Managing Cravings & Discomfort

Hey, I'm Barti Arez and I'm the Stop Drinking Coach. Welcome to my podcast where I teach you how to stop drinking, how to quit craving, and how to begin the journey back to yourself so that you can transform your life. After a 14-year binge drinking career, starting and stopping dozens of times in trying everything in the book from AA to therapy, I finally discovered the key to sustainable sobriety. And on this podcast, you're going to learn practical tips, tools, and strategies to help you quit drinking alcohol the easy way so you can finally step into the next chapter of your life and begin fulfilling your potential. For private one-on-one or group coaching, visit www.TheStopDrinkingCoach.com and book a call with me. S.T.C. Welcome back. My name is Barti Arez. I'm the Stop Drinking Coach. And in today's episode, I want to talk about something really important to understand around this process and journey as we move forward. And that is that cravings are temporary. You know, I know how intense cravings are. Trust me. I mean, if you listen to some of my previous episodes, Fridays, when I used to get that craving, I would be speeding home from work to try to get to the Trader Joe's that I'd always stop at and buy that six pack. And it started drinking on the way home. And so I know that when you get those feelings of a craving that it's intense, it's visceral. You feel it in your body. You have this mental sort of pattern with it where you're just so convinced you're going to drink, right? Visually in your body, you feel these intense sensations of anxiety or desire or it could be a burning sensation. I mean, it shows up differently for so many of us. But the thing that you have to remember is that cravings are temporary. Okay. Cravings on average for most drinkers are going to last anywhere from about 15 minutes to about 45 minutes. They might go a little longer. You know, I've had certain clients say they've lasted two hours before, but that's not really common. Most cravings are going to last about 15 minutes to 45 minutes. And they're kind of like a bell curve. If you think about bell curves that you learned in math, you've got this straight line and then you've got this kind of this trigger point and then it rises up and like a bell, it kind of curves and then it comes down and it goes back to its baseline. And that's how cravings are as well. I know in the moment when you feel that craving, when you get that craving, it feels like that feeling, that thought, that intensity, that sensation isn't going to go away until you get a drink. It feels like you're going to be in this perpetual state of longing and desire, but it's just not true. Okay. Cravings are temporary. The last 15 minutes to 45 minutes. So when you get craving, you have to pull yourself out. You have to go into that state of the observer where you pull out of your mind, out of your body as if you're up in a, you know, camera room like watching yourself and you have to remember, hey, okay, this feeling, this sensation, whatever is happening inside of me is temporary. It doesn't last forever. What causes us to stay stuck in this vicious cycle is when we continue to give into the cravings. When we make decisions based on temporary phenomenon, right? Let me say that again. What keeps us stuck in this vicious cycle is when we make decisions based on temporary phenomenon. And the reason meditation is so important, the reason mindfulness is so important, the reason increasing your level of self-awareness around your internal environment is so important is because of this very reason, because what you discover through this healing process, through this discovery process, as you're growing and evolving, your spiritual psychological and emotional nature as you're learning to overcome your addictions is understanding at a fundamental level that everything that we experience is temporary, our thoughts are temporary, our emotions are temporary. And that really what we are as a operator of this vehicle of this system is that we are a witness to a series of thought forms that are constantly shifting and we are a witness to a body or a vehicle that is constantly shifting in sensation, what you might call feeling or emotion. Okay, think about it. When you wake up, right, you're a little bit tired. And then you have some coffee and then you're energized. And then you go to work and then you're focused. And then, you know, your boss sends you an email and then you're a little frustrated. And then you go to lunch and you forget about it and then you feel hungry and then you start to feel satisfied. And then two o'clock rolls around and you get a little tired so you have some more coffee and then you feel motivated again. And then, you know, you start to feel worn out and a little bit tired because the work day is long, but then four or five, six o'clock is coming up and you start to feel a little bit motivated or excited again, right? Like, then you get home. Like, so you have to understand that everything is shifting and what meditation teaches you, right? It's a known experience that you discover as you begin to increase your self-awareness around your internal environment. That on average, we have about 60,000 thoughts a day. Okay, 90% of those they say are the same as yesterday, maybe more, right? I would say most people aren't really having novel thoughts every single day. You're thinking about the same things over and over and over again and same thing with the body. Right? It's like, how old are we? We're in our 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, right? And it's like, we've been around the block long enough to know all of the different sensations that we feel. And if you can only find the courage within yourself to be fully present to the sensations without having to do anything about them, you will discover that all sensations, good, bad, ugly, oscillate. They rise and then they fall. And a craving is the same way, right? A craving is the same way. It is not something that you feel perpetually from the moment it triggers until the moment you fall asleep. It's this passing wave, right? It's like, it's like you're sitting on the edge of this riverbank, right? And you're looking at this river. And as you look at this river, you understand after you stare at it for a while, you understand that the nature of this river is that it's always flowing. And if you put one leg into this river, it's never going to touch the same water. It's always going to be new. It's always going to be novel. And as we sit there on the edge of the riverbank, right, a craving for alcohol is like this leaf or this branch that floats down this river. And if you're staring straight at the river, right, you'll be able to notice that branch coming in in your peripheral vision. And maybe it's a slow move in river, right? And maybe it takes that branch, you know, 10 or 15 or 20 minutes to pass. But eventually as it passes out of your peripheral vision on the right, it's going to be gone and it's going to be replaced with something new. And so what you have to remember is like, think about all the people who have struggled with alcohol, who currently struggle with alcohol, maybe yourself, but also think about all of the millions and millions and millions and millions of people that got sober, right? We all go through the same process. We all go through the same experience, right? It's this journey. It's this process of learning how to just be comfortable watching and noticing the data that passes through us. And to recognize man, like you're safe, even though you might not feel safe, even though a craving feels really intense, you have to remember that like, hey, check your five senses, you know, knock on wood. You know, where are you? Look around. Is there a gun to your head? Are you about to jump into an oncoming traffic? Right? Like you're good. You're good. You're safe. You know, if you're in your house, if you're in your office and you start to get this twinge, this thing inside of you, recognize that you're safe. Repeat this mantra. I'm safe. I'm supported. I'm loved. I'm cared for. I'm resourceful. And remember that that sensation, whatever it is, will eventually pass. Right? The thing that we have to remember is on this journey forward as we remove the alcohol from our life and we move towards a state of mental, emotional, and physical sobriety is that the game is about learning how to redefine the way that you interpret things that are happening inside of you. Right? That's really it. That's what that's what the personal growth journey is. That's what the personal transformation journey is. That's what the healing journey is. That's why you go to Tony Robyn seminars. Right? It's all about just taking data that's inside of you and upgrading your perspectives, creating the way that you see and interpret that data. And it's about changing that data over time. It's about redefining your relationship to the data. Right? For example, if you have a lot of trauma, right? And you go to therapy for five, ten years, right? To work through that trauma. What does the therapist do? Right? The therapist acts as a mirror and as a guide to help you incrementally