6 Things I Learned From Not Drinking For 1 Year

eleven years ago this month i gave up alcohol and in today's episode i wanna share some of the things that i've learned along the way i feel like i could rule where i know i could be what i want to from at all in it like a day's off on a road trap alright eleven years ago i gave up alcohol and in today's episode i wanna share some of the things that i've learned since then so the reason i'm doing this is my 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 i have kinda come true in the last ten years and i'm sharing here on my first million because i think a lot of people wanna enjoy this but also because this isn't just about giving up alcohol so it doesn't matter if you're giving up drinking or you wanna get up drinking or you wanna just create a new habit i have found that these things that i've learned that 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 dull my anxiety a ton and i am a pretty anxious person i don't know if you could tell if you listen to podcast podcasts i bet you can but i have a fairly high anxiety and i noticed that when i started drinking my anxiety it just like kinda went away and so as i got more and more into drinking would just like this feels awesome i don't feel anxious i'm gonna keep doing it so it was very much self medication and by the time i was like twenty one i was super into alcohol to the point where probably ages twenty two to twenty three i was intoxicated basically twenty four hours a day i was drunk twenty four 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 little hungover and you just keep going and so i realized one night i was blowing it i always felt i was kinda 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 meaning someone you like breaking up with that person i think i and many other people we would drink because for some reason we didn't wanna face reality whether it's trauma you had or i'm not sure why other people experience it but you wanna 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 on month six month seven month eight i noticed that i would face these challenging situations like for example i was twenty three twenty four when i quit and like like every single twenty three twenty four year old guy meeting girls is like the number one focus in my life and i noticed that when i was like six seven months in at first i was super nervous to go up and talk to a girl sober but then i did it one time and i felt oh my god that was a rush i gotta feel that again i gotta feel that again i gotta feel it again and i noticed that it happened with business it happened with so many other facets of my life that i got to feel this extreme emotion that for a lot of sober people it's probably just that's just how they feel but it felt awesome and so i felt like i was alive again and so i actually loved like confrontation i loved like nervous feelings because it felt like a rush to experience some of those things and so it was important to lean into that and i had to sit down for a minute and figure out why am i doing this and i just always tried to remind myself that and i think that that's the case for any goal that you try to do when you change your life is you gotta to constantly remind yourself why are you actually doing this lesson number two tell your friends so i originally tried giving a booze because i was in college and i was like like this is a problem this is just a huge issue that i have i was basically living by myself my senior year of college and starting my sophomore year of school it was like full blown an issue and so i went two years like that and i live by myself basically so like no one would know that i was screwed up and i also had a hotdog dog stand and that was like my business i've talked about here a lot of times the reason i had that business was you could own a hotdog dogs stand and sell hot dogs from eleven to three and being intoxicated and most people won't know because i just think that you're acting goofy and so that's one of the reasons why i it and so i basically didn't tell anyone and then the first time i got sober i just went cold turkey and i got super sick a lot of people don't talk about this but with alcohol but i'm pretty sure there's only two drugs you can die from if you try to do it on your own and you could have withdrawals and dying and that's alcohol and opioids and so i got really sick like five days in to giving up booze and i went to my college doctor and they like measured my blood pressure and they're like man your blood pressure was like through the roof what the hell going on and i had to explain to them what what the issue was and that the first time that i ever vocal localized it and so we had to go to the hospital that day and i had to tell the hospital that was an issue and it was like really embarrassing and i felt horrible about even like vocal that i remember i was like in tears practically i was oh man i can't believe i said that out loud but it definitely felt better but i didn't tell you one once i got out of the hospital i still didn't mention it to anyone and then eventually after a few months i was gonna graduate college and i moved to san francisco to try to make it in the internet world and i relapse because when i got off to san francisco i wanted to meet new friends i wanted to impress these guys so i moved in with even though i doubt they were impressed by drinking i somehow felt i needed to impress them and i was yeah let's go party let's go do this and we went out and i got pressured and i caved in and i and i ended up drinking again and then it took about another year of kinda 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 is 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 in a weird way i was like i'm a i'm i'm basically a bomb like i i deserve to be here like i'm ruining everything i i deserve to be with these other addicts and i met this doctor name's jocelyn pork i saw her up until recently actually she gave me this advice it was like you should tell your 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 i've got a drinking issue and so you can live your life the way you wanna live your life and i'm not gonna judge you i'm totally fine with you guys doing what you wanna do but from this point on i'm sober and i'm not gonna 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 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 kinda bail on me and i was kinda bummed for a minute and then i was like you know what if they're were gonna bail on me over this then fuck him wanna be friends with those guys anyway and it felt amazing if it felt so good to be able to talk about this with people and i 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 a habit 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 human recognizes 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 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 kind of normalize it and so in my opinion if you're trying to change a habit whether it's addiction whether they're 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 greene is one of my favorite authors he's got this awesome book called the forty eight laws of power and i remember reading it when i was trying to get sober and i think it's like chapter twenty five and he's got this chapter about recreating your identity and he wrote wrote the book in terms of like how to gain power which you could argue is or is not good but 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 eighteen years old and then she's like you know i'm kinda quirky gonna lean 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 guy guy 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 b sober