Episode 49: The difference between people who change and people who don’t.

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Hello, everybody. I just want to stop and say welcome to those of you that have become regular listeners. It is so fun to watch my numbers grow every week. I tend to check my numbers because I do my metrics on Monday to kind of measure growth in a lot of areas of my business. And I can see my podcast drops on Monday morning. And there’s about 100 of you that are tagging in before 10 AM.

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like you’re waiting for it to drop. And I know that I have a relationship with certain podcasts that the day they drop, I’m listening. And it feels like such an honor to know that some of you are feeling that way about this podcast. And I feel like such a connection. A lot of you are reaching out and emailing me or connecting with me on social media. And it just feels fun after so much time and effort of putting myself out there.

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to feel like I’ve got a little bit of traction. And in fact, I just figured out how to know, because this is a process, running a podcast is not something that you just wake up and know how to do. Besides record the episodes, there’s a lot more to it. And I just found out that we’ve made it into the top 10% of podcasts, which puts us on the board. It qualifies us as a real podcast with a legit, consistent audience.

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which just puts me in the game. It qualifies me to invite authors and other podcast hosts onto my show. And then also people will find me and invite me onto their show. And I’ve actually done two interviews in the last two weeks where people have found my show because of my numbers. So I just wanna thank you for listening and encourage you to hit the subscribe button if you haven’t. And if you’re listening on Spotify, they’re now doing comments, so you could leave me a comment.

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so that yes, I’m targeting people who have struggled with alcohol, but my approach to emotional sobriety can be applied to anything. This really isn’t your typical sober podcast. It’s not that at all. I mean, I’m talking about how I’ve reintroduced alcohol. It’s much more about recovery, and we’re all recovering from something, you know? I define recovery as learning how to listen to your own intuition.

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so that you can be a person who trusts yourself, not just with alcohol, but with food and spending and relationships and big decisions, all of it. I am doing this because I am passionate about empowering people. I want you to be free from the expectations of the status quo. I want you to be free to follow your own path. And that requires that you learn how to get out of your own way. I acknowledge that life can be oppressive for many people,

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I assure you that you are your own biggest oppressor. Your own thoughts and feelings, and your fear of your own thoughts and feelings, are your biggest obstacle. And I am living proof that learning how to resolve your subconscious urges and suppressed emotions is the easiest way to live your one best life. And so if you’re enjoying this podcast, somebody you know will as well.

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So please don’t be afraid to share it just because of the stigma of sobriety, because that’s exactly what we’re busting here. And the more of us that stand up and speak our truth, even if it’s just to say, I like this podcast and it’s helped me, the easier it becomes for the next person to get out of their own way. And speaking of getting out of your own way, today’s podcast is on the difference between people who are able to change

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aren’t. And if you are listening to this podcast, you know that sensation of dread in your body where you have had some success, you know, maybe you had a week or a month or a year of sobriety, and then you reintroduced alcohol or, you know, if you’re not talking about alcohol, it could be diet or it just could be working out or healthy lifestyle or whatever, you know, you’re you get

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And then life picks up again and gets busy, or you have a bunch of stress or something happens, and you lose that sense of progress, that sense of forward thing. And so maybe you have a couple days or a couple of weeks where you kind of fall off the proverbial wagon, and then you’re staring down and saying, I knew it. I knew that that wasn’t sustainable. I knew I would not be able to stick with it.

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And so you go back into this belief that you failed to change. And this period of setback or not meeting all of your goals is evidence that you can’t change and that you’re never really going to change. You’ll always come back to this place where you tried, you failed, and game over. So.

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What I want to point out is that the difference between people who change and people who don’t quite make the turn, or people that continue to repeat the same mistakes over and over, like I like to say, like to run laps in the cul-de-sac of stupidity, the difference is not that people who do change don’t ever have setbacks or find themselves unmotivated or unable to meet their own expectations.

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The difference is how they respond to that and what they make that mean. And what I want to show you here is that how you feel about a setback or what you’re calling a failure, that is a feeling, not a fact. So let’s take an example where somebody does, let’s say, eight months of sobriety.

