11 years ago this month I gave up alcohol and in today's episode I want to share some of the things that I've learned along the way.
I feel like I could rule the world I know I could be what I want to.
I put my all in it like no days on the road.
All right 11 years ago I gave up alcohol and in today's episode I want to share some of the things that I've learned since then.
So the reason I'm doing this is my one year anniversary of giving up drinking.
I wrote this blog post. You can google it.
It's called six things I learned from not drinking for a year.
And today I thought I'll recap that blog post but also share some of the things that I didn't add to that blog post that have kind of come true in the last 10 years.
And I'm sharing here on my first million because I think a lot of people would enjoy this but also because this isn't just about giving up alcohol so doesn't matter if you're giving up drinking or you want to get a drinking or you want to just create a new habit.
I have found that these things that I've learned they can apply to anyone trying to make a major life change and so lesson number one figure out your why and go all in on that.
And so let me explain so I started drinking in my late teens with just my friends just like most people when they start doing it.
But what I noticed was that it dolled my anxiety a ton and I am a pretty anxious person.
I don't know if you can tell if you listen to this podcast I bet you can but I have a fairly high anxiety.
And I noticed that when I started drinking my anxiety it just like kind of went away and so as I got more and more into drinking I was just like this feels awesome I don't feel anxious I'm going to keep doing it so it was very much self medication and by the time I was like 21 I was super into alcohol to the point where probably ages 22 to 23 I was intoxicated basically 24 hours
a day I was drunk 24 hours a day.
First thing in the morning you start you go all day and then you wake up a little drunk or a little hung over and just keep going and so I realized one night I was blowing it I always felt I was kind of special I felt like I had this fire in me that I could do something interesting.
But I was completely blowing it and I felt I wanted to feel life because I didn't really feel like a lot of emotions during that period because they were hidden and so my reason was I wanted to feel life and I wanted to not ruin my potential.
And so like funerals wedding celebrations meeting someone you like breaking up with that person I think I and many of the people we would drink because for some reason we didn't want to face reality whether it's trauma you had or I'm not sure why other people experience it but you want to like cover it up and I'm not against alcohol and drugs for other people but for me
it basically just like masked how I felt and I hated that and then I realized that when I got sober.
Facing challenging situations it felt like this massive adrenaline rush I felt like so good about facing things that I previously was nervous about so it took about six months after getting sober but on month six months seven month eight I noticed that I would face these challenging situations like for example I was 23 24 when I quit and like like every single 23
24 year guy meeting girls is like the number one focus in my life and I noticed that when I was like I was like I was like I was like I was like I was like I was like I was like I was like I was like I was like I was like I was like I was like I was like I was like I was like I was like I was like I was like I was like I was like I was like I was like I was like I was like I was like I was like I was like
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to impress these guys who I moved in with even though I doubt they were impressed by drinking I somehow felt I needed to impress them and I was like yeah, let's go party let's go do this and then we went out and I got pressured and I caved in and I ended up drinking again and then it took about another year of kind of going crazy and I eventually went to a homeless clinic in San Francisco
it was called the San Francisco South of market mental clinic I think it's what it was called it was for homeless people pretty much like at the time I had just left my job to start the hustle and I didn't have any income and so I technically qualified to like go to this homeless clinic but in a weird way I was like I'm basically a bomb like I deserve to be here like I'm ruining
everything I deserve to be with these other addicts and I met this doctor named Jocelyn Porquez I saw her up until recently actually she gave me this advice she was like you should tell your friends tell your roommates that you're having an issue I was so freaking afraid to do that and so I kind of worked up the courage with her encouragement and I eventually told my
roommates and I was like hey guys I've got a drinking issue and so you can live your life the way you want to live your life and I'm not going to judge you I'm totally fine with you guys doing what you want to do but from this point on I'm sober and I'm not going to drink alcohol and I would love it if you could encourage me and I felt like the biggest weight lifted off my shoulders
and I noticed that when I felt that weight it will go away it became so much easier and so I had no problem after that telling a bunch of other friends and a few of my friends at the time they kind of bailed on me and I was kind of bombed for a minute and then I was like you know what if they're willing to bail on me over this then fuck them I don't want to be friends with those guys
