Quitting Drinking is an Initiation - Time To Step Up

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 and 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? I am back with another episode. Way too long overdue. Please don't hate me. I love each and every single one of you, but life has been really wild and beautiful and has taken me on so many different adventures and twists and turns and rides and in so many different ways that are totally unexpected. You guys have heard me say this and mentioned this before. It's like, when you go to quit drinking and you finally get sober, I'm coming up on 5 years sober in a few months here and your life will expand in ways that you previously just can't imagine. If you would have asked me, "Try to predict who you would be, what life would be, the types and qualities of experiences that you would have 5 years from now." I would have been able to on a really generic surface level say, "Okay, I'm living in a different city. Maybe I'm doing my own thing and maybe this is what my health looks like and here's how I feel like and here's what my day looks like and here's what my relationships look like. Sure. We're all human. We can all fit our life into those categories. But the way that you feel, the way that you understand them, the way that you interpret them, your consciousness in who you are and the depth and the capacity and the connection of all of it and how it is revealed to you in your life is so different, so different. I could have never imagined how things are for me today." And so yeah, I'm just super, super, super grateful. I just got back from kind of like a three week ceremony. I was in Costa Rica. I didn't move to Costa Rica by the way. I know some of you who have been listening were wondering if I had actually pulled the trigger and made the move. It did not end up working out, which I'm very grateful for. I just kind of chose a different path for myself. I'm still in Austin and Austin is beautiful and so many great things are really on the horizon. So, yeah, I was just in Costa Rica for seven days living in the jungle for a retreat and then I came back and I was in Austin for a few days and then I went to an alcohol-free music festival, which was awesome. And I spent about a week in northern California and that was beautiful spending some time like deepening and exploring a new relationship and just so many beautiful things happening in life. But enough about me, I know you aren't here to just listen to what I've been up to. In this video or in this podcast and by the way, I'm driving right now and on my way to grab some food and run some errands for the day. This is my day back as I'm landing and integrating before I have like 50 calls from people who want to join the program this week and my calendar is almost fully booked. I've got like a couple spots left for people next week. So there's a lot of people who are coming into SDC and I couldn't be more grateful to be able to help all of you. Up into the greatest, most amazing, incredible chapter of your life. And as I say that, let me take a moment to remind you that like, that's what this is. That's what this is. The program that's running inside of you that is fearful of you giving up alcohol is literally the spirit of the alcohol talking. It's not actually objectively true and it's not reflective of what your experience will actually be when your neurochemistry recovers and you spend enough time alcohol free and you develop confidence and you develop more self-esteem and you improve your skills and you begin to heal all the parts of yourself that you were afraid of confronting and using alcohols away to cover up and mask and numb out and escape from. And I don't care what it is. It doesn't matter. It can all be worked through. It can all be healed. It can all be reprocessed. It can all be let go. It can all be forgiven. And you can emerge on the other side as a more powerful, wise, compassionate, loving present, humble, skillful, creative, impactful, successful version of yourself in every sense of the work. Remember that as human beings, we are not born to drink our life away and then die. Alcohol is procrastination against our personal evolution. That's what we used when we got sidetracked when we literally didn't have the tools, skills, resources and other human beings to help us process and understand our pain and our fears and our inadequacies and our shortcomings and our grief and our shame and our guilt and everything in between. So we found our self silently coping through the bottle and that's what you're doing every day if you're drinking and you have a problematic relationship with alcohol is you've got kids, you've got a wife, you've got a husband, you've got friends, you've got colleagues, you've got a community, you've got family members, right? But then quietly and secretly, you're going off and you're just drinking alcohol because you're like, oh, things need to be more fun and exciting. Oh, I need it as a social crutch. Oh, I need it to manage the job that I hate and the stress and the overwhelm and the lack of connection and meaning and sense of purpose that I feel like I have in my life. And what I'm here to tell you, my friend is like, as an adult, it's time that we step up and we start to take care of the shit. Like you stop running, you stop numbing, you stop avoiding being more confident. You stop numbing against the fact that you're afraid of other human beings in social environments, right? Maybe it's not that you have social anxiety. Maybe it's that nobody taught you the nuanced, artful nature of developing relationships. Maybe you don't have social anxiety. Maybe you actually haven't like dug deep enough to understand the value of developing relationships and how developing the right relationships can catapult your life into new heights that you never imagined. Maybe you just are afraid of being judged because at one point in your life, you were like really, really vulnerable and you opened yourself up and you laid your truth in heart on the table to your parents or to your mom or to your ex girlfriend or boyfriend or some kid at school or your teacher or your coach. And then they made fun of you and shamed you and you have never been able to actually move through that experience. So now as an adult in your 30s, 40s or 50s, you're still using alcohol as a crotch and it's siphoning your life and it's siphoning your life force and your energy and productivity and motivation and you're leaving $5,000 a month or more in sales on the table at work because you don't have the ability to focus and concentrate and follow up with leads and be linguistically articulate enough to close that deal