or i'm gonna try not to drink too 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 instead i just decided it i'm gonna recreate my identity and i'm gonna give myself the label of i am sober and i have other examples of i'm 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 it was silly like i was i was kinda 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 it but i labeled myself and labeling myself as an athlete or as someone who works out every day i didn't wanna 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 bills builder as a four as a force of nature as a fitness free i think those labels are incredibly important because it makes sure that you reach recreate your identity and i liked to tell people that and to this day i still do that for 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 like 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 kinda puts my foot down of i do not drink alcohol and i i felt this little load lighten from my shoulders to like put it out there but it put pressure on me to never break that because i didn't wanna disappoint others and i didn't wanna disappoint myself and so i like recreating my identity and i like using labels now i think it's really important so whether you wanna start a business this is a business channel we'll talk about business where you wanna 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 forty eight laws of power that was a great one mastery by robert greene 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 wanna 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 it is created and so what i had to do when i was giving a boost was that 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 gonna 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 thirty 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 and m's just e m and 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 like no i'm this massive life change i can't screw anything up and i was no just improve this one thing and given to 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 as much we'll address the sugar thing another time and so i did i drink alright ate tons of m and m's that was my candy for a long time was peanut m and m's and i loved non alcoholic beer i drink so much o i would drink like fifteen to twenty o dual a day because i noticed when i trade beer i just went and got no du and that's a non alcoholic beer if you don't live in america it done tastes 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 drink a ton of like carbonated water like all day and i love diet soda in diet soda you could say that 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 twenty three twenty four twenty five when i went to this journey i was single at the time and what does every single guy care about meeting girls or mean whenever you're into but basically meeting someone and my number one fear i remember this when 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 what do they think i'm free what do they think like are they gonna think that i'm like religious what are they which is done 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 day i was scared shit list i was so afraid and i decided to just tell her when we something it it came up i don't remember how i think because i didn't order like a drink which she ordered to drink she was like don't drink and i was like no like i'm basically an alcoholic and i had been like six months since i drink 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 ed 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 and that they're made her maybe like more interested in me i was like i'll take a leg up anywhere i can get it so i leaned into that and i noticed that women liked to me more at least the right type woman the type of woman i wanted to attract they liked me more because of that and i've been married now for a a long time and so meeting girls is not in that way isn't and actually something i care about anymore but men were attracted to me more too like i because i had this newfound confidence it felt as if i was walking around all day and i remember i used to think i have got a drawing 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 is changing my confidence i'm gonna 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 can meet a girl i can go and start a business i 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 earth lesson number six finding inspiration is one hundred percent worth it and helpful and it's okay to be corny so i remember when i was twenty four i met this guy named joe garvey joe garvey actually had a kind of a 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 ten thousand dollars and i do a scavenger hunt all over the city where you gotta 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 like hundred dollars 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 roll up and do all these like team building stuff 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's was like oh no like you know had a problem i 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 them 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 you people still like you and stuff and i got so much inspiration from that and it made me feel 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 i even have this jar i had this jar where every day that i didn't drink i would put a penny in and then it was like every day that i exercised i put a penny in and then it turned into where i put three pennies in if i didn't drink if i exercise and i ate well i would put a penny in and i my goal was to fill this jar all the way up and i looked back at that and i'm like yeah i 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 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 it inspiration is awesome i was already a motivated person i don't think you can make someone who's un 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 pat my foot on the gas and i was just flooring but i wouldn't go 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 up 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 the 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 scary like giving up alcohol starting a business meeting a girl trying to approach a woman who you 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 in 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 into accomplish whatever it is you want to accomplish it's still like a little uncomfortable for me to talk about some of these 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 a booze or start a business do whatever at the end of the day this is all about like getting over your fear i think it's it's about how to kinda jump off a cliff and there's a reason i have this horrible tattoo i'm not gonna show it right now but on my feet on my left and right feet i've got the word act and on the right foot i have now it's a homemade tattoo when i was getting sober i like used the needle and i like tattooed my feet because 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 into change whatever whatever it is you wanna change i'll be in the comments on youtube but 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 a bunch of them but if you are struggling with something say what it is you're struggling with and what you're gonna do to approach it and get over it because i think it feels good to put that stuff paper like i said it feels good to label yourself about about what you what you are now versus what you were but let me know in the youtube comments when you think about this and that's the pop i feel like i could rude wear on i know i could be what i want to from at all in it like a days on on a go travel never looking back