Process Over Outcomes - The Key To Sobriety

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. What is up SDC fam? My name is Barti Arez. I'm the Stop Drinking Coach and I'm back with another video and I'm super excited to be here with you today. As you can see, my video looks a little bit different. I actually upgraded my camera setup, which I'm really excited about because I'm moving into 2024, re-igniting content production. I took my foot a little bit off the gas because I really just have been deep in the work working with clients and really digging in and delivering and helping people get sober. So my time has been a little wonky, but what I've discovered through the last 18 months of doing Stop Drinking Coach and helping people is that really my zone of genius is in actually speaking and creating content. I've helped thousands of people get sober just through my podcast alone. And so what I've discovered through that, the key that I've unlocked is that being face-to-face isn't where I am able to deliver the most value where I can deliver the most value is when I am creating content, speaking, creating podcasts. People don't need to actually talk to me one-on-one. And so with that, Stop Drinking Coach is moving from a one-on-one coaching program to a group coaching program. Now, I will be doing hybrid for a little while. My one-on-one pricing is going to increase, but I am going to have an incredible group coaching program and the person that is going to be running it is the person that was my coach when I was getting sober. So I am feeling even 10 times more confident in the success rate and overall just end result of everybody who comes through my program because not only are you going to have my support, with me, continually creating new podcasts, new short form content, but you're also going to be getting two weekly group coaching calls by an absolute master coach. This individual is so well versed in all things life, mindset, healing, personal growth, evolution, energy management, the whole deal. So I'm super, super excited about it. And so in today's podcast, the title is "Process Over Outcomes." And one of the things that I discovered through this process is that in order to actually improve it something, you have to commit to the process, not just say you want the outcome. And for all of us who struggle with alcohol, we all want to quit drinking. We all have this goal of living an alcohol-free life. We all have this goal of being sober. But how many of us are actually committing to the day in and day out processes that are required to meet the conditions of an alcohol-free life? Let me repeat that. We all want goals, right? We all have these goals in our mind. We want to lose 25 pounds, right? We want to have X number in our bank account. We want to live an alcohol-free life. We want to be free from the desire and virus of alcohol. But how many of us, right, with all of these goals in mind, maybe we want to have a better relationship with more love and passion and chemistry and intimacy? Maybe we want to start this business. We want to get out of this soul-crushing job, right? We have all these things. But how many of us are actually committing to the process to bridge the gap, right? So for example, if you want to lose 25 pounds, right, you can't just say, "I want to lose 25 pounds and I'm really going for it this year, right?" You make it your New Year's resolution. The conditions to lose 25 pounds are you have to meet a certain macro, you have to meet a certain amount of calories every day, right, which is going to be less than you're consuming and you have to be burning more. You have to be getting a specific type of macro nutrient ratio and you have to be exercising every single day, right? So there's three things effectively that you have to hit. You have to hit a certain number of calories that has to be under whatever your baseline is and based off of how much you're burning. You have to hit a certain level of macros. You have to be getting enough protein, et cetera, right? If it's all carbs or if it's all sugar, it's not going to work. There has to be a balance, right? And then the next thing is you have to exercise every day. Until and only until you meet those conditions will you manifest the result of 25 pounds lost, right? Same thing when it comes to having a certain number in your bank account, for example, right? Let's say you run a business because this might be a little bit simpler or help you understand it, right? So if you run a business in order to get to a certain revenue goal, you have to focus day in and day out on the processes that will allow you to meet that revenue goal. So what are the processes that are involved with that, right? One process, for example, is going to be focusing on lead generating activities like content marketing or paid advertising. Okay. The next thing is going to be, for example, optimizing your sales process, right? If you have a, if you've taken an inventory of all your data, right, based off of how many leads you're getting, how many people you're getting on the phone with, how many, you know, how many people are converting? If you have, let's say, a 20% closing ratio, if you bump up that closing ratio by 10% by optimizing your script, asking better questions, having a more dialed in sales process, you can meet that revenue goal, right? Even if you change nothing else, but you double your closing ratio, you can be on track to meet that revenue goal, right? What about retention, depending on how your business model is set up, is do you have some sort of retention process where once people, you know, go through your business, is there an opportunity to keep them on maybe some, with some sort of subscription model to continue to provide them accountability and support and consulting and, you know, strategy for them to continue to make forward progress to meet their goals, right? So when it comes to sobriety, right, living an alcohol-free life is not putting the bottle down. You have to understand that many of us have been drinking alcohol for nearly all of our life, 10, 20, 30, 40 years sometimes, right? This thing has changed our brain. It's changed our memories. It's woven, it's tentacles into everything. Our