and to overcome the objection when you're met with it. And so it's like you're leaving your life on the table for these micro moments where you're choosing to outsource to alcohol, something that I fucking promise you, you have the ability to resource within yourself. It doesn't matter what it is. It doesn't matter why you're using alcohol. Alcohol is not an inborn requirement for being human and managing and coping through life. It's just not. You come born and equipped with a nervous system and a brain and thoughts and emotions and feelings and like your ability to cope through life is fully like available to you. It's your birthright as an adult. It's your birthright. You have the skills and tools and you can learn them but you might not have them but you can learn them and it doesn't matter if it's for grief. It doesn't matter if it's because you feel so scared inside of your relationship and you don't know what to do. It's like, dude, it doesn't matter what it is. I'm telling you that you can heal, that you can recover and that it all gets easier. And I just want to remind that to you. I want to reiterate that to you because sometimes like we get lost. When we've been living in a certain way within a finite set of what feels known, say, familiar and comfortable and we think we like that, the thought and idea of changing that can seem deathly terrifying. It's like, it's an initiation process. Let's just look at my life and then as you're listening to this, use yours as a background example. Think about yourself. Right. So I look at my life and I look at what was available to me in terms of what I could do with my time. I looked at what was available to me in terms of how how connected I felt to myself. I looked at what was available to me in terms of how connected I felt to a sense of mission and purpose in my life. I looked at the quality and depth of my relationships and the caliber and quality of people whom I was connected with. I look at my resources and my capacity to use my time in a way that I wanted to freely. I looked at my health and how I felt about myself in terms of my confidence and my self-esteem. I looked at the number of skills that I had. I looked at like, look at all those things, right? Throughout my 20s. It was absolutely nowhere near, not even one-tenth of who I am today in all those capacities. Not even one-tenth. Like some things are 20x more, 50x more, 100x more. But had I continued to live in that comfort your ability in what was known and when was familiar in what was safe and what was certain in what I thought I wanted, my life would not have expanded. I would not be sitting here talking to you. I would not have had the impact and the ripple effect that has come from me choosing to get sober and me choosing to walk a path of light and expansion for the greater collective human conscious collective as a whole. Like whatever benefit you've got from listening to me, you would not have gotten, had I chosen what I thought was safe, known familiar, uncomfortable and what I thought I wanted, right? I had to go through an initiation process to step into an entirely new caliber and echelon of life, one in which at a previous time, I never thought I would get to. I probably thought I was undeserving of. I was scared to try to navigate, didn't know what the process would look like, feel like or what it would entail, seemed risky, seemed hard, seemed out of reach, but now I'm absolutely like living it every single day and I'm not only living it, but it's growing and expanding and getting more beautiful day by day in ways that I didn't ask for, but it's just happening because I'm living in alignment now energetically in my entire operating system from my mind to my heart, to my body, to my behaviors, to my thoughts, to my intentions, to the way that I think, to how I think, to what I think about and like, dude, it's all working way more in alignment and harmoniously, not only with my own system, but with the system of those around me, and the greater collective system of like, our biological sphere of life. Like it's working in more harmony with my friends, with my community, with my community on social media, with the people I impact. Like I'm a more harmonious, energetic being, and everything is working more symbiotically with each other because I've been able to clear out my energetic blocks, my energetic distortions, my energetic resistance points, namely lack of confidence, fear, anxiety, like not allowing my potential to come through, right? If you're not allowing your creativity, your potential, the truth of your authenticity to come through, then you're living in energetic blockage and distortion, which is gonna create more pain, which is gonna lead to more fear, which is gonna lead to more resistance, which is gonna lead to more triggers, which is gonna lead to more projection onto other people, and why everybody else has to conform to manage your nervous system, instead of you stepping up and taking ownership that your triggers are your triggers, and it doesn't matter what they did or how they showed up. Like it's time for you to take ownership of your life and your reality, and in a calm, neutral way, communicate to other people and set clear, healthy boundaries, but it's not for other people, it's for you, to then decide if you're gonna accept that and tolerate that, or if you're going to choose a different path and direction in your life. What I'm trying to illustrate, and what I'm kind of sending through here as a transmission and a message, is that your only purpose on this earth is not to pay your bills and raise your kids and fucking watch Netflix and order food. Your only actual purpose, the only reason you wake up in your heartbeats is for the next X amount of years as you're alive, is for you to evolve your consciousness and get better at driving your human car. That's it. Everything else is a side quest that you do to manage your time, to pass your time, to keep you distracted, to light up your neurochemistry, so that you can continually come back to that path. That is it. And if you don't believe that, and you've gotten lost, and you believe life is somehow some other thing, let me bring you back. Let me be the light of consciousness to bring you back to your authenticity and your personal truth and your actual mission, which is that everything is predicated. The results, the quality, the impact, the truth of everything that you do, is predicated upon your caliber of consciousness and how you have learned to drive your personal car, the amount of money that you make, how much your wife or husband loves you or respects you, and adores you, how your kids look up to you, if they listen to