get closer to that trauma in a very safe and controlled way. And then by asking you the right types of questions and by guiding you through certain types of practices, they help you reinterpret and reprocess that moment or that experience, which really just exists in the form of a memory. I think I'm going to write a book. Eventually, and that book is going to be called "Change your memories, change your life." Because as we think about our life, as we think about our reality, as we think about our future, what people generally don't understand about this human experience is that the way they're brain, their sense of self-identity, ego, persona, personality, whatever you want to call it, that thing inside of yourself that you refer to as me. That thing tries to understand the present moment and it tries to predict the future based on past memories. So when you take two people and you say, "Okay, one is successful or one's not successful," there's a lot of variables and conditions that go into it. But one, largely, one of the driving factors of it all is what is the memory bank that somebody is using to pull data from? What are the reflection points that somebody is using to try to make predictions on? So if we have a really rough childhood and upbringing and many people did and they don't even recognize that they did because maybe there wasn't overt, sexual or physical violence or abuse, but there was emotional neglect. And there was, "Oh, Johnny, we don't talk about our feelings." Oh, you know, Samantha, you know, we don't talk about the things that we're going through. We repress those. We push those things down. Right? And you don't get during those early formative years, the language skills, the interpretation skills, the models to understand thought, feeling, and sensation, all those things become super scrambled. They become really intense and they disregulate you. Right? They start to affect your self-esteem and your self-image and your confidence around what's acceptable and what's not acceptable. And then you start to just produce feelings of guilt or shame around even the concept of having feelings. Right? Like, so many things can happen, which create dysregulation inside of us. And when that dysregulation goes on for years and years and years, whether it's anger, frustration, or overwhelm, or sadness, or just not feeling safe expressing ourselves. So we've got all this pen to energy and emotion or thoughts that we quite literally do not know how to process and move outside of our body. And this vehicle can only take so much before it starts to redline and fume. Right? And when it starts to redline and fume, and we don't have the tools and skills and strategies to navigate our internal environment to process and make sense of our thoughts, to make sense of the sensations, or to really even understand what these are and to recognize their transient impermanent nature. Right? We just, we start, it becomes too much. And then we go out and we use a substance that man is just such a Trojan horse in our society. It floods the brain with dopamine, reinforcing the consumption of it while at the same time alleviating temporarily, very, very temporarily, whatever that thing is, that pain or that stress or boredom or whatever way we're trying to find relief. But then it does it at the expense of the way the vehicle operates. It does it by adding in all of this debt. So the next day, we feel worse than how we started the day before, thereby causing an increased level of motivation to seek out relief again. It's so fucked. It's so fucked in the way that it works because it gives you a little bit of, a little bit of pleasure at the expense of your whole operating system, at the expense of your life, your children, your partner, your the stability of your relationship, your mental health, your emotional health, and then it increases the drive and the motivation to seek it out again. It's such a, it's such a broken trade off. It's such a poor, broken strategy. You know, it works for a little while, you know, when you're in high school and you're in college, when you don't know any better, when you have no context, when you think you're invincible. Right? Do you remember being like 18 or 19 thinking you're invincible? I specifically remember being 19 and thinking I was in vincenzo, I was like, I'm never going to die. You know? But as you wake up, you realize that we're actually just ingesting poison. Ethanol gets converted to acid aldehyde. You know, if you haven't gone on YouTube and watched that video where Dr. Andrew Huberman, who's a professor of neurobiology at Stanford University talks about alcohol, I encourage you to go watch it. He debunks all of it. No safe amount of alcohol. The generates your brain, contributes and speeds up cancer. I mean, the whole thing, the whole thing that the game is rigged. So the way that we win this game is not just by putting the bottle down, but by creating the right set of conditions in our life to allow the supportive, forward process of living a life free from alcohol. Right? So many of us, when we're caught in this destructive vicious cycle, think I just need to put the bottle down. I just need to put the bottle down. Right? And you know where that gets you. You put the bottle down for a day, two days, seven days, and then you go back. 30 days, a dry January, and then you go back. Right? It's not just the alcohol. The question that you have to ask yourself is, why am I turning to alcohol in the first place? What is going on inside of me, mentally or psychologically or emotionally, where I believe that alcohol is a useful strategy. Right? What is it about myself internally, about my thoughts, about my relationship to myself, my relationship to the people around me, my environment, the world, or the feelings or sensations that are too much, right? That are too much to bear witness to in which I need to flush, poison down the system, flush poison down the hatch, which I know is only going to reintroduce a bug, a vicious bug that is now going to be in my system to create more obsession. Like, that's what we need to think about. That's where we need to peel the layers of the onion. Right? What is it about it that I am not willing to bear witness to? Right? That's what this journey calls for addressing over time. It's not just putting the bottle down. It's about creating the right conditions. And so what are some of these conditions? The conditions are accountability. You have to have a sense of accountability. Right? Whether it's through a sober coaching program, whether you do the 12-step deal, if you're into that, you've got to have some connection to people outside of you whose lives aren't oriented around alcohol, who are going to be there to fucking check you when you need it. You know? Sometimes we just need to be called out for our bullshit. You know? And some people might say, like, "Barty, that's too harsh." But it's like, we live in a really soft world nowadays. Sometimes we need to be checked. So having a sense of accountability is very, very important. And you need to show up and be willing to have that type of relationship with somebody. You need to have the courage to be transparent. Part of what creates all of our problems is when we're not transparent. We're hiding shit all the time. It's like quit hiding shit. Be open. Like, stopping sneaky about it. You know, if you're in a relationship with somebody, just be open about it. You know, the sneaky shit, the hiding shit is what destroys relationships. You need to be open. You need to be honest. You need to be transparent. Otherwise, like, why are you in a relationship? Whether you call it a marriage or a partnership, like that person who you're connected to should be the person where you have the most honesty, the most transparency. That is your life partner. That's the person who has your six, who has your back. And if you can't be open with them, then what do you you doing? Well, it's like, okay, well, Barty, maybe I'm afraid, you know, the shame or guilt. Like, what if I'm open with them and they're sick of my shit? Well, it's like, dude, I mean, that's part of being in relationship, right? It's like, you guys need to communicate through it. You need to be open about it. You need to talk about it. You need to work together, collaborate as a team. And if you've got this deep, dark, dirty little secret, and it's like, fucking things up, well, it's like, is that fair to them? Is that fair to the other person? Is that what they signed up for when getting into a relationship with you? If they knew it and the answer is, yes, well, okay, be open and honest about it. If the answer is no, then it's like, all right, let's fucking figure this thing out together. Otherwise, why are you dragging that person along? You know, it's just not fair. And when we continue to do that, and it compounds over time or years, dude, it just like it keeps building and building and building. And it's just like, that's what creates more relationship mistrust. And it makes it harder to dig out later on without getting therapy or counseling or, you know, something along those lines. So, right, accountability is really important. Accountability is big. You