evenings, our sexual relations, our dating relations, our familial relations, our weekends, our, you know, our work events, you know, how we manage boredom, how we manage stress, how we manage overwhelm, how we manage conflict. All of these things alcohol has become the number one thing for. So if alcohol has become the number one thing for like 15 different experiences in your life, you best believe that putting the bottle down and only putting the bottle down and not doing anything else is not going to get you to where you want to go, right? In order to meet the conditions of sobriety, in order to meet the conditions of an alcohol-free life, there are a series of steps that each and every one of us need to fulfill on a day in and day out basis to provide the conditions for an alcohol-free life. And what are the conditions for an alcohol-free life? Mental regulation, emotional regulation, time management, right? Having a clear understanding of your values, right? Having clarity around your goals. Having clarity around who's good for you in your life and who isn't good for you in your life, right? It's about really digging in and what it really is, you know, sobriety is a metamorphosis. You know, people throw the word transformation around a lot, but it is truly a metamorphosis in so many different ways, right? Like how we manage our time, what we do, who we hang out with, where we place our attention and focus, what we're consuming, what our output is. All these things are connected to sobriety, right? Because if you think about it when you're in a drinking phase, everything is a means to an end to drink. You go to work and all you can think about is when you get off, I'm going to have a drink, right? You hang out with your kids and as soon as you put them to bed, you put them to bed, okay, it's time for a drink, right? You go out with friends and you're either pre-gaming before or you're trying to, you know, get to the place as quickly as you can so you can have a drink, right? You're filtering everything. through alcohol, right? And everything starts to fall by the wayside, right? So you're deluding yourself to think that, you know, that alcohol doesn't have its tentacles woven into your mental operating system, your emotional operating system, your physical operating system, your neurochemistry, your memories, your filtering mechanisms, it's everything, it's everything, right? That's why each and every one of us feel the exact same when we go to quit drinking. We all think and are deathly fearful of trying to imagine a life without alcohol. It is way too fucking overwhelming. You cannot imagine a life without alcohol when you haven't gotten sober yet, right? You just can't, it feels impossible. The idea of never being able to feel that dopamine rush, again, is deathly fucking terrifying. You think life is gonna be boring. You think you're just gonna go be a depressed, little mole in the corner. And it's just not true, it's not true. I know it feels that way, but everybody feels that way. This is where you have to drop the ego and remember, you are not unique. You think you're unique, but Bardia, my relationship is this. I only do it this way, I only do it that way. It's only for this, it's only for that. It's only anxiety management, it's only for sleep. It's only after work, but I'm already successful. I run a multimillion dollar business, I've got employees, I've got families, I've got kids, but what about the wedding? I can't miss my best friend's wedding, but I'm going on a Euro trip in three months. I can't get sober now. There's a million and a half excuses, but what I was talking to my group coaching program, some of my clients yesterday about, it's like, listen, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter who you are, it doesn't matter what you're trying to accomplish, whether it's business, whether it's your health, whether it's losing weight, whether it's getting sober, whether it's with your wife or your kids or your business partner or whatever else, your family, somebody who screwed you over, whatever it is, whatever it is, the answer, always, always, non-negotiable, always, is more responsibility, more accountability, more mindfulness, more organization, more proactivity. Every time you want to get somewhere and your meeting resistance, there is always, always, always, it doesn't matter what arena, sobriety, life, family, business, it does not matter, friendship, it's all the same. You cannot point the finger to something outside of yourself, but my fucking business partner, but the fucking government, but Biden, but the economy, but the wars, but inflation, but my sister, but my dad, but my mom, who's a narcissist, but my partner, listen, it doesn't matter, it does not matter what the excuse is. If you want the results, you have to take more ownership, more responsibility, more accountability. Every time you are not finding the results that you want, it is never about the other person, it is never about the environment or the world outside of you ever, ever. And if you choose to place the finger outside of you, then what you're doing is you're giving your power away and you're saying, I can't experience something because of something else. And that's just not true. It's just not true, okay? The way that we experience any success, any result, always comes back down to us. It takes us to have more accountability, more responsibility, more ownership, more proactivity, more time management, more organization, more mindfulness. That is the only way results are achieved in any area of life, any area of life. If you're at work and you're in a company and you want to move up the ladder, you can't, it doesn't work by blaming your boss or by blaming your coworker who's getting all the best leads. It comes by you getting better. It is the only way. Life, reality, success, sobriety, it's a binary system. It's either you have the result or you don't have the result. And if you don't have the result, the only, the only, only answer ever is that you haven't put in or set up the right conditions for the result to manifest. It's not anybody's fault. And this is a bit of like tough love. It's your fault. It's not your fault for all the trauma and all the