You Need To Lean Into The Discomfort

Hey, I'm Barti Arez and I'm the Stop Drinking Coach. Welcome to my podcast where I teach you how to stop drinking, how to quit craving, and how to begin the journey back to yourself so that you can transform your life. After a 14-year binge drinking career, starting and stopping dozens of times 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. Hey, what's up guys? Welcome back to another episode. My name is Barti Arez. I'm the Stop Drinking Coach and I am super excited to be digging into another episode today. I apologize for not putting one out last week. I actually caught food poisoning and it was absolutely brutal. Don't wish it upon anybody. But interestingly enough, it actually reminded me of being drunk and when I was drinking because I was throwing up like every half an hour and I was nauseous and I couldn't keep water down and it was just, it was absolutely brutal. But I remember thinking in that moment like, geez, the last time I really felt like this was when I was drinking and I'm just so grateful to no longer have to experience that. And so in this episode, I want to dig into the concept of leaning into the pain because this journey is all about learning how to lean into the pain. Now, it doesn't mean that there's going to be pain for the rest of your life. But early on in this journey, for all of us, including me and everybody who I know who has developed a problematic relationship with alcohol and gun sober, for all of us, there is pain that you're going to experience. In multiple ways, one is going to be the pain of the withdrawal, right? The withdrawal that everybody has to go through and deal with, which lasts three to 10 days for most of us, the pain of having to experience cravings and not giving into them, right? That anxious feeling, that feeling that, you know, it feels like, you know, you're not going to be able to survive unless you have a drink, which again, only lasts on average 15 minutes up to an hour tops. And that's what you have to remember about cravings is that they don't last forever. Even though in the moment, it feels like, you know, you go tunnel vision and you can't think about anything else. Trust me, like that the craving only lasts like 15 minutes to an hour. It's like a bell curve. There's a point in which the craving hits. That's the trigger. There's something either a thought process, something in your environment, a certain time. Could be any number of things. We all have slightly different triggers, but trigger hits, you start thinking about alcohol and it's like this bell curve. It kind of comes up. It hits this point of intensity. And then eventually it starts to fade down and eventually, usually about within an hour, you go back to a totally neutral baseline where the craving is completely gone. So, right, there's the pain of the craving. There's the pain of like, oh, what am I going to do this weekend? It feels like, you know, life is boring now where that, you know, you know, how am I going to handle my free time? So, or it could be the pain of feeling stress, the pain of frustration, the pain of maybe anger or resentment or any other emotion that you have been running from, right? And that's the fundamental thing that we have to understand on this journey is that, you know, the reason we use alcohol is because we are trying to change the way that we feel inside. And there's something inside us, which isn't sitting well, whether it's anger or frustration or stress from work or kids or your job or whatever else it might be, your relationship, we're using alcohol as a way to escape. But how do you escape alcohol? How do you quit drinking? How do you get to the other side where you are no longer stuck in the slave cycle of constantly drinking alcohol? The way that you do it, I mean, it's almost right in front of your face. The way that you do it is you just allow yourself to move through whatever it is that you're feeling without drinking. And what you discover is that you can, you are fully equipped as a human being. You are fully equipped to be able to handle anything and you don't need alcohol as a way to numb out and escape. And I know that sounds crazy, you know, as I look back on my journey a few years ago when I was in my drinking phase, like the concept almost seems foreign to me. But think about it this way, like use this as a thought experiment, right? Let's say you got sober. Okay. And you were a year sober right now. How would that version of you handle challenges? How would that version of you handle stress? How would that version of you handle boredom? How would that version of you handle a conflict with your kids or with your work or with your partner or your relationships? Imagine you're sober. How do you think that version of you would handle it? Well, the version of you would probably assess the situation. Breathe through it. Remind yourself that no matter what is happening, you're actually safe and supported and that whatever is going on, this too shall pass. And you'll probably go outside and you'll go for a walk. You'll probably go and drink some water. Maybe you'll go, you know, take a drive and watch your favorite or watch your favorite movie or you might call a friend or you might call a coach or a mentor or somebody that you trust who has maybe been through a similar situation to talk you through it. Right. So if you know that there's going to be a point where you're eventually just going to handle life on life's terms, then what you need to do is like, Hey, if I just want to collapse time between me and now and getting to that point, I need to start feeling and being present to what is going on inside me in the moment. Right. It's like alcohol is, what we're doing is we're procrastinating against the internal resistance, the internal pain. And