A lesson by Amber Hollingsworth guiding learners through a structured decision exercise about whether to pursue sobriety. The instructor introduces a four-quadrant pros-and-cons method across life domains and asks learners to rate the importance of each pro/con on a 1–10 scale to produce an objective, prioritized evaluation.
Chapters
In this lesson, we're really going to focus on making some decisions. In the past lessons, we've really looked at what is addiction? Do you have it? Do you don't. If you do, how bad is it? All of those kinds of things. Now you've looked at that and you've got some clarity on it. This is all about, do you want to do anything about it? Now, I like to do pros and cons a little bit different than most people. There's actually like if instead of drawing like a line down the paper and you have like the pros and the cons, there really should be like a line and then a line this way, like across there should be like four quadrants. We're going to look at the important areas of your life and we're going to talk about the pros and cons of making a change, getting sober in each little area of your life. So the areas you're going to look at are going to be your physical health. You're going to look at your financial health, your self esteem and self confidence, your relationships, the physical space that you stay in, your hobbies, interests and activities, and your talent, skills and abilities. The next exercise is going to really walk you through how to look at how your life might change for the better or for the worse in each of these categories. Now, just to make it a slightly bit more complicated for you, not only are we going to look at the pros and cons and we're going to be objective about it and it's okay to look at both sides of the issue, but, but I'm going to ask you to add like a number value. So like, for example, if you say under physical health, if you say something like, well, if I stop drinking, my blood pressure might get better or I might lose some weight, I want you to give me a number on a 1 to 10 scale. Don't worry, I'll have these instructions on the lesson, but I'm going to ask you to give me a number on a 1 to 10 scale about how important is that to you? So it's like, yeah, this could get better, but I don't really care about it. You'd give it a low number if that could happen. But that would be awesome and man, you would be so happy about it. Give it a high number, 8, 9, 10, something like that. Because not all pros and cons are made equally right. Some of the things are just more important to you than others. And I know this is going to take a little time, but if you do it this way you really going to have a true and honest objective look which is going to help you make some decisions in the next lessons.
