we drink when times are hard but that is never when you should drink why would you add a depressant in when you need positivity right the only time to drink is when you're smashing out the park everything is fine you're feeling really good you've got good people around you and you're willing to allow a very significant depressant into your life that you know is going to force you down but you haven't got much work next week you don't really need to do be super productive and everything else that's really the only time to consume it
Brewery welcome to the show thank you so much for having me on what is high performance do you think oh I think I high performance is the constant search um to find the best version of yourself um and I think finding the best version of anything in the world we live in today is about testing and iterating um so we've just got to try a bunch of stuff and see what gives us a bit more performance and the things that work stick keep doing them double down on them and the things that don't change very
good and we're having a conversation today about reducing or eliminating alcohol in our lives what is the most valuable conversation that you think we can have for our listeners and our viewers in the next hour I think the the most important thing to say to people um is that if you are regularly consuming alcohol then it is holding you back we're always looking for levers we're always looking for something that can move the needle right and you try and prioritize what is the needle mover that's going to make it move the most right so could
it be this could it be that could it be these it's alcohol it is alcohol if if you are regularly consuming a volume of alcohol then it is significantly impacting your Peak Performance even for someone who maybe has a couple of drinks after work twice a week again the regularity of that is the issue because what we have to look is at the at the actual long tail of alcohol right so the you feel like oh I have a hangover the next day but the psychological impact the depressant uh parts of it actually last much
longer the halflife of the psychological impact of the the the needing it of how much it's propagated up by Society all of those things not just the physiological Parts take a long time for it to get out of your system so if you are drinking two glasses okay it's not having a massive impact but it is still having an impact and what I would say is if you are drinking that little amount and you are listening to this podcast about high performance it's going to be easy for you to find out whether I am right
or not and so why not just give it a shot why not say you know what I'm going to not drink for a month would be easy everybody does it every year right I'm not going to drink for three months and I'm going to look at my data I'm going to look at my sleep I'm going to look at my um Fitness I'm going to look at how I feel or maybe I'll track my mood I'm going to look at my productivity I'm going to look at the things that I'm trying to achieve in the
world and I absolutely guarantee with every fiber of my being that they'll be up because I like a lot of people have always enured a drink yeah right I've got here a glass of decent red wine there might be a good quality Mero yep um and I've got a bottle of beer now if you ask me what do I think of these two things I would say I love red wine and it's good for my heart I love a beer after work it removes the stress and calms me down after a beer day at work
yeah is either factually correct well I think both of those can be in part true um and so here's the thing is that the relaxing effect of alcohol is so intrinsically linked into stress you know alcohol is the world's most readily available tool at helping us mitigate stress except when you look at what actually happens so the moment you start consuming alcohol and you'll see this in your whoop and your devices and various things like that the aura ring you'll see that your heart rate starts to increase right and that's because you've introduced a 100%
Toxin and so our system must process the alcohol it has to get it out of your system if it doesn't you will die right and I think a lot of the information out there is like oh well alcohol can help you relax and all of that stuff yes but it's actually causing so much damage in in the way we use it and actually if we use natural tools to learn how to relax and switch off and unwind and we calm down our central nervous systems and we don't put something that's completely toxic into our body
then the difference is exponential I'm really interested how we ended up in this in this place where it's the most normal thing in the world to have a drink I mean when someone dies you have a drink to commiserate when someone is born you have a drink to celebrate when you start a new job you have a drink to get to know your mates when you leave a job you have a drink to say goodbye totally to your old mates and I've got something here which um is a print out of alcohol Associated organ damage
okay so I'll just very few of these I'll I'll pull out a couple of them um cardiac arhythmia in your heart um oral cavity cancer fatty liver liver cancer gut leakiness choral cancer um Strokes acute respiratory diseases pneumonia muscle wasting how have we ended up in a world where drinking something for most of us sometimes daily for almost all of weekly how have we ended up in a world where drink that does that to the human body is the most normal thing yeah exactly it's insane it's completely insane and yet it is it is brainwashed
