Go Alcohol-Free According to Your Favorite Self-Help Heroes

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By Karolina Rzadkowolska

I’m obsessed with personal growth. Since I stopped drinking, I’ve dived head-first into discovering my intrinsic self and becoming a better version of myself than I was yesterday.

I read all the personal growth books, listen to podcasts on every drive, do programs, and yes, I swear by my coach, Tony Robbins. Ok, I mean I have a Tony Robbins coach named Julie that I absolutely love working with.

The breakthroughs, insights and takeaways I’ve made have been HUGE for my life. And the learning never stops. The personal growth field has so much valuable information for us, especially when you use the advice to change your drinking.

We all know that drinking isn’t doing us any favors. Not helping us become our best selves (unless best self means cranky and hungover) or pushing us outside our comfort zones.

Of course, no one has to change their drinking. But if you hear an inner voice telling you that it’s holding you back from your fullest potential? Holy sh*t! That’s your sign that you are meant for greatness! And your world may just explode (in a good way) when you listen to that voice.

Here are my top four heroes on quitting drinking and changing your life.

Brené brown

Brené came from a family of addiction and didn’t quite like how she partied in college. So preemptively, she quit drinking in her mid-twenties and just celebrated 23 years sober! You may know Brené Brown from the one of her five bestselling books, or TED Talk, or Netflix special. This woman is on fire. When asked the secret to her success? Sobriety.

Brené researches shame. Something I was mired in as a drinker. Alcohol was the biggest fuel to my shame, or what Brené describes as “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.” Drinking more than I wanted to gave me the worst red-hot shame, and instead of talking about it, I made it my biggest secret—the very opposite of what I should have done.

“Shame hates it when we reach out and tell our story. It hates having words wrapped around it—it can’t survive being shared. Shame loves secrecy.” And silence. And judgement. Finally coming to terms about the truth of my experience with drinking and talking about it in private Facebook groups was one of the biggest reliefs of my life.

“Owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing that we will ever do.”

Brené tells us that to become wholehearted and happy, we need to become authentic. And in order to practice authenticity, step into your worthiness and become resilient, you need to stop numbing and taking the edge off. Because you cannot selectively numb emotions. When you numb the painful emotions, you also numb the positive emotions. Drinking unintentionally dulls the good feelings of life.

She recommends to feel the feelings, stay mindful, and lean into the discomfort of hard emotions.

“I want to be in the arena. I want to be brave with my life. And when we make the choice to dare greatly, we sign up to get our asses kicked. We can choose courage or we can choose comfort, but we can’t have both.”

Tony Robbins

Personal development guru, self-made multi-millionaire, frigid water bather, and bestselling author, Tony ain’t got no time or mental energy to waste on alcohol. Tony Robbins, the epitome of success in our culture, doesn’t drink. IS IT ANY COINCIDENCE?

Tony Robbins has never been a drinker. He saw the pain that it brought his family from a young age and stayed away. He is obsessed with optimizing his life not handicapping it.

Tony Robbins states that there is one force that controls all of us humans: pain and pleasure. Everything we do is either out of our need to avoid pain or our desire to gain pleasure. The only problem, Tony says, is when we seek momentary pleasure that creates long-term pain.

You know that being alcohol-free would benefit you, but you fail to make it stick because in the moment you associate more pain to quitting than the pain of not changing. Humans are much more driven by the fear of loss than the desire for gain. (Studies even show that we react way more to losing $100 than if we were to find $100.)

“Even though you are unhappy, your fear of the unknown is a more powerful motivating force. At least I know how to deal with the pain I have now.”

The key to changing behavior is to change what you link pain and pleasure to. I used to link pleasure to drinking. I bet you do too. I linked pain to not being able to drink. But I reversed it.

Today, I link pleasure to fulfillment, happiness, wellbeing, and growth (all things incongruent with drinking). I link pleasure to deep sleep, living authentically as the real me, going after my dreams, being a sober rebel in a world that tells us we have to drink.

I link pain to acting inauthentically under the mask of alcohol. I link pain to hangovers. I link pain to having a beverage control me. I link pain to the disempowering beliefs that say I need alcohol.