what you discover through this journey, and I promise this to you, the pain of living in the alcohol cycle and the damage that it does to you psychologically, mentally, emotionally, energetically to your health, to your relationships, to your kids, to your work, to everything. The pain of that is far greater than having to confront whatever other pain is inside you. I promise you that. And it seems irrational or it seems counterintuitive because when you drink alcohol in the moment, temporarily, it increases dopamine and GABA in your brain and it gives you the illusion that alcohol is making you feel better, but it's not. It's the very thing keeping you trapped in the cycle of perpetual pain. I mean, I'm telling you, like all my clients, when they're 30, 45, 60, 75 days into this thing, they cannot believe, they cannot believe how much better they feel on every front, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, energetically, their relationships, everything has gotten tenfold better. And it's because they were number one, develop the courage to reach out and work a program. Number two, they followed a system that is proven to optimize you, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. And number three, they began to learn how to self-regulate. They began to learn to take themselves when they were activated and in a state of fight or flight through their breath and through different mental techniques to bring themselves back down to a state of safety and calm. And when you learn how to do that, after never having really done that before, it is so empowering. It is so, it is so empowering. You build so much confidence. You build so much self-esteem. You build so much self-trust. Because dude, the alcohol thing knocks those things out. It absolutely destroys your confidence. It destroys your self-esteem. It destroys your self-trust. It chips away and eventually begins to crumble your self-image. Because it's like, dude, you're smart, you're successful. You've got all these other things in your life, which like, you've got pretty dialed in. But this alcohol thing, it just, dude, when you just keep going back to it, it just destroys you. It destroys you internally. And so you have to lean into that pain, right? Like, if you're at point A and you want to get to point B with the alcohol game, there's no other way to do it, but to walk through the fire. It is your soul's evolution. And it doesn't matter who you are, how much money you make, where you're from, what all accolades you have in life or anything else. Like, if you've developed a problematic relationship with alcohol and your neurochemistry has become warped and imbalanced and your emotional system in the way that you manage stress and anxiety, it doesn't matter if you're the king of England. We're all on an even playing field. And the even playing field is you learning how to manage your human operating system. And so, understand that your evolution as a human being, the person that you imagine yourself capable of being, whether you call it your higher self or whatever you want to call it, the only way to get through the other side is by leaning into the pain. And that's what we have to understand is that pain is not this thing that we've been like everybody's running from all the time. The people who are the most successful, the people who are the happiest, the people who have the most peace, the people who have the most agency and control in their life, are the people who have the greatest amounts of courage to continually confront and move through pain and discomfort. And it's how you look at that pain and discomfort that colors the experience of it, a very like simple analogy, which really it goes into every other area of life, but it's so simple to understand is going to the gym, right? There's two people who go to the gym. One of them goes to the gym and looks at the gym as just this painful, drudgery hour of their life, you know, like they have to go and they have to drive there and they have to put on clothes and then, you know, they're constantly just worried about what other people are thinking about them and think that everybody is looking at them. And then when they lift the weight, it's just it's so heavy and their muscles are sore and they feel the lactic acid burning and every rep that they push is just miserable. And it's just this whole, you know, it's that's how they color the experience. So literally every step they take in the gym, every breath they take is just, oh, it's so overwhelming. They're so tired. And every rep that they push is just, oh, it's so painful, right? While somebody else, that's that's person a person be goes to the gym and person be is clear on what the pain of the gym is for. They understand that the pain of every rep is breaking down their muscle and making it thicker and stronger, creating more definition, giving them more strength, making them more capable, giving them more flexibility and resilience so that when they go out into the world, they have a greater capacity and control for how they move their body. And they understand that with every rep that they push, they're connecting it to the ideal body or physique that they know that they're capable of having. Like it's all a mindset. It's how you interpret the pain which colors the experience. So if you look at, oh, I have to wake up early, oh, I have to follow a routine. Oh, I have to sit here through this boredom and it's just why me, poor little me, how did I ever get myself into this situation? Why is it that everybody else got the longer end of the stick and I got the shitty playing cards? If you look at the pain that you're experiencing that way, then life is going to be a bust. And it's like, why do that to yourself? Everything is a mindset. You can reinterpret the pain of this journey