The Discomfort IS The Compass

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. SDC, I am back with another episode. Listen, before I dig in, I just want to apologize for taking two months to record this next episode. The last two months of my life have been kind of crazy. I won't really get into the details, but yeah, it's just been really busy, it's been really crazy. But all good things, ultimately. All things that are actually moving life forward, moving the program forward and things in a positive direction. So excited to be back here. And right now it's 8.38 a.m. on a Thursday morning. And I just took a scoop of my pre-workout getting ready to hit the gym, but I found myself just kind of talking to myself and moving some energy through me. And so I wanted to take this as an opportunity to just jump on and start recording. And one of the common themes that has been coming up lately in my coaching sessions and really everywhere within myself is well. My own life and my own plans and the things that I'm working on on a personal level is that discomfort is the compass. So many of us, when we go to quit drinking alcohol, find that we are running into various forms of discomfort. We run into fear. We run into boredom. We run into self-sabotage. We run into making sacrifices around who we hang out with and where we go. And it feels like our social life takes a bit of a hit early on. And it feels like things just aren't quite as the same as they were before. And maybe we have some internal fears or some anxiety or some resistance that we feel like we might be having to now work through with our partner with something going on at work. Right? So many different ways in which once we remove alcohol from our life, right? Life, normal everyday life starts to throw some curveballs at us. It starts to test us, right? One of the, one of the old quotes, um, are saying that my coach used to have who is now going to be coaching inside the stop drinking coach program, which I'm absolutely excited about, is that when you go to declare to yourself and to the universe that you want to change and transform the universe, God, source, whatever you want to call it, your unconscious mind, we'll say, okay, great. You want change and transformation. So what will happen immediately after that is all of the parts of yourself that are no longer in alignment with that higher version that you want to get to are going to become exposed, right? Light is going to begin to shine on all the parts of yourself that are maybe getting in the way of you growing and evolving into that next stage, right? And how you deal with that is your story. How you deal with those challenges and discomforts is your spiritual curriculum, right? Let me say that again, when you declare that, for example, I want to quit drinking alcohol and I want to become alcohol free. I'm tired of living in this slave like vicious cycle where I keep saying I want to stop and then I start and then I stop and then I start and I stop every week, every 30 days. I'm sick of it. I'm tired of it. I'm tired of all the consequences. I'm tired of all the damage. I'm tired of my relationship being this way. I'm tired of showing up as a fraction of the mother and the father that I could be. I'm tired of being a piss poor role model. I'm done with it. Okay. As soon as you make that declaration, the universe will say, okay, beautiful. Here's an opportunity. Here's Bardiya. Here's a stop drinking coach. Boom, you've got a path and a process forward with a system and tools and accountability and everything to follow, right? You start it or you just listen, you're doing it on your own. And then the stuff with the relationship starts to come up. And then that freaking person that you work with that work starts to piss you off and annoy you. Then your coworker starts to get in the way. Then XYZ starts to come up. And how you handle that is your curriculum. That is the journey, right? So when these discomforts pop up from time to time, it's imperative that you understand that all forms of discomfort are a teacher. Okay, they are a teacher. When you look at biology, okay, look at evolution, look at every other organism that exists on planet Earth that is not a human. Okay. This way you can take your thoughts and emotions and stories and narratives and projections off the table. Okay. Look at every other biological organism on planet Earth right now that has ever lived and is currently alive. Okay. The way that a biological organism evolves into a better, stronger, more resilient, more equipped version of itself is by having that organism have pressure applied to it, right? A tiger, a bird, whatever, right? It doesn't get bigger, stronger, have longer, more efficient wings, a better, more favorable color to its environment. It doesn't get stronger, faster, more agile, develop better eyesight, unless nature forces outside of itself apply pain and pressure to force it to adapt. And this adaptation happens over hundreds of thousands or millions of years, right? The same tigers go up against the same types of predators day in, day out, weekend, week out. And the ones that figure out how to survive by being more resilient, by being stronger, by making better decisions, by having a better criteria by which they make decisions. Those ones evolve and adapt and they become bigger, stronger, more agile. The ones that don't, the ones that fold under under pressure, they die. They die, right? And humans are the same way. The pain of our life, the discomfort of our life. It's not there to just, you know, God, universe, source isn't here to just like fucking just ruin you. It's not just here to, it's not here picking you out and saying, John, Sally, Susie, you know, Samantha, you know, I'm just going to keep giving you a little bit of time. Giving you a hard shitty life. I'm just going to keep putting you in circumstances that seem really hard and annoying and fucked up. No, that's not the thing. That's not what's happening here. Universe, God, source, whatever it is. The fact that you're even alive, okay, is a one in 400 trillion chance. Okay. Remember, you didn't ask to be born. The universe was around 13 and a half billion years. And then you, and then you got the gift of life. Boom. You went from, we went from, I mean, dude, we are living in a universe in which we have no understanding of. We're floating on a rock in an infinite void in every direction. We don't know why we're here, where we're going, what the purpose is, what we're supposed to be doing. Everything is the best guess and we're all figuring it out. But you can't forget the fact that no matter how much bullshit you're going through, dude, you didn't ask to be born, but now you're here. You have the gift of five senses. And you get an undisclosed period of time and you get to, like, why you're here, let me, let me explain to you why you're here. Why you're here is for you to tap into who you are, to discover who you are, to create who you are, and to fulfill your potential, to make this place better than you found it after you leave. That's why you're here. That's why we're all here. That is a worthy purpose in mission, to try to leave this earth better than when you found it somehow, with your unique fingerprint, with your unique energy, in the way that you share space with people, in the way that you are kind, giving generous the way that you support others, the way that you're present for others, the way that you give and exchange love, the ideas that you have, the way that you uniquely contribute to the world, your art, your creativity, your business, your whatever it is, whatever it is. That is why you're here, to discover who you are, to tap into your authentic source, and to find a way to remove all limitation from you being able to connect to that alignment and for you to be able to express that into the world. That is where you create an experience, harmony in your life. That's why we're here. It's imperative to realize here that like the pain and the discomfort, it's there for a perfect place. Okay, the pain in the discomfort that you're experiencing from time to time is there for a reason. It is a test. It is a test. Okay, you're 10 days over, you're 20 days over, you're 30 days over. On the 30th day, you're coming up on that 4th 5th week on a Friday night and you're feeling a little bored. You might be feeling a little flat because you've been assaulting your neurochemistry with a drug for 30 years, for 20 years. Okay, I want you to understand. Okay, if you're a partner of somebody listening to this, okay, a lot of people who are in relationships with people struggle with alcohol think like, "Oh, why don't you just stop? Listen." That's the dumbest thing you can say to somebody and it's really just ignorant. So if you are in a relationship with somebody who's struggling with alcohol, for you to say, "Well, why don't you just stop?" is looking at a heroin addict on the street and saying, "Well, why don't you just stop doing heroin?" It is no different. It is no different. But people psychologically cannot fathom and process that because alcohol is just so socially accepted and you can go buy it from the store and we follow these unconscious notions that if it's legal, the government must have ran tests on it and they must have approved it. There must be a reason alcohol is legal and heroin is not because we have a loving government that actually cares about us. So if they said alcohol is legal, keep going with it. Don't do the heroin stuff though. Telling an alcoholic just want to just stop without a system tool structure accountability, a complete lifestyle change is silly. Like, you look silly. So show this to your partner. Have your partner listen to this this episode because it's really important. Like, that is not how this works. It's not a light switch. If quitting drinking was a light switch, listen, if I discovered how to make quitting drinking a light switch, I'd be a trillionaire. This alcohol addiction thing is much bigger and much more complex