past, but now in the present moment as an adult, it is your responsibility. In every way, in every capacity to figure out how to set up the right conditions to manifest the result that you want. And that's all life is. That's all successes, whether it's in work, whether it's with your family or your relationship or sobriety or losing 50 pounds. It's all the same. It's all the same. You have to take more ownership. You have to take more responsibility. You have to be more mindful. You have to be willing to make the sacrifices necessary. You have to be willing to drop your ego. You have to be willing to confront your shadow. You have to be willing to confront the parts of yourself that you feel inadequate or guilt or shame over. And you have to move through them. And you have to work through them. It's the only way any of us grow. Nobody can go inside of your body and mind and do the work for you and stay sober for you or make the money for you or create the career for you. You have to do it. If you're in a relationship, nobody can go into your body and become the loving, playful, intimate partner who leads the relationship or shows up in a certain way. Like you have to be the one who does it. And where your meeting resistance are the parts of yourself that you're not willing to explore, to move through, to let go, to make the sacrifices around. When we say, or when I say alcohol is a sobriety, is a metamorphosis. It is this transformation. It's akin from a caterpillar going to a butterfly. Think about technically speaking, how much more freedom a butterfly has versus a caterpillar. A caterpillar can move, you know, one 100th of one mile per hour across a two-dimensional plane. Whereas a caterpillar can probably fly, you know, 10 miles an hour, hundreds of feet above the sky across states. Do you think that that caterpillar knows what's in store for him? Do you think that if that caterpillar goes into a cocoon and gets hot and sweaty and is eating its own ass and its feces for six weeks or however long it cocoons? But halfway through, it decides its bored. It decides the shit smells too bad. It decides its back hurts and it gets out. And so it never gets the opportunity and experience to become a butterfly. That's what sobriety is. You don't know what you don't know. I have 10xed my life in every single way over the last three years. Over 10xed. In every way, my health, my relationships, my career, my impact, everything, everything has gotten better. And that is available for each and every one of us because alcohol serves as procrastination against our personal evolution. It is the thing that is limiting your most authentic self, your most authentic expression. It is the thing that is limiting your ability to come home to your truth, to the basis, the foundation, your purity, the thing, the pure energy that was coursing through your veins as a baby, that unique fingerprint, that unique, energetic expression that comes from you that is different from the other 8.5 billion people on this earth. That thing is being repressed by alcohol because you're afraid of the anxiety. You're afraid of being bored for a while. You're afraid of letting go of toxic friends. You're afraid of letting go of the bar scene. You're afraid of letting go of some toxic ex who keeps you in this relationship loop with alcohol. You're afraid of confronting whatever it is, whatever it is. And yeah, it's hard. Being anxious, having some cravings, dealing with a little bit of boredom, missing out when all your buddies are on the golf course and you choose to do something else. But guess what? You adapt. You change, cellularly, energetically, vibrationally, neurochemically, physiologically, biologically, over time, everything adapts and changes. All of it, all of it. You change. You become something different. Barney, talking to you today is something different than the person three years ago. On every level, how I think, how I care myself, how I communicate, my confidence, my self-esteem, my willingness, my openness, my flexibility, my emotional management, my mental management. It's all different. Neurochemically, I'm different. It's all like, just like a caterpillar becomes this butterfly, you too, through this journey, will become something new. You will go through a process where you don't recognize yourself for a while. You go through this mundane period. Okay, fine. The pink cloud wears off for a little bit, but you keep doing it. You keep committing to the process. You keep doing things on a daily basis that optimize mind, body, spirit, neurochemistry. My program provides you a perfect structure for with systems to follow tools, resources, strategies, community, accountability, people to text, people to talk to. You talk to me. talk to your commitment and companion for the week. There's, my program provides all of the conditions to support this flowering process, this metamorphosis process. I can't tell you how many people finish my program, hit their 90 days, do their kind of final check-in, and say, I can't explain how this program has changed my life. I came here to get sober and I got so much more. Because you think that this sobriety process is, life's not gonna be different, and I just put the bottle down, and it's just not true. Everything will shift over time, your mindset, your emotional management. The way you feel and live inside of your body, the way that you exist in your avatar will change. And I can't explain it to you, but you have to experience it. Your nervous system will shift. Your brain chemistry shifts, your relationship to yourself shifts. You have aha moments, you can see the truth. You pull yourself out of the matrix, and once you're on the other side, and you see this cultural matrix model, this dynamic that, like cattle, human beings are herded into through the K-12 system, high school, college, where you just, you don't know what you don't know. You're just this vessel, this mirror that's mirroring back data from your environment. You don't have the self-awareness yet. The consciousness yet to make sense of what's going on. You're just monkey-see, monkey-do, following your friends and your coworkers, and the people you look up to and your heroes and your parents, and then all of