The Caitlin Mitchell Show
After nearly a decade in business, it's time for me to share what I've learned about building a business focused on service leadership to help you on your journey as a business owner. My goal is for you to walk away from each episode with one thing - one sentence, one thought, one perspective shift, one new idea - that has an impact on you, your business, or your life.
The Caitlin Mitchell Show
What Sobriety Taught Me About High Performance: My Journey | Ep 6
On December 30th, 2022, I made a life-changing decision. Little did I know the profound impact it would have on my life.
In this episode, I'll candidly discuss how sobriety has reshaped my life, from excelling as the leader of my team to strengthening bonds of friendship and family. Join me as I explore the catalysts for change and the role of accountability in my journey.
I'll reveal a landscape filled with unexpected joys and achievements. Sobriety has enhanced my leadership skills and contributed to my company's most successful year in business. It has also revitalized my parenting, allowing me to be fully present for my son and build authentic connections.
My transformation is more than a personal victory; it's a testament to the power of choice and the pursuit of high performance in every area of life.
Connect with me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/caitlindmitchell/
Welcome back to another episode. You guys. Today's episode is a deeply personal one that I actually get asked about quite a lot, and that is my journey in sobriety. I gave up alcohol on December 30th of 2022. And I honestly don't ever foresee alcohol being a part of my life ever again, and it's something that comes up a lot in conversation. People are constantly asking me questions about it on Instagram, in person, at the gym, wherever it might be, and I just felt this need, this calling to share this story with you, because perhaps this is where you are.
Speaker 1:Perhaps you are questioning your own relationship with alcohol, or what would it look like to be a successful leader of my business without alcohol as a part of that journey, and so I wanna share with you kind of my whole experience with it, the background of my relationship with alcohol and then all of the benefits that I've noticed as a result of choosing to be sober and becoming a great leader. One of my episodes recently was about just becoming the greatest version of myself, of asking myself that question what does it look like to be the highest performer? And alcohol's not a part of that. Alcohol doesn't get to be a part of that experience, so if you haven't had a chance to go back and listen to episode three and episode four. I think that those two episodes are really gonna help tie in this kind of whole experience together for you. So I really hope that you enjoy this episode. I hope that it leaves something with you to walk away with and perhaps think about in your own life. And, of course, if you have any questions at all, please feel free to reach out to me on Instagram, at CaitlynDMitchell, and send me a direct message, ask me questions, share your story. You know I'm here for you in any capacity possible. I do ask, though, that if this episode does help you in any way, or it shares a message with you that you feel called to share with somebody else, please share with someone else, because you just never know what impact one sentence, one episode, one thing might have on the domino effect of somebody else's life. So if this does land for you, I ask that you please do share it with others, so that other people can hear this message as well. All right, you guys, let's go ahead and dive into today's episode.
Speaker 1:So I titled this episode. You know what sobriety has to do with high performance or its impact on high performance and I am going to talk about that and I do think that it is important. But I also wanna share kind of the background with you and my story with you, so you can kind of understand where I'm coming from. So, like I said at the intro of this episode, I gave up alcohol in December 30th of 2022. And the impetus for that was a simple conversation that I had with one of my trainers and my friend, val, at my local gym, and you know, our local gym opened in September of 2022.
Speaker 1:So excited to get back into fitness and I think I shared about this on my episode about fitness and high performance, and I was going all the time like all the time, but I was not meeting my fitness goals. You know, there were certain days that I was showing up on, like a Saturday, after going out to drinks with friends the night before, and you feel a surrogate and you just don't feel that great. You're not moving as fast as you want to. And so I'm having this conversation with Val and I'm like I'm just not meeting my goals. I feel like I'm working my ass off and I'm not really noticing the changes in my body that I wanna see. And Val says to me she goes okay, well, walk me through your typical diet. What do you eat in the day? And I'm like, let's just be clear, I don't have a great eating habits. I love my chocolate chip pancakes, I love my chocolate milk or hot chocolate. I've got some sugar issues, let's all be honest about that. But I also was drinking wine. You know, a glass of wine night, two glasses of wine a night, sometimes three glasses of wine. On the weekends four glasses, you know, if we're going out to dinner with friends or whatever it might be. And so I walk her through everything and she looks at me point blank and she says well, you just can't drink anymore.