than any of us could imagine. But I'm doing my best to create a system that will get us there. It's progress over perfection. So I know I'm skipping around here. If it's your fifth weekend on a Friday night, and you're dealing with some boredom, you're feeling a little flat. You want to party. You want to have some fun. The way that you handle that on that Friday night, when you really want to have a drink is your test. It is your test where God source universe, whatever you believe in your unconscious mind, the declaration that you made that said, I want to get away from that hellhole. And I want to step into an embody this version of myself, somebody's who is happy, present, loving, kind, supportive, generous, a leader, a role model for their family, for the people they work with, for their community. I want to be in great health. I want to be in good shape. I want to start having adventure again. I want to start getting into hobbies. I want to stop living my life in fucking service of this goddamn poison. I want to stop being a slave to this. So the question becomes, which one do you want more? Which one do you want more? And which one are you willing to endure? We all have to endure pain. Listen, it doesn't matter if you struggle with alcohol or not. Welcome to being a human. Okay, this podcast applies to every single person, even if you're not drinking because whether you have alcohol use disorder, alcoholism or not, life is hard. Life is hard. Even if you don't struggle with alcohol, people still get bored. People still deal with procrastination. People still deal with self sabotage. Equally, equally across the board, it's not like you're exonerated from life's struggles and pains when you quit drinking. Every human being deals with what should I do on a Friday night? Every human being deals with relationship struggles in their marriage. Every human being has to deal with all the pressures that come along with raising kids. Every human being has to deal with an asshole boss or being in a job that they don't really love, but they do it for the money or whatever it is, whatever it is. These are normal every day to day pressures, but because we've been drinking alcohol for 10, 20, 30, 40 years, our window of tolerance, right? This isn't like, this is your subjective experience. This isn't like an objective fact about reality. Your window of tolerance, okay? Your subjective window of tolerance has shrinking down significantly. The ability to just feel sensations that don't feel good have resulted your inability to feel those things have resulted in a looping behavior towards reward every time you feel a sense of pain. Think about it. It's really simple when you logically and rationally look at it. Grab a piece of paper, draw a line. It says, okay, you have an X for trigger and then you immediately draw a line to alcohol. What you have conditioned for the last 10, 20, 30, 40 years of your life is every time you feel a bad sensation, frustration, sadness, worry, stress, anxiety, wanting to just let go and check out from five days of work or running from sensations after you get into a fight with your partner, every time you have a bad sensation, guess what you've conditioned yourself to do is to get a reward. This is the fucked up part of alcohol because alcohol while it's like numbing you, it's providing a sedative effect. It's also activating the most important and critical part of your brain that is responsible for your survival, which is the reward center and dopamine. If you go to YouTube and you look up this video like neuroscientist explains addiction, he starts off by saying the most important things in life are food, water, and dopamine. Dopamine is responsible for your evolution of your ancestors from the very first humans. The dopamine and reward circuit has been working to ensure that we continue to repeat behaviors that are good for our survival. So dopamine is linked to forward progress. Dopamine is linked to checking off tasks. Dopamine is linked to making progress towards goals. It's this feeling of reward. It's this feeling of motivation. It's this feeling of pleasure. It's this internal biological confirmation that you are doing something right, but alcohol is the opposite. It is you're hacking this reward system for nothing. For nothing. You got caught in a trap. You should have never been fucking with it in the first place. You never needed alcohol. Your brain, your brain circuits, your reward center. This whole thing was set up to provide you as much fulfillment and reward as you possibly need based off of your effort. You have to understand that the universe, you can't hack this system. You can't hack the universe. The universe is very fair. That's why nobody just gets a million dollars in their bank account overnight. If you think of a one to one metaphor analogy, just like no matter how badly you want to make more money, you're never ever going to wake up with just more money in your bank account. You're never going to go to the ATM and it just starts funneling out hundreds when you go to take out 20 bucks. The universe is fair. It is an equal exchange. You will only start to make more money. You will only start to increase your financial independence when you as a person learn how to deliver that value at a higher scale or with a greater impact or in a more specific high value way. Only then will you get the equal exchange of funds into your resource account. Similarly, as human beings, when it comes to our thoughts, our mental operating system, our emotional operating system, it's also fair. You can't hack this game. You have to earn it. You have to earn good feelings. You have to earn self confidence. You have to earn self esteem. You have to earn a loving, present, harmonious, fun, playful, intimate relationship. You can't hack these things. You can't just turn to alcohol because you're not willing to deal with stress because you're not willing to have hard conversations. If you do, then you get the result and you can't keep fucking bitching about it. This is the tough love. I've said this song one of my podcasts before. It's like, this guy, Sean, my old mentor who was 24, 25 years over. He did the AADL very, very long ago. He used to tell me he would get a huge sponsor somebody and they'd call him up and be like, "Sean, I think I'm about to drink." He'd be like, "All right, go ahead. Have a drink." Then it'd be like this crazy pattern interrupt and they're like, "Wait, what? You're my sponsor. I'm calling you because you're supposed to talk me out of it." He's like, "No. You've played this game with yourself already. Go ahead and have a drink and then see what happens and then just call me tomorrow and then we can talk about it." and people would be wildly confused. Right? Like at some point you have to realize that nobody is coming to save you. In the sense that nobody can go inside of your body and mind and tolerate and withstand and move through and process your personal pain and discomfort. You have to do that. You have to do it. You have to be the one who learns internally how to get creative when you feel bored. You have to be the one who internally decides that you are going to begin to change your value system from thinking that life is supposed to be this merry-go-round of work, get fucked up on the weekends. Work, get fucked up at night. It's your job, of course, with coaches and support and other individuals who can help you, like myself or any other program you might try to do. Right? It's your job to ultimately say, you know what, I'm redefining my values. My values are no longer. Everything is a means to an end to just relax and have fun. Like, what kind of life is that? What kind of life is that? Everything is in service of just finally relaxing and having fun. Like, dude, that's dog shit. We're not 16. We're not sophomores in high school. Right? Like, you've got responsibilities. Right? You're an adult. Hopefully, at some point, you've come up with some level of mission or purpose in life. Maybe it's not some grand mission or purpose, but it's to be the best mother that you can be and to raise a well-adjusted healthy human. Right? You took on that responsibility of bringing a child into the world. It doesn't mean you get to fucking neglect it after a year, three or four, because you're tired and annoyed. Right? If you're a father, it's to be the best man that you can be. It's to be the best leader and provider for your family, so that you can provide the support and safety that everybody needs to grow up, to be present, healthy, well-adjusted, and contributing members of society. Right? If you have a business, it's your job to be a leader and to deliver the best product and service that you can to your customers and to support the employees that work for you to help them grow and evolve in their life. Right? Life is so much more than just drinking. And it isn't until you put the bottle down long enough and really take a proactive approach to this process where you begin to significantly upgrade your map of reality. You start to understand who you are, why you are the way that you are, how you became who you are based off of your childhood development. And you start to learn all the intricacies and nuances of thoughts and emotions and the nervous system and the brain and internal representations and how to manipulate and adjust all these things, all these different tools and frameworks that you begin, it's like it's a second life. You've been living within a finite frequency for so long and you think that the way the world is and the way that you are in the way that life is is how things actually are, but it's not. Your subjective viewpoint, your subjective experience, your subjective filter has been radically altered through this drug. It's critical, it's critical that everybody understands that alcohol is no different than cocaine or heroin or, or Adirol or methamphetamine. Understand that if you are trying to quit drinking and you've been drinking for 20 or 30 years, take yourself out of