you, or if they tell you to fuck off, how successful you are when it comes to your health, when you look in the mirror, everything, all of it, all of it, all of it, is a reflection of your caliber of consciousness and how you have come to learn and understand your human operating system. And if you are drinking alcohol, my friend, that means you are off-path. That's it. You are off-path. You've lost your way. You've lost your way into a substance because you psychologically, emotionally, behaviorally, socially within the context and confines of your own consciousness in your own life have lost your way and have become dependent on a substance outside of you that is slowly killing you and draining every aspect of your life because there is a specific pattern, a specific set of triggers, a specific set of experiences or memories or sequence of events that have discombobulated and distorted your system, where your consciousness, your thoughts, your beliefs, your values, how you manage your time contextually within whatever is happening in that instance, you don't know how to do it. And so you're on autopilot. Trigger craving drink. And meanwhile, it's siphoning your money. It's siphoning your brain, your concentration, your focus, your incurring massive opportunity cost. Massive, massive, massive, massive opportunity cost. Okay? If you are drinking three days a week from five to 10 pm, that's 15 hours a month or 15 hours a week, that's 60 hours a month, six times 12, that's 720 hours a year. Imagine 720 hours a year you are drunk and this is not even counting the recovery from the hangover. So let's say you're at least hungover for five hours or unclear, right? The following day. So that's 30 hours a week. That's 120 hours a month. That's 1200 hours per year. How much money did you spend there? How many dumb fucking fights and arguments and conflicts did you get into? How many physical examples did you set of patterning and programming and repetition? Did you set for your five, six, seven, eight, nine year old? For your 13 year old, that's just getting into middle school and high school and is trying to figure out and navigate life around what's acceptable and what's not acceptable. How many imprints did you just imprint into your family? How much deeper did you take yourself into the associated patterning and conditioning of alcohol use disorder? Like dude, these are the fucking conversations that nobody is having with you. Not your mom, not your dad, not your friends, not your partner, not your spouse, not your kids, not your buddies who wanna keep drinking and parting with you and maybe not your therapist either. So it's like at what point are you gonna wake up? At what point are you gonna realize that the cost of not changing my friend is significantly worse than the momentary short-term discomfort you're gonna have to feel for the next X amount of weeks or X amount of months to allow your mind, body and neurochemistry in your thoughts and your maturity and your spiritual development and your initiation to take place. Yeah, it's gonna be hard. Yeah, there might be moments where you feel like you're missing out. Yeah, you might have to not go on that vacation next week, but guess what? A year from now when you're making 30% more money, right? Two years from now when maybe you've started that business, five years from now when you're entirely a different unrecognizable person, you're going to be able to live your life and experience life in a way that you have never dreamed of. But if you keep choosing short-term instant gratification now in the moment, you're never going to be able to get there. And like, really, really, that is kind of the difference between like an adult that you look at and really like fully respect in every capacity of the word and is like reliable and responsible and like is sort of like this elder that you feel safe around who you know like fucking got it and got you and got the family and got the community versus the one that you're like not entirely sure about. It's the one who you can look at and like can manage their impulses. Right? That's what creates safety. That's what creates trust. That's what creates long-term survivability in every respect of the word. Right? When you look at your husband, when you look at your wife, the one thing that you really, really actually hope that they have is the ability to manage their impulses because what does that say about them? If they do not have the ability to manage their impulses, what does that say about like the deep structure of your union? What does that say about how they prioritize and value consequences and decision making and the impact short, medium, and long of those decisions and how it impacts safety and family and financial resources and health? Right? Do they have the vision and foresight to like actually play the tape forward in who they are and what they do and the impact that that has in all of its different facets in life? Obviously, we don't want to have a partner that has very poor impulse control because what if they're out one day and there's an individual that walks up to them that happens to be three times more attractive than you are and three times more successful or three times more masculine or three times more feminine or three times more this or that. It's like, well, we would hope that we could trust our partner and that there isn't a good meaning issue there. Right? I'm just throwing out metaphors and examples to help you connect the dots in your mind because when we get strung up on alcohol, we follow a very small path that tells us what's real, what's good, what's not, what's bad, what's comfortable, what's not comfortable, what life is going to be without it, it's just so cookie cutter and I could say you're going to explain it. The way that you feel is exactly how I felt. Every person who goes to quit drinking has the same fears and points of anxiety. You can't imagine life with that alcohol. You think life is going to be boring. You think social events are never going to fucking measure up. You think that the way that you've been able to connect with your friends or your partner through sex or social events is just never going to be the same and what the fuck are you going to do and literally what are you going to do with your time? What are you actually going to do if you don't drink? Like go sit at a coffee shop. Are you fucking kidding me? You put a gun to my head. These are the types of thoughts that we have. It's like this is fucking insane. What am I going to just go hang out at the park under the sun? That's going to be miserable. You mean I'm just going to go to the movies and not fucking drink while I'm watching