to understand that, hey, okay, I've got some pain inside me, whether it's lacking confidence or self-esteem, or I've got this thing from my past, my childhood, or the way my parents treated me, or I've got this deep internal pain that I'm not good enough, or that I'm not lovable, or that I'm not capable or deserving of these things in my life. Going back and learning how to reprocess that pain, reinterpret that pain as a 30-year-old, 50-year-old, 60-year-old, 70-year-old, that you are now listening to this, with the life experience, with the wisdom that you have, the understanding, like going back and reprocessing that pain is not nearly as bad. It's not nearly as painful as you thought it was, right? Like we all experience pain, whatever pain it could be, whether it's our childhood trauma, whether it's something that happens in our adolescent years, or maybe it's a relationship or a divorce, or whatever else it might be, that we think that we need to use alcohol as a way to numb out and escape from. Like going back and reprocessing that pain is not nearly as bad as you might think. It's not going to sting as much as you make it out to be. I promise you this, I've done it. I came from absolutely nothing. A poor family with substance abuse, with emotional neglect, with virtually no emotional connection to the people around me. Like, I get it, man. I get it. We all go through trauma. We all experience pain. Pain is a necessary part of life. I mean, we live in it. And it like to think that it's not to think that you need to constantly be avoiding pain is a totally warped perspective. You need to be pursuing pain. That is how you grow. That is how you evolve. Think about every area of your life that is important to you. Okay. Let's think about our relationships. Okay. In order for our relationships to be deeper, to have more connection, to have more alignment, we need to go through the pain of working through, let's say, any character defects we might have around relationships. Maybe we're mistrusting of people. Maybe we're afraid to be ourselves. Maybe we're afraid to be vulnerable. So we have to work through the pain of learning how to be more heart centered and more open. And more connected to our true self. We need to practice communication that might be outside of our comfort zone. We might need to communicate more openly and vulnerably. We need to maybe let people know how we feel in a way that's calm and collected and with the right tonality. Right? Like, okay, so if we want deeper, healthier relationships that feel more loving connected, we have to work through whatever pain there is there. But on the other side is deep love and connection. Right? If we want to have better health, if we want to be at our target ideal weight, we have to go through the, and again, use the word, understand the word pain. Again, this is, this is up for interpretation because you can look at pain in different ways. Some people will say, oh, well, it's so painful having to watch what I eat. It's so painful to not just eat pizza and ice cream every day. It's so painful to have to grow, free shop and be mindful of the energy that I put into my body because all that, all that, that's what food is. It's energy being broken down. And if you put shit energy into your body, your system is going to operate like shit. But if you put good energy into your body that has good micronutrients and vitamins, then your system is going to operate better. So it's a mindset, right? So if you, if you want to be at your target weight and you want to look in the mirror and look good naked and feel good about yourself and feel attractive or whatever else it might be, I don't know, whatever your goals are, like you're going to have to go through the pain or the mindset of learning how to be mindful of what you consume. And you're going to have to exercise multiple days per week to make sure that you're moving your body and your joints are healthy and you have good mobility so that you're not in pain and that you have a good amount of muscle mass so that you burn fat more effectively. And so that your hormones function better so that you feel better, you have more energy, you have more dopamine flowing through your brain so you have less cravings, right? So you're going to have to move through the pain of that but lean into it. On the other side of almost every type of pain you learn to lean into is your liberation, is your growth, is your freedom. You want to make more money? Great. Live in an abundant universe with trillions of dollars floating through our economy and ecosystem. Great. You just have to become more valuable to the marketplace. So how do we do that? We acquire more skills in management, in leadership, in communication or we take on new technical skills, whether it's, I don't know, marketing or accounting or something in the medical field or health or whatever it is that you do and you're passionate about. If you want to make more money, then we have to elevate our mindset and we have to expand out of our current comfort zone in how we trade goods and services with our time. And so that may involve learning new skills, expanding your map of understanding when it comes to business or building a side hustle, right? How do you leverage your time better? How do you leverage your energy better? You might have to get better at managing your time. That might be painful if you've never managed your time before. Having to download a calendar on your, you know, use Google Calendar, use an app, right? Maybe you want to, maybe you want to travel more and you want to experience more cultures or more parts of the world. Well, that's going to require you to step outside of your comfort zone and adopt and become more comfortable with the pain of, let's say, solo travel and having to get organized and