a sudden, you fucking snap out of it and you wake up. The journey of overcoming our addictions is a process of developing sovereignty. Sovereignty, addiction keeps you slave. It doesn't matter how much money you have. It doesn't matter how big and amazing your family is. It doesn't matter what accolades you have or what you've accomplished. When there is something that you feel like you have to continue to go back to and you have to filter your energy and your mind and your thoughts and your time management and everything through, you are a slave to that thing. The company who produces that product owns you. They own you and it's fucked and it's fucked. You have to find the courage within yourself to understand that like, hey, you just, like this thing doesn't work. I've tried every which way. I've tried drinking, switching from beer to wine to liquor to not having in the house to only doing it on vacations, to only doing it on weekends, to only doing it, you know, in this case, in that case, and it just doesn't work. You get three months off and then you go back, right back to square one and it gets worse. And then you take two months off and everything's great, but then you're at a party or you're at a wedding or you're partner pisses you off and then you have another one and then you're right back in it in a week, within days, you're fucking back in it. And it gets worse. Dude, it's a black pit, it's a virus, you can't beat it. Trust me, you think you're gonna be the one who beats it. But, Bar-Diam, having these thoughts again that maybe I could just have a drink once a year at Christmas or on New Year's, you can't. If you could, if that was your relationship with alcohol, that's how it would have been. You would have just been the drinker who has won at Christmas. You just would have been the drinker who doesn't give a shit about alcohol, doesn't exist in your mind, but on New Year's when you're out at a party, yeah, you decide to have a few to celebrate, whatever. But you're not, you're not. You're the person who overdoes it. You're the person who binges, you're the person who hides it, you're the person who looks forward to it every time when you come home from work or when you put the kids down, you're not that person. And you have to accept that, it's okay. There's millions of us out there. Alcohol just does not vibe with our brain chemistry. Alcohol for us is like cocaine. It produces way too much dopamine, produces way too much pleasure. We love it, we escape the pain, but then it follows up by creating more pain than we were in before. The problem never disappeared. Your anxiety never disappeared. Your people pleasing tendencies never disappeared. They never got resolved. Your work never got resolved. Your relationship never got resolved. Your overweight insecurity never got resolved. Your loneliness never got resolved. Now you're hung over the next day, feeling guilt and shame as to why you used a drug to cope. And now you're hung over and now you're neurochemically deficient. Now you have more anxiety by being gavid deficient. Now you're feeling less motivated by being dopamine deficient. And guess what? Guess what? The human experience is a constant teeter totter between the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. Everything you do is for the pursuit of pleasure of the avoidance of pain. Let me help you understand your human experience. That is everything. The reason you go to work and try to get a good job and make money so you can use money and feel like you have a sense of freedom and do what you want and not have to worry about getting kicked out of your house is to avoid pain and to pursue the pleasures that money provides for you. The reason you try to get in shape and you work hard and you, you know, you want to get fit is so you can attract or feel positive inside and feel confident, feel good when you, you know, you look, look in the mirror naked. So you can pursue pleasure, which is sexual relationships with a good mate that you feel really good and attracted to. And you avoid the pain of feeling unconfident and unsexy or unattractive or you avoid the pain of a short life or diabetes or early death or heart disease. Everything you do is in the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. That is, that is what human, not even human. That is what biology is. The earth and all animals and all organisms that exist are simply oscillating between pain and pleasure full time, full time. Because on the extreme end of pain is death. And so every organism that's alive has this innate desire to avoid death and to keep pursuing finding ways to pursue pleasure. But alcohol is this Trojan horse that comes in. High jacks are reward and pleasure system produces 4x pleasure above baseline and then tips it basically to the equal and opposite end. And when we go super high and then go super low, we've got to try to come back up and that come back up process, that recovery process takes a while. Right? And it, dude, everyone can get hooked to alcohol. You know, 60% of my clients are between the ages of 40 and 60. And many of them, many of them, listen to me, many of them had, you know, a take it or leave it sort of relationship with alcohol in their 20s. And then in their 30s. But then that divorce happens when they're 40. Or, you know, COVID happens three years ago where they went from, you know, drinking once or twice a week to drinking every day. And once they ramped up the volume and consistency and they started heavily, heavily taxing their neurochemistry through this pain pleasure dopamine feeding cycle, all of a sudden they're hooked now. There's no fucking, oh, I'm not an addict, oh, I'm not an alcoholic, oh, I can control my shit. Dude, it's, it's a ticking time bomb for every single person. Nobody is exempt. It doesn't matter how much will power or self control you think you have. It is a matter of time before the thing, before it hooks your tentacles in. It hooks its tentacles into, into your life, you know? And so you have to, if you want to quit drinking, you have to commit to the process and not just say that you want the outcome, right? Like it's about setting up the right conditions to support sobriety. I've got this thing that I wrote