anyway and it felt amazing it felt so good to be able to talk about this with people and I've talked to a bunch of other people who have struggled with this in a common feature that people have when they're trying to break any type of addiction or have it is they don't talk about it with people because they're embarrassed and I have found that talking about it it makes
me not embarrassed because a lot of other people struggle with the stuff and it humanizes someone because I know that a lot of people listen to me and might look up to me it's cool to help them but I mostly do it for me it's a selfish reason why I talk about it because it makes me feel better and it makes me feel like it's no big deal or it kind of normalizes it and so in my opinion if you're
trying to change a habit whether it's addiction whether trying to start a business I think that you should tell people and the reason you should tell people is because of lesson number three which is I think it's important to recreate your identity so Robert Green is one of my favorite authors he's got this awesome book called the 48 Laws of Power and I remember reading
it when I was trying to get sober and I think it's like chapter 25 and he's got this chapter about recreating your identity and he wrote the book in terms of like how to gain power which you could argue is or is not good but it doesn't matter the lesson though was awesome for me and he gave examples of like celebrities for example lady Gaga lady Gaga was this like fairly
like normal woman when she was like 18 years old and then she's like you know I'm kind of quirky I'm gonna lean into like this weird thing with my identity I'm gonna make my whole brand about it and she became that person and that is like the lady Gaga character and I found that to be very empowering and so I started changing my language to not I'm gonna get sober or I'm gonna try
and be sober or I'm gonna try not to drink to I am sober I am an alcoholic and I found that labeling to be powerful I think a lot of people don't like to label themselves labels can be really bad for you if you do like I am depressed or I am weak or whatever it is and so I just changed the label that I gave myself and I found that that kind of was like the seed for recreating an identity
so my identity before getting sober was like I've got a strong tolerance or I can be the life of the party or I just don't give a shit I'm down for whatever like these stupid labels that I gave myself I was still labeling myself so instead I decided I'm gonna recreate my identity and I'm gonna give myself the label of I am sober and I have other examples of doing this so for example
I'm gonna talk about this in a second but after giving up drinking I totally got addicted to sugar and I got pretty like fat and like two or three years ago I told Sean I go Sean I'm now a fitness influencer and if you go to my Instagram you'll see all these old posts where I it was silly I was I was kind of being silly about it but I was serious I'm like I am a fit person now I am
an athlete and so I got super fit because I started working at it but I labeled myself and labeling myself as an athlete or as someone who works out every day I didn't want to ruin that label and so I exercise every single day and I think labeling yourself as a good person a loyal person as a business builder as a force of nature as a fitness freak I think those labels are incredibly
important because it makes sure that you recreate your identity and I like to tell people that and to this day I still do that with a bunch of things so for example if I need if I meet someone new I'm not gonna be like yeah I'm an alcoholic I've got issues but if they offer me a beverage or something a beer I just say no I don't drink because I like it too much and they usually
get the message but I do like little subtle things like that where it's kind of puts my foot down of I do not drink alcohol and I felt this load lightened from my shoulders to like put it out there but it put pressure on me to never break that because I didn't want to disappoint others and I didn't want to disappoint myself and so I like recreating my identity and I like using
labels and I think it's really important so whether you want to start a business as a business channel we'll talk about business when you want to start a business and you're working somewhere it's like oh I'm only working here temporarily but I'm actually building a company right now because I'm an entrepreneur I like labels I think labels are incredibly effective
lesson number four I'm not trying to be perfect I'm just trying to be mostly good and I think that that is true for many things and let me give you an example so I read so many books when I was trying to get sober I talked about the 48 laws of power that was a great one mastery by Robert Green that was another good one and then the third one was the power of habit the takeaway
for that book for me was that a habit doesn't go away it just gets transferred and so what that means is that when you want to change a habit it's important to look at your loop so usually it's a there's some type of stimulus that makes you want to do something and then you react to it and you typically do that over and over and over again and that's how a habit is created and so what I