to create an itinerary and to do some research on where you want to stay and what options there are and what, you know, maybe it involves learning a new language, right? What else could you possibly want? Like, well, I want to feel like my life has more meaning and purpose. Okay, great. What do we want to do there? It's like, okay, well, how do we do that? Well, let's figure out what meaning and purpose means to me. Where do I feel the most energetically? aligned, what are my gifts and talents? You know, if I have 30 or 40 or 50 years left to live, and I know that I don't get a second chance, what would be a meaningful way to spend my time? What do people tell me I'm naturally good at or gifted at that maybe I haven't fully accepted or recognized within myself that I could double down on? Because I think life is really a game of learning how to double down on your strengths. Right? There's so many ways to think about this, but at the end of the day, leaning into the pain is where is how you're going to get to the life that you want? Everything that you want is on the other side of the other side of pain, including being sober and having a life where you're free. You're no longer tethered to a drug that is going to constantly take you through this emotional mental psychological energetic roller coaster. The way that you untether yourself from alcohol is by removing alcohol from your life and allowing yourself to feel whatever it is you need to feel long enough to allow your mental and emotional and energetic system to rebalance and create a state of harmony. You never need it the alcohol. You never needed the alcohol. Think back to when you were 10 or 11 or 12 or 13 or 14 or 15 before you started drinking. Alcohol was not a thing. You weren't living in the shadow of it. You weren't craving it. You weren't missing it. You weren't filtering your social experiences through it. You went to school. You played your sports. You did your homework. You hung out with your friends. An alcohol did not exist. It was not a factor. You can get back to that place. And I know that might seem impossible because you've been drinking for 30 years. And alcohol has become your best friend and it's this toxic relationship. And you can't imagine a life without it, but I promise you. It was half of my life from 15 to 29. Then from 29 to a few months into that, I was drinking four to six bottles of wine a day. Alcohol has been the cornerstone and centerpiece of my entire life. I came out of the womb with my dad being an alcoholic around me. My earliest memories when I was living in Los Angeles when I was probably four or five six years old is my dad sitting in the corner of the kitchen leaned up against the corner drinking and there'd be like music playing. My earliest memories of consciousness involve alcohol for my caretakers and the people around me and the environment. So like, dude, I get it. I get it. But understand that regardless of what you think alcohol has done for you or the way it's come into your life, you can reharmonize your mental and emotional and energetic operating system back into a state of harmony. But the only way that you can do that, the only way that you can get into a sense of peace in the present moment is by identifying where is all the pain that exists inside me from my past, from my childhood with my parents with bullies on the playground, whatever it might have been, the boyfriend, a girlfriend who broke up with me, the relationship from my past, the divorce, the loss. We need to identify those things and we need to develop the courage to begin working through them and understand that when you work through them, it is going to release the energetic load of the pain. In the whole personal growth, personal evolutionary, spiritual journey is about moving through this evolution of consciousness to where you can get to a place where you can look back on your past despite the pain, despite the tragedies, despite whatever it is that you experience and to be able to reprocess it and reinterpret it and see it somehow as a gift. And I know that might sound insane and I know that might sound crazy. But loving yourself in the present moment means being able to love yourself for all of it, all of it. The good, the bad, the ugly, the pain, the challenges, it's about being able to fully accept and embrace and let go and forgive and anything else that we need to do to love ourselves in the present moment and to build that confidence back, build that self-esteem, you are capable, you are, you are deserving, you can do whatever it is you want to set your mind to. Dude, it's all possible, but you have to embrace the pain. And when you begin to embrace the pain, you become stronger, you become more resilient, right? It's kind of like that thing, how we all in our head start to get, right? Like, let's say you're worried about something and then you go through it and you're like, "Ah, wasn't that bad? I made a mountain out of a mole hill in my mind." This journey oftentimes is that, is that. We create these projections in our mind about how life is going to unfold or how hard it's going to be. I can't tell you how many of my clients have gone on vacations 30, 45, 60 days into their sobriety and came out and they're like, "Holy shit, I was so worried. I couldn't imagine going on a vacation not drinking." And they come back and they're like, "Dude, it built so much confidence. I'm so happy. I've never been so grateful in my life to know that I'm capable of doing this." And when you have the right support system, when you have the right program, when you have the right foundation, underneath you and you have tools to self-regulate, you can get through anything. You never needed it. We were duped, we relied to, we were tricked into thinking that you need the substance to