on my Instagram yesterday. And I want to read it to you guys if you aren't following me. Manifestation of the results occur, i.e. manifestation of an alcohol-free you occur when the conditions that are required for that goal to appear are met. Manifestation of results occur when the conditions that are required for that goal to appear are met. Right? So what are the conditions for an alcohol-free life? Well, first and foremost, we need to have some sort of structured plan that we follow. Right? Like if you're just winging it, you can, you can raw-dog it, you can, you know, use your iron will and go for a month or two, but you're shooting, you're shooting from the hip, you're throwing shit at the wall, hoping it sticks, you're trying to traverse a path in a journey, which you don't really have all the tools and strategies for. Right? Like had you had the tools and strategies, you would have done it, but you haven't been able to get the result because you don't have the system to plan the strategies and the tools. So we need to have a structured plan and we need to do some do things every single day that optimize this avatar. Mind, body, spirit, physical health, i mean that's body and neurochemistry. And then we need to do it with other people, very, very few people who have a truly problematic relationship get sober on their own. Very, very few people, I don't know what the percentage is, 1%, 2%, 5%, very, very, very, very low. So doing it with other people, knowing that you're not alone, being in a group in a community with people you can text or call or form relationships, with. Dude, it's so important. If I didn't have that community, if I didn't have that accountability, there's no way I would have been able to do it. I would have cracked. Even though I hit rock bottom, and I was drinking four to six bottles of wine a day, and I quite literally was like on the brink of suicide, not I was going to kill myself, but I was killing myself with my alcohol consumption. Once the pain wore off four or five, six months, I probably would have gone back. I would have gone back. This is why I say this in every one of my podcasts and every piece of content that I have is you have to get clear on the pain. You have to get clear on the pain, and then you have to play the tape forward on the pain. How are you showing up as a man, as a woman, as a father, as a wife, as a husband, as a leader, as a mother and father? Who's looking at you? Who's watching you? Who's modeling your behavior? If you have children, they are sensing. Children, besides just what you do or what you say, they can sense your energy. When you're emotionally numb and checked out, sitting on the couch, drinking, they can sense something is wrong. That mirrors back into their nervous system. I'm unsafe. Something is wrong here. Like, dude, it's a serious deal. If you grew up with alcoholic parents or substance abuse within your family or extended family, you know. Like, dude, alcohol is the thing. I'm certain. Alcohol is the thing. It's responsible for the it's like the crux of generational trauma being passed on from generation to generation to generation right? Whatever it is, the narcissism, the anger, the lack of emotional maturity, the inability to communicate, the inability to share your feelings, the inability to acknowledge, the inability to spend the time learning how to raise a proper human being because all you do after work is you just drink. Like, dude, it is the crux. It is the the the the Trojan horse of our modern society. And when when you commit to this process and you get through the other side, you realize you wake up like what would a fog we were operating in? Every single person who gets sober, who I help quit drinking or, you know, maybe you've you've got some sobriety from listening to my podcast. When you get enough sobriety and you escape the dopamine feeding cycle and you're not really craving anymore and you're feeling much better and energy is back and you're sleeping better and mood is better and time management is better and you're working out again and you're losing weight and everybody telling you how good you look and you're glowing and something's changed about you and you're getting more done and you know, you're getting a raise at your job and all these things are happening, you're like, what the fuck was I doing? What was I doing? I wish I quit drinking 10 years ago, 20 years ago. Trust me, fam. It is not what you think it is. Alcohol's cool in high school and it's cool in college when you're, you know, just a few years ago, you were a 13-year-old waiting to try to feel like what it's going to be to be an adult. And then you go out and you don't have to fucking deal with your parents anymore and you go do your own thing and you get into all types of crazy, fucking instances and trouble and you know, you're exploring, you're exploring consciousness, you're exploring different states of mind, you're exploring, you know, the limits of risk and tolerance and what's possible and consequences. And yeah, when you're learning doing drugs and shit when you're in high school and college is cool and fun and interesting, you're, you know, fucking becoming sexual and you're developing relationships and you know, you're having your first boyfriend or girlfriend and you're, you know, you're going to parties and it's cool. It's, it's fun. Sure. But dude, when you're 30, when you're 35, 40, 45, 50, 55, 60 and you're of that same mindset and you haven't finally held the mirror back up to your life to say, "Who the fuck am I? What do I want? What skills do I have? How do I want to contribute to the other human beings on this planet? How do I leave this place better than I found it? Do I want to, what are my goals? If I have one life and assume that I don't get a redo at this and you know, what do I want people to say at my funeral? How do I want them to remember me? What are the things that I want other people to know? What unique ideas and philosophies and perspectives and you know, do I want to bring into the earth? Write a book, you know, create some content, inspire somebody like that. That's why we're here. An alcohol is this distraction that we all end up being hurted like cattle. It's this coping