into us but how were we how were we ever led to believe that smoking was good for us I mean there are pictures of a woman holding a baby smoking a camel with the advert saying as smooth as a baby's bottom right and you're like how is that or doctors smoke camels so how do we end up in a world like this well alcohol has always been this social tool right if you look Way Way Back Where alcohol came from it was about bringing people together and allowing for that and people unwind and they connect
with it and much like anything you start to build some corporations which are about increasing shareholder value and all of those things and so they start to look for ways to increase it um so as a little example a side stop here I met a wonderful woman and she had been hugely successful at building social media Brands and she started working for McDonald's and um she said you know it was great but when I sat in a boardroom and they said we don't need any more Market penetration that's not what we need what we need
to do is get people to eat McDonald's at more times of the day okay so they were going to go after breakfast and different meals and things like that and she was like I don't want to be a part of that um I don't want to be a part of that creation Now with the alcohol industry they realize that if they can associate more things right so celebration commiseration congratulation wakes this is propagated by huge amounts of marketing that once you do it on a mass mass scale I believe it's a$2 trillion dollar marketing industry
right um that that once you do on a mass scale then Society takes over and that's where we are we we are Now Products of that um and interestingly that's changing right the the marketing has started to change it's since really 2004 Marketing in various different places been more restricted in this country um countries like in in Sweden far more restricted um so and you can see the global the you this country's alcohol consumption declining along with that marketing budget we we did a study with Sterling University um about peer pressure and it was really
shocking you know for instance one of the highest peer pressure environments was working females in London from their bosses right like the and and because they felt like they had to to signif like 58% um felt like they were regularly pressured into having a drink of alcohol um and more importantly some 88% of people said that they'd had a drink when they didn't want to right this is a massive study National study in the UK so that advertising has now been propagated by this huge amount of peer pressure and expectation the peer pressure is so
ingrained that when I meet a a stranger I say hey we should really now what's coming next is meet up for a drink go for a drink yeah all right and and then there is so the the only way you can meet somebody is to propagate drink and there's many many subtleties are you going to come out tonight or you know wherever the conversation is and inside all of that is actually elements of peer pressure and it's one of the greatest thing that propagates this I've never ever had a problem with alcohol I did not
drink very much when I was younger partly because I was on children's TV and it was like my boss let me know on no un certain terms am I allowed to let myself down in public so from a young age I was like really self-controlled and then I had this career as a TV presenter and you know people think you go out and have a great time actually you're trying to get your job right and you feel Under Pressure to do it so you never really go out and drink and I traveled the world with
Formula 1 and everybody went out and I stayed in the hotel room because I had to do the job properly yeah and then during lockdown and the last three or four years I just I and late 30s early 40s I sort of felt like well I can relax a bit now yeah and particularly in Co one you know like a lot of people 3 in the afternoon I'd say to Harry my wife I'll just go and see what wine we're going to have with dinner it like the drinking culture at home was ridiculous and we
could talk about in detail why on Earth did that happen well it decimated this country's relationship with alcohol I mean it did globally the American alcohol industry used the pandemic as a way to change license laws um so they petitioned and got ped the ability to create alcohol as an emergency service which then meant it got 247 access and deliver it into homes and alcohol consumption increased by 20% um and that is a huge amount so the pandemic inside it for people was so much fear in reality the pandemic was traumatic yeah yeah yeah we
we were we were shoved into environments that we weren't used to we had so much fear and doubt and all of this stuff and and that creates this significant desire for compulsion um and what we're seeing now is that this is really a source for the vast majority of people's consumption is these experiences and Trauma and stresses that we're not really dealing with um and plus you know you were on Zoom you you know you could you could it would be easy nobody could check on you um and so a lot of people it stepped
up a notch and what I'm hearing from many many many people is that it hasn't come back down yeah and they've been trying but it haven't that was the case for me without doubt it you know I I certainly didn't drink loads but I definitely drunk more Co and then afterwards and then about 6 months ago I would get real sort of strange feeling heart murmurs like at night when I was asleep after having drunk alcohol not one drink but three or four just three or four glasses of wine and I'd wake up my heart
would be missing skipping beats I'd be feeling short of breath in the night but I kind of still went well I just it's one of those things then a couple of months ago it lasted for a good day or two after a night out yeah and that's the moment where I thought I think something needs to change here and I was kind of I was curious anyway because of this idea that I have about trying to find our 1% this whole podcast exists to find the one per and then I was bringing as you've just