socialize, to have fun and to de-stress and it's just not true. It's just not true. And so, understand, like, to re-condition yourself as an adult, which is your responsibility now. It's like, "What dude, what's the alternative? What are we just going to give up? We're just going to croak over and die?" Like, "What's the alternative here? How many people have asked you?" Whatever your name is listening to this, insert your name, what's the alternative? And play the tape forward. What is the alternative? You just keep drinking because you can't deal with a withdrawal that lasts five to ten days. You keep drinking because you're afraid of feeling some anxiety or boredom. You keep drinking and damaging yourself and damaging your relationship and damaging your kids and damaging your life, dude. You only have one shot here. And let's take a second to reflect on that. I don't care if you're spiritual or if you're religious, what your beliefs are about, why we're here, what happens after? Let's just assume, based on the data that we have, you only get one shot, no redoes, and you don't get to go anywhere else and chill in ecstasy for the rest of eternity because we don't have evidence for that. It's an act of faith. So if that's your faith, great. But assume, let's take this seriously. You listening to me on this podcast, the remaining 40, 50, how many ever 60 years you have left. Let's assume that there's only one version of you, one unique fingerprint. And so what do we, what's the alternative? You just keep going? Trust me. Whatever pain there is, you can get through it. There is support, there are systems, there are experts that can help you move through and process any of it. But the first step is you have to develop the courage to lean into it. Whatever pain it is, whether you're sober and you're trying to break through to the next level in your life with your health, with your relationships, you have to have that courage. You have to develop that courage and understand that like one of the things that you will discover as you move through the pain, as you ascend in consciousness, as you heal your trauma and as you learn to relax and regulate your nervous system, is that this game of life is simple. It's the two fundamental driving, sponsoring polar opposites of all energy are fear or safety. Safety and fear. Safety and safety and pain. Love and fear. So the game ultimately, why we're doing all this work is so that you can learn how to feel safe in your own mind and body. Because once you learn how to feel safe in your own mind and body, you then discover that we don't live in a hostile universe. But for most of us who experienced a lot of trauma, we think the universe is hostile. We think that people are out to get us. We think that there's danger lurking around every corner that people can't be trusted. Whatever. Because your nervous system is constantly going into a state of fight or flight because you've had all these adverse childhood experiences and your parents didn't get on one knee and co-regulate with you and teach you how to breathe through uncomfortable feelings and emotions and prove to yourself that by breathing, you can get through anything and that your nervous system will go back to a state of calm and safety. So your brain and nervous system can got frozen in time, hundreds of times between the ages of 0 and 7 or 0 and 14 or whatever. And so now as a 30-year-old, 40-year-old, 50-year-old, yeah, sure, you're 50. You've got wisdom and life experience, but emotionally and mentally, you're operating through the lens of a seven-year-old or an eight-year-old or a 12-year-old or a 14-year-old having a tantrum constantly. And that's just the game, dude. What other purpose are we here for as an adult than to learn how to manage our internal state of consciousness? Everything else is a distraction. And that's why this journey of getting sober is so powerful. This isn't about living in the shadow of your addiction. It's about finally growing up to get to the place where you're like, "Okay, I'm not going to run anymore from myself. I'm going to finally stop the buck stops here and I'm going to begin investigating very curiously and I'm going to begin learning about what is going on inside me and how does this thing work? What's insane to me that I've always thought about is that if you grab 100 people and you ask any of them, tell me about how your eyes work. Tell me about how your brain works. Tell me a little bit about how your heart works and how your stomach processes food. 99% of them, 99 out of 100, are going to have no idea. The one person who does is probably going to be the doctor because that's what they had to learn. Right? Like how insane is it that we inhabit this human operating system for 70, 80, 90, 100 years and the vast majority of us haven't taken the time to figure out what are feelings and emotions? How does our brain produce our thoughts and our experience of reality? Why is it that we keep running into the same problem over and over and over again? Why do I get triggered 50 times a day? Like, why is it that I get alcohol cravings? You need to get curious and begin passionately investigating how your system works and that's what I've done and that's what I'm building. The stop drinking coach is going to be the most revolutionary system and course that exists in the sobriety space hands down. I haven't found a single other sober person who communicates the way that I do, who has the background that I do, who has studied the things and have constructed the map together in the way that I have. What I'm building this year is going to be absolutely insane. Like the course is going to go through everything, starting from ground zero to childhood development to understanding trauma and I'm going to pump so many resources into this thing. It's