Speaker 1:And in that moment and I'll talk about this a little bit later it was almost like someone gave me permission and a reason to not drink anymore. And so on that day, that was December 30th, I decided not to wait until New Year's Day. It was like let's do it, I'm gonna do it now and I'm gonna commit to all of dry January to see this thing through. And it was right. About the same time, I swear to God, the universe works in the air, works in these beautiful, mysterious ways in our favor. It was right around that same time that I made the decision to at least start with dry January, because at that time giving up alcohol for forever seemed like not a thing that I was gonna do, like that was an impossible task to me. That wasn't even in my wheelhouse, not even in my brain at this time. That right around the same time, I had a friend at the gym mention a Huberman Labs podcast episode to me, and it was this episode that really highlighted why continuing to allow alcohol to be a part of my life in the longterm was gonna be problematic for me in this pursuit of greatness, in this pursuit of being a high performance leader.
Speaker 1:And I wanna share some interesting quotes from you from this episode. It's a Huberman Labs podcast episode, it's episode 86, and it's called what Alcohol Does to your Body, brain and Health, if you wanna go listen to it and check it out. But I wanna share with you some interesting pieces up from it. One of the first things that's mentioned is that chronic alcohol intake, even at low to moderate levels, which is defined as one to two drinks per day or seven to 14 drinks per week, can disrupt the brain. So I just wanna share, like low to moderate, is one to two drinks per day. So and I'll go into this in my story here in just a moment of my relationship with alcohol before this. But I'm looking at this like okay, low to moderate, like I don't have a problem, right, I'm in the low to moderate range. But even the low to moderate range can disrupt the brain.
Speaker 1:Another piece of information people who drink consistently, even in small amounts, ie one per night, experience increases in cortisol release from adrenal glands when not drinking. So feel more stress and more anxiety when not drinking. Guess who has, or used to have, massive anxiety problems Me. And I'm like, why has this correlation never been apparent to me before? And I'm listening to this episode, I'm like, dude, this is me, like, this is my issue, my anxiety, my stress, right? Another quote for you With increased alcohol tolerance, you get less and less of the feel good blip and more and more of the pain signaling. So behaviorally, you drink more to try to activate those dopamine and serotonin molecules again. So you're drinking more to get more of that baseline feeling. Another quote the risk of breast cancer increases among women who drink for every 10 grams of 10 grams, for every 10 grams of alcohol consumed per day, there's a four to 13% increase in the risk of cancer. Alcohol increases tumor growth and suppresses molecules that inhibit tumor growth. Sleep, even after one drink, is not the same quality as without alcohol. When alcohol is present in the bloodstream, the architecture of sleep is disruptive. So I'm looking at all of these things. I don't sleep well, I have anxiety, I'm worried about cancer, these dopamine and serotonin like it's all starting to make sense to me as I'm listening to that podcast episode and that conversation with Val, listening to that episode making the decision to do dry January.
Speaker 1:I remember on that day when I decided to make that change. I vividly remember thinking to myself like this moment is gonna be a part of my bigger journey in some way, shape or form. I felt it so deeply, such an innate knowingness, an intuitive hit. I just knew that I even started a journal about the entire experience because I just knew deep down how much of an impact this was literally going to have on my entire life. This wasn't just about fitness. This was about something so much bigger than myself. It was about impact. It was about realizing my greatest potential, to be able to have every ounce of myself squeezed out of my time here on this earth. I truly believe that that decision was the catalyst for everything else positive that came into fruition that following year of 2023. Perhaps this is where you find yourself this desire for something more, something bigger, something greater. Maybe that's why you're even listening to this podcast episode. As an entrepreneur, as a business owner, as a leader, that man is there something more for me in this life? The answer is yes.
Speaker 1:For me, that was on the other side of sobriety. I wanted to go through the importance, too, of intentions, of goal-setting in my decision-making process. To be sober. I started with dry January because for me, it felt approachable. I could do 30 days Also at that time. A lot of other people are going to be doing dry January. It's going to make it easier for me to begin to shift into this new identity. 30 days seemed hard, but not impossible. I knew that I was going to need something to hold myself accountable. Perhaps that's you if you're struggling through this, or you're thinking about trying out sobriety, or testing for a certain period of time. At least, for me, I have accountability when I get things done.