mechanism that everybody just goes towards because they never figured out how to manage the avatar and they've got all this pain and trauma and you know, defects in their personality and the way they operate and so they just numb it out and it's procrastination against your personal evolution. But once you develop the psycho-emotional and spiritual kind of courage to be like, "Dude, listen, I get it. Like I don't get to experience 13 or 14 or 15 out of 10 anymore when it comes to fun because I was under hypnosis. I was using a drug." And the best I can get in order for me to sustain the rest of my life and not die of cirrhosis and to not fucking destroy my family and to create an example of more alcoholism and childhood trauma and to finally save my marriage or relationship and finally reach my goals is the best that I can get is a 10 out of 10, which is what life originally through nature has afforded me. 10 out of 10. I don't get 13 out of 10 anymore. I get to always stay at a stable 7. I'll also never go to negative 5 anymore in terms of pain and anxiety and sadness and depression. The worst, the worst it'll be is a 3. I oscillate between a 7 and on my worst days I'll be at a 3 and when I stay proactive on my mind, body, spirit, neurochemistry, connection, accountability, pursuit of passions and goals and learning and becoming better and loving myself and being on this healing and personal growth and transformation journey, I will experience 8, 9 and 10s from time to time when I earn it, when I put the work in. In a way, it's like, "Dude, we're growing up. We're growing up by becoming sober." It's not sober, aren't the fucking weird people. Sober are the people who woke up and said, "Enough is enough. Enough is enough. I'm tired of fucking excuses. I'm tired of giving into some anxiety or some boredom or some craving or thinking I'm fucking missing out on other people's experiences." No, my experience is the most important. My health is the most important. My mental health, my emotional health, my family. My future is more important than a bottle. And whatever pain or boredom or struggle or whatever, I have to endure along the way I'm willing to do it. Because if I go back, I already know how that game ends. I've played it 15,000 times. Right? You have to be the one who decides that. And every time you relapse and you go back and it's like, "Fuck, why did I do it again? That's why you did it again." Because in that moment, in that critical choice point where you were feeling something, boredom, anxiety, peer pressure, listen, it shows up in a million and a half different ways. You know, as a sobriety coach, somebody comes back to me and says, "Fuck, I don't know why I did it." Okay, well, let's rewind the tape. What were the conditions? What were the environment? Could you have made a different decision? Well, yeah, I went out with my friend who I used to hang out with and all we used to do was drink together. And I ended up having a drink with him. Great. So you're saying that if you just don't hang out with that person, you would have continued your 60-day streak, 80-day streak? Yeah, for sure. Yeah, if I wasn't with them, I for sure would have continued. Perfect. Here's what you have not learned about sobriety. You cannot hang out with people who you used to drink with until you feel 110% confident that you could go out, have coffee, go to dinner, do whatever and sit there for an hour or two hours and manage whatever physical sensation runs through your body and you can leave alcohol-free. Otherwise, you do not have the ability to go do that. That is the sacrifice that you make. Go back and listen to my other episode. It's called "Choose your sacrifices" or "Your sacrifices will be chosen for you." You have to choose your sacrifices and it sucks. It's hard. For sure, losing 100 pounds is hard. You don't get to fucking eat pizza and ice cream every day. You have to fucking eat chicken and rice and vegetables for a while. You have to show up every day for 45 minutes at the gym and you have to exert tons of energy and you're going to get tired and your heart rate's going to go up and you're not going to want to do it and you're going to fucking sweat. But you have to earn the physique that you want. You sat there for multiple years and you just threw toxic fucking poisonous processed food down your gullet every time you were bored or anxious or uncomfortable. So now you have to earn it and you have to make the sacrifices. You don't get to go out on Friday night. You choose and you're responsible for the result. It's not the government. It's not the other people. It's not your parents who made you this way. It's you. You are ultimately responsible for the result. So you eat the. either get to choose the excuse and be right and still deal with the same bullshit or you get to say no, it doesn't fucking matter anymore. I'm choosing this other thing and part of choosing this other thing is this willingness and this commitment and this courage to endure whatever comes up along the way. And to understand that whatever comes up along the way is going to make me better. That's what it is. It's like do you want to get better? Do you think you can get better? Do you think you can be a wiser, more adapted, more intelligent, creative, consistent, compassionate, mindful, organized human being? Because that's what sobriety is. You just, you become better. It's not like, I always say this. It's like what happens if you take somebody who's relatively successful, productive, functioning? And you just remove the thing. You just remove the poison. Imagine you're in second grade. John is a Susie Sally is a smart, relatively well-adjusted and productive member of society, but they drink every day. What would happen if John or Susie or Sally stopped drinking? Dude, a second grader could answer it. Well I know alcohol is bad. When my dad and mom drinks, they get really angry. So it's like basic, basic deductive reasoning. So if John or Sally was already a well-adjusted, productive member and they stopped drinking, their life would probably get better. Boom. A second grader can answer it. But your life getting better doesn't come without that part of you developing the courage to face the temporary