had to do when I was giving up booze was I had to look at what my behavior was and I had to like break the pattern and the pattern wasn't necessarily going to go away it was just going to get transferred to something new and so when I transferred my habit to something new I was under doctor supervision under the for this and I told the doctor I'm like man I'm trying to not drink
and I'm on day three I am craving sugar so much because when you drink like I drink like 30 beers a day you're like craving carbs constantly because that's a big part of alcohol and the doctor was like just go and eat M&M's just eat M&M's all day just go like who cares just you can figure that out at a later date but right now the goal is not to be perfect and live a perfect life
it's just to be better than you were and I thought that that was so relieving because I thought I had to be perfect as like no I'm making this massive life change I can't screw anything up and I was like no just improve this one thing and give into the sugar and then at a later date when you're confident with that the alcohol thing is is away and you're not craving it as much
we'll address the sugar thing another time and so I did I drink all right eight tons of M&M's that was my candy for a long time was peanut M&M's and I loved non alcoholic beer I drink so much Oduals I would drink like 15 to 20 Oduals a day because I noticed when I created beer I just went and got no doles and that's a non alcoholic beer if you don't live in America it doesn't
taste very good but it was an awesome replacement and I got pretty fat because of that but I was okay it was better to be fat and not on alcohol than whatever I was before but drinking as much as I did and then I transferred that habit from non alcoholic beer and sugar I've mostly have successfully transferred it to diet soda and carbonated drinks so I drank a ton of like
carbonated water like all day and I love diet soda and diet soda you could say that's not good for you but that's okay I'm not trying to be perfect I'm just trying to be mostly good now lesson number five being sober attracts more people like I said before how was 23 24 25 when I went through this journey I was single at the time and what does every single guy care about meeting
girls or mean whatever you're into but basically meeting someone and my number one fear I remember this when I was trying to get sober was what girls think about me I didn't want them to think I was like a freak at the time I was like oh what do they think I'm a freak what do they think like I think I think that I'm like religious what if they which is not wrong being religious
but I ate and I was like are they gonna be turned off are they like not gonna be into me because I'm gonna be boring and I remember my first sober date I was scared shitless I was so afraid and I decided to just tell her when we something it came up I don't remember how I think because I didn't order like a drink which you would drink she's like oh you don't drink and I was like
no like I'm basically an alcoholic and I'd spend like six months since I drank and I remember she leaned in like she like put her elbow on the table and like leaned in and I was like bingo she's interested what the hell that and I don't think you should do something like this for other people but at the time I was like I'll take any advantage that I can get and the fact that I
was afraid to meet women and girls because I was an alcoholic and that they're it made her maybe like more interested in me I was like I'll take a lake up anywhere I can get it so I leaned into that and I noticed that women liked me more at least the right type of woman the type of woman I wanted to attract they liked me more because of that and I've been married now for a long
time and so meeting girls is not in that way isn't actually something I care about anymore but men were attracted to me more too like because I had this newfound confidence it felt as if I was walking around all day and I remember I used to think I've got a string attached to my back and I would try to pull it up and so I would try to walk up like perfectly straight because I
was like wow this whole drinking thing it's changing my confidence I'm going to lean into other things that create a real sense of confidence so I started changing my posture and it was awesome and what happened was that created this cycle of confidence where I was like oh I could do this without beer I could do I could meet a girl I can go and start a business I could do
all these things and it created this like crazy cycle of confidence I kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and it was the best feeling on or lesson number six finding inspiration is 100% worth it and helpful and it's okay to be corny so I remember when I was 24 I met this guy named Joe Garvey Joe Garvey actually had a kind of an interesting business it was called
clash it stood for like the California League of scavenger hunts or something like that and when I was trying to start my business I didn't have any income coming in and so I met Joe somehow through a friend of a friend and he was like man I host these scavenger hunts for companies they like pay me $10,000 and I do a scavenger hunt all over the city where you're gonna like