the equation and put in a cocaine addict. Somebody who is doing cocaine casually or multiple days per week for 20 or 30 years and they're 30 days sober, they're 45 days alcohol free. How would you treat that person? Would you have more compassion for them? Would you tell them, hey, fuck all the bullshit, you're you stayed sober today. Okay, that is enough. Okay. Seriously, how would you treat that person? You would treat them with kindness, compassion, you would be proud of them, you would tell them to keep going. It's not worth it to go back. You've already got 30, 45, 60 days. Just have the courage to just withstand a little bit more discomfort just one day at a time, call a friend, face time somebody, go for a walk, put on my podcast, put on your favorite song, jam out to it, go for a run. What do you tell them to just just pull through for 15 more minutes and just let the craving pass? Of course you would. So we need to have that same compassion to ourselves and understand that if we're on this journey, dude, this is a long term game we're playing. If you've been struggling with this alcohol deal for a few years or decades or whatever and you've gone back and forth, understand that when we go alcohol free, we're trying to do this thing for the long term. But even saying that is a broken statement because we just take it one day at a time. And so that really is what we have to do. We just take it one day at a time. And as you remove the alcohol and the discomfort starts to come up in whatever area, right? It's wrapped in a million and a half different shiny bows all masqueraded as the same shit. It's just discomfort boredom. It's uncomfortable. Having to have that talk with your partner about how you really feel, it's uncomfortable. Feeling like your friends are going out to brunch and you decide to stay home, it's uncomfortable. Going to a work dinner where everybody's sitting at the bar after the conference and you're having a cranberry, I don't know, soda, uncomfortable. But guess what? Guess what? All of those discomforts last a few minutes, maybe an hour. And then it passes and this is the nature of being human. This is part of the awakening process. This is the part where you begin to transcend in terms of how you interpret and manage your internal state. Discovering that you are not your mind, you are the witness of it. You are not the sensations that you feel in your body, you are the witness of it. And that 1% increase of objective distance between witness, observer and the sensations and thoughts that appear is enough to begin to radically transform your life. And let me help you understand what I mean by that. There is no perfect button to push. When you are heated, when you're in a fight or flight state, when you're a fucking pissed off, angry, overwhelmed sat frustrated, lonely, lonely, whatever it is, that intensity. I've gone through all the nervous system courses. I've listened to all the books. I've looked at every YouTube video. You can push a button, activate the vagus nerve, hold one nostril, hold your left arm up, stand on one foot, take six breaths, activate, listen. There is no magic button. If you're at a 10, there's nothing that you can do that just automatically turns it off and takes you back to perfectly regulated. That's your job. It's to learn how to slowly go from a 10 to a 9 to a 8 to a 7 to a 6 down to a 5 and to a 4 where you can manage yourself. But all it takes is 1% increase in objectivity, in rationality, in being able to step back into being able to create distance for your life to radically change. And the analogy for that is imagine you're standing where you are on earth and you're trying to get to the moon in a shuttle. If you were off by one degree because of the distance, you would completely miss the moon. Right? So if you're on earth, you're trying to get to the moon. If you were off by one degree, you would completely miss the moon. You would have a totally different trajectory. Similarly, in your life, as you learn how to mentally and emotionally regulate, as you begin to upgrade your map of reality, you're able to start to make all of the connections for your pain, your stress, your trauma, your self sabotage, why you are the way that you are. You begin to understand these things in a very logical, rational way, and then you have application of tools and strategies and you surrender to accountability and lean into the process and program and you're willing to sacrifice the bullshit that you know is not serving you. You just by making tiny little 1% improvements over a long enough time horizon, your life will be in a radically different place. See what you have to understand is that this is an opportunity being able to have a problematic relationship with alcohol, being able to fucking experience addiction is in a way a gift as fucked up as that sounds. Because when you get sick and tired of your own bullshit and you say, "Okay, I'm fucking done with this. It's time to change." There is few things in life that provide an opportunity for you to truly restart. Few. If any. Maybe a major divorce. Maybe. Even then, I don't know if something like that is even compares. I truly believe that recognizing and acknowledging that you have an addiction is a gift because when you're back as against the wall and there is so much pain, there's so much frustration with just the way you are. that you've been engaging yourself in living life and engaging and relating to the world. When you're so fucking sick and tired of that, there's no way but up. There's no way but up. And so what I mean here is when you go to quit drinking, use this as an opportunity to fucking change everything. Change it all. Change it all. Fucking start new. Be willing to just find some new friends. Be willing to try new activities. Be willing to get into new hobbies. Be willing to find other people who are alcohol-free and connect with them. Be willing to read all the books. Be willing to listen to all the podcasts. Be willing to get proactive. And start to use the fear and the pain and the discomfort as a compass because it is. It is. The things that you're afraid of. The things that you're fearful of. The things that you are anxious about are the very things that if you develop the courage to move through them, to face them, to confront them, to process through them. Are the actual things that will provide you a biological upgrade. And what I mean by biological upgrade is that your nervous system will shift. Your perceptions of reality will shift. Your perceptions of self will shift. Your perception of the world will shift. Everything will change as you begin to confront and actually chase fear and discomfort and pain. It's critical that we remember this on the journey because going alcohol-free, it's not the easy thing to do, especially if you've had a problematic relationship. I mean, just look at our society. Everybody is numb. Everybody is numbing out with something. So it's not the easy path, but it is the most potent, powerful, rewarding and transformative path that you can embark upon. There isn't really isn't many things in life that will force you to learn, grow, heal, and evolve in the way that alcohol does. Because here's the deal, dude. You're an adult. You've been living for 30, 40, 50, 60 years. And there's a significant amount of pains and challenges and traumas and perceptions and limiting beliefs and stories and narratives and programs and patterns and behaviors that you've been operating under that are limiting, that are limiting. And so when you remove the alcohol and you lose your primary coping strategy to all that shit that you deep down know about, but don't fucking talk about, don't tell people, guess what? You are forced to confront them. The good news is, is you don't have to solve all those problems tomorrow. You don't have to solve them overnight. You don't have to solve them even in the next week. You just take it one day to time. And you just handle what comes up right now or today. So if today it happens to be a conversation with your partner, then you just deploy all of your intention and mindfulness and awareness and resources into that and you lean into that and you get vulnerable with it and you do your best. And maybe you have a therapist, maybe you have a coach like myself, maybe you have some other support around you who you can call and talk to as you navigate this journey of life. And then next week when something else comes up, you handle that, but you develop the courage to lean into the discomfort. You have to understand that on the other side of the discomfort that you keep fucking running from is everything that you want. That's the goddamn cosmic joke of life. Is that all the things that you're so afraid of, you're so resistant to all the strategies we use to self sabotage, all the procrastination, all the perfectionism, all the stories, all the narratives, all the avoidance, all that stuff, right? Keeping you away from the thing that you're so anxious and fearful of. The cosmic joke is when you finally develop the courage to turn towards it and move through it. You discover on the other side what's there is empowerment and freedom, my friend. You have to understand how this vehicle works. One of the most critical skills that you can learn as an adult is discernment. Write that down, discernment. You have to be able to learn how to discern the difference between fear and danger. I couple anxiety into fear. Your body, your brain, your nervous system, doesn't understand the difference between fear and danger. So when you're afraid of having that talk with your partner, your body starts getting anxious and going into fight or flight and starts creating all these stories and narratives about what's going to happen, how you're going to be rejected, how you're going to look like a fool, how you're going to lose power in the relationship, whatever the fucking bullshit story you're telling yourself that's not true and disempowering, right? Whatever it is. When you lean into it, what you