described 100% poison into my body on a weekly or two or three times a week basis yeah so when you talk about the peer pressure stopping was actually very easy for me because I didn't drink much staying stopped was harder because I I went around a friend's house I knew loved his wine and him and his wife said go try this bottle I felt bad going on no so I just was like I'll have a little bit New Year's Eve I'd already kind of stopped I was like well it's New Year's Eve so I was
like I was struggling a bit and then I I discovered like you know alcohol free hinin which I love like that then change the game so when I go out now I just say I'll have an alcohol free beer tot and I've noticed that people don't if you order a diet Coco people try and change your mind or almost what's wrong with you alcohol-free beer they kind of just accept you having a beer together yeah and yours is alcohol free and this feels to me like a really big element of this whole thing is how
do we make it culturally acceptable yeah for people to not drink and then not be judged for that exactly well this is you know N9 years running one year no beer and the reason why we invented it in the first place um is that that name one year no beer was supposed to be enough of a slap in the face for the person asking you that you that it kept them quiet now when we looked at the Dynamics of what's going on let's talk about what's really going on we are tribal beings and um so
the tribe as we know it drinks alcohol and so all of this is propagated around that sense of tribe so what people do is they they say they're going to stop drinking and they're leaving the tribe and this is why the people here are like well hang on a minute you know if you left the tribe you died so they're like but stop come back you know you be careful so there's a big psychological tribal element of PE that's driving that behavior um and also it triggers individuals onto their own um I actually believe that
everybody is questioning their relationship with alcohol it's it's it's not a matter of if they are questioning their relationship with alcohol it's when right almost every single Sunday or hangover or after drinking people are questioning their relationship with alcohol and I think there's a sliding scale of of what that sounds like to them it could be a tiny little niggling or it could be a real screaming at you and for some people this takes a lot of time to get to that Journey where they're like you know what I'm done with this for me it
took years um of the questioning of questioning of questioning but when it comes to this specific thing with peer pressure um and this is a major fact into it there's some things that we can do to to help mitigate that right you know um having a having a a good explanation for what you are doing okay so let's say you present the information and you say look I'm just doing a I'm doing dry Jan or I'm trying to run this practice for this half marathon or I'm getting ready to do a hiero um and just
so I've just knocking the booze on on the head at the moment now what you're saying is I'm leaving the tribe but I'm just going on a little holiday and I will be back and they're like okay I understand so here's your alcohol-free drink um I also think that this has moved on significantly since I started in this space 9 10 years ago the ready availability of alcohol free Alternatives and things like that I think it's more acceptable but I I have stood around a group of guys um at a party and they're talking about
their cricket championship coming up and um they're like oh you know we we really need to win this year yeah yeah we're going to win this year um yeah who we need we need the right people on board should we get po and then one guy goes oh he's such a good player and another guy goes yeah but he doesn't drink and so they're like yeah good point forget it so Paul doesn't get an invite because he doesn't drink even though they want to win the Cricket competition and that is the world we live in
or many many people are inside that inside that sphere and I think we are we need to do more to help people with that peer pressure element let's talk about why you're sitting here then mhm were you once in that sphere oh yeah oil broker I mean absolutely that my job was to take people out and get them smashed was it yeah I was very very good at it I mean you know I'm a lot of whining dining a lot of lunches and things like that um and um yeah it was it was fun it
was great I did it for 13 years in London here um I walked through London last night late and I could see lots of people entertaining talking lots of people on The Source it was Wednesday night you know it's it's it's it's still going on and there's lots of people doing it but we can't sit here and say that there aren't times when that isn't great I mean I'm sure you've got some brilliant memories of some fantastic nights out totally falling over in the street with your mates laughing till your head was going to fall
off just the best nights out exactly created by the fact that you were drinking yeah I again I think there is there's lots of those elements you could have those good nights and this is why for me I'm not sober I'm not alcohol free right I drink as much as I want whenever I want if I want to go to Vegas and let the wheels come off with the boys I can no problem I will regret it for a week or maybe two afterwards um and it so it very rarely happens I think if we
start to be truthful about our about this sometimes was it that good a night um so how much do you remember is is one question um and so we're searching for fun we're searching for dopamine um and we're searching for stress relief and the only tool we know is to go to the pub or go to that that thing and have that experience and I think that's been very very ingrained and propagated by society and actually what we have to teach ourselves is that we don't need alcohol to have fun right alcohol isn't fun right