know, following a structured process to optimize mind, body, spirit, and neurochemistry is important. My program offers that. I don't know of any other programs that do mind, body, spirit, and neurochemistry on an active daily basis. You have to remember that like, dude, this vehicle, this operating system, this thing called being a human, it is way more sensitive and requires way more maintenance than a car. Okay, you feel, you fill up your car with gasoline, you get an oil change every few thousand miles, right, every 10, 20, 30, 50,000 miles. You, you know, get the brakes checked or replaced and pumps and, you know, fluids. You know, your body requires way more upkeep from your sleep, your diet, how much water you're drinking, vitamins and minerals, deficiencies, sunlight, movement, exercise, human connection, a feeling of connection to yourself, to your life, to the world around you, to your environment, the feeling of pursuing something in life that's worthy and meaningful, having things that you're interested in curious about, right, when you look at like the wheel of life and all your shits fucked, it's like, yeah, no wonder why you're turning to alcohol, right, and if you just go to drop the bottle, right, this poison that you've conditioned yourself to become accustomed to over decades and you don't go out and begin aggressively optimizing the vehicle through all of these measures, it's like, dude, it's, it's going to be way harder. You have to take a proactive approach to your recovery, you know, a lot of things out there don't really advocate for that or they, they might say it in a meme or like on some, you know, Instagram post, but like if you're doing this and you've repeatedly tried on your own and it failed, you need to get super aggressive. Like go back and listen to that episode on my podcast where it's called mindset, you have to be willing to go to war, you know, overcoming your addiction to alcohol or your problematic relationship with alcohol is not just like, hey, I'm going to go hire a personal trainer for a month or two and then like lose 10 pounds. It is, it we're going to require so much more of you and you have to, you have to get to that place inside of you where you're willing, you're willing to go to war and when you go to war, there are certain types of non-negotiables, right, that you, you just have to be willing to acknowledge and accept, right, like, for example, you wouldn't go into enemy territory without weapons, right? And so just like in your first week of sobriety or your second week of sobriety, like when you're trying to not drink, you don't just go out with your friends to a bar where you know like it's going to be guaranteed for you to drink, you know, like you, you have to be willing to take a very strategic approach to this thing and you have to understand that it's, it's possible. It's possible. I was drinking four to six bottles of wine a day and I stopped and now I don't get cravings for alcohol. Thank God, it's been, you know, a year and a half, two years where I've gotten a craving. The first year there was cravings. You know, the first year there were cravings, year, not like the first two weeks, the first year I got cravings, right? And so ask yourself, hold the mirror. Are you willing to have cravings from time to time for a year to then eventually get to a place where you basically probably never get them again? Or if you do, you're so good at handling them and they're so far and few, few and far between and they only last a few seconds to where you can be free of them forever, right? A lot of us, you know, are impatient. We go into this process where it's like, you know, we've been drinking since we were 15 or 13 or 16, you know, we're 10 years into this thing, 20 years into this thing, 30 years into this thing. And, you know, like we, we get frustrated and angry and upset when we're two weeks, three weeks a month into the process and we're like Jesus, I thought, like, you know, my entire life was going to be healed. It's like, dude, you've been, you've been doing, like imagine, you've been doing cocaine for 30 years and then all of a sudden you stop. Like how long do you think that recovery process is going to take? Probably at least a few months, minimum. I have some clients who come in who, you know, 60 days into it are flying high on cloud nine. And I have other people who come in who in their first 30 days, like struggle. And that's okay. That's okay. The way that you feel in the beginning of this journey, regardless of who you are, is not indicative of how you feel for the rest of your life. You know, I say this all the time. What's going to happen when you take a part of a person who's relatively smart and successful and has a life and relatively productive and you just stop pouring poison down the hatch. Dude, life is going to get better in every way over time. Right? Like, but you, but you also have to be proactive in the mix. Right? Part of the reason a lot of us were drinking in the first place was because we were unhappy with ourselves. We're unhappy with ourselves. We're unhappy in a relationship. We're unhappy with our work or our career. Right? That's what being a human is, man. We came here to learn. We came here to grow. We came here to evolve. We came here to increase our skill sets to become wiser to develop more context around the human experience. We came here to get better to navigate this experience in a more effective way. Why do you think we went to school? Why did you go to college? Why did you try to get, you know, a good job? We all have this innate desire to grow, to evolve, to become better, to realize more of our potential internally. I think that is the driving force that, you know, you take everything else away. Every human being to some degree has a desire to explore themselves internally and to create better conditions for their life. So why everybody would prefer to have a million dollars than not have a million dollars? It's because what is a million dollars affords you? It affords you more creative control over how your life unfolds. It gives you more access, more options with how to manage your time. Right? With what you want to do, with the experiences that you want to have. Everybody would rather have more experiences that are unique and novel and colorful and playful and interesting and stimulating than less. But alcohol keeps your life very, very small. Right? And it's not alcohol's fault. Yeah, alcohol is a poison, but it's an inanimate object. Objectively, alcohol is just a poisonous liquid that sits on the shelf. But then we grab it, we pour it into the system to try to gain some sort of effect from it, not realizing that by virtue of touching it, we become slave to it. Because when we seek to regulate or optimize through a substance outside of ourself, there's no other way it could end then by becoming a slave to it. Because what we're saying by choosing the alcohol is that I forgo any personal responsibility in the management of this vehicle. And I'm overturning all responsibility and power to this liquid. And so the liquid says, okay, like a jailer, it says, okay, well, you can have a little bit of relief. You can have a little bit of enjoyment. You can have a little bit of whatever it is that you're seeking to get through me. But in exchange, I'm going to take everything else away from you and make you believe that you can't have those things or enjoy those things unless you come to me. It is a jailer. The protector becomes the prison guard. Remember before you started drinking when you were 12, 13, 14, 15, whatever years old. Okay, if you started drinking at 10, I've got that person listening. Okay, remember when you were nine years old, whatever. You woke up, you did your things, you went to school, you had fun, you played outside, you know, you did recess, you came home, you did your homework, you played some video games, you played outside, you had dinner, you didn't think about alcohol. Life wasn't being filtered through, is this enjoyable or is this not enjoyable or how do I feel about this? You just did life, right? You were curious. You were naturally exploring things. But then alcohol, once alcohol came into the picture, it became a jailer like a vacuum and it sucked everything in your life that was already yours, social connection, meeting new people, enjoying a weekend, enjoying your evenings, going to a restaurant, whatever the thing was, golfing, playing games, it sucked all those things like a vacuum and it put it behind the gate and it said, oh, okay, well, now that you're turning to me as your source of fun, I guess I'm going to take all these things from you, I'm going to make you believe that you can't enjoy them unless you have me. Like what a fucked up God that is, you know, like who does that? Who does that? What kind of person does that? Imagine a, imagine like a relationship that you were in, a boyfriend or girlfriend, wife, husband, whatever you want to call it, right? Imagine that person comes into your life and they take everything from you. They take going out to restaurants, they take socializing with friends, they take doing hobbies and activities and sports and maintaining your health and