discover on the other side is a release. You experience freedom. You experience freedom, right? Your body, your mind doesn't know the difference between fear and danger, right? So when you're about to go have that conversation and your body starts tightening up, it literally thinks there's a gun to your head, but there's no gun to your head. You're just having a conversation with an employee, with your boss, with your partner, with your kids. Okay, that is the critical skill. You must learn how to apply that in your life, right? If there's actual danger, there's a gun to your head. If you, you know, if your safety is threatened, if you're about to jump off of a five story balcony, if you're about to run onto oncoming traffic, if you're about to jump off of a cliff, absolutely, your body should tighten up and you should withdraw. But the other things that you're afraid of, whatever those are, it's not going to hurt you. It's not going to kill you, right? And it is only by exposing yourself to that discomfort and pain incrementally with safety and support and coaching and accountability and other people around you, slowly but surely you keep this exposure therapy that this works for phobias. It works for all types of things. What we're doing here is we are showing this nervous system, this brain of ours, which has been conditioned through our childhood and through of our own doing of, of, of using drugs, which is now in a almost permanent fighter flight state, anxious state all the time. We are showing it that, hey, it's actually safe to be in your body. Everything's okay. Hey, it's actually safe to be in social environments. Nobody's going to laugh at you like they did in seventh grade. The bullies aren't going to come up and start bullying you like they did in high school, right? Those are old memories. Those are old traumas that are still stuck in your nervous system and they're still a part of you that ate 12, 13, 16 year old who is still alive and well because you've ignored them. You pretended like life wasn't fucked up when you grew up and you just ran into becoming an adult with no ceremony, with no passage of rights of no, you didn't earn it, right? Are you responsible now? Are you self aware enough before your parents just threw you out? I don't know, some of you were, some of us weren't, but we did our best and our best was because we didn't have the tools or strategies or blueprint or know how to just use alcohol because everybody else is doing it, everybody is promoting it. It seems like the fun, accepting, societally supportive thing to do. You make friends, you get to check out from work, you get to let go of all your problems, you get to temporarily live in illusion of euphoria as if you are somebody or that you've earned something or that pumps up your ego in this nonsensical way. It's silly, silly. We all got duped into drug addiction through high school and college by the Matrix at large, we don't have a loving government that is out to support us. I hope over the last three to four years everybody has found that to be a fact because I would say 10 years ago, everybody still thought that the powers at play and the institutions and corporations and organizations at large actually gave a shit and we're putting together the system in favor of our development and growth. It's the opposite, my friend. Alcohol is what keeps the masses numb, dumb and distracted so that they can push their agenda forward, whatever those agendas are, much bigger and much more complex than any of us could fathom. So if you are not out getting yours for yourself and for your family, guess what? In three years, five years when AI radically begins to change and transform lives and jobs and everything else, like, I don't know, I don't know. I don't know what's going to happen with the monetary system, the financial system, you know, cryptocurrency, if the Fed is going to come out with Fedcoin and they're going to take money, I don't know. I don't know. All I'm saying is I stay personally optimistic for my life, but the rest of the world out there at large, I don't know. I'm sort of pessimistic. I believe in humanity, but here, the reason I'm saying these things is because, listen, man, like if you're listening to this, you probably care about your future. You probably care about the future of your partner. You probably care about the future lives of your children and you want to make sure you can do everything you can to get yourself in the best possible position to be successful. Right? Why? What else are we here? Why else are we here on earth? But to pursue better outcomes. But to pursue progress. But to pursue growth and development. But to pursue more control over the direction of our life. Why did you go to school and learn language and learn math and the basics of science and history and language? Why else did you go to high school? Why did your parents pay so much money for you to go to college? Or why did you pay so much money? Why did you make crazy sacrifices to get a PhD or master's degree? Why did you go out and take all this risk to start a business? For what? So that you can traverse point A to point B. We're all traversing point A to point B infinitely until the day we die. Each and every one of us want to, at some level, better our life, better our circumstances being good shape, have more money, have great relationships, have good community, feel connected, feel productive, feel proactive, do things that feel like they're an alignment. This is what we want. This was the plan the whole time. But then we got sidetracked with alcohol. And we all know how that is. Alcohol is a fucking demon. Once you get that virus into your system, all things become a means to an end to drink. You do enough to get by everywhere so that you can drink. It's fucking piss poor. It's half-ass. It's half-ass. And even if you're wildly successful by objective standards, you're still only operating at 20 or 30 percent. Trust me. Because if you're successful, given what you've done, imagine those years, let's say it took you 10 years, 20 years, 30 years to build your wealth or your success. Guess what? If you were not drinking that whole time, imagine just the money compounded in an account. That's the least of it. What you have to consider is the time and the opportunity cost. Most people who have a problematic relationship with alcohol are spending 20 to 40 hours a week drinking. That doesn't even include the hangover. So if you're drinking four days a week from 5 to 10 pm, that's 20 hours a week. That's 80 hours a month. 90 times 12. What is that? That's 960 hours per year. And if you're running a business, imagine if you took 960 hours and put that productivity back into your business. How much money have you left on the table just in the last year alone? Dude, it's incomprehensible. Not just the money that you left on the table, but the opportunity cost of being proactive. It's insane. It's mind-boggling. It's mind-numbing when you really add it up. So you have to acknowledge and understand that this path and process forward, there's going to be discomfort from time to time. But the discomfort is good. It's called for. The discomfort and the pain and the anxiety that you're feeling is a mirror. It's like you have to understand that everything that we experience internally in terms of dysregulated thoughts, dysregulated emotions, anxiety, fear, frustration, sadness, loneliness, attitude. These are mirrors. These are signals. They're not just these sensations free to bitch and mone about and say, "Oh, well, why am I feeling this way and why am I feeling that way?" You know why you're feeling that way. It's very clear. It's because you're unhappy with your partnership or you're feeling lonely, in which case, okay, dude, fucking brush your teeth. Go get a photo shoot. Upgrade your dating app profile. And go meet some people. Like, problem solved. Okay, well, I'm socially anxious. I don't feel good enough. Okay, well, let's start there. Why do you feel socially anxious? Dude, you just keep peeling back the layers of the onion. All of the problems, all of the challenges, all the pain, all the discomfort, all of it. It's not this like a losery, spontaneous, sensational energy that just appears in our body. Everything has a reason. Everything can be traced back to a source. And so the question is, are you willing to be honest enough with yourself to begin looking at these things? And to begin hiring for them and getting support and accountability and the things that you need to get through them so that you can relinquish yourself, so that you can release yourself from these games, from these nonsense stories that you keep getting caught up in. The choice is yours. Remember, nobody's forcing, nobody's holding a gun to your head, forcing you to drink. Also, nobody's holding a gun to your head to saying, hey, you can't go out and fucking be a 100% different person tomorrow. Nobody, you, you, this is your life, your curriculum, your spiritual journey. This is why you were put on earth. These exact problems that you're going through are perfectly designed for you, your relationship problems, the sacrifices that you have to learn how to make. The areas of your life that you need to step up in are perfectly designed for you. That's why they're your challenges and not mine. I had my own challenges, born in a broken dysfunctional family, emotional neglect, tons of dysfunctional behavior, drugs, alcohol addiction, fights waking up to cops coming at the house to the house three days a week as a kid, losing my dad to alcoholism, killing himself when I was 14 years old, not having, you know, stability, you know, growing up, barely having enough money. Like, all, all the things, those were mine, those weren't yours. Maybe you grew up in a different family. Maybe it was more supportive. Maybe it was less supportive, but those were mine. And I found a way, I, I maintained resolve. I stayed present. I stayed proactive. I stayed committed. I reached out. I asked for help when it was