Speaker 1:I actually want to share some interesting statistics with you about accountability and just how important it is, especially if you're going to go off into this journey. There's an article from Colorado State University titled being held accountable for your goals. The author cites research by the American Society for Training and Development that says the odds of a person performing an action go up dramatically when they have a specific accountability appointment. The probability of completing a goal if you have an idea or a goal you just have it is 10%. If you just have an idea of a goal 10% probability of completing it. Not so great. If you consciously decide that you are going to do it, you'd think that'd go up. It does, but it only goes up to 25% probability of actually completing the goal. Then let's set a timeline on it. I'm going to decide when I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it by this day. Your probability of completing it then goes up to 40%. What if you throw in a plan for how you're going to do it? 50% probability. You see it keep going up and up and up. Let's say you commit to somebody else that you will do it. It increases all the way up to 65%. Get this. Let's say that you have a specific accountability appointment with a person that you have committed to. So you have an appointment with a person, your probability of completing a goal with those two factors at play is 95%.
Speaker 1:Talk about the power of accountability. I was served an ad ironically on that day, december 30th, from a company called Reframe. This is like noom, but for quitting drinking completely or cutting back on your drinking behavior. It goes into all this behavioral psychology of what drinking does to you and reframing your habits, your behaviors, your beliefs about alcohol, its impact on your life, all of this stuff. I went all in on that app. I went all in. I got my husband to be a part of my accountability partner with me. I talked to other people about it. I told people about it. January 31st. I'm going to be sober for this whole month, dry January. I'm going to do it because I knew I was going to need accountability. Perhaps that's you, perhaps you've considered this, perhaps you've thought about it. You've done it for five days, or you've fallen off, or whatever it might be. I want you to think about just the power of having a specific accountability appointment with a person that you have made a commitment to. It makes that much of a difference.
Speaker 1:Talking about accountability, the decision to go alcohol-free. That's one of the biggest questions that I get asked is was it hard? The answer is yes and I built in that accountability to ensure that I was going to be as successful as I possibly could be. Before I go into my challenges, that I ran into the benefits that I experienced of an alcohol-free lifestyle, how it ties into high performance, I do want to share with you my background and my past experiences with alcohol so you can understand where I'm coming from and perhaps how this relates to your story, because that's really where this whole journey stemmed from was my past relationship and my prior experience with alcohol. Even if you don't see yourself in this story 100%, perhaps you're going to see some glimmers of who you are and your experience and your journey, so that you know that you're not alone. That was my thing. I felt like I was alone in this until I started to understand and be exposed to other people's stories that it wasn't just me, it wasn't just my experience. I was not unique in this capacity and this struggle and these thoughts that I had around alcohol.
Speaker 1:Alcohol has been a part of my life for a very long time. It's a part of just American culture in general, from high school to college, studying abroad, going wine tasting when I lived in Italy like alcohol is just consistently there. Then, after I graduated from college, wine became more of a staple in my everyday life. Enjoy a glass of wine at night with dinners a way to unwind, relax. On the weekends, we'd go to bars with friends or we'd go do a pub crawl On our bikes. We'd bike along the beach when we lived in Manhattan Beach, and weekends are filled with brunches that have mimosas or champagne or whatever it is. You think about that.
Speaker 1:Alcohol consumption was so completely normalized and so much a part of the social experience that a world without drinking was never even in my realm of possibility. That wasn't even a thing. It wasn't even on my radar At that time. In my brain and in my narrative, in my thought process, in my beliefs, in my reality is if you didn't drink, if you chose to be sober, it's because you're an alcoholic and had a problematic relationship with alcohol. You had to give it up, you had to be sober. That was my story. That was what I thought at that time.
Speaker 1:Here's what's interesting COVID comes along 2020, we're all at home and I don't know about you, but I found myself drinking so much more wine than usual. It wasn't just my one glass of wine, but perhaps it was two glasses of wine, sometimes even three. If we opened up a good bottle of wine, it started to slip into way too much alcohol on a consistent basis. I remember, right around when we came out of COVID, more and more people talking about just how much more they found themselves drinking than they used to. There are actually scores of articles on this, about this being a common human experience that we all went through. That was absolutely what I was experiencing too. I was drinking way more than I had previously.