the movie? Like you mean I'm just going to go to dinner and like focus on talking to the other person and like enjoy each bite and savour each flavor rather than just having four to six drinks? Like dude your mind can't conceive it. But what you have to remember and understand is that who you think you are isn't even what you are. You're just a conscious witness that's been hyperspaced into a meat suit that operates based off of patterning, programming, conditioning, neurochemistry and a bunch of different like set of principles. But all of it can be changed. All of it can be reformatted. All of it can be reprocessed. Things can be like go. You can change the whole fucking paradigm of it all. But you don't know that and you have no idea how that is. And so you're like oh fucking alcohol is ruining my life. And so you try to quit drinking and you get a week and two weeks and a month and two months and a year. And then you're like oh fucking I can do it again. And then you do. And then now you're listening to my podcast again. Right. So if you want to quit drinking you like I'm just speaking to myself. Okay. I think I'm like a reasonably intelligent person reasonably. Like I'm definitely absolutely nowhere near the smartest person at all. I'm like a monkey compared to a lot of people. But I've got a few things figured out. A few things figured out. Namely what's happening with addiction on multiple levels in the brain from neurochemistry to childhood programming and psychology and trauma. And what's happening like through all of these different layers and how they're all connected. And then I've got practical tips and tools and strategies and like an actual playbook that you follow. Day in and day out that says if you do these things and if you think in this way and you apply this mental model and you apply this strategy while you're experiencing this and going through that. It will make the process 10 times easier and it will feel better and it's not going to feel as hard and scary. And if you're struggling with alcohol specifically for this and you listen to this really powerfully stacked guided meditation. That's not just a guided meditation. But leverages all of these other healing modalities that most people don't understand and have never heard of. And boom, you stack it one on top of the other. It creates a profound visceral psychological and conscious change in your mind and body where like things could permanently like never be the same again because you unlock consciousness. You unlock parts of your the way that you interpret your internal frameworks that you're like, oh, I didn't even know this is a quality that I could change. I didn't even know this door was here, but this door has been here from the moment I was born. But I just didn't know you don't know what you don't know. You know. And so like that's what this journey is about. It's about healing. It's about growth. It's about initiation. It's about courage. It's about expansion. It's about becoming the person that you've always wanted to be. At what point did you get off track? Like, dude, when you were 9, 10, 12, 15, 18 years old and you're like, how'm I going to be this? And I'm going to show up this way and life's going to feel like this. And here's going to be the opportunities and the way that I live and the quality of my relationships and how much money I make. And I want to go to fucking Germany and do this and do that and like experience it. Like, at what point did you get off track and just fucking throw in the towel? Like the reason you're here on earth and have 50 years left is so you can do that. And so when you're on your deathbed, you can exhale and be like, I fucking gave it all my all and I let all the music that was inside of me out. Otherwise, why the fuck would you want to die regretful? That is the ultimate worst pain, my friend. Go to YouTube and look up. I interviewed an elderly person. I interviewed somebody who's on their deathbed. There's like a thousand and a half of them. There's like 5,000 of those videos and go look in and watch. Literally do this. Watch what they all you bickwitously across the board. That means all of them, regardless. Say they say the same thing. I wish I spent more time with family and was present. I wish I didn't listen to other people's judgments and opinions. I wish I followed my heart. I wish I tried to start that business. I wish I wasn't so afraid. I wish I didn't let my fears hold me back. I wish I was more myself. I wish I wasn't so hard on myself and just let myself be happy and understand that I'm actually whole and complete despite making mistakes or hurting others or have shame or guilt about some aspect of myself or something that I did in the past. That I'm actually a divine reflection of the universe or God or whatever you want to call it. And that I'm whole and complete the way that I am. I just have to find it within myself to see that and understand that and accept that and then begin to live from that. Allow myself to live from that. Despite the shame, despite the feeling of inadequacy, despite the thinking that I need to accomplish XYZ and then I'm only deserving to be or show up in a certain way. All that shit is nonsense, my friend, and you've gotten lost if you are operating based off of any of those stories and narratives. And so what do you need? What do you need to quit drinking? You need everything that I'm telling you. And I'm not saying that you have to have it and it's the only way, but it's what I needed. And I feel and sorry, I got distracted here. I consider myself a reasonably intelligent person. Very reasonably. You know, like the AA didn't fucking work because it gives you no substance. It gives you no substance. It's an old outdated technology that was cool 100 years ago. Show up to the same church every day. Reaffirm you're an alcoholic every day so you don't forget because we know the voice inside of your head slips in and is tricky and that's what you have to learn how to live with an eventually reprogram and tell your story. Be seen. Be heard. Be valid. validated by other people who get it and don't forget you're an alcoholic and the only way to get through it is to Absorbed is to fully surrender yourself to the will of something outside of yourself and I do believe surrender is important I believe as you dig deeper into this path and process there is a spiritual component absolutely I don't get too heavy on that on the front end because when people are not ready for that when they have not Calibrated their level of consciousness into that understanding. It's a turn off and it does people a disservice So trust me when I say that I have gone through and Work through and