time. And I was willing to be present to the discomfort, recognizing that, hey, it's going to be okay. If I'm a little bored or I'm a little anxious or I get a little craving, it's going to be okay. I knew, I knew that if I just maintained my sobriety over a long enough time period, everything would change. And you have to believe that. You have to believe that in those critical moments, in those critical choice points when it's Thursday, Friday, Saturday night, when you're hanging out with that guy or with that girl, you're at that dinner party, you're at that conference or you're on that vacation. You have to maintain that resolve. Dude, part of being an adult is recognizing that to some degree, each of us individually have to carry the weight of the world on our shoulder. You know, maybe it's not the weight of the world, but it's the weight of your family. It's the weight of having to feed your kids. It's the weight of having to make sure you don't lose your job. It's the weight of making sure that you run this business so that you can continue to ensure that your employees and their families are taking care of and supported. You can't keep running from that. You can't keep numbing from that. You have to develop the courage. And guess what? Another piece of the cosmic joke here is it doesn't matter how much stress that you feel. It's okay. Stress isn't going to kill you. Okay? Yeah, long-term stress, not good for the vehicle, not good for the operating system. But acute stress, stress from time to time a few days a week, you're going to be fine. Guess what? The body feels like pins and needles. You can go out. You can ground yourself on grass. You can lay down in dirt. You know? That sounds silly, but go do it. Next time you're feeling stressed out, when was the last time you went and actually lay down on the grass and just connected your body to nature and looked at trees and got the fuck off your phone? It works. It helps. Breathe. Look at the expansive sky. It's going to be okay. That's a big piece of this process. Just recognizing that it's going to be okay. Dude, I quit drinking at 29 years old. I want to like, besides 21, probably the second-last hardest time that you want to quit drinking. It's about to go into my 30s, right? When I was about to be like, oh, I'm finally, you know, got more resources and opportunity now and I could, you know, all the nonsense. I was like, fuck. All right. Well, guess I can't do that. Guess what? Had I prioritized dumb fucking bars and Vegas trips and going on a boat and playing golf and drinking and watching the game, I wouldn't be here. You wouldn't be listening to me. And the tens of thousands of people who I've supported and have helped and have impacted them directly, their families, their partners getting their partners back, their children getting their mom and dads back, their friends feeling better about their friend who finally got their act together. None of that wouldn't happen. If I wasn't willing to deal with the boredom and the discomfort for the first year. Listen, I had cravings on and off for the first year. This is not hidden secrets. Everybody who quit drinking feels some agitation or some boredom or some craving from time to time. It's not every day. You might go weeks without a craving and then you might get three days of cravings in a row. That's par for the course. It's just like if you're going to go get your PhD or you're going to get your masters and you know that you have to, I don't know, I don't have either. So let's say you have to write 50 papers for the semester. It's par for the course. For the next year, your weekends are going to be tied up behind a computer or a laptop and iPad, typing away. Similarly, so with quitting drinking the next year of your life, there's going to be adjustments to give your mind your emotional operating system, your neurochemistry, your nervous system, your entire physiology, your hormones, all of it, time to recover from the drug-induced assault from the abuse you were causing yourself. Dude, imagine how many times you've been hungover. How many hundreds of times have you been hungover? Maybe thousands? Dude, that is being in a poisonously destroyed state. You hate everybody. You want to do nothing. You can't think. You can't function. Everything like, dude. Replace alcohol with any other drug and now have compassion with yourself. You have to have compassion with yourself and you have to recognize that, yeah, this journey is there's going to be some discomforts along the way, but it's okay that discomfort, the pain, the anxiety is what you go toe-to-toe with only to move through it, only to discover how to reprocess it, reintegrate it, and you get to the other side and then you're free. You've released and moved that energy through your body. I first started producing content a few years ago and I've said this to so many people, so many people. I used to be deathly afraid of creating content. I used to be deathly afraid of speaking, of using my voice. Why? Because the trauma that I experienced through my childhood development sewed the seeds of emotional neglect. I'm not good enough. People don't care about me or want to listen to me, right? Because my parents' family didn't pay attention. They didn't get to know me. So I'm just like this fucking person just floating by. Who am I? What am I good for? So the thought and idea of me going out and speaking, creating content, giving my opinion, sharing things, sharing how I feel, my philosophies, my life views, whatever it is, immediately was like, nobody is going to care. I'm going to get rejected. And my biggest fear of those things was what if I do it, what if I go all in and I still don't get the result? Then my deepest fear actually comes true. See? Nobody actually gives a shit. See? Party, you're fucking nobody. See? Whatever you have to say is fucking nonsense. You're a weirdo anyways. That was the biggest fear. But guess what? I leaned into that. And as I leaned into that, I experienced the most profound biological upgrade in my nervous system and in my mind and in my self-concept and in my view of the world by ruthlessly running towards the discomfort. What else are you going to do? How much time do you have left? 30 years, 40 years, 50 years? So what? Live out the rest of your fucking time, focusing on all the things that are good and you think you have control over. And you're just going to ignore all the other things that like are fucking there, hidden all the skeletons in your closet? No. No. The purpose is to pursue the discomfort so that you can continue to evolve and grow. That is how you access and expose your potential in life. So think of the concept potential. Before we do that, let me ask you a question. Do you believe that part of your life's mission, part of the reason you're here on earth, maybe not all of it, but part of it is for you to tap into an experience and pursue your some potential? Yeah, of course. That's why you try to keep getting better jobs, to keep getting more money so that you can have more experiences, more adventure, more control, retire suit. That's why you keep going to the gym so that you can see how great your physique can get, how good you can feel. That's why you keep learning new information. Of course, it's a given. So if you can agree that that's part of the mission, then it's imperative that you get to a place where you recognize that letting go of alcohol is the perfect opportunity to do that. It's the perfect excuse. That is what I did. I used the most destructive thing of my life as a springboard, as an excuse to ruthlessly run in the opposite direction. And I didn't know where it was going to lead to. If you would have told me three and a half years ago when my shoulder was like mangled in the pool, then I was in the most excruciating pain of my life. If somebody came in and whispered and said, "Party out, don't worry. I know this moment is really difficult, but two years from now, you're going to become a sobriety coach and help all these people in your life. It's going to change in transforming ways you can't believe and you're going to reach all your goals and it's, don't worry." I couldn't even fathom it. I had no idea. I had no idea. All I knew was I didn't want that pain of anymore. I didn't want four to six bottles of wine a day. I didn't want alcohol. I didn't want what it was doing to me. I didn't want to hurt myself. I didn't want to damage my life anymore. I didn't want to keep living that way. So I was clear on the pain. The second thing is in that moment, I thought about the rest of my life. And deep down, I always knew that life was more than alcohol. Deep down, I always knew that I was going to figure something out, that there was something inside of me that needed to come out and express itself. And I knew that if I could find a way to tap into that somehow, some way, that life would be wonderful. And in that moment, I knew, I knew it with certainty that if I just removed alcohol long enough, that I was the type of person who would figure it out. I just knew it. And so ask yourself, how many problems and challenges and things have you overcome in your life? How many hard things have you gone through? Probably a few, probably a few notable moments or challenges. So if you can find a way to remove the alcohol long enough, you have to trust that everything and else in your life is going to figure itself out. Because when you're not numbing, when you're not losing 20 to 40 hours a week, off-distracted in a hole somewhere, eventually you're going to have that conversation. Eventually you're going to go try new hobbies. Eventually you're going to change it up. And you're going to be able to begin to access and create that potential. But it doesn't come without going through the discomfort. But, dude, discomfort's not going to hurt you. You know, the people that are the most successful, the people that you admire and revere and look up to the most, your role models, whoever they are, are the people who have pursued