going to be wild. There's going to be a meditation or hypnosis or NLP technique to problem solve absolutely anything within the human experience and the system and what I'm building, the resource vault, the archive is just going to keep growing. A year from now, there's going to be 50 different tools and resources and strategies to problem solve basically anything because once you understand how the human operating system works, it's like dude. At that point, it's just about doing it and not having excuses and as an adult, we can do that because we're not eight years old anymore. So, lean into the pain. Everything that you want is on the other side of pain. It's about how you interpret that pain and the story that you tell yourself about it. Are you going to be person A who goes to the gym and says, oh my God, every rep, oh my God, poor little me, why do I have to go through this? Or are you going to be person B who looks at what you think is pain and say, hey, this is actually the bridge. This is the thing that is necessary for me to go through to evolve and grow and adapt and become the person I know I'm capable of being. That's how you have to think about it. And with enough time, compounded effort, compound interest starts to kick in and life begins to transform mentally, emotionally, spiritually, energetically, your relationships and everything else. But you have to be willing to work through it. And this is why working a program is so important because if you're trying to do this alone and you're experiencing all these different pains and things coming out of left field and you have no accountability and you don't have a community that you can tap into who's on the same frequency and wavelength. Dude, it becomes a lot more challenging. Like human beings, we are tribal. We are community-based animals, right? Like, we need other people. We need support. We need accountability to something outside of ourself. And if you're trying to quit drinking, if you're trying to get sober, finding a community that you can tap into is so, so important. Because it can be isolating, right? When 80, 90% of the world everybody you know is drinking and just living their life on the alcohol hamster wheel and you don't want to do that, you want to be a better version of yourself that no longer systematically poisons and runs from yourself. You want to look at who and what you are. You want to learn. You want to grow. You want to adapt. You want to get to the next level. And whatever ways are meaningful and important to you, you have to get around other people. The synergy of connecting with other people on the same frequency and wavelength is electrifying. It is so powerful. There's so much power that comes from a group who is on the same mission and purpose. And then you tack on like a coach who can help you see your blind spots, who can help you traverse the path from point A to point B and create the shortest distance between two points. Dude, what you can accomplish in your life is insane. The greatest thing I ever did was to invest in coaching. I mean, two and a half years ago when I got sober and I started working with a coach and I immersed myself in a coaching system, I mean, I had no idea that I would be in this position two and a half years later. I mean, maybe there's a, I kind of knew it in the back of my mind, but like insane. The growth that comes from leaning into the discomfort, leaning into the resistance. And what you discover by leaning into the discomfort and resistance and pain is that like, dude, it's just not as bad as you thought. You become stronger, right? It's just like going to the gym. When you first get to the gym and you bicep curl, let's say 15 pounds, by the sixth rep, it burns. And there's all this lactic acid burning up in your tendons hurt and your joints and your elbows hurt. But if you rep those 15 pounds every single day and then two weeks later you get to 20 and then 25 and by month six, you're rep in 50 pounds in each hand. Not only did the pain and the discomfort and the stress increase, right? Because once you say that if you're to drop a 50 pound weight from five feet in the air onto the ground and a 15 pound weight, the 50 pound weight would have significantly more impact and damage. So we know there's more damage and pain happening by wrapping 50 pounds than there is 15 pounds. But you as a person got stronger, your capacity increased, your muscles got thicker. The amount of lactic acid coming in becomes less. You have more muscle, it's thicker, it's stronger. You become stronger, you become more resilient, right? And so here's a thought experiment and here's an exercise. Look back on your life and when was a time alcohol excluded? When was a time where you went through a significant period of growth? It could have been in school, in college, when you were studying for some degree. It could have been in a sport. It could have been in some hobby or some instrument or some creative endeavor. Think back to a time where you grinded it out and you were committed. And think about your evolution. Maybe it could have been when you first started an instrument to where you got it. Or when you first started learning about a new subject in school to where you graduated and got your certificate or your degree or some sport that you played. Think back to when you were wobbly and you could barely move your body. And by the end of playing that sport, you were agile, you were strong, you were resilient, you had the moves. Think back to that evolution. Being sober, learning to live alcohol free, becoming then stepping into that next chapter of who you're capable of becoming, where you're more confident, you have more self-esteem, you have more self-awareness, you have better mental regulation, better emotional regulation. People look up to you, people