strategized and have developed a process that you can walk that Hold your hand and shows you how to do it But you have to have the courage to walk it. I can't do it for you your wife can't do it for you Your husband can't do it for you and it's not their fucking problem and they're not the ones to hold you through it They can be there as a support system But they're not your accountability partner my friend and if you're applying that type of pressure to them You're hurting your marriage you're hurting your union and you're setting a bad example Your partner needs you to show up for them as the person that they married or the person that they Originally fell in love with And it's like yeah, I know you feel bad about that statement. I know you feel like you're already coming short I know hearing that makes you want to go drink again, but it's like dude. This is the fucking reality of it. This is the truth and So like we need to pull up our pants We need to recognize that we've gotten off track and it's okay It's not entirely your fault. Look at the fucking matrix and system that we live in everywhere You don't have an option It's like everywhere you go. You are being program and force to consume alcohol That's just it's culture dude. It's culture You get into high school you start drinking you get to college you get fucked up and you have wild experiences And then you go to work and everybody does happy hour after work and it's how people connect and it's how people manage Working a job that they don't connect with and doesn't have meaning or purpose because it's Spreadsheets and fucking selling products and services that they don't give shit about Right, it's like dude. We're managing. We're coping. We're trying to live in fine meaning and purpose But if you're at a place where it's like siphoning your soul and destroying everything man like dude It's time to get out. This is your Initiation process to becoming the man or woman or whatever you are To the thing that you've always aspired to do God or the universe is giving you the test Do you want to live that lifestyle? Do you want to be able to move into that echelon of experience of love of compassion of personal sovereignty of discipline of your mind and body looking and feeling a certain way to have a certain caliber of relationship or partner or sex life for respect or financial capacity like what do you what do you want? And if you haven't thought about those or clarified those and you're just stuck looping in the present moment It's time to begin asking those questions my friend and this is what a program offers is everything that I've shared with you can textually around like The things to consider and how to walk this path and what to do and what to think about and what values are they connected to and who are you like that's all in the program It's all in the program and The way I look at relapse is like relapse is just an opportunity to learn right So when we go to quit drinking and we're not walking a clearly defined path and we don't have a program with accountability and structure and community and like Like all these things We'll get a couple weeks and then we relapse and we're like oh fuck Like why that happened like oh I'm so disappointed. I just there's something wrong with me. I just can't quit like I'm not cut out for sobriety It's like no there's just you are an infinitely like complex As like you're an infinitely complex energetic Soup of consciousness that inhabits a body and this it doesn't even make sense like what's beating your heart 24/7 What energetic system knows that that's the looping cycle to keep your heart beating and somehow you're aware of that somehow like you take physical matter that Like is not alive like rocks and materials and molecules and all of a sudden it creates awareness and you have The capacity to remember like a thousand different memories from your past And you have the ability to close your eyes and imagine a red rose and a yellow school bus and a better future than you have now like do this whole thing is actually magic and at no point where you giving the blueprint For how it works for how to manage it for how to interpret it all the bells and whistles that are actually available to you inside that you fucking have no idea about and you just got programmed by your mom by your family by your brother by your sister by your mom or your dad what they gave you You got programmed by the things they didn't give you you created all these stories and narratives about who you are and your self worth and your value and whether you're your loveable or not loveable and because of the experiences that you had early on because that's what children do there are self referential they don't have the capacity to understand like other people's experiences like to kids they're the center of the universe so everything that happens between the ages of like zero and seven is then self reflected and directed back to you and forms the architectural neural network of your identity and your beliefs around what's possible and what's not possible and your triggers and your sensitivities to other human beings and dude I it's insane it's it's so there's so much and if you don't know how to drive the car and you're driving the car into the ground you need more you need more I needed more I tried it the other ways and it didn't work it worked for a few months but then I went back because I gave into that voice inside of my head everybody who relapses just gives into the voice inside of their head at this point I've been doing this three and a half years and worked with over 400 people like I've pretty much got this down to like a science we're not very different from each other the reason why we might be drinking is a little bit different but all of it can be traced back to a moment in an experience that created a set of stories perceptions imprints triggers nervous system responses it's connected to a memory it's connected to your childhood it's kind of connected to the patterning of our neurochemistry and there's a path out if you have the courage to walk it and to recognize that what's standing between you and your dreams is you having the courage to fill out an application you having the courage to go work a program maybe it's not my program maybe it's somebody else's program maybe it's a mother system maybe you go to rehab I don't know what it is but the what's standing between you and the dream life that you can imagine for yourself is you having the courage to allow yourself to be with discomfort to stopping so fucking afraid of discomfort discomfort is the initiatory process to evolution it's the only way nature knows how to do it you cannot