eating good food and doing all the things that are good for you as a person and they take them all away and they said, you can't have them unless you do it with me. Like what kind of controlling fucked up relationship is that? Immediately you would look at that person and say, fuck you. Like who the fuck do you think you are coming into my life, taking everything that I've enjoyed and saying I can only have it through you? Like what kind of fucking game is that? Why would I sign up for this? That's the game that we sign up for with alcohol. It's dog shit. It's nonsense. Right? Imagine, imagine that person and now link alcohol to it. Imagine some person, toxic person comes into your life and says, yeah, I'm taking everything away and you can only have it if we do it. You would become it's slave. Like what kind of why? What like, wouldn't you just rather say, you know what? I don't want to have anything to do with you. You can go walk off the edge of a cliff. I don't care. Give me everything back. Give me everything back that's already mine that I deserve. The ability to connect with people. The ability to be present. The ability to enjoy my evenings and weekends and to go out and socialize and make real authentic human connection around conversation that's meaningful, invaluable and deep and connected to authenticity and the human experience. The fucking Dodgers game, not the fucking bullshit nonsense that you talk about while you're drinking and never remember. It's like, it calls for, it calls for getting angry to some degree. It calls for like recognizing that we have been duped and we have become slave to some bullshit that was peddled to us under the guise of fun, excitement and luxury and sophistication and the $500 bottle of wine like, dude, it's nonsense. It makes you slower. It makes you dumber. It lowers your IQ. It damages the most important part of your brain responsible for creating a better life. The prefrontal cortex, logic, problem solving, organization, planning. The things that will make your life inherently better increase its quality and value and quality of experience. That part of the brain gets damaged and destroyed so that you can be a silly goose and sit there and dance and forget about your problems. How about we start fucking addressing our problems? How about that? Regardless of whether we come from a good family or a poor family, hey, what happened to us happened to us. But how about we get to a place where we start fucking aggressively addressing our problems with support and accountability and connection with other people who are of the same mindset and frequency who don't want to just, you know, just seepin to the bottom of the barrel and just get by. How about calling for more into your life? How about calling for greater experiences? How about calling for greater novelty, greater variety? How about calling in greater relationships that care about you and support you and aren't toxic? Trust me, folks. Trust me, fam. There are tens of millions of people out there whose lives do not orient around alcohol. There are so many clubs and groups and social circles and anything, anything that you want. You're into underwater basket. We've ingrate. You want to get into a running club, a meditation club, some about spirituality, something about business, marketing, networking, finance, career, leadership, some creative endeavor. There's a thousand of them. But you have to have the courage inside of yourself to say no more. I'm done playing small. I'm tired of waking up, going to work, getting fucked up and repeating. While at the same time, creating a miserable example and experience for my kids and the people around me, it calls for more. It calls for more energy from you. Alcohol does the opposite. It siphons. It sucks away. It represses all of your energy creatively, proactively. You got to do the opposite, right? Like look at the world. Look at culture. Everybody drinks. You've read enough personal development books and listened to enough motivational tapes and podcasts to say whatever the masses are doing, run the other way. Do the opposite. I know you've been hanging out with the same old friends for 10, 15, 20, 30 years. It feels like God, what am I going to do? Everybody I know drinks. But guess what? If you want to be the average, if you want to be the one who is just mixed in and then you feel powerless and victim to it all then use that as an excuse. That oh, I have to go find a new friend or I have to go, you know, or yet myself around people and communities who have higher caliber conversations and who have a different way of approaching their life. You know, alcohol is a net negative. You always lose with alcohol. There's no winning. There's no winning. So you have to find it within yourself to develop the courage for a while to be present to some discomfort. That's the game. That, I mean, fucking, it's simple. It's simple. Everybody who gets sober has cravings. Everybody feels like they're, you know, missing out for a little while. Everybody feels like they're a little bored. Everybody feels like fucking having a pity party. Dude, it's, it's standard. It's standard. But the difference between the people who get through those periods of time out on the other side and then begin to radically improve their life in a hundred different ways versus the people that don't, or is the people that don't, don't set up the right conditions to support those challenging moments. And, and when it comes to those critical choice points, they just give in rather than maintaining that resolve, maintaining that courage to be like, okay, whatever's going on in L2, if you jump into my program, you'll understand L1, L2, L3, whatever's happening in L2 in the mind and whatever's happening in L3 in the body is temporary. It's going to pass 15 minutes. Phone set, a timer on my phone for 30 minutes. I'm going to walk out my door with my headphones on and I'm just going to walk in a direction for 30 minutes east, west, north, pick a direction. And when that alarm goes off, I'm going to turn around. And I'm going to throw on Bardi's podcast or I'm going to listen to something, listen to one of my favorite songs or I'm going to go for a run or a jog. Guarantee by the time you get back, whatever thing you thought you had to squash, you're going to, you're going to manage it. Guess, guess, guess what we all learn on this, on this journey. Doesn't matter who you are. What you, what you are forced to learn is how to manage your mind and how to manage the sensations that flow through you. Like, that's it. That's it. You learn to peacefully coexist with thoughts that are whatever negative or berating or mean or whatever, you know, we're obsessive or you learn to coexist with what feels like needles in your stomach. AKA, exactly. anxiety or Loneliness or sadness or whatever that thing is you feel it in your chest you feel it in your stomach you feel it in your shoulders it radiates down your arm But guess what it it's all transient it all changes it all fluctuates and you learn this in meditation. This is why meditation is so powerful as we As we embark on this journey forward because for 10 to 15 minutes a day You sit there and you close your eyes and you simply observe You know like when was the last time you just observed your internal environment to understand yourself like you're a grown adult How old are you 30 40 50? Your eyes are always open taking in the world outside of you and you're always out here sitting making these predictions on you know Letting the outside world influence how you feel inside but guess what? The secret to life the secret that every religious spiritual philosophical master who's ever walked this earth from every continent across every time zone they say the same thing If you want to really understand the human experience if you want to really understand and dig deep into the nature of reality if you want to meet God whatever Esoteric way you want to interpret that a person and energy the universe nature You're high yourself Whatever your soul your spirit the animating life force that beats your heart without you having to do anything the underlying energetic current that animates all nature If you want to meet that thing if you want to get closer to that thing close your eyes and Explore inward But so many of us are afraid to do that right and so the question is if if you have such a hard time doing that Simply closing your eyes and being with yourself Then that is the journey that is what we need to begin addressing That is that is why this this this this This path and process is so profound You're not just putting the bottle down You are re Acclimating you are rediscovering you are learning how to live within this vehicle that you've been numbing for so long You know dude that that's a big job. That's a big responsibility like that's what I help people do and So people come to me and they're like oh this that it's like Do you understand like what we're actually doing you know We're not just putting the bottle down we're learning how to live alcohol free mentally emotionally physically energetically spiritually every which way We're learning to redefine our relationship to ourselves to our