up until now, you've only dreamed of.

If so, I'm here to guide you through the most common...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2023
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593538676
• ISBN 13: 9780593538678
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 224
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Buchpark GmbH; gpsr@buchpark.de; ; Krügerweg 1; Trebbin; Brandenburg; 14959; Deutschland