initiate from one point of existence into a higher more favorable point of experience without initiation without discomfort that is how molecular cellular biology knows how to do it we haven't found a peptide yet that you just stick into your body that numbs you all the time and avoids the discomfort and just allows the cellular change to happen and also you just wake up smarter you just wake up wiser you can't just get wiser wisdom comes from going through bullshit and making mistakes and making errors in judgment either about yourself or about other people or about circumstances and situations then you feel the pain and the pain says oh I don't want to feel that again therefore let me backtrack rewind the tape look at what happened and make sure that I implement better structure strategies processes curriculums moving forward so we don't keep re-experiencing the pain and burning the hand on the stove right like as a parent if you're a parent you have lived your life and you've made certain mistakes and you try to impart those into your children hey you probably shouldn't date this type of person right because it's probably not going to end up well maybe you shouldn't hang out with these types of friends you know maybe you shouldn't run and sprint and practice your running in oncoming traffic because something bad might happen right like learning how to navigate the human game from a psychological and emotional and a social standpoint and a familial standpoint and from a masculine energy standpoint to a feminine energy standpoint to a leader leadership standpoint to an athlete to being a businessman to being an entrepreneur to being a friend to being a lover like there are there are blueprints there are architectural like frameworks for each and every one of these things and like if you want to become a better human you have to invest in yourself and like apply a level of commitment and follow through to fucking get better like you don't stop learning in college you don't stop learning in high school if you want more if you want better if If you want more favorable, it's time for you to step up. It's time for you to recognize that this is your initiation into the person that you've always wanted to become. And this is what you've asked for, but maybe God or the universe hasn't brought it into the package that you've wanted, but it's the package that you, your soul, needed to learn. I need to, I needed to start drinking four to six bottles of one a day and severely injure my left shoulder for me to wake the fuck up. If I could sit back in my throne and say, "You know what God? You know what source? You know what universe? You know what fucking insane blueprint that I'm somehow a conscious witness to?" I would rather have you give it to me this way. I would rather just be born into an awesome, super successful family and have a trust fund and be able to just do whatever the fuck I want for the rest of my life. I think that's how we would all to some degree. If we could wave a magic wand, we'd be like, "All right, let's just do that. Let's just fucking be able to live it out the way we want. Let's be able to have infinite choice in any moment and let us gain all the things that come from something like that." Sure. Actually, I don't know if I'd want that. To some level, for sure, it sounds like an awesome fantasy and I would love to have those experiences. But would I be the same caliber of person? Would I have the same depth? Would the relationships that I carry in my life and the way that I communicate and hang out with people be the same? Would my values be the same? Would my understanding of consciousness and other people as a whole be similar? I don't know. It'd be totally different. I'm super grateful and honored and feel privileged to be the person that I am today. And it has only come through a significant level of pain and the courage to walk through that pain. But guess what? I'm still here and I'm still fully intact. That pain hurt from time to time. Those discomforts weren't comfortable. But guess what? I'm stronger than ever. I'm more resilient than ever. I'm wiser than ever. I'm less fuck-widdable than ever. I'm more confident than ever. I'm more certain than ever. I feel more resourceful than ever. And guess what? That came from developing the fucking balls to be uncomfortable for a little while. And to trust that whatever bullshit stories my alcoholic mind was telling me in the moment about how my life was going to be over and things were going to be boring and sad and fucking whatever wasn't true. Wasn't true. The alcohol demon spirit was talking. Not BARTY, not TRUTH, not my higher self, not the real actual possibility of potential and expansion. So it's like, what are you going to do? What are you going to choose? I just record a video on my Instagram and it's like, it's the gap. I'm going to be creating a lot more content around the gap because this is what it all comes down to my friend. The gap is where unmanifest potential and infinite beauty and surprise and growth and evolution and all the things that is beautiful about life occurs. It occurs in the gap. And what is the gap? The gap is the moment between the trigger or the choice point and what unfolds. It's that fertile space. It's the womb of creation is the gap. So when you are triggered to drink either psychologically or emotionally, it's like, oh, it's 5 p.m. I got a drink. Oh, it's a blue, sunny, skydowed set. I got a drink. Oh, this person pissed me off again. I got a drink or you get that trigger in your body that's like super fucking visceral and tense and you want to drive through a concrete wall to get your drink. That gap is the 5, 10, 15, 30 minutes in hour where your mind or your body is on fire and you sit with it. That's the gap. Guess what? The gap is not going to hurt you. Guess what? In alcohol craving, no matter how intense it is, is going to pass. In your capacity to withstand and bear and cope that gap is basically the degree of life satisfaction and success that you're going to experience in life because that gap is synonymous with almost every other aspect of life. The gap is when you're working out for an hour at the gym and you're lifting weights and you're fucking squatting heavy ass weight on your back. For the 30 minutes, you're stretching your body. That's the gap of discomfort. When you go to yoga class for an hour, when you don't want to, that's the gap. When you sit down and fucking read the book to repair your marriage and watch the YouTube video, like that's the gap. What are you going to do in that moment of discomfort? Are you going to shy away and repel and retract, which is what your mind and body does default? What the