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And they felt great. They loved being sober. And then they reintroduced alcohol. And that really just didn’t go well. They ended up going back into old habits. And the story they’re telling themselves about what’s happening is that they were not able to sustain sobriety. They were not able to change as they wanted to change. And the truth is, like when you pull out and take the feelings and just deal with the facts.

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They sustained sobriety for eight months. That happened. It’s not negotiable. But because they had a story that they needed or wanted to stay sober forever, or that time itself was enough to change their relationship with drinking, they feel like a failure. And when you feel like a failure, you start acting like a failure. If the story you’re telling yourself is that I did eight months and then I flushed it down the toilet, well,

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That’s a shitty story. Of course you feel bad. Now contrast that with somebody who decided they wanted to be sober for eight months, because eight months was symbolic of something like who knows. And they met that goal. And then they reintroduced alcohol, feeling like they were doing so with full capacity to make that choice.

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and that they felt really good about their eight months. They invested energy in education and self-reflection and feel like they have the tools and the confidence to make good decisions moving forward. They have a newfound respect and desire for sobriety as a form of self-care, but they don’t feel like they have to abstain 100% of the time. They feel like a winner. They feel like they’re in control of themselves around alcohol, and they’re going to behave accordingly.

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So the same circumstance told through two different lenses with two different stories creates two different feelings and experiences of that. And then those feelings determine what happens next. The person with the story that they can’t sustain their sobriety is going to keep drinking. Their thoughts are creating their reality. The person who thinks, huh.

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nailed it, stuck the landing, super proud of myself. I’m totally in control. That person is going to behave like somebody who has the capacity to control themselves around alcohol. So in a nutshell, the difference between a person who can change and a person who believes that they can’t change and therefore disregards the evidence that they actually made a lot of progress is simply the way they react to setbacks.

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It’s the ability and the capacity to cope with not meeting your own goal, disappointing yourself. That’s it. And that is why it is so important to go upstream to your thinking habits and the way you talk to yourself if you want to make a real change. Setting your goal to stop drinking is a downstream intervention for an upstream problem. And it leads to a black or white.

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do or die all or nothing mentality that actually perpetuates the cycle. And so while an initial period of abstinence when you are recovering from alcohol use disorder is super important, the longer you can go, the better. As I’ve shared before, I went three years and so far that’s working out, but there’s no guarantees. Life is long.

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which is why the most important goal is not to focus on how long you can go without drinking, but to change the way you respond to yourself. Begin to treat yourself with compassion and kindness and shift from that black or white, all or nothing perfectionistic mindset where if I don’t win it all, I’m a complete failure and move into a more healthy relationship with yourself.

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where you learn how to tolerate your own feelings and your own human experience without beating yourself up, that is the real goal that will allow you to sustain change. You have to recognize that the all or nothing thinking is the problem that’s perpetuating the bad behavior because you think you have to have complete sobriety forever or...

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do tons of exercise every day, or eat healthy at every meal. And when you don’t meet whatever arbitrary goals you’re setting for yourself, and whatever the current definition is of perfection that you’re trying to adhere to, then you use that as evidence to perpetuate going back. So I’m gonna give you four characteristics that you need to adopt. Mindset habits.

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that will allow you to sustain change. So if you’re taking notes, you might wanna write these down. I’ll give you all four at front and then I’ll break them down. The first one, number one, is the belief that it’s possible. The second is the ability to deal with uncertainty. The third one is the ability to choose new thoughts on purpose. And the fourth one is focusing on evidence of progress.

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OK, so the first one is a belief that it’s possible. The truth is, you do have a belief that it’s possible. The problem is that you also believe that there’s a possibility that you can’t do it based on past experience. So you’ve got yourself an inconvenient set of conflicting beliefs. And we deal with conflicting beliefs all the time. We know that it’s possible to both love and to hate someone, to want to do something and also to not do it.

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So conflicting beliefs are not the problem. What you need to understand is that you have to focus and give your attention and give your energy to the belief that you want to cultivate. What you pay attention to grows, and what you neglect dies. So the belief that you lean into will get stronger. The belief that you interact with will get stronger. So the more time...