likely the most discomfort in their life. The people who you respect, the people who you admire, the people who you look up to, the people who are your role models, are the ones who got shit done. There was no fucking excuses. Whether it was your mom or your dad, the dude always worked hard. The dude, you know, never, you know, you know, through rain, sleet and snow, always showed up, made it happen. The development of our character comes through how we handle and move through challenge and discomfort. So the very thing that you keep avoiding is actually the very thing that you're fucking craving and that you want. You want that life free from alcohol. You want to tap in and embody that version of yourself, your higher self, the version of you that you know you're fucking capable of being. If only you overcame the fear, anxiety and nonsense, dude, that part of you that you're craving so bad comes through the boredom, comes by enduring the craving. Comes through going through the discomfort, comes through letting go of your loser friends who all they do is drink, coming through just it's by moving through it. It's by moving through it. But guess what? You don't have to do it alone. You don't have to do this by yourself. There's programs available. I have a program. If I'm not your guy, there's other programs. There's other people who get it. I say this in every one of my podcasts. We are the same person living in a different body. And I take that from a spiritual point of view as well. It is one consciousness expressing itself through different human beings. Dude, you're not unique. The boredom, the anxiety, the agitation, you know, the feeling a little flat, the having to make sacrifices. I made all of those. Every person whose year plus alcohol free has made all of those. Sure, is it harder for some of us than others for sure? Do some of us have different friend groups with different different deals for sure, but it's all the same. But what I'm here to promise you is that how you feel in the first month, two months of sobriety is not how you feel a year into sobriety. Sure, are there still kings that need to be worked out? Is everything the same? Are you still just a social butterfly going out every weekend? No, probably not. You don't do that anymore. You don't go to bars anymore. That's just that part of life gets removed. But guess what? Every other part of life, every other part of life. I'm not saying just some parts of life, every other part of life gets a huge upgrade. The only part that takes a hit for a while is like the social piece, but that's okay. That's okay. You don't have to go to bars to connect with people. You don't have to go out to brunch to connect with people. Okay? You can go for walks with your friends. You can FaceTime them. You can find an activity to do it together. You can drop into a yoga class. You guys can go get a workout. You guys can, they can come over and you guys can watch a movie and you can door dash some food. There's so many ways to connect. You can go to an art gallery. You can go to a museum. You can go to a concert. There's so many things you can do to fill that need of human connection and support and camaraderie. So the discomfort is the compass. Recognize that if you're at a critical choice point where the easy, comfortable, desirable, more fun, exciting solution is to drink and the uncomfortable solution is to be present to it and to find a different way to regulate through it for 30 minutes or an hour until it's gone, that's the solution. That's your mission. That's your goal. But guess what? Every time you make that sacrifice, what feels like a sacrifice, right? And depending on who you talk to, they're gonna say, oh, a party, well, it's not a sacrifice and whatever. You know what I'm talking about, right? Feels like sacrifice in the moment. Sacrificing fun and excitement and drug-induced euphoria for hanging out in a Friday night and keeping it male and chill. Okay, feels like sacrifice in the beginning. Eventually, eventually it doesn't. Eventually, it's effortless and easy and automatic and it gets to a point where you're not thinking, okay, what are we doing? It's the weekend. It's like, no, it's just another day and you just keep doing your thing and you keep making incremental progress forward and every area of your life is everything expands and improves. But I promise you, in every area of your life where you lean into the discomfort and quote unquote make that sacrifice, the universe will return it back two to fivefold. God sourced your higher self, your creator, whatever you wanna call it, universal energy, the animating intelligence that beats your heart and digest your food without you having to ask or manage that process. That underlying intelligence that gets all 86 trillion cells inside of your body to be perfectly orchestrated talking to each other, managing all your hormones and functions and all of that. That unique intelligence that's way more intelligent than your conscious mind that struggles to put IKEA furniture together, that thing is watching. It's noticing. When you put in the work in a sincere and intentional way and you move through the discomfort, even though every part of you wants to go back to just numbing out, it will return, it will pay you back in love, in presence, in connection, in opportunity and abundance, in due time, two to fivefold, tenfold, over time. But you have to trust the process. You have to trust that like the world, the universe, this three-dimensional plane of existence that you are operating within, it's not trying to fuck you. It's not trying to ruin your life. It's not trying to make you a little mole in the corner who's saddened to press been alcoholless. That's not what this is. It's the complete opposite. That's why, dude, you go to my TikTok. You go to my TikTok, you go to those pages where I talk about those videos where I was like, I've got this one video that went viral and it starts out by saying, I really fucking respect people who quit drinking alcohol and it's not that I don't respect people who still drink. It's I just wanted to call out all the people who did it. And it got like 20,000 comments, something ridiculous, 5,000 comments, 10,000 comments, and every one of them, it reached all the people who quit. Every one of them said it was the best decision of their life. Every one of them. Out of the 5,000 you probably got like 20 that were like, I'm a year alcohol free and life still sucks and it's like, well, probably because you were drinking because your life sucked. You had all these problems and challenges that you stuck your head in the ground and were not addressing whether because you had trauma or fear or low self-esteem or whatever else. Yeah, your life sucked objectively. And so you drank and then you removed your primary coping mechanism and you probably have not taken a proactive approach to resolving any of those issues. See, the good news about life is that if your life sucks, you can change it. If there's something you're unhappy with, you can change it. If you've been in a broken, sexless, lifeless marriage for 10, 20, 30 years, you can change it. And there's 8 billion people out there, 3.5 billion, 4 billion of which are the opposite sex, who would be happy to meet you and create a new life. The good news is, is if you're in a job that you absolutely hate, you can go to YouTube, you can find a new skill that seems interesting and exciting and you can basically learn it for free over an 8 to 12 week period by watching YouTube's and tutorials. And then once you learn that skill, you can add it to your resume and then you can get proactive and you can find a new job in a way that seems more fun and exciting with more upside potential and opportunity. The good news is, is if your 50 pounds overweight, you can go to YouTube and you can figure out your exact meal plans, your exact dieting, you can go to chat GPT, you can have it organized a 12 week fitness thing for you, you can go to a Facebook group and you can find some accountability partners for free, you can exchange some phone numbers, you can create a text chain pod and you can lose that 50 pounds. The good news is, whatever problem that you think is so hard, is so painful that is impossible, that you're just stuck with can be solved, can be managed. Maybe it's not 100% solved, it can be managed. And when you do it with people who understand and get it, God, it's so much easier, you don't feel alone. That's why I say, it's so important to recognize that dude, you are not unique, your challenges and problems with alcohol, it's the same as mine, it's the same as everybody else's, relish in that fact, relax in that fact that it's okay, you're not alone. And it's gonna be okay, you can find different ways to fill your needs. You can find different ways to fill your social bucket, you can find different ways to fill your fun bucket, you can find different ways to fill your weekend bucket, your evening bucket, so many ways, so many ways, but you have to have the courage, you have to have the courage to be willing to try. And if you fall, it's okay, it's a learning process, that's why I say we're not quitting drinking. We're learning how to live a life free from alcohol, and that is a learning process. Because if you've been drinking for 10, 20, 30 years, since you've been a teenager, you don't know how to live a life free from alcohol as an adult. You have training wheels on. That's why you need support, that's why you need accountability, that's why you need a system to follow, that's why you need to do things specifically every single day that helps support and provide the conditions to experience and live an alcohol-free life sustainably on a mental, emotional, physical, spiritual, and neurochemical level. This vehicle, this avatar that you are a witness to, that you inhabit requires tremendous amounts of maintenance and upkeep, if you wanna feel calm, neutral, regulated, connected, happy, and feeling like you're making progress. You can't just fucking