you know that's not a direct math there are some other math I have fun over here and I do this with these people um and I think that's the important of building connection outside of just people at the pub um so as an example I have a CrossFit gym very sociable you know the other the other evening we bowling nobody really drinks people have one or two drinks so building an environment or a culture of my like that for me means that I can sustain or go around the environment where the pressure is really high
because I'm like well you know going out doesn't always mean to need to mean drinking so how did you get to this point from being Brewery that would be the first one at the bar buying drinks for everyone almost like the cheerleader on a night out every time the cheerleader I was um in The Matrix very much loved booze had a whiskey collection would buy bottles of whiskey at auction was building a wine collection I mean every time I I went out for dinner I would take a picture of the bottle I liked I would
send it off to my guy at the wine society and he would put in it in store storage and I built up you know a wine collection and would you know boast about my various collection and understanding of alcohol so I was right in it I also wasn't a problem Drinker right so I wasn't waking up in the morning needing drink I wasn't um one any of the words like people might use to describe it like alcoholic or anything like that right you know I could go for weeks without having a drink but you know
I just did a lot of entertaining and was the party boy um and what started to happen was I just got this little knowing in the back of my head and we've touched on this but I think that's where most people are the annoying is hang on a minute I think alcohol is holding me back or I think I think I think I'm drinking too much I think I need to whatever the knowing is and if you go into that knowing because everything is against that Society is against that if you go oh I'm thinking
about not drinking what don't be stupid it's amazing fun well I can't talk to them um for me that knowing led to me to say you know I'm going to have a conversation with my fellow Brokers and say I'm thinking about not drinking what I want to drink more you know so and then I approached my boss and I thinking about thinking about not drinking and he was like you are committing commercial suicide if you stop drinking is that what he said yeah and so okay this is nine 10 this is 10 12 years ago
but I think that there are millions of people probably in London right now who work in jobs where they feel they would be at a disadvantage if they don't go and drink right or if they don't and it's it's still propagated in there so whether it's said it's still implied to the individual so I think you start off with that little awareness and that little annoing and you and you go into that and you say you know what is the impact alcohol is having me what is the truth um and eventually that that got to
a loud noise for me and I was like you know what that's it I'm going to take a break so I decided to take a break and I wanted to do longer I'd done you know a month before dry January everyone dies dry jary right so I'm sorry but it's easy um and if you want change change is not usually easy right it's usually actually hard so um and this is why so I decided to go for 90 days and that is when I just couldn't believe it I mean the lights went on um I'm
ADHD and I now know that alcohol is Kryptonite for ADHD and and so you know all of a sudden my brain started firing properly uh the clarity the energy I started to think you know I what else can I do I can start exercising and I and I want to start looking after my body and I want to start really training properly I run my first half marathon in 13 130 I got down to 10% body fat over that year that I took um alcohol free like everything got better fitter faster healthier happier better Dad
better husband grew my business reduced our costs in the business what is not to like I mean know it was just a transformative experience and and this is the the message here you know the the the stone Bridges inside a stone bridge is is the archway that holds up and in it the top one is a keystone we talk about Keystone habits regularly consuming alcohol is a negative Keystone habit so it means it's propagates other poor habits so you probably don't exercise you probably don't can't be bothered to look after yourself you're not meditating you're
you're eat you eat [ __ ] food you're you're you know all of that tired sluggish you've got anxiety you've got so it holds all those things in place but similarly taking a break from alcohol actually puts a keystone in place that holds up all these positive things now you're exercising now you want to meditate now you want to look after your body now all of a sudden these things are so much easier to do right so the transformation is exponential it's not you ver you drinking versus you not drinking it's you drinking and self
sabot massaging and doing all these bad behaviors versus you doing all of these good things that come as a byproduct of not drinking so interesting so for people that are sitting listening to this or watching it going I'm not sure I could give up to drink your message is you're not giving anything up you're getting way more than you had leis Hamilton said this year he's not drinking because he wants a 1% Edge um and you talked about a 1% Edge this year um oh my God if those guys are doing it to get the