go all over the city and find like certain things and it was a blast and he would let me work some of the scavenger hunts and he would pay me like $200 or something and it was a big deal and at the end of a scavenger hunt you ended a bar and you drink and he would like be there being the life of the party he was this big he was a big tall guy and he was in the center like getting everyone
to rattle up and do all these like team building stuff but it was like cool and but it always involved alcohol and I remember after working with him he told me I don't remember how but I was like Joe you don't drink he was like oh no like you know I had a problem I don't drink anymore I'm sober and I was like you can do that while being the life of the party that's insane to me
how do you do that and like he had a ton of friends and women loved him and I was like you're the man you're my hero I can't believe you just admitted that you had a drinking problem and yet you're still like the man people still like you and stuff and I got so much inspiration from that and it made me feel so good so I started reading all these inspirational books like the Tony
Robbins of the world all that stuff I read it like crazy how you even have this jar I had this jar where every day that I'd get in drink I would put a penny in and then it was like every day that I exercise I put a penny in and then it turned into where I put three pennies in where if I didn't drink if I exercise and I eat well I would put a penny in and I my goal was to fill this jar all
the way up and I look back at that and I'm like yeah that was like maybe a little corny but it helped so much and like leaning into some of these like cheesy things it's really powerful and I know a bunch of because of this podcast and because of my work I know a bunch of like quote powerful people I know a bunch of billionaires people who like sometimes many other people
will look up to a lot of them do this corny shit because and I still do it by the way we do it because inspiration is awesome I was already a motivated person I don't think you can make someone who's unmotivated motivated but I think you can inspire them an inspiration is just having something to reach towards or it's reading something or being or consuming some type
of content where it helps point your your car in the right direction I always have viewed myself I've viewed myself as this like fast car whose back tires were lifted in the air and I was like had my foot on the gas and I was just flooring it but I wouldn't don't anywhere and that and that was like my motivation I was already a motivated person my wheels were moving quickly
but I had to like let the tires on the ground and I had to be pointed in the right direction and that's what I use inspiration inspirational stuff for so I like a lot of these cheesy movies where it's like a guy doing something that's totally unrealistic but it makes me feel good or reading the Tony Robbins books reading a lot of these books that I will definitely make
fun of now which by the way I still read it made me feel so much better and gave me inspiration and I think it's important to like lean into that whether you're starting a business or whatever you're doing because dude it's scary like giving up alcohol starting a business meeting a girl trying to approach a woman who you who you like moving to a new place it's scary and you
need every advantage that you can get in order to like get over that hump and to actually make these things become a reality and so like lean into some of that stuff there's a lot of like really good inspirational stuff out there sometimes it's my first million this podcast but I think it's cool to like consume a lot of that information because that rubs off on you and you
need any advantage you can get in order to get ahead and to accomplish whatever you is you want to accomplish it's still like a little uncomfortable for me to talk about some of this stuff but I do it because it definitely makes me feel better and I acknowledge that I think it will make a lot of you guys feel better if you're trying to achieve anything whether it's giving
up booze start a business do whatever at the end of the day this is all about like getting over your fear I think it's about how to kind of jump off a cliff and there's a reason I have this horrible tattoo I'm not going to show it right now but on my feet on my left and right feet I've got the word act you know on the right foot I have now it's a homemade tattoo when I was getting
sober I like used a needle and I like tattooed my feet is like I said I like inspirational stuff but I think that this podcast hopefully is a little bit of inspiration but also practical ways that I can get you guys to act now and to change whatever it is you want to change I'll be in the comments on YouTube whether you're listening to this on YouTube or a podcast app but go
to our YouTube page my first million and comment on this video and I'll try to reply to a bunch of them but if you are struggling with something say what it is you're struggling with and what you're going to do to approach it and get over it because I think it feels good to put that stuff on paper like I said it feels good to label yourself about what you what you are now versus
what you were but let me know in the YouTube comments what you think about this and that's the part I feel like I could rule the world I know I could be what I want to put my all in it like no days on in a road let's travel never looking back