thoughts to our feelings to the sensations that pass through us We're learning to reinterpret our memories We're learning to change the narrative change the story around our life the way we manage our time the things that we do are Values our priorities all of it. This is like a comprehensive deal you know and so like You have to be committed to that process You have like that even if even if you don't see the whole staircase which nobody does when we start this journey You have to just be willing to take the next step and that's what one day one day to time means You know we just do this one day to time I didn't know when I was shoulder mangled in the pool four to six bottles of when I was drinking and I was in that Excruciating pain my rock bottom in that moment my life I ran it all through flash before my eyes I thought about my past. I thought about my future. I thought about the present moment I had no idea I'd be sitting here talking into this microphone and tens of thousands of people you in your car wherever listening to me while you're working out no idea No idea I just knew that what was happening in that moment couldn't go on and that I needed to take it one day at a time and Fucking get out of my head Get out of all this future projecting and and just I need to live my life in 24 hour increments And for some of you it's in our increments or it's minute by minute increments But guess what if you're not drinking now Maybe a couple of you are because it's reaching so many people But if you're not drinking in this present moment guess what you cannot drink You cannot drink It's about learning how to manage those tiny little periods of discomfort for a while for a while and not given to them By setting up the right conditions Maintaining a sense of accountability having connection with other people doing things that optimize the functioning of your operating system to reduce the craving and desire Which my program helps you do And continually optimizing your mental health your emotional health your physical health like doing the thing that we're supposed to do As adults as as as creatures of this planet To be proactive live harmoniously You know be a good person search internally for what has meaning to us and to pursue that and to express that And to have balance in our life and to take time for Family and connection and creative endeavors and and have personal time of disconnection from you know stimulus and to be mindful of what you consume energetically through media and social media and news and politics and To use your gifts your creativity your talents whether it's in your voice whether it's in your physical touch whether it's in the way that you nurture other people whether it's in the way that you provide whether it's in the way that you Build companies or you know contribute It's it's a multifaceted process, but what we know for sure is that when you continue to not allow yourself to Feel that discomfort from time to time and you just give in and you numb the thing it just keeps you in a vicious cycle So you have to be willing to make certain sacrifices You know I can't tell you like how many people like either you know I come into contact with Maybe come my clients or I talk to who are like do two weeks into sobriety and you go out to a bar like what are you doing? That's not what you do. It's like you sign up for you know a personal trainer and two weeks into you know you're supposed to be counting macros and managing your things and You know you go to like an in ice cream buffet Like that's not where you should be You know You don't go to an ice cream buffet a week into you know Being on a mission and journey to lose a hundred pounds Right like that like that. That's what we're doing. It's not like we're learning to lose ten pounds Like you're trying to lose a hundred pounds like that's that's the that's the type of tenacity and commitment that we're on as we're trying to overcome our Addictions to alcohol, you know Mentally emotionally we've got all these memories these associations these people like it's engraved in our life like dude This it there's there's a lot here. It takes a lot of vigilance. It takes a lot of mindfulness But you can do it remember that you don't wake up craving alcohol very very very few people do a very small percentage of Drinkers are the ones who are getting up and drinking as soon as they wake up and my heart goes out to you guys But many of us who have a problematic relationship I mean even at four to six bottles of wine a day. I was starting at like 10 or 11 or 12 I wasn't starting immediately when I woke up, but I mean I wasn't waking up too long before that probably at nine You know But remember that most of us like you probably only get one to two cravings a day like you wake up you go to work You know you start to get that itch maybe around four five six. It's your witching hour You know typically when you come home or you know your cooking dinner or whatever And then you might have another one before you go to bed, but like that's it you want to escape this vicious cycle You like you you're really sorry to your partner for all the fucked up things like you're really tired of of just the fucking Just the this the slavery Okay, then make a commitment to learning how to manage two one hour periods That's it. That's what you're doing here. You're learning how to manage a couple Uncomfortable periods of time within a 24 hour time block and then on top of that you Developed the courage inside of you to say that okay if I want to escape this this this vicious Fucking destroyer of reality Then I need to skip the party. I need to skip the Work event where everybody's drinking. I need to have a tactical strategic plan when I go on a vacation I need to have the courage within myself to at least tell the person I'm going on a vacation with that Hey, I'm not drinking. I haven't drink in a little while. I'm feeling really good about it and my I'm intending to not drink on this Vacation and I would appreciate it if you would support me in that and then you just move forward and if they ask you how long You know is it forever say I don't know but I'm not drinking right now and it's been feeling really good and I want to keep it going. And that's the truth. That's the truth. You don't have to tell people you're never drinking again. I'm not drinking right now. It's feeling really good and I intend to continue that for the first sea of all future. You don't owe anybody an explanation. Just like if somebody were to fucking ask you, when are you going to take your next bump a coke, you say, I don't fucking know. Why is it matter to you when I'm going to do my next line of coke? The fuck does it matter to you for? You can feel a little frustration or you can feel that energy coming outside of me because this is the mindset that we need to have. Far too many of us have just been fucking our lives, our relationship, our children have been siphoned away from this fucking cultural matrix and model forcing poison in addictive substance that enslaves us down our throat. In everybody who drinks, we all feel the pain and the consequences. Nobody's getting out unscathed. Everybody feels the hangover, the brain fog, the lack of clarity, the lack of proactivity, and it's like, you need to have that attitude. When you think about alcohol, take yourself back to the worst experience you've had on alcohol, throwing up the guilt, the shame in the morning, just the utter pain and the destruction. The conversation with your partner that just destroys your soul. That's alcohol. It's not the one to two drinks that you think, you got to play the tape forward farther. You have to understand that part of this "disease" that they like to call it is that when you think about alcohol, it only plays the tape forward 10%. It's like you play a movie, you think about alcohol, you're like, "I think a drink would sound good." Imagine there's this movie called Alcohol in your life. And you play this movie seven days a week, maybe some of you. Some of you play it three days a week, five days a week. Imagine you press play in this movie called Alcohol Plays and it starts out the same way every time. And it ends the same way. You've actually seen this movie every fucking time you've drank in from the very first time you think about alcohol. And here's how the movie plays out. You think about it, the movie starts playing and it only plays 10% and then it pauses. And then you're like, "Well, this seems like a fucking great movie because the way the movie works is like, okay, you've got this ritual and you imagine yourself in the third person, you go to the store, and you grab it and then it's sitting there right next to you and you're like, "Oh, I'm about to fucking feel really good right now, about to escape this pain or this misery or this anxiety or this loneliness or this boredom or things are going to get way more exciting." And then you have a couple drinks and then the person, you know, lights go on and then the movie stops. And you're like, "Yeah, that seems like a great fucking movie. Let's do it." But if you keep playing the tape forward, you recognize that, "Oh, after the second drink comes a third drink." And as soon