animal does. Look at the animal's life. Look at how an animal lives. They don't have much choice. They don't have much sovereignty. They're dependent on others. They get fed, not when they want it, but when other people say it's time for you to eat. If they're an animal out in the wild, they're in a constant state of survival. There's no abundance. There's constant threat detection. As a human, and you look at other humans who are successful or who have more or who are more abundant or who are living in experience that you're like, "Wow, that seems ideal." Maybe you like art and you're like, "Wow, that fucking artist seems amazing. I would love my art to look like them." Maybe you're an executive or an entrepreneur and you're like, "Man, I really admire that this person built this business and is able to help all these people and service this industry and also create this level of abundance and freedom for themselves, but also be able to support families and take care of other people. I would love to do that." Maybe you look at some fitness model or bodybuilder or musician or DJ or whatever your lane is. Whatever your lane is. You like to crochet. You like to. I don't know. Maybe you're really into being a mom right now and you're like, you know, researching like parenting techniques and you see these kids on social media who are like super respectful or like emotionally regulated or like the way they play with their siblings. You're like, "Fuck, how do I do that for my family?" Whatever it is, it is all contained within the gap. The gap is all the things that you don't want to do, but you fucking sit down and you do it and you cope through it and you bear it. It's not magic and it's not a secret and it's not that you're not cut out for it. You haven't had the courage to fucking sit down and be with it and to cope with it and to bear it and to recognize your neurochemistry will change. Your window of tolerance will increase. Your capacity to hold more will improve. You will become stronger. You will become more resilient. You will become wiser. You will. Will become more skillful. But this is your call to initiation. You have to sit down and do it. You have to put yourself through it and it feels impossible when you're doing it alone and that's why you don't do it alone. You do it in a program. You do it alongside other people. You do it with community where other people who have walked this path who are just like you have done it and are like, "Okay, now you're at this stage. Watch for this. Consider this. Do this. Do that. Here are your options. Here are your choices. Consider this." And then you walk it. You don't want somebody to walk it for you. You don't want somebody to do it for you. This is your life substance. This is your soul's work. This is your soul's evolution. And so you have to fucking pull up your pants and just do it. You're not unique. Your relationship with alcohol is not unique. The fear you have around quitting is the same fucking fear everybody who has ever quit any drug has. There's nothing unique about you. There's nothing unique about your family. There's nothing unique about your past. There's nothing unique about your specific trigger. It either shows up in someone's mind or in someone's body. Guess what? Based off the statistics, there's like 30 million people at least in the U.S. I think there's way more that struggle with alcohol. Somebody just like slammed my car doors. They're opening. And so it's just not unique. But if you live through the separate three-dimensional ego, you're going to feel unique. You're going to feel like you're the only one who gets it and nobody understands. I get it. I understand. I lost my dad to alcoholism. I have seen it all. I've experienced much of it, not all of it, but much of it. It hurts. And you feel shame and you feel guilt and you feel hopeless and you feel like you can't do it because you've tried a million times. But what are you going to do? What are you going to do? Are you going to try again? Are you just going to throw in the towel and then maybe get reincarnated, carmically, and then have to fucking do it all over again until you figure it out in the next life. You know? Like, what are you going to do? You either figure it out now. You either put the -- I just accidentally gone through -- You either do it now or you put it off and do it later. Like at some point you're gonna have to pay the price At some point the bug is gonna have to stop and you're gonna have to feel the discomfort So are you gonna choose to just do that today and get it out of the way over the next like three six months? Or do you want to wait like five or ten or fifteen or twenty more years and experience all the opportunity cost and damage and Destruction and lost time with your kids and money and age faster and fucking hangovers and lost productivity and Lost income and not be able to retire as sooner because you're pissing and siphoning money away and you're not managing things like dude Either strap in and allow yourself develop the fucking courage Initiate into bearing the load of discomfort early on in the process So the back end you can chill and enjoy Or just keep giving into the short-term instant gratification now That doesn't even feel that good that barely fucking surfaces that isn't even working that well anymore Because you're afraid of the gap The choice is yours my friend, but I encourage you to like fucking Go all in go all in fill out an application Book a call like do this thing invest in yourself if it's not with me find somebody else's podcast who you're like Yeah, that energetics that tone that community that work I want to do it with that person doesn't have to be me, but fucking do something act don't keep putting it off like That's the worst place to be is like half in half out, you know Half in half out. That's like that's the worst part You know that that that really is the worst so Fucking get motivated man. Whatever it is or woman whatever it is that you want is Absolutely possible you want the relationship you want the life you want the confidence you want the career You want to be in that position where you're proud of yourself you want the respect you want to lead you want a guide You want to build you want to create it's all possible It starts with you having the courage to take that next step fill out an application book a call Invest in yourself don't let fear and stories and excuses and I have to talk to my wife or my husband and I don't know if I can afford it Like those are the same reasons why you are the way that you are and don't feel like you have the capacity to change Because you've given in to the discomfort when you meet the wall of