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You sit around thinking and worrying that you’re not going to be able to do it. And that one time you tried, and then you failed. And the more time you expend mental energy towards fueling the belief that you can’t, or you didn’t, or you won’t, the stronger it’s going to get. So you have to make a decision to focus on and nurture the belief that you want to cultivate. And how does any belief get stronger? Through consistent exposure.

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to the ideas and information that you want to believe. Listening to stories of other people, anecdotes of people who have been in your situation and who managed to accomplish whatever it is you want to accomplish. If your goal is to not drink or to not care if you drink or not, or to be able to moderate your alcohol, you’re gonna have to find people and information that supports that goal.

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so that you can see what is possible. Seeing what’s possible and knowing how it’s possible is everything. Imagine that you have a child who is dyslexic and is not doing well in school. They’re six or seven years old, their peers are reading, they’re not reading, they’re transposing numbers, it’s awful. And imagine that we don’t know what dyslexia is and there’s no framework for that child to get services.

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or to have a happy ending. And so everybody’s just telling the child, you know, up, junior’s not gonna be doing well in school, he better learn a trade, and I don’t want him in this class and we’re gonna, you know, not have him in with the main population because he’s stupid. That child has nothing to tell him an alternate story, that there’s hope for him. So he believes what he’s told, that he’s stupid, and he better learn how to work with his hands.

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Contrast that with a child who, at six or seven, is diagnosed with dyslexia and has parents, a parent who is also dyslexic, but has managed to become very successful in life and in their career and knows exactly what the child needs and how to help and is able to give the child hope and the tools and support that they need. Same set of circumstances, completely different outcome.

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One of the kids has a vision for who they can be and how to work with what they’re given in life. And the other kid doesn’t know what’s possible and simply accepts the narrative that he’s stupid and his life becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. That’s the power of belief. You don’t even have to believe that it’s completely possible for you to become the person you wanna be and make the changes. You just have to know that it is possible.

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so that you keep showing up for the learning. And a big part of that learning is number two, the ability to deal with uncertainty. So here’s the deal. Only the present moment exists. The past doesn’t exist. The future doesn’t exist. The only thing that exists are the stories in your head about what happened in the past and what you think is gonna happen in the future. And the story that you’re telling yourself is what is creating the feelings.

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So even when you hear somebody say, you know, I’ve quit drinking and I’ve been sober 25 years and I would never take a drink of alcohol, well, maybe, but we hear stories all the time where people fall off the pedestal that they put themselves on. So the real truth is that promises don’t mean shit. You can promise yourself that you’re over something or that you’ve become a completely new person, but certainty is a feeling, not a fact.

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which is kind of unfortunate for those of us that prefer to live in certainty of knowing how things are gonna go and that we’ll be able to control things. But the good news is the flip side, and that’s uncertainty is also a feeling, not a fact. And you have to realize that both of them, certainty and uncertainty, are a product of the stories you’re telling yourself in your head. And only by becoming aware of your stories,

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and being willing to accept that the way you feel is a product of what’s happening in your brain and not the objective truth, can you learn how to deal with both uncertainty and certainty when either one isn’t serving you? And I wanna take a moment to really explain what the story in your head, what does that mean? You realize that you have an inside voice and it’s always talking. So here’s a simple example.

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Imagine that you’re walking outside and it’s cold. The voice in your head starts telling you a story. Maybe your voice says, hey, you’re a dumbass. You should have brought your jacket. Or maybe you have a nice inside voice and the inside voice is, it’s okay. We’re almost home. It’s only gonna be another five minutes. We can take this. I look so forward to sitting in front of the fire as soon as we get home and I’m gonna make myself a warm cup of tea. We can do this, keep going. Like,

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Your inside voice is always talking, and you’re listening, and whatever that story is telling you is dictating how you feel. So if you forgot your jacket and you feel like a dumb ass, you’re mad. But if your story is you’re almost home and you’re looking forward to a warm fireplace, then you feel okay. So the voice in your head is why you’re having feelings. If you had no thoughts in your head, you would have no feelings, except obviously you would feel cold.

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But the other emotions that are creating your mood are a product of story. And the stories that you tell yourself are just products of the past, things that you’ve heard. Maybe it’s what your mom or dad would have said in that situation to you. Or cultural tropes or social paradigms that dictate how you’re supposed to think and feel about a certain situation. It really doesn’t matter where they came from. It matters that you notice that they are there.