as the third or fourth drink comes in, the euphoria and the light start to actually go down. But then you keep drinking. And now you're just chasing and you're chasing until you go to sleep and then you wake up and it's just filled with shame and guilt and why the fuck did I do it? And like, the hangover and the brain fog and all of it. Oh, like all of a sudden you remember it's like, "Oh yeah, I fucking, I forgot to play the tape forward." Dude, every time you're just not playing the tape forward far enough, if you play the tape forward to the morning, instead of like, so every time you think about alcohol, recognize that the what the brain does is it's just going to play to the 10%. But it takes you the conscious witness, not the autopilot person that's been living in autopilot. It takes you the conscious witness that every time you think about alcohol, to play the tape forward all the way through 100%. Just recognize that the thing that you have to learn how to live with, that I have to learn how to live with that everybody. And it doesn't take any effort anymore, it doesn't take any energy. So it's not like this thing like, "Oh, we're living in this shadow forever." No. For the first year, you got to do this. After that, it just do it. Clicks. Just like, I don't have to think about breathing because it's just what I do. I'm a breather. You know, just like you, you don't have to think about breathing. You know, I don't have to think about playing the tape forward anymore with alcohol. It's done. It's the thing of the past. Right? But for that first while, you have to play that tape forward. Because what happens? You go three months, you go a month, six months, nine months, you relapse, you're like, "Fuckin' half to end." Just be a minute. First of all, it's never that enjoyable in the first place. Once you get to that place where you're like, "I'm fucking done drinking and you're really, really actually putting an effort to try to quit." Anytime you go back, it's never the same. You don't get that same rush. You don't get that same hit. You don't get the same you for it. It just fucking makes you feel like shit. Nums you. It poisons you. And then the next day, you wake up and you're like, "I," and then you just, they're self-loathing. So it's not worth it. So you like, you get to choose. It's not your power list. You're powerful. You get to choose which experience would you rather have? The experience of whatever discomfort that you just have to manage for 10, 15, 20 minutes. Right? Oh, you're at a party and everybody's drinking. You feel like the odd one out. Okay, great. Well, guess what? Party's only last an hour or two. And then you get to go back to 364 days and 18 hours of feeling good about yourself. You know? So you get to choose. What would I, what would I rather experience? This mild discomfort that I know is temporary. When I'm out with my boys and they're golfing or at a restaurant or somebody's party or vacation, this mild temporary discomfort. When I'm on a vacation, I'm like, oh, man, I would have normally been getting fucked up right now. Sitting at the bar seems really fun and exciting. Managing that pain or discomfort or drinking or playing the tape for 10% going into a drinking pattern, chasing it, getting fucked up, doing dumb shit, saying dumb shit, waking up, feeling like you're dumb because you made the same mistake. Knowing the consequences, which pain? Choose the pain of just being uncomfortable for a few minutes. Knowing it's going to pass. You don't live in a perpetual state of craving. Just like you don't live in a perpetual state of happiness or sadness or orgasm or hungryness. You can satisfy whatever the thing is. And then it passes and it changes into something else. And that is the human experience, my friend. We are just a conscious witness to a vessel that contains two modes of operation, a thinking, pattern, and a sensation pattern. And these patterns are just infinitely always changing. And sometimes a pattern comes in that you haven't learned how to manage it. That's the thing. It's an uncomfortable feeling. It's a bored feeling. It's intense, like whatever it is. But then it changes. And so learning how to surf and manage discomfort is the key. I mean, that's the key to success in life, right? Whether you are an individual trying to start a business or you are a person trying to overcome your addiction. Both people like are going to have to learn and grow and add new skills and make sacrifices and increase their competency and create a series of conditions that support their success and are going to have to experience moments that are really challenging and difficult where you're going to be met with decisions that aren't easy to make. And then you're going to have to focus a lot on yourself and keep reinvesting in yourself. Like they're both very similar in a way. You have to make sacrifices. It's like you want to escape the nine to five where somebody else tells you what to do all the time. And you don't get to make as much money as maybe you want to make. And you want to have a life of complete freedom where you can earn what you want to earn and you can do the type of work that fuels your soul and helps other people. You want to do that? Well, guess what? In order to get there, you have to go through a very long period of shutting out all distraction where you focus all of your attention, energy, and resources on yourself so that you can invest in yourself and increase your skills, knowledge, resourcefulness, competency, output, energy, time. You have to say no to all the dinners and the distractions and the people who are trying to take time away from you, and you have to go all in on building your business. You might have to skip holidays. Like so many people, when they go to build a business, will work through holidays, right? Like very common. You hear that all the time from all the books that you read, the podcasts that you listen to, but it's like, you know, when we're getting sober, it's like, oh, well, we can't miss a holiday, you know? Knowing that all my family does is drink, like, I have to go be with them. It's like, no, you don't. You can prioritize yourself. You've had 30 holidays with them, 50 holidays with them, 70 holidays with them. You have to get to a place within yourself where you're willing to make the sacrifices necessary to fucking get the job done. And guess what? Like, it's just sitting with discomfort. And then you just fucking get over it. Like, oh, yeah, didn't get to go to dinner. Oh, yeah, didn't get to go to the vacation this year, but guess what? You've got 40 years left to live. You can go on a vacation next year. When you've built the foundation, you feel confident, you know? There's a saying, it's like, don't be mad about the results that you don't have because of the work that you didn't put in. Right? I think that's how it goes. And it's true. It's true. It's like, you know, if you don't have the results that you want, it's like, well, you didn't put it in. You didn't earn it, you know? And so much of this kind of process, you know, when it comes to our problematic relationships, it's like, man, there's like, there is some pity party. There's like, yeah, but fucking, you know, whatever, whatever we complain about, I complained about it, you know, we all have our own little internal things, you know, pity parties that we throw. But it's like, well, what do you want? What do you want? Are you more committed to the pity party? Or are you more committed to getting to the result? And if you're more committed to getting to the result, which is staying alcohol free one more day, then whatever discomfort presents itself in that moment, that is what you're also committed to working through and being present to and enduring, or applying a tool or strategy, or self-regulation technique to manage and get through. And guess what, man, like the good news is, like when you choose staying alcohol free, when you choose this path, when you choose the way, this way, life just keeps getting better. Guess what? Guess what happens every time you overcome a craving, you become a little bit more confident. What happens every time you choose to make a sacrifice and then, you know, like, you wake up the next day, feeling really good and productive. Dude, it all comes back to you. Remember, you're a smart, successful, intelligent human being who's already relatively productive. What do you think will happen when you retrain the system through neuroplasticity and the regulation of your nervous system in a complete total upgrade of your, the way that you manage your mind and your emotional system, like your lifestyle, like what do you think's going to happen when you stop pouring poison down the system, and then you go on a super proactive run of making your life better. Dude, your life's gonna get better, right? Think not why the giving up of alcohol. Think, how do I address the underlying pain and concern that was driving me to drink in the first place? How about rather than making it all about alcohol, making it about yourself, having the courage to shine the light within to say, what thoughts need to be changed? What thoughts need to be managed? What emotions do I