Tony says that drinking isn’t merely a habit. “You have created a network of strong neuro-associations within your nervous system.” But if you “just stop indulging in a particular behavior or emotion long enough, if you just interrupt your pattern of using the old pathways for a long enough period of time, the neural connection will weaken and atrophy. Thus, the disempowering emotional pattern or behavior disappears with it.”

Ask yourself, when it comes to changing your drinking, what pain have you linked to taking this action in the past? Reverse it! Ask yourself instead, what will it cost you if you don’t change now? What will it cost you to keep living in mediocrity? What will hangovers cost you emotionally? Not living up to your potential? What will you miss out on in life if you don’t change?

What would you gain if you made the change now? Get really excited! Amazing sleep. Pride. Self-esteem. Health. Energy. Self-Love. Time and energy to work on your passions. Renewed sense of confidence and a positive outlook. “If I do change, how will that make me feel about myself? What kind of momentum could I create if I change this in my life? What other things could I accomplish if I really made this change today? How much happier will I be?”

It’s never too late to change. “You must know that in any moment a decision you make can change the course of your life forever.”

There’s a secret to happiness. It’s called growth. “In order to succeed and be happy, we’ve got to be constantly improving the quality of our lives, constantly growing and expanding.” Are you growing or are you stagnating?

(Tony’s one of my greatest heroes in my own growth. To learn more from him, check out these free tools!)

Marie Forleo

Marie Forleo is a bestselling author and host of the award-winning show, Marie TV. I’m not quite sure about her drinking status, but in my estimation, with her empire to run, I doubt she spends her free time with vino.

Marie tells us that most of our patterns and actions are a result of the beliefs that we have. Our “beliefs are the master commanders of our behavior and results” and basically run our lives. She states that “your beliefs either support your aspirations or thwart them.” They either empower you or disempower you.

“In order to solve any problem, we must first make a change at the level of belief. Because when you change a belief, you change everything.”

If I believe I need alcohol to socialize, how empowering is that? Does that mean I believe I’m not inherently interesting, bubbly or capable of socializing as I authentically am? If I believe that only the most severe problem drinkers quit drinking, does that mean that I believe I should keep up a habit that doesn’t make me happy just for appearances? Not very empowering.

Marie tells us that our beliefs are a choice and that we can consciously unlearn them. “Any limiting belief can be erased and replaced.”

Start with awareness, a desire to change, and dedication to start practicing new beliefs. I changed all my limiting beliefs around alcohol, just like Marie says. Beliefs that alcohol relaxes me, or that it makes things more fun, or that I have to be a drinker to be normal are all gone.

Lastly, let go of your excuses, or “the little lies we tell ourselves that limit who we are and what we ultimately accomplish.”

Rachel Hollis

Motivational speaker and best-selling author Rachel Hollis also had a huge awakening around drinking.

Rachel found her drinking habit escalating when her kids were toddlers. She poured a drink, and click, she could relax. Terrified to realize that not only did she “need” wine every day, but that she was perpetually hungover too, she made radical changes. With a chapter titled, “The Lie: I Need a Drink” in her international bestseller Girl, Wash Your Face, Rachel became sober curious and drinks occasionally today.

Rachel faced the truth: she was using drinking as a form of self-medication to deal with stress and anxiety. She drank to deal with and mute the hard stuff. Four screaming kids. Running a company.

But, she realized, self-medicating doesn’t allow your own strength to grow.

The only way to deal with the hard stuff? Walk through it without the crutch of alcohol. “The difficult seasons we walk through are how we learn to build up strength to manage any situation.”

“Having a drink will always be the easiest way out; it requires the least effort; but demands the most in retribution.” We humans are really good at escaping “the hard parts of our lives by muting them with distraction.”

The key? To build up your own strength and resilience and replace drinking with healthier coping mechanisms. Over time, walking through the emotions and hard stuff makes us better and more adept. Because “you don’t need a crutch if you are strong enough to walk on your own.”

Rachel advises to first and foremost become self-aware enough to realize that this habit isn’t serving you or making you happy, replace it with a better coping mechanism, and remove the temptation.

If you liked these tips about leaning in and discovering more about yourself, check out the 5-Day Restart, a free course to shift your mindset!