sit around. You can't just do the bare minimum. You have to exert yourself, you have to try, you have to put in some effort. And if you've got all these fears and anxieties that are limiting you from when you were 10, 12, 14, 16 years old, but now you're in a body that's 30 or 40 or 50 years old, of course you feel torn. Of course you feel split and disregulated, dude. You've never taken the opportunity to look in the rear view mirror and start to reprocess and make peace with your past. This is a necessary part of being an adult that nobody fucking told us we have to do. Where in school, where in college did anybody say, "Hey, you're gonna go through this developmental period. You're gonna be warped into hyperspace into three-dimensional existence. All of a sudden you're gonna become conscious. You're gonna experience the trauma of being a human, right? From infinite void where we were, had no responsibilities and not conscious, to now having to figure out a way to survive. Dude, it's hard. It's hard. I know. I know you've got kids. I know you're probably working maybe two jobs, right? I know you've got a business and you've got all this weight and pressure. I know the economy's fucking wild and inflation and I get it. I get it. But that's why you gotta do it with people. You gotta have accountability. You gotta tap in. You gotta have conversations with people who get it. Who are gonna be like, "Hey man, you can do it. You can do it. You can get through one more day. Go for a walk and call me in 30 minutes. know, you can do it. And every time you do it and you lean into that discomfort and you move through that craving, you move through that fear, you get through that boredom and you wake up the next day, guess what? Your window of tolerance expands 1%. Your self-trust, your confidence, your self-esteem raises 1%. Now imagine doing that for 365 days in a row, one day at a time, one day at a time. You don't have to quit drinking forever. I have not quit drinking forever. Three years, three and a half years, alcohol-free and look what I've done. Insane. Insane. And you can do that in your own way for your own life within your own family, within your own community. If you want to beat this alcohol thing and you want to get into a life of service and helping others, do there's probably going to be opportunity for me to bring on more supportive co-coaches and community members who can help other people. You come into the program, you successfully complete the program, you hit three months, six months, alcohol-free and you're like, "Barty, I want to mentor people. I want to help others. I want to be an accountability support system for people. Dude, I've got you. I'll support you through the process." You know? Dude, there's so much opportunity in life when you open yourself up to the possibilities of potential and you look at the rear view mirror and you say, "I'm done with that. I'm done with it." But it has to be earned. Remember, there's no hacking life. You've been hacking life for 20, 30 years. Look where it got you. Look at the state of your health. Look at the state of your relationship. Look at the state of how you feel about yourself. This is the result of hacking life. You keep drinking. You keep drugging. You keep numbing your pain. Dude, man up, woman up. Have the fucking conversation that you need to with yourself, with the people around you. You know? Like, it's time to fucking grow up. That's what letting go of our addictions is. Our addictions are a manifestation of our pain that we're wallowing in. And I get it, the pain is real. It's validated. I validate you in your pain. But what are you going to do about it? How long are you going to keep playing this fucking game with yourself? You have to get to a place where you say enough is enough. And then you just take it one day at a time. You can stay sober today. That's all you have to do. You just have to stay sober today. You just have to get through today. Regardless of the stress, regardless of the kids, regardless of the partner, regardless of the work, regardless of the past, you just have to not consume today. That's all. I don't know. I don't play that game. I still take it one day at a time. Although I don't think about it. It's automatic, unconscious, and default. Just like I breathe air, just like I wake up and I brush my teeth. There's no thinking about it. I'm just alcohol free. That's the default programming. And I pride myself on the fact that like, no matter what happens, no matter what happens, it's just not a reason to drink. It's just not. My window of tolerance, my capacity to handle pain, to handle discomfort, whether it's emotional pain, whether it's sadness, whether it's frustration, whether it's overwhelm. My window of tolerance, my mindset, the way that I understand this vehicle that I inhabit, the way my understanding of my nervous system, my understanding of all the different oscillating emotions and sensations, my own understanding of my mind, the way that I talk to myself, my clarity, my map of reality, my context, my objectivity, my vantage point, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what it is. It's just alcohol is not a solution. It's it never even comes to mind. And this is coming from somebody who was obsessed. I don't know anybody who loved alcohol as much as I do and take this like as a take this as a honest sign of truth. The reason I can speak to this so well and you love listening to me is because I get it. I fucking get it. I so deeply get what you're going through. So deeply get it. And I had cravings on and off for a year, but I was like, dude, what's the alternative? I go into my thirties and copy and paste my twenties over and piss it away. No, I'm not doing that. I'm not doing that. The game is when you get clear on the pain, when you get your fucking head out of the sand and you stop living in denial and you seriously take a real inventory and look at all the damage and pain and consequences that's coming from your drinking and you viscerally connect to that in your heart and in your mind. And you see that you then turn your back to it. Okay. And you say, I'm now moving in this direction. And in order to never again experience any of that bullshit, I am willing to endure any other form of discomfort or pain that comes along this journey. That is the decision that we have to make. That's the decision I made in that rock bottom moment. I said, listen, if I drink again, that version of Bardia will not come to fruition. And I'll drink into my thirties and I'll drink into my forties and fuck with the way I drink. I probably would have died in my forties. I was drinking four to six bottles. I was drinking 25 to 30 drinks a day at 29 years old. How sustainable is that? My liver would have given out by 35. I would have died sooner than my dad did. So and then and then what would have happened is I would have been laying there in the hospital on my deathbed with probably not that many people around me. And I would have reflected on my life, laying there in the fucking hospital. And I would have thought, fuck, that's it, huh? This was my life. When I was a kid, I had all these fucking aspirations. I had all I remember when I was a teenager, I had this fucking vigor and this piss inside me about who I was going to be and what I could do in the life that I could lead in the impact. And I just became a fucking slave to the alcohol companies that heard that they're fucking getting rich off of my life. And I was always scared. I was always fearful. I was afraid of being rejected by other people. I was afraid of speaking my truth. I was afraid of my own heart. I was afraid of my own voice. And now I'm here. I'm going to fucking die. Imagine the weight of that regret. Imagine it. Because if you do not stop drinking, that is a 110% non-negotiable fact. That is what we'll ensue. Allow the fear of that moment to drive you into action. Fear in pain is a way better motivator than pleasure. You talk to a bunch of different coaches and performance experts and mindset, people and hypnosis people. Everybody's got a different philosophy. You talk to psychotherapists and mental health professionals and trauma informed experts and somatic experts and whatever. To me, the philosophy is get fucking clear on what you don't want. Get very clear on it. Feel the pain of what if that actually happened and allow that to light a fucking fire in your under your ass to run 100 miles an hour in the different direction in another direction. So for me, what I always keep in mind is what alcohol represents is four to six bottles of wine a day and hurting my shoulder and mangling myself in the pool. We're寂 scushing pain of my life. Pain. Pain. There's no there's no wheezing my way into, oh, it's going to relieve some stress. No, it's pure pain. Do you know how many thousands of times I've woken up and said I was never going to drink again every time from the very first time I picked up alcohol and I binge at 13 or 14, 15 drinks when I was 13 or 14 years old. From the very first time I picked up alcohol is like, I'm never doing that again every single time. And I finally got to the point where I just don't bullshit myself anymore. So when I think about alcohol, I just take myself back to the most painful experiences and moments and I'm like, oh yeah, that's what alcohol is. It's not this illusion of, oh, I'm going to have fun and just hang out and have a good time. No, it's bullshit. It's a lie. And then I think about that version of myself who I'm operating in alignment with now. Okay. The dream, which I'm not done, I'm just scratching the surface realistically with everything that you've seen so far, I've probably hit 5 to 10% of like the mission so far. I've made tremendous progress, solid progress. I'm probably 5 to 10% in of like the vision that I have. Maybe, maybe not, maybe I'm like 1% in. We'll see. But I've connected this as a fact that if I drink that version of myself, which I've spent a lot of time thinking about and reflecting on, and maybe this