edge then what can you do I think I think the the two messages are simple again okay um well I don't have a problem with alcohol okay but I didn't say that I'm asking you this question is alcohol causing you any problems so how's your sleep how's your anxiety how's your mental health how's your Fitness how's your weight loss how is your diet how is you know what though this is the interesting thing for me I've not drunk now for maybe four weeks and all of the metrics are improving for me yeah but I had
no idea that alcohol had anything to do with those metric is not being good and that is the hardest thing of all like I wasn't getting drunk falling out of taxis rowing with my wife eating a burger throwing up and not being there for my kids on the school run the next morning yeah I was just having a couple of drinks but I wear a whoop and my HRV has gone through the roof I'd go to the gym a couple of times a week and suddenly I'm going four or five times a week my energy
has never been as good now I can't actually if I'm being totally honest sit here and say that's cuz I don't drink I also can't here and say I didn't have that before cuz I was drinking but the only thing that I've changed in my life from two months ago is drinking alcohol yeah so it's very interesting uh this what you are saying there is the most powerful message and what I'm trying to say and I think that you know there are lots of connotations with giving up drinking okay so there's nothing to give up
but let's let's not talk about giving anything up um and also that's a big scary thing you know for the rest of my life like I don't think I can do that and sober and being completely abstinent those I think they are great tools from with which you can make massive change in your life but I think that the reality is and this is from our research um tens of thousands of people who've been asked a very simple question what would you like your relationship with alcohol to look like okay 6% say they'd like to
stop drinking okay so 94% of people have got no interest in stopping drinking and so this is why we must meet people where they are at and what we're saying is why don't you just drink a bit less like this is 100% poises And it is causing significant impact in your life if you can do a break oh wow you know that is really going to help and a sustained break is going to make even more exponential change but even just drinking less is going to have a significant impact on you and I think that's
where we've got to meet people now where what we do in our world is we help people first of all come and hey you know why don't you just TR come and drink a little bit less and then on that Journey we're just going to show you the truth okay we're going to we're going to make you really really aware at your core of who you are as a human being that everything you want everything that you want in life to be happy to be healthy to be have longevity be running around the garden with
your grandkids to um to build a successful business to have productivity Clarity to leave a legacy everything that you want is actually being taken away by alcohol and when you see that really clearly and you see it from your perspective yourself not some bold guy on a podcast preaching to you evangelically but you see it for yourself then most of the time you will choose not to drink and I think that's the that's the that is the best optimal place if you want to live a healthy good long life is that yeah sure sometimes indulge
yeah sure sometimes you have a drink or two but the vast majority of the time no thanks can we talk then for people that have listened to this and are now thinking maybe this is something to be curious about and I think that's the that's the other thing I don't think it's helpful to sit here and say hey hi performance audience never drink again why not see what it's like for a week and then a couple of weeks because there's something else here about willpower and showing yourself that you have the willpower to do things
that you might think are difficult that is also hugely empowering for people y exactly so what is the the biggest blocker and how can we help people overcome the things that make this so difficult stress is such a key factor in this thing but what we are seeing is that most people a have never been taught the tools how to deal or manage or mitigate stress an actual fact they're doing the things to vastly incre increase significantly their stress and then they're getting to the end of the day wondering why they need a drink let
me give you a little example our central nervous system is a bit like one of those little toy cars just with a little Dynamo in it and so you get up in the day and you start winding up like this you know you wind it up wind it up you wind up you wind up and you got more stress from work and problems and family stuff and everything else you wind up and then you get to the end of the day and you put that little toy card down expecting it to relax and go to
sleep it shoots off into the distance and that's our brain just going into overdrive of like I need something to switch off at the end of the day but what happens is when you teach the tools of how to regulate yourself right and we use this wonderful device that helps people see in data right whether they're in fight or flight or recovery and we show them just how impactful they are being stressed out during the day is that if all you do with that little toy car is when you bring it to the top you
just pause and allow your central nervous system to turn back into recovery now you can actually handle a higher level of stress without getting to the end of the day and requiring a drink so stress resilience learning Stress Management tools is really important we've talked about you know people's environments we've talked about stress um I want to talk about meaning and purpose and why that is so important so important um so for me I realized that commuting and I'm so sorry for everyone in London I if maybe you love it maybe you don't but um