need to work through? Connected to my thoughts, right? It's like, dude, we're all just living on a planet, trying to survive. We're all just trying to figure out how to live life and find ways to be happy and connected, and we're trying to strive towards something meaningful, whether it's through our work or with our family, we're trying to have good experiences. So if internally your system, like the tape that's playing, is constantly running into a wall, stop numbing it. Develop the courage, you should be like, all right, let's change the tape. Let's take the tape out, put a new tape in. This is what coaching does. Is it, somebody can hold the mirror as you just talk to somebody, right? If somebody's just talking to me, I can tell through their body language, through their tonality, through their choice of words, through where they're looking, their eye movements, how they really feel, what they're actually saying. I can read between the lines. Just by listening to somebody you can tell if they're coming from a victim mentality, an empowered state, what the underlying thing might be, what they're not really willing to accept or let go of or what aspect of themselves, they're holding back or they're not fully connected to, or what they're still blaming or holding onto. Like I can see that. I can see that just by looking at somebody and having a dialogue with them, right? That's where that's why you invest in this process, 'cause it's not just putting the bottle down. It's a multifaceted process of upgrading and optimizing my and body spirit, your physical health, your emotional health, like your neurochemistry. You know? So learning to manage the discomfort in those temporary periods, man, that's it. That's the game. That's the game. If you can learn how to do that, what if you just made a pact with yourself that says for the next 12 months, I'm gonna give this thing 12 fucking months. It'll be a test of your character, a test of your discipline. Imagine who you would be on the other side. If you said, dude, whatever. Next time I fucking get a craving and moving forward, if I get a craving, I'm just gonna go walk. I'm gonna get out of my house, I'm gonna go fucking walk for an hour. And I'm gonna, I'm in the determining thing for that is gonna be the stopwatch, not how I feel in between in the process. Watch what will happen to you in your life. Watch who you will become. I'm telling you, man, each and every one of us has an infinite ocean of potential to explore and to activate. You do so much, so much, you have so much to give to the world, you have so much to give to the people around you. If you just remove the poison and you begin to heal the wounds, the pains, the dysregulations, the things that don't allow you to fully believe in yourself, the things that don't allow you to express your voice the way that you want to to move your body, like, man, the thought and idea of like, you know, dude, time is limited, time is limited here. How old are you? How many years do you have left? Write that down, think about it. And consider the fact that like, there will be a moment if we're lucky enough where we get to just reflect. And we're like, all right, here we fucking go. Five minutes I'm gonna die, probably gonna die today, tomorrow, and you're sitting there reflecting on your 20s, your 30s, your 40s, your 50s, your 60s, maybe even into your 70s. I've helped a few 70 year olds stop drinking. And you're reflecting. You're like, fuck, who could I have been? What could I have done? What's the mark I could have left? How could I have made it to where people remember me in a different way? Like, dude, alcohol keeps your life so small. You think it's fun, you think it's exciting, you think that you're doing new novel things, you're not. You're repeating the same tiny cycle. You do enough to get by, because once you're in the hooks of alcohol, everything is a means to drink. You do enough to get by. And then you go fucking drink, and you experience the same familiar bullshit, same familiar thoughts, same familiar feelings, same familiar consequences, then you feel bad about it. You call yourself an idiot, you self-loathe, you actively make your life and the relationships around you worse, and then you do it again. Like, what kind of game is that? It's a poor game, it's a poor game that we're playing with ourselves. And so, you know, if you've tried to quit in the past and you've been unsuccessful, I say this at the start of every one of my TikTok lives, you have to work a program, you have to do something different, you have to be proactive, you have to do something that is totally different from what you've tried in the past, and you have to believe that it's possible, but you just do it one day at a time. So you don't have to, all right, I'm embarking on this journey with Barney and the stop drinking coach, and I'm never drinking again. Nope, wrong. You're immediately doing it wrong. Say no, I'm at this place. I know this relationship can't go on any further and I'm willing to try something new. And I don't know what the journey looks like, but today I'm not gonna drink, and I'm gonna do exactly what this person tells me in the way that they tell me, because they're the ones that. that have done it, not me. So for me to think that I can change the process or that I've got it somehow figured out better after I've tried a thousand times and haven't been able to, like, got a humble, humble the ego. And I have to listen. I have to listen and trust. I'm not saying that my path or my program is the only way to sobriety at all. All forms are valid. And everybody vibes and does different things. But the way I found to do this thing is I needed to work a program. I needed to have a system. I needed to have a process. And I needed to understand what was going on internally. And I needed practical tools and strategies to help me manage it. And then I needed community. I needed to connect with other people who understood. And I needed to be able to text them and call them and have support and be able to check in. And just feel like I wasn't alone and to have people who I could rely on during times that were challenging. So that's what I encourage for you. Is find something that resonates and be willing to go all in. And remember that, this game, this whole thing, is all about taking these little-- what would normally have been painful moments and learning to work through them, to recognize that they're impermanent. You're going to wake up the next day feeling so good you didn't drink. Always. You never wake up wishing you drank the night before. It's about you learning how to sit with that discomfort temporarily from time to time. It's what we all have to do. And the sooner that you can just accept and acknowledge that, hey, from time to time, there's going to be some discomfort. And that's OK. That's OK. It's part of the process. It's part of what happens when you take a very sensitive vehicle, incredibly sensitive. All it's trying to do is heal you and keep you alive. And you pour poison into it for 15, 20, 30, 40 years. Like, dude, you fucked it up. It needs some time to recover and have some compassion in grace that when you feel those feelings of discomfort, it's just the residual debt that you have to pay back. Just like paying off student loans-- fucking, 10 years later, you still see that $3, $4, $5, $6, $700 a month recurring charge. And it fucking pains you. But it's like, yeah, at one point, I was so excited about getting an education. And I was so certain that this was the knowledge that I needed and that this was the institution that I needed to get it from. And so I got alone with debt and has a bunch of interest. But I'm willing to make that sacrifice. And so with us, when we drink, we're making a sacrifice. We're sacrificing our health, our energy, our values, our relationships, our kids, our time, our money. And then at the back end, we have to pay that debt back. Alcohol takes from you way more than it ever gives you. If it gives you one hour of pleasure, two hours of pleasure, five hours of pleasure, it does that by giving you a followed up of 50 to 75 hours of pain. If you have a heavy night of drinking from 5 to 10 p.m., guess what? You're going to pay that back for three days. You're not going to be up to 100% baseline for three to four days. Minimum, minimum, probably longer in terms of like really full recovery where you're like fully sharp again. So for a few hours of pleasure, you sacrifice two, three, four days. And just throughout that two, three, four days, you've got this constant obsession, this hunger, this desire. When's my next drink going to be? Dude, it's a fucking bug. It's a virus. It's a virus. It's a virus that once you introduce it into your system, you're fucked. So that's how you have to see it. You have to play the tape forward all the way through, all the way through. And to recognize, hold them to both in your hand. Which pain do I want to feel? This 10, 15, 20, 30, 40, five minutes an hour of craving or 50 hours of prolonged pain and shame and guilt and self-loathing and then you've got to talk to the wife and the husband again and then the kid saw you again. Dude, it's just not worth it. It's