is the gap that's missing for you. For a lot of us, when we try to imagine life without alcohol, we are definitely afraid. terrified. If you've been drinking for 20, 30, 40 years, you can't fucking fathom a life of that alcohol. You think it's going to be boring, dull, sad, lonely, depressing. You're the odd one out. You're why you, God, uh, pitties you, whatever. So you can imagine life without alcohol, alcohol, but you have to. You have to sit there and reflect and grab your journal and say, who could I be? If I was free from the desire to drink, I didn't want to drink. If I was free from the craving, if I gained all this time and energy back, if I gained all my mental creativity and faculties back, I gained my ability to be consistent and my ability to push through back. And then I was able to process through and heal all my limitations, my traumas, my, um, emotional dysregulation, my self-sabotage, my procrastination, my, um, you know, my perfectionism, my, uh, social anxiety. Who could you be? What would you do? I'll tell you, it's infinite. This is your playground. This is you get to do what, whatever you want to do. Nobody's holding a gun to your head that says you can't do this. You can't go work there. You can't become this person. You can't build this personal brand. You can't start this business. You can't travel to these countries. You can do whatever you want. This is your human playground. You're here to learn and to grow and to evolve. And nobody is holding a gun to your head either way. So imagine who you could be and get excited about that. And then think about what if you were on your deathbed? Starting with the end in mind, reflecting on the fact that we are mortal beings and that this time is finite is critical is critical because most people are living as if they're going to live forever. They're just pissing away the days and weeks and months and years. Dude, this thing is impermanent. Don't assume you're going to be the lucky one who just dies of old age in a peaceful way. No. Statistically speaking, most of us are going to succumb to some disease or something. Right? So what are we doing here? How much time left do you have with your kids? How much time left do you have with your partner? How much time left do you have to do the things that you want to do and the way that you want to do them? So get excited about who you could become and then think about laying on your deathbed and being like reflecting on that moment. What did I do with my life? What did I do? Did I just piss it away? Did I live in fear? Did I live in anxiety? Was I afraid of my truth? Was I afraid of rejection? Boom. Okay. Well, now you're going to go into the void for an undisclosed period of time and we don't know if there's any redoes after this or where you go. And so you're one shot. You just you fucking you fumbled it. Stop fumbling it. Stop fumbling it. Find a program. Find support. Find a community. Find coaching. Find accountability. Do it. If you haven't been able to do it by yourself, that is what you need. And I'm not saying that to blow smoke. I'm not I'm saying that because that's what I needed. That's what I needed. So I'm practicing what I preach. I would not have been able to do this thing sustainably. Had I not a pro had I not had a program had I not had a system to follow had I not had people around me to I could call and text and you know and I can expand my map of reality and start to make sense of my childhood and my emotional operating system and the nervous system and the brain and the subconscious mind and how thoughts form and how beliefs form and and how to regulate all these things. There's no way I didn't have the tools. You know. So you got to be willing to lean into the discomfort and get excited. Get excited about the discomfort. It's an opportunity for your entire life for all these years of drinking all you've been doing is fucking running from the discomfort. Dude, it's time to change it up. Start pursuing the discomfort. Get excited about it. Be certain in the fact that when you continue to move through the discomfort on the other side, there's light at the end of the tunnel. Listen, there's nobody who pursued massive amounts of discomfort consistently and committed to it for long periods of time who didn't become bigger, more powerful, more resilient, happier, more successful have a better understanding of themself, develop self confidence and self esteem along the way, develop tons of wisdom. That's the only thing that comes through the pursuit of doing challenging things. You don't do challenging things and then get a fucking lump of coal at the end. You do challenging things and then you're met with growth and evolution and progress and fulfillment through that. You proved to yourself who the fuck you are. That's what this is. You finally proved to yourself. Instead of all this fucking lip service about this is who I used to be and I resting on all these fucking laurels from the past. You're not high school anymore. It's not college anymore. It doesn't matter what you did yesterday. It's what you do today. How are you going to show up differently today? You know, far too many of us, right? It's the old adage of the guy fucking sitting at the bar talking about the good old days. You fucked that. You've still got 30 years ahead. How about we create new good old days? How about we step into a new chapter of empowerment and commitment and follow through and resilience and strength and courage and fortitude? That's what that's dude. That's the fruit of life. That's the nectar of life. The nectar of life is sweet when it's earned through trials and tribulations. You know, if you have a business like your first, like whatever dollar amount, $100,000 you make, million dollars you make, dude, that day, that moment, that goal that you hit is, that's it's sweet. It's sweet because you earned it through blood, sweat, tears and sacrifice. If somebody just gave you money, yeah, you'd be cool. Yeah, great. Exciting. I get to go buy a new car, pay off my debt, but it's meaningless. You didn't earn it and you know deep down you didn't earn it. So it's whatever. You piss it away. The things that you want in life have to be earned. And you earn it by developing the courage to turn towards the trials and tribulations. Recognize, recognize that when you get that craving at 6 p.m. Your 10th day of being alcohol free, whatever. It's like get excited. Oh, here it is. Here's that moment. Here's this hour that Barrio was talking about where I get to go do something else. I get to do something else. This is where I'm building my resilience. This is where I'm redeveloping trust with myself. Use that use that as an opportunity. It's all your mindset. It's the perspective that you take. So I think I'm going to wrap it up here. We went pretty long here about an hour and 26 minutes. I know it's been a little while though, but I wanted to want to take a little bit more time and just and just share because I'm sure many of us could use it. And yeah, you know, it's this journey is profound. It's life changing. It's life changing. The amount of people who come through my program and say, I came into quit drinking, but my life has changed as a result of this experience. It's so many. It's all of them who get through it successfully. So if you want to work with me, go to my website www.thestobdrinkingcoach.com and fill out an application very, very soon here. I'll be launching this group program, which I'll definitely release more information about it once it's live. As of now, I still continue to work one-on-one. And yeah, I've got a huge library of course material. I've got a library of really profound and powerful meditations that I've gotten excellent feedback on for my clients so far. Really, really powerful stuff, a comprehensive system. And as you come in and work with me and come into my program, you're going to have access to the program forever. There's always going to be an opportunity for you to stay plugged in and receive ongoing support and accountability. So if you're serious about this thing, go to my website, fill out an application. Other than that, I appreciate you listening. I appreciate you listening. I appreciate your patience. I know it was about two months since I recorded my last episode. And so, yeah, life has been kind of crazy. I'm moving in the next month. We're really working hard on getting this group program and stuff launched so that I can become a lot more consistent with content as I kind of pull away from kind of clearing up my calendar on one-on-one stuff. So, yeah, I'm super excited for kind of what this future holds and really just this year in 2024. There's a lot of really good things that I'm working on building that are going to be really helpful for you in a lot of different ways. So, I appreciate you listening. Share this episode with somebody that you know. And if you have not yet left a five-star review on my Spotify and on my Apple, I would really, really appreciate if you did. If you've gotten value from this, if you could just take two minutes to go to Spotify, hit the five-star. And if you can jump over to Apple podcasts, hit five stars, and just write a little review, it would really, really mean the world to me. Seeing the positive impact that my work has on another other people when I receive emails from you, when I receive text message, you know, Instagram DMs from you guys, you guys can find me on Instagram at the stop drinking coach. When I receive those, it fuels me. It gets me so excited. It pushes me to want to continue building and creating stuff for you guys that is helpful. So thank you so much and I will see you in the next episode. - Hey, thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to the podcast, leave a five star review, and share it with your friends or someone you know who might be struggling with alcohol. And if you feel like you're ready to finally transform your relationship with alcohol, visit www.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. [MUSIC]