or in any big city I guess um I'm from the Isle of mul right it's a beautiful island I've spent my entire life on boats and here I was commuting via tube into a windowless office every day working in a job that I found a very fun and I made a lot of money but I wasn't connected to what it was and it wasn't who I was and and and because of that I needed alcohol to live that life um and so when I sort of went through this process of changing my relationship with alcohol
I realized what a i' had started launching one year noer and when that when I saw that it was starting to help people and I would get these messages you know a handwritten letter from a son saying I've got my dad back um these these messages of posts of you know youve changed my life I mean one guy who is the founder of a very large Tech business who came through our program he called me two weeks ago and he said you not only saved my marriage you saved my life and you're like how can
you live another way I I I don't know how to live another existence now other than helping people um through this change and so getting connected into that element of meaning and purpose was was huge for me now wait pause all the people in the finance and all the people Insurance all these people who work in these jobs are like great Rory good for you you found your thing and now you're all you know covered up in meaning and purpose well done here's something really powerful ful to remember about meaning and purpose in terms of
compulsion okay is that direction is as powerful as destination okay a lot of people right actually are highly empathic and because they're highly empathic they are significantly more like to turn to compulsion because we're not taught how to deal with our emotions and alcohol is one of the most readily available tools for packing down emotions so when you take that away from the table you're left with an an empath you're left with somebody empathic and what do empaths need they need to help others they need to be able to give back to others and this
is extremely common for the people who have problematic relationships with alcohol so um what happens when you take them through that process is okay you need to be helping and serving others and you need to feel like you do that I'm going to give you an example of one of our guys who came through the program and he um he is on the board at one of the large Banks out there and um he said ruri thank you so much um for the program I've now realized I [ __ ] hate the finance industry what
do you want me to do now I'm on the website right and again exactly his situation we're like okay well you are empathic and you need to give back so he turned around and he said I want to I know what I'm going to do I'm going to create a department to coach Junior Executives up into the senior team and he got that passed he's now doing it so he is now feeling that fulfillment of helping people even within that role okay now I started off by saying direction is as powerful as destination what does
that mean you don't need to be building schools in Kenya or um creating water pumps or saving the planet or you know helping people change their relationship with alcohol you don't have to be doing it to reduce the compulsion but you do have to be clear that that's what you want to do okay and what happens when you make the commitment okay um I work in the finance industry I keep choosing I'm so sorry for everybody in the finance industry I work in the finance industry I don't love it I realize that it's contributing to
my relationship with alcohol meaning and purpose is a major factor what is it I feel like I want to do and when you come start and you make a decision to go in a direction right okay I'm starting to create this thing whatever it is suddenly you'll be reading about it suddenly you'll be following podcasts about it suddenly you'll be talking to people about the idea you might even start putting money towards it and that calms down the compulsion because we know we're heading in the direction of where we will feel more meaning and purpose
I love that so interesting another of the core drivers I want to explore with you is sleep yeah yeah cuz I always thought oh have a couple of drinks if you want to sleep well I mean I'm the that I'm on a flight it was always give me three or four bottles of that red wine cuz I want to sleep um I'm imagining I probably have got that wrong and I imagine you're probably going to tell me why I'm going to tell I'm going to tell you off right now yeah okay so there's a few
things here alcohol is significantly detrimental to sleep okay um again when you see this in the data um you will see that when you start drinking heart rate goes through the moon you're basically processing poison which we talked about earlier so what it stops IT disrupts deep sleep and and it stops us from getting that good healthy deep sleep again we're a white a sleep monitor and you will see straight away that deep sleep is significantly impacted sleep deprivation is a torture device now we are we need to focus more on sleep as a race
we need to teach people better about sleep sleep is a skill we've never really been taught to deal with this amount of stress this amount of stuff going on in the world psychological all of those stuff and get good sleep what does the alcohol do specifically yeah so when you when you start consuming alcohol literally because it is a toxin or a poison you're now working overdrive you know there's lots of research out there saying we shouldn't be eating before dinner because it sends your system into overdrive you're trying to calm down what we have