pain along the way. Some boredom, some anxiety, some sitting on a plane where you would normally get fucked up and not. And you have to sit and deal with that anxiety for an hour. You throw in a podcast, you breathe through it, you drink three fucking diet coax instead. But guess what, every time you have a craving for alcohol and you don't drink, eventually your body realizes, hey, it's not getting the thing it's craving for. And incrementally, over time, the craving become less intense, they become shorter and less frequent. I'm three years alcohol free. For 15 years, I was a brutal binge drinker, drinking three to four days a week, obliterating myself. I was drinking 20 to 30 glasses of wine a day in a pack of cigarettes a day. And now I'm three years alcohol free and I haven't had a craving for alcohol in probably two years. Can you believe it? Can you believe it? It's possible for you. I'm sure the volume that I was drinking was probably worse than you. I think in the hundreds of people that I've worked with, I've only had maybe two people who were drinking as much as me or more. So it's possible. It's possible. And it's not a pissing contest of who drinks more whatever, but it's just like, dude, it's possible. But you are the one who determines, am I willing to put in the work? Am I willing to commit to the process? Because that's what it's about. Whether you're trying to lose weight, whether you're trying to achieve a certain revenue goal, whether you're trying to get sober, whether you're trying to reignite love or passion or intimacy in your relationship, you have to create the conditions. You have to commit to the process, to the creating of the conditions for that thing to occur and manifest. You can't just say that you want it and then get angry when it's not there. You can't be mad about the results that you don't have for the work that you didn't put in. There's no free lunch in nature. Money doesn't just appear in your bank account. Money just doesn't appear in your bank account. There's a super passionate loving relationship that doesn't just appear. You start with step A and then you move to point B to C to D to E to F to G and so on. The conditions have to be met. And if you are not meeting the conditions, then you have to ask yourself, well, what am I doing? I want this type of relationship, but where am I being romantic? If you're a woman, where am I showing my man love and respect and adoration and supporting him? If you're a man, where are you being romantic? Where are you leading? Where are you being proactive? Where are you showing your woman X, Y and Z? What are you doing to create the conditions for the result that you want? That's why a program is so important because a program provides you with all of the conditions that will help. But that's what you're investing in. That's what the whole thing is about, whether it's sobriety coaching or business coaching or mindset coaching or relationship coaching or whatever else. The person that you're working with and investing in has found a series of conditions that says, hey, if you're in a relationship and you're constantly getting into conflict, here is a relationship communication formula. Okay. Step 1, we ask our partner if they have the emotional capacity to have a conversation, right? Because sometimes we just go to our partner and we start bitching and moaning about something we're pissed off about or something that they're doing wrong and then they get defensive and boom, vicious cycle. So step 1, ask your partner, hey, there's something on my heart that I'd like to talk to you about or share with you. Do you have the time at 2 p.m. to sit down and talk about it? Boom. Step 1, we get a yes. Okay. Number 2, okay. We talk using the word I and me, not you because when you point fingers at somebody else, it just makes them defensive. They go into defense mode. So rather than saying, hey, you do this and you do that and you do this, you say, hey, I'm feeling this way when I notice this happens. I'm experiencing this inside of my body. Here's how it's making me feel. Here's what I'm thinking about it. And then you speak and then you allow the other person to speak and then you don't interrupt. And then when the other person speaks, you repeat back to them what they said to demonstrate understanding, active listening, acknowledgement and empathy. So the other person feels hurt and understood and then you ping pong this back and forth until you get to the source and the bottom and the root. And then you come up with a strategy and a solution that works for both of you and you ping pong the strategy and the solution following the same previous principles. Don't interrupt, listen, repeat back what they said and the entire time you maintain eye contact, you maintain emotional regulation. It doesn't matter how intense your blood is boiling or how much adrenaline you feel, you always go back to the principles, the formula, right? Everything in life has a formula. Everything in life. Every result, every outcome, every manifestation has a formula. There are a certain set of conditions that need to be met for that thing to occur and sobriety is no different. So this is really what I wanted to drill in and help you understand is that like there is a process to this thing, right? Alcohol isn't, you know, quitting drinking isn't putting the bottle down. This thing has woven its fabric. It's tentacles into the fabric of every aspect of your life for as long as you've been drinking. Ten years, fifteen years, thirty years, forty years, all of it. Organization, time management means to an end, night time, putting the kids to sleep, you know, your relationships, your partner, your weekends, your vacations, your all of it, all of it. So how do you develop the capacity within yourself to go through all of these life experiences without the thing that you used to rely on for years and years and years and years? Well, there's a set of processes and conditions that need to be met that you need to follow. Optimization of mind, body, spirit, neurochemistry on an ongoing basis, not one day you do it the other day you don't. It is a commitment, just like it is a commitment for that caterpillar to go into a cocoon for six weeks, back