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And that is how you deal with uncertainty. You notice and name. You notice the story that you’re telling yourself, or the belief or the thought that you’re having that’s creating the feeling. And you just call it out. OK, this feeling, I’m feeling this way, not because of something that is happening, but because of the story I’m telling myself. Because that allows you to diagnose the real problem. You’re not dealing with facts. You’re dealing with feelings.

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And you’re going to need to come on down out of that brain and move into the body and be able to tolerate the sensation of the feeling without getting carried away in the story, which the good news is most uncomfortable feelings are not that painful. They’re not more painful than a paper cut. And all you have to do is be able to tolerate the discomfort long enough to diagnose the real problem, which this is emotional.

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and that your emotions are being caused by a story. And that leads to number three, which is your ability to choose a new story or new thoughts on purpose. And this is actually somewhat easier than it sounds, because you will believe whatever you think, especially if you repeat it over and over in different contexts and integrate it and connect it with other ideas.

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So you’ve got to fight fire with fire. And this is where you can begin to view your feelings as a gift. This is where you learn to react differently. All you have to do is stop and notice when you’re feeling fear or doubt or uncertainty. Just noticing instead of subconsciously reacting to it, letting it drive your behavior, letting it tell you stories in your brain. Like if you stop, drop, and feel,

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and then notice and name the emotion that’s happening in your body. Get out of the story and just stick with the facts, and that is that you’re having a feeling. Feelings actually are facts. It’s the thoughts that are creating them that are false, not true. And that’s how you need to learn to react differently to your feelings. Instead of flinching and needing to change them, allow them to inform you

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that you’ve got a shitty story on board, and that if you don’t change it, you’re going to have a bad outcome. You know, painful emotions are just like any other pain. They’re the body’s way of signaling to you that something is wrong. Something needs to be adjusted. If you don’t fix your sock, you’re going to get a blister. That’s what the pain is for, to have you take action, which can be as simple as a reframe. Zooming out.

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and seeing things from a larger perspective. I love the parable of the Chinese farmer who gets a horse and the horse runs away and the neighbor stops by and says, ah, that’s bad news. And the farmer replies, maybe. Well, the next day the horse comes back and brings another horse rhythm. And the neighbor says, ah, good news. And the farmer replies, maybe. Well, then the farmer gives the horse to his son who,

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rides it and then falls off it and breaks a leg. The neighbor says, ah, sorry about the bad news. And the farmer says, eh, whatever. And then a week later, the emperor’s men come in and collect every able-bodied man, young man, to go to war. And the farmer’s son is spared because he has a broken leg. And of course, we’re all supposed to say that that’s good news, but the truth of life is that good news and bad news

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matter of perspective. They are relative. Things are what they are, which is why spending your time arguing about what they should be is an absolute waste that will keep you stuck. But realizing you’re stuck in a story allows you to escape it. To look for and choose to see things from a different perspective, one that actually serves you. So when you’re dealing with uncertainty or worse,

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the certainty of knowing that you’re absolutely screwed. Either one of those, when you’re dealing with one of those, if you can instead learn how to respond with curiosity, what else could be true here? And then taking time to create a story that actually inspires hope. Looking around for evidence that you have changed, you are changing, and you have the ability to continue to change, instead of assuming that whatever just happened is proof that you can’t.

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That is the way you move forward. And that is number four, then, which is to train your brain to track evidence of progress. So motivation, the desire to do something and to repeat a behavior and to get better at it, motivation is fueled by evidence of progress, not evidence of fuck ups. As soon as you think that you can’t do something and that you’re incapable, you give up.

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But the more you realize that you’re making progress and you keep track of your improvements over time, you notice what you did right, even in the middle of fucking it up. If you start to notice the good things instead of evidence that you suck and that you can’t do it, but instead start noticing evidence of progress, that will even more enhance the motivation that you have to continue on the path.

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So the story you’re telling yourself is that you’re in the process of change. Maybe you’ve hit an obstacle that you need to overcome, or you’ve had a setback that is now a learning experience where you are going to be able to benefit from that in the future. Whatever, creating a story that you’re on the path to change and believing that story through consistent exposure to the story and exposure to other people who have had the same sort of story.