not worth it. We have to get to a place internally where we psychologically and emotionally accept that like, dude, this thing isn't working and you have to get out of denial. You have to look at the pain. You have to be clear on the pain. Play the pain forward and compound that pain over the next year, three, five, 10 years of your life if you don't get this thing figured out because it will get worse and the pain will continue to compound. And sometimes, man, the pain, the damage is irreversible. And it's like, why go there? Why go there with yourself? You have such a beautiful life left to live. Like, why are we playing such a small game? It's such a small game. Life is so much bigger. It's so much bigger. You know, so much bigger. And so, remember that the cravings are temporary. It's not worth it. It's never worth it, my friend. It is never worth it. Give yourself permission to sit and peacefully coexist with that discomfort for a while. Get into running. Get into running. Learn to peacefully coexist with some pain for a while and recognize that all the pain is temporary. So hope this episode helps you. I trust that this episode helps you because if we can just learn to be the observer of our life, if we can sit back into that place of observation and recognize that whatever's happening in our mind and body through that initial discomfort of craving or whatever would have normally driven us to drink, we can recognize that that is temporary and that we can go in another direction and that if we endure it and work through it, we will get through it and life will get better and do time. Then we can all do this and you can do this. If you've gone weeks without alcohol, a month without alcohol, whatever it is, you already know you can do it. A relapse going back to alcohol is game tape for you to assess and understand what is it about this process and journey that I have not learned? What is it about this process and journey that I have not acknowledged? What is it about this process and journey that I have not accepted? And what is it about this process and journey that I have not integrated? That is what going back to alcohol is. You just rewind the tape. Oh, you went out with a friend, got it, so don't go out with that friend anymore. All right, at least not in the first few weeks when you're like trying to build a foundation or the first couple months. Like, dude, I didn't go out to bars and do all that thing for months 'cause I knew myself. I was like, dude, I'm such a fucking fiend for alcohol. If I do anything to go mildly near it, I don't trust myself. And so I had the courage to be like, dude, I don't fucking trust myself. I can't, I can't, sorry, dude. I know you want me to go out. It sounds like a fucking great time. I would love to just go obliterate and disconnect, but I can't do it. And it's because I'm clear on two things. I'm clear on the pain. If I do do it, I know where I'm gonna end up. And I know I'm at this critical place in my life right now that if I continue to do that, this other thing that I really want, which is to grow into the man that I know I'm capable of being and to fulfill my potential, I know that isn't possible. And so I want you to look at that for your own life, right, get clear on the pain and then think about the possibility of what your life could be if you just went all in and stopped fucking around. And recognize that that really isn't gonna be possible in the way that you know it's possible. Many of you who might be listening could already be very successful by let's say financial means or you've got businesses or you're retired. And so maybe life isn't about getting the money or building the business or that, but it's about something else for you. It's about something else. It's about being around for your grandkids or it's about having the health to be able to travel the world and enjoy the experiences that you want without being on oxygen or you know, you know, cane or whatever it is, like some health condition that's preventing you from experiencing the way that you wanna experience. So you gotta get honest with yourself. And I've got a great episode on that. It's called you gotta get honest with yourself. You gotta dig deep, you know, this thing isn't won with half-ass measures, you know. You gotta dig, you gotta go deep with it. But know that you're capable. It's all temporary, it's all temporary. The way that you feel in the beginning, oh I'm making a sacrifice or like, oh I can't hang out with my buddies or I gotta skip a vacation or like whatever the fuck it is. Whatever it is, okay? Like, it's not gonna be like that the rest of your life. It's like, like if you're 50 years old, okay, can you take 50 to 51 and go monk mode, go all in on yourself, eliminate all the bullshit, so that the next 49 years of your life, you're smooth sailing. It's like, yeah, yeah, I could do that. I think that's a reasonable trade off. I'm willing to endure some pain and discomfort and boredom and sacrifice, it do it only feels like that, like for a little while. But I'm willing to make the necessary adjustments, and to really just get serious about becoming a better version of myself. Do that for a year and watch what happens. Most people haven't taken the time to actually drill in and turn the fucking boosters on. Turn, pour some jet fuel into the engine and see what you're capable of by getting around the right people, having the right mentors, the right coaches, having the right types of conversations, reading the right books, listening to the right podcasts, getting into the right frames of mind. That's what you want, empty the tank. Empty the tank is a human being so that when you go to the lay, to lay your head down to rest, you feel proud of yourself. That's what I offer. That's what my program offers, that's what I offer. That's what my community offers is the connection and the path and the system forward to play this game. I can promise you, I can promise you that when you start playing a higher level game, you win higher level prizes. Life just gets better. What happens when you take somebody who's relatively smart and successful and productive and functioning and you remove the alcohol and you give them the tools to better manage themselves, dude. You become the co-creator of your life. So again, trust this episode was helpful for you. If you haven't been to my website, www.thestopdrinkingcoach.com scroll down to the bottom. You can see what other people have said about my program and working with me. And fill out an application if you'd like to work with me. Really excited for some of the upcoming things coming up in 2024 that I'm building and working on. I'm building a course which I finally just finished and everyone who's ever been a client of mine is gonna get access to it. All new clients are gonna get access to it and it is absolutely game changing. It goes super deep into the human operating system. Really the best way I can describe it is what it's gonna do is it's gonna wipe the software clean and it's gonna install a new operating system in terms of how to just understand and navigate your internal experience of consciousness across mind, your body, your emotions, sensations, a whole new interpretation of managing what's going on inside of you. With lots of tools, lots of strategies, there's gonna be meditations that will help you lose the desire for alcohol at the deepest, unconscious level, healing meditations, things around your inner child, family, dude, it is just gonna be, I don't know anything that exists in the space that is even close to what I'm building because I don't think anybody has the combination of perspectives, experiences, and skill sets that I do. Not to say that it's not possible, but as of now in this space, once this is finalized, which is very, very soon, there's quite literally nothing out there that has the plethora of tools and strategies and support that my program is gonna have and I'm very, very excited for what the future holds. And I'm excited for all of you and all of the people I'm gonna help through this program because there's way too many people who are trapped by this thing and there's not enough resources and support. So I'm very, very excited for what's to come. So if you wanna work with me, go to my website and fill out an application. And yeah, if you haven't left a five star review, I would really, really appreciate it if you did both on Spotify and on Apple. It'll help push the podcast out to some more people. And yeah, if you feel called to share this episode with anybody that you know, I would appreciate it. So thank you so much for listening and I will see you in the next episode. - Hey, thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to the podcast, leave a five star review and share it with your friends or someone you know who might be struggling with alcohol. And if you feel like you're ready to finally transform your relationship with alcohol, visit www.thestoptrinkingcoach.com and book a call with me. I offer private one on one and group coaching to make letting go of alcohol easier and more sustainable than you ever thought possible. Thanks again for listening and I'll see you in the next episode. (upbeat music)