sore, eating its own ass, hot and sweaty, you know, making the sacrifices of hanging out with the other caterpillars, right? It has to go through a rigorous, painful, challenging process, but guess what? It's not rigorous, painful and challenging. The butterfly doesn't go into the caterpillar, doesn't go into the cocoon and then live in the cocoon for the rest of its life until it dies. It goes into the cocoon, it does the heavy work it needs to do. I mean, I wish I, I'm going to research this so I know the details, right? Like it sheds its skin, it builds a new exoskeleton, it creates new bones, it gets rid of all its legs, it develops wings, its colors change, like whether that caterpillar is conscious of it or not, like that's probably a lot of work, right? But then eventually it starts once the conditions are met and it does the work mentally, emotionally, spiritually, the way it handles itself, it manages its mind, it communicates, manages conflict, manages stress, anxiety, once it meets all the conditions, it comes out the other side of butterfly and the butterfly is 100,000 times more powerful, more beautiful, more free than the caterpillar. The brain of a caterpillar probably can't even conceive what a butterfly could experience. It doesn't know three-dimensional, it doesn't know wings, it doesn't know what it it feels like to fly. It can't conceive what's available on the other side. Similarly, when you were seven, when you were five years old, and your brain didn't have the understanding, the context, the intelligence, it wasn't developed enough to conceive what reality could be at 30 years old as an adult. Similarly, you can't conceive the other version of you on the other side, a year down the line, two years down the line, three years down the line, five years down the line. It's different. It's inconceivable now. And I know it's scary, the thought and idea of what it all means and the work that you have to put in, but this is why you do it with a community. This is why you have accountability. You do it with a group. It's possible, my friend. It is absolutely possible. And guess what? You're the one who is responsible for it. It's not, hey, this is outside of my control. It's fully in your control, based off of the choices that you make, day in and day out, by optimizing and harmonizing your system. So I hope this episode was helpful for you. Put these things into context, relisten to this episode, send it to somebody who you think it'll help. It has to be process and your identity over the outcome, over the outcome. The outcome is sober, alcohol-free. I know, we all want that, but you have to commit to a process. And when you commit to the process and you meet the conditions necessary for the result to occur, then eventually it will occur as a natural byproduct. As a natural byproduct. So if you would like to work with me, go to www.thestoptrinkingcoach.com and fill out an application. So again, I talked a little bit in the beginning. Up until now, I've been running a pretty much one-on-one coaching program, Q1 of this year. Officially, I'm launching a group coaching program, which I'm very, very excited about. I will continue probably for the remainder of 2024. I'll probably do a hybrid. There will be different price points. And one thing I also want to let you know is that for my group program, it's going to be a year-long commitment. I think I'm going to have two options. Monthly rate where you can pay with a 12-month commitment or it's going to be a year-long, you pay in full, and you get a discount. And the reason for that is that I-- if you listen to my content, if you listen to who I am, and the way I communicate this whole deal, and my approach, quitting drinking isn't just about putting the bottle down. My vision for Stop Drinking Coach and what I have-- what I have my vision for the next five years is to create one of the most powerful and comprehensive human transformation programs in existence. And so I don't want to work with people who just want to come in and say, oh, well, 90 days in a month. Like, if you're going to do this thing, like, you have to understand this is a journey. There's a lot of people who can go in 90 days, and then they drink the next week. Like, so what happens then? You need a community. You need support. You need to have people that you can start to look at family, phone numbers that you can exchange. Real relationships. Because if you slip up-- and I'm not saying my program is perfect, and I have 100% success rate, I don't. I'd be a trillionaire if I did. Nobody on Earth is 100% cracked the code to addiction. This is a complex deal. But you need somewhere where you can always tap back into. You need coaches and community and support. You can always come back to. And that's why it's a year-long program. Because I want people to come into my program really commit to transforming their life, not just putting the bottle down, but becoming better humans in every capacity. And my program is going to provide you the resources, tools, books, podcasts. I have a really comprehensive course that I'm building with all types of assets for healing and mindset, and mental management, and emotional management, and healing. And healing from toxic family dynamics, and healing your inner child, and stepping into the future version of yourself, and aligning to that person you know you're capable of being. I'm trying to make this a full 360 deal. So fill out an application if you'd like to work with me. If you go to my website, scroll down to the bottom of the page. You'll see plenty of screenshots and testimonials of people in my program. I've got 500 more that I haven't added, because it just slows my website down too much. And let's do this thing. If you're really seriously committed to taking things to the next level, fill out an application. And if you have not yet already left a review on Apple or on Spotify, 5 star review, I would really, really appreciate it. It'll just push my content, my episodes out to more people who need help with this whole journey. So I appreciate you listening, and I trust this episode helped you, 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 5 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.