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And that inspires you to take a leap of faith, to believe that for yourself, and to step into the uncertainty that you may not nail it on the first try, but also the ability to know how to handle those feelings and how to react to those setbacks. Like, that is the difference between a person who doesn’t change and a person who does. Simply a person who believes that they have the ability to change and that that’s what they are doing.

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Because the story that you’re telling yourself is what creates your reality. If you want to change, start saying you’re changing. And when you come up against evidence that you haven’t been changing appropriately, match it and beat it with evidence that you have and that you are on the right path. And then ask yourself, OK, what do I need to keep moving forward? And that’s the other thing that often.

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We come against obstacles or setbacks because we’ve hit a new level in the game where we need to upgrade our tools. We need to ask for more support. We need to go back for more training. So looking at a setback where you can do a post-game analysis, what happened here? Where am I not giving myself what I need? And what do I need to do to move forward? Then anything that happens is just

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fueling your progress, even if it’s a lesson in what not to do. So to finally wrap this up, what’s the difference between people who don’t change and people who do? It’s the realization that change happens in the mind. Your behaviors are driven by feelings and thoughts. And so if you want to change your behavior, you have to learn how to tolerate uncomfortable

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to untangle the story and to give yourself the time and space to create a new story and to not expect that this is a one and done. Change is a process. You’re never going to get there. You have to practice being the person that you want to be every single day and learn how to deal with both the what propels you forward and then also the things that set you back. It’s called being human. Welcome to life.

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Stop telling yourself that you have to wait until life gets easier or until certain things happen or until you feel ready. Change is happening right now. The game has already started. You just have to decide if you’re gonna be the one directing the action. And I just wanna say that if that feels overwhelming to you, I can help. You don’t have to figure out how to change yourself and your life. You can start by saying that you want

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to want to change. I remember that feeling so well. I wanted to want to quit drinking. I didn’t want to quit drinking, I just wanted to want to quit drinking. And the litmus test for that is I would run into people that maybe I used to drink with and you know, they’re at a party and they’re not drinking and they look amazing and they’re talking about how good they feel since they quit drinking and I would feel jealous. Like, oh, I wish I could do that.

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And it turns out, best news ever, I could do that. I went from a person who couldn’t go a single day without drinking and who could not open a bottle of wine without finishing it and also probably boosting it with vodka. That was my existence every single day. And I have become a person who was sober for three years and now occasionally enjoys one glass of wine without any worry.

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that I’m going to go back. I feel quite certain that I have changed. I have a lot of evidence that I have changed. And I know how to adjust my story if ever I feel doubt and uncertainty. I know what to do for myself. And I can help you do the same. My 12-week program called The Next Chapter really is the fast pass to escaping your alcohol obsession.

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learning how to manage your mind, learning how to process and interpret and manage your feelings, learning how to choose a new story for yourself so that you can become the best version of yourself in just 12 weeks. You don’t have to figure all this out on your own. I do it for you. I know change can seem so overwhelming and maybe even impossible, but what I do as a coach is to break

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So you don’t have to think about making a huge life change and doing all the things right forever. Think of just making one decision that will allow for change. You know, what’s the next thing you need to do? You don’t have to worry about how to do all of it. Just sign up for a course that will guide you through the process. I can help you change the way you think one day and one week at a time. And I can train you.

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how to track your progress so that when you look back on this period of your life, you will feel so proud of how far you’ve come. So check out the link in the show notes and I’ll see you soon.

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Thanks for listening. If you liked what you heard, please take the time to rate and review the show so that other people can find it. I really appreciate it. And check out the show notes for any resources I’ve mentioned, including links to follow me on Instagram and join my private Facebook group where I connect with my tribe every day. I love it in there and we have so much fun. And finally,

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If you’re ready to redefine sobriety so that you can feel excited about quitting drinking, follow the link to my 10 Days to Spontaneous Sobriety course, where I will help you eliminate, eradicate, obliterate, cancel your desire to drink. Because looking and feeling your best is addictive too. I’ll see you soon