admire you. You're more successful at work. You're a better leader within your family. That version of you is the same journey, but it's a new journey. It's a new journey and it's the most powerful and profound journey that you can take. Because when you take this journey, everything else in a way pales in comparison. The amount of confidence and strength and self-esteem that you gain as a result of finally overcoming your addiction, this is your hero's journey. Every day that you learn to self-regulate, every day that you choose the correct decision that's going to move you towards the person that you want to become, rather than giving in to the pain or the overwhelm, man, there's nothing sweeter than that. It is a nectar that only those who earn it can taste and there's nothing sweeter than it. There's nothing sweeter than it because it is truly an ascension, it is truly an evolution. If I look back on the person that I was, too. and a half years ago, I was not the same man. I couldn't even call myself a man back then. It's just, it's wild man. So lean into the pain, lean into the resistance, lean into the discomfort. And if you've tried to do this on your own multiple times and have not been successful, reach out for help, reach out for support. There's no way I would have been able to do this without it, no way, no chance. You need community, you need people you can tap into. Stay close to that community. If you finish your 90 days, stay close to the community. Tap in. This isn't just something. This isn't like, oh, I'm going to hire a personal trainer for six weeks and try to lose 10 pounds. Like dude, we're talking about war here. You're going to war. But I'm telling you, when you get to the other side, the victory that you feel, man, you'll be the most proud of yourself than you've ever been. And there's nothing like it. And so if you're on this journey, you've got this. One day at a time. One day at a time means you don't think about tomorrow, you don't think about this weekend. You don't think about six months from now, the vacation you have planned or anybody's wedding that you have planned. The only commitment that you ever have to make to win this game is that you're just not going to drink today. And no matter what happens, what goes south in your life, what's challenging? How do I get through the next six to eight to 12 hours without alcohol? Who do I have to call? Where do I have to go? What workout do I have to do? How do I have to distract myself? How much breathing do I have to do? And you'll get through it. And by the time you wake up, whatever you're feeling will be 80% reduced in terms of its intensity. And you'll be so grateful that you stayed so bright another day. Tap into community, tap into support, and tap into your future. Start thinking about your future. Start thinking about what you want. All the things that you've ever wanted for yourself become possible when you get sober. When you work a good program, when you have accountability, when you're living a lifestyle, where you're actively optimizing your mindfulness, your energy system, your improving, all of that, while at the same time going back and beginning to expand your map of reality, reprocessing your past so that in the present you feel more confident and empowered, anything that you want becomes available to you. So now it's about, okay, we've got all this time back. I've got all this energy and clarity. What do I want to do with it? I've got 30, 40, 50 years left. How do I want to enjoy it? And who do I want to enjoy it around? That's a big question too. And that's why tapping into community is so, so important. So lean into the pain, lean into the discomfort, lean into the resistance, and I promise you, everything that you want is on the other side of that. You just have to develop the courage to take the first step. And if you're not sure what the path entails, reach out to me, visit the website www.thestopdrinkingcoach.com. Fill out an application. I do private one-on-one coaching. I'm going to be moving towards a more group coaching here, but we'll still keep one-on-one available as well. And just scroll down to the bottom of the website, www.thestopdrinkingcoach.com. I've got, I don't know, 30, 40 snippets and screenshots of testimonials and client experiences. I've got 100 more than I haven't added. That would just really slow down the load speed of the website. But I've got so many of those. And so, hope this episode was helpful. I hope it was a good reminder for why you started this journey and where you're going. And trust me, it all gets better. It all gets easier. The discomfort and the pain that you feel in the first 30 days, 10 days is not reflective of the rest of the journey. You just have to adopt the right tools, the right mindset, do the right things on a daily basis, mentally, emotionally, neurochemically, optimize your dope. I mean, do the things that are going to help you get there. And I promise, I promise there is no greater journey that's going to help you evolve more as a person, reconnect to your deepest authentic self, develop the self-love, the confidence that you always wish you had, the certainty within your life, the empowerment to go out and enjoy your life the way that you want to than this journey. So thanks for listening, share this episode. If you think it would help somebody you know, and leave a five-star review, if you haven't, I would really, really appreciate it. Thanks 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.thestoptrinkingcoach.com and book a call with me. I offer private one-on-one and group coaching to make letting go of alcohol easier and more sustainable than you ever thought possible. Thanks again for listening, and I'll see you in the next episode. (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]