discomfort you find an excuse You're like oh no, but I need permission But my wife or my husband wants nothing more wants nothing more than for me to be the best man or woman I could be to best be the best father or mother to be the best husband and wife to be the best leader to be somebody who I can Actually want to look at and like respect then feel bad and helpless about you don't need their permission Okay, what you need to do is you need to act You need to take your life into your own hands And you need to act and you need to find a way because it's not easy all the time It's not just going to be perfect all the time you need to find a way you need to get scrappy you need to get resourceful And you need to make this simple connection that if you're meeting resistance and you think it's hard and you think this is out of scope It's because you've been living the way you've been living So if you want something new if you want something different you have to meet that discomfort and move through it But the good news is you don't have to do it alone you can do it with community you can do it with coaches you can do it with a Playbook and a path and a process and resources and guides and everything in between You know, so I'll leave it at that and I hope I hope this podcast Has been helpful and created some insight or clarity or at least fucking fired you up man Like we should be fired up about life you should be fired up about who you are you should be fired up about what Value you can bring to the world you should be fired up about the truth that you want to express to your family and to your kids and to your partner And to your friends and the people you work with and if you're not it's like you've gotten off path and There's a lot of energetic distortion inside of you that you you're just not sure how to make sense of her manage And so we just got to bring you back to the path teach you all the bells and whistles of what's going on inside of this insane thing called being a human So that you've got Things that you could use to better drive your car and that's what this is about Right, we're not just quitting to quit drinking. We're not just quitting out of a vacuum to just say oh I'm just not a drinker anymore. You're quitting so that you can start fulfilling your potential as a human being so visit www.thestopdrinkingcoach.com At the very top there's a Google slide presentation that you can watch. It's got like 40 slides It takes you step by step by step through kind of this whole deal Scroll down. There's an application for you to fill out takes a couple minutes book a call with me If you scroll down underneath the application form. There's a 40 minute video presentation and If you scroll down beneath that I've got 12 video testimonials. I've got I don't know 10 clients right now who I'm waiting for new video testimonials from And like 50 and I've got 500 more screenshots in my phone of people's experience inside the community So don't just take it for me like look at what other people who are just like you who listen to the podcast who find me on TikTok and Instagram have to say about their experience quitting drinking and doing it through the SDC system Just a heads up as well The investment of the program is also increasing. Okay, I've been doing this now for three and a half years I've worked with over 400 people I have transformed lives beyond measure The ripple effect of this work and the impact of this work is immeasurable. It's immeasurable and What you gain from quitting drinking is immeasurable If I look at What my life has become in several years as a result of quitting drinking that coaching program can easily be worth over a million dollars But it was nothing near that but what I've gained in all of the different ways of my life Like increasingly exceeds a million dollars. So when a program is like, you know right now my group coaching program is just 2000 one-on-one coaching is 5500 Group coaching may go up to around 3500 because I'm gonna start running ads and Bringing on an individual to handle my Sales calls like SDC is growing, you know, and I need to account for some of those costs and things like that So if you want to join join sooner than later also when the price goes up to 3500 It's still gonna be worth 10 times that and when one-on-one also increases it's gonna be worth 50 times that when you get the opportunity to work with me on a daily basis close one-on-one and like Get the level of support and strategy and structure and codes and everything that comes from that personal experience It's like you have no idea what your potential is your your potential who you can be on the other side is unmanifest infinity in any direction and So it comes down to like do you have the courage? Do you have the courage to believe that you're capable of doing it if you work with the right person work with the right people and Have all of the necessary support. It's like dude you put 30 50 100 200 grand into college to go learn from a bunch of professors while getting fucked up all day every day You know now as an adult you veered off path Do you feel like you have the courage if you have the right teachers and professors and mentors and guides that lay out a Structural blueprint with a bunch of other colleagues next to you who are doing it like do you think you can do it? I think you can I did it and I've helped a lot of people do it. I believe in you. So I'm gonna leave it there. Thank you so much for listening and I hope that you take Something that you've learned and you apply it to make yourself better not just for yourself but for your family for your kids and For our species man I'm gonna be dead in a period of time and we're all gonna be dead in a period of time and then the world is gonna be repopulated by new people and it's like I'm just I'm doing everything that I can to try to make a dent into making this place Better to have more smiles on people's faces when they see me to have more gratitude To have more Appreciation to have more opportunity to be able to take this insane experience that we're living for an undefined period of time And to be able to make it fun and cool and enjoyable in a way that's not harmful and destructive to myself and to others Because I've played that game and I already see where it leads to it doesn't work. It's a black pit It will ruin you. It will ruin your children It will ruin your generational cycles and it all goes to piss when you do it that way when you take the easy way out so I think this is your initiation and it's time to step up. I'll 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.thestopdrinkingcoach.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.