to do is be calming down all of those things for Sleep nice and naturally so and when you do that and you go into parasympathetic nervous system so that's element that is where you're getting all the recovery recovery what does that mean well that means your organs are repairing that means your brain is learning we we now believe that the vast majority of neuroplasticity the brain's ability to learn and develop new things and new skills happens during deep sleep so that's why we must must must prioritize that sleep the KnockOn effect of drinking alcohol then
having sleep deprivation those two things are significantly impactful is then you know you're many many more times likely to desire compulsion the next day again which then propagates the need to have alcohol because it's been so stressful on your system you wake up with an inherent level of stress imagine for a second that you have a a tank availabity of stress to deal with during the day and you know if you haven't dealt with your past trauma that's actually stressful on your central nervous system ruminating in your brain thinking overreactive Mental Health impactful on your
your central nervous system the food you eat coffee if you drank alcohol last night and didn't sleep well now your availability to deal with stress is very very small so when you get the stress from the day into here you get absolutely worked up into a hyperactive State and then you can't calm down and you're like that's why I need a drink again at the end of the day but this is propagated by the alcohol in the first place and physiologically does alcohol reduce our stress it in a very in the moment it does psychologically
it does in the very very beginning right so it helps the brain switch off and and um all of that numbing effect but it actually propagates and increases the stress let me put an analogy for you okay let's say um I created a headache pill and you came to me and you said I've got a really bad headache I said great take this pill but after you've taken that first pill 15 minutes later you'll need to have another one okay and then 15 minutes after that you'll need to have another one and you'll need to
have another you'll need to keep taking it the more you take the worse your hang the worse your headache is going to feel tomorrow right and you're like that's absolutely ridiculous like why would anybody take that and that's how we are using alcohol and how we view alcohol and actually it makes it the things that we are seeking for with alcohol is actually making sign significantly worse I've got I've got fear in in public my anxiety is through the roof wait a second you have anxiety and you're regularly drinking alcohol I think just stop drinking
and then see if you have anxiety yeah because nine times out of 10 that anxiety is going to significantly reduce oh you feel low and depressed you feel sad you're regularly consuming alcohol okay well let's start with not drinking alcohol and then see and if that changes that thing great if it's not then maybe you need to go and do all the other stuff it's so interesting this isn't it because all all the audience listening or watching this will have things in their life that they wish were better yeah it might be a myriad of
different reasons but one thing you can guarantee is if you stop drinking for a short period of time at least you will know if it's the alcohol or isn't that's it so where's the negative there yeah just to experiment we we we we started the podcast by saying what is high performance about testing and iterating so let's test let's just run the test and say okay so you've done a month before let's just see if it gets longer do things get better okay that's amazing then you know that alcohol is is costing you what is
the cost what was life like before and then what was life like like now that's the cost that you're paying to have this thing in your life um that's the truth of the cost so for you what is the cost how different are you feeling what are the things that have changed how big is that cap if you were going to put it in numbers right of out of 10 what were you before now you've realized and by the way okay before you probably thought you were a nine out of 10 right I'm a high
performance guy I'm operating at N9 of 10 but now in reality looking back where were you before I definitely thought I was a nine or I thought I had days where I was a nine you are a nine thanks I probably was a four yeah now four yeah last year was hard and actually when you have and it was hard for a number of reasons and when it got hard having a drink made it a bit less hard yeah and it's only at the end of the year that I now think man maybe if I
hadn't had those drinks less hard stuff would have happened right alcohol specifically T attacks your coping mechanisms yeah so your ability to cope with the difficult stuff in your life is diminished by regularly drinking alcohol so if you're going through a tough time why add alcohol and this is again where we get people too it's like we drink when times are hard but that is never when you should drink why would you add a depressant in when you need positivity right the only time to drink is when you're smashing out the park everything is fine
you're feeling really good you've got good people around you and you're willing to allow a very significant depressant into your life that you know is going to force you down but you haven't got much work next week you don't really need to do be super productive and everything else that's really the only time to consume it what could you have said to yourself that would have con vinced you that you weren't a nine that you were actually a four is there anything you could have said to yourself I don't think so yeah no so the
only way to find out is by giving it a shot amazing thanks so much for your time thank you for having me on