Speaker 1:When these conversations arose for me with others who were questioning their relationship with alcohol, that was when I started to question my relationship with alcohol. I'm asking myself questions like should I give it up? Can I limit myself to just drinking on the weekends? I'll say right now that those are both things that I've tried. I tried another app where I would just do one glass of wine certain nights of the week and I'd check in every day, and it didn't matter. I could not limit to just the weekends. They simply did not work for me.
Speaker 1:I found myself struggling with being disciplined and not drinking and trying to control a relationship with a highly addictive substance. You say it out loud like that. That's just crazy to me. I don't have the data and I should go find it for you guys, but you can look it up and type in Google Alcohol is one of the most addictive substances on earth, and it becomes more and more addictive the longer our relationship is with it. And so here I am ashamed of myself that I can't control a relationship with a highly addictive substance. That's been a part of my life for 20 years, right Like I, and I felt bad, and I just don't want you guys to feel that way if you're struggling through this and you're listening to this, because what's interesting is and perhaps this is what you're going through right now, because you're listening to this episode my awareness of my behavior around alcohol really started to come to the forefront and I began to have this conscious relationship with this substance and being fully aware of how it was truly impacting my life.
Speaker 1:Right, I moved from we talked about this in a past podcast episode. I moved from that unconscious incompetence that I didn't even know that this thing was having this impact on me. I moved into conscious incompetence. Now I am aware, now I have the awareness and I'm paying attention to the, the metacognition of what's going on in my life with this highly addictive substance. So I'm looking at how much this is impacting my life. I'm not sleeping well. I'm like in this I can't wait until five o'clock so I can have my glass of wine to reasoning with myself that I don't have a problem because it's not like I'm waking up and drinking first thing in the morning every day. Nor was it impacting my daily routines. So I'm aware of these thoughts that I'm having with myself.
Speaker 1:But the thing is is that I was 100% operating in what I now know to be called gray area drinking, and if you haven't heard of this term before, there was an article recently in Forbes where a health coach and certified functional nutritionist and the founder of the gray area drinking resource hub, jolene Park. She defines gray area drinking as a following Gray area drinking is the space between the extremes of rock bottom and, every now and again, or moderate drinking. Think about what that means. And when we look at the article or, I'm sorry, the podcast episode from earlier, where low to moderate drinking levels are one to two drinks per day, a lot of us fall into that category, and so a lot of us are operating in this gray area drinking where we don't really kind of know what to do with it. Listen to this definition from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, from CDC, that says that moderate or social drinking is one cocktail or less for women in a day and two cocktails or less for men in a day.
Speaker 1:And so, by all means, I was 100% operating in moderate drinking or social drinking. I certainly wasn't someone with problem by all intents and purposes, especially defined as a CDC and a variety of other places that I started reading about. So I'm in this place where I'm justifying to myself that I don't have a problem, so I don't need to give up alcohol. And it was right around that time of this awareness of gray area drinking that I happen to have this conversation with Val, with my trainer, that I happened to give it up for dry January. So it wasn't like for me this rock bottom situation that prompted all of this, and it wasn't even that I went all out on New Year's Eve and had one last hurrah and felt like crap the next day and then started my dry January challenge. It was like there was this nudge of an outside force that gave me a reason to openly challenge alcohol's relationship in my life, and I am telling you right now it was one of the greatest gifts that I have ever received, and that is a life without alcohol.
Speaker 1:And so I want you to think about too, like, if this is what you're struggling with, do some research, and like I'm not here to say no one should ever drink again. That's not my purpose. My purpose is just in sharing my story with you so that if you see yourself anywhere in this and you can see the benefits that I've reaped from just trying this different way of thinking about alcohol and the impact it's had on my life, then maybe you'll make that same decision too, and maybe you'll get to see what I've been able to experience. Also and I want to share some of the challenges that I faced because it's the reality is, people are like well, I'm afraid it's gonna be really hard to give it up. It's so deeply embedded in my culture. I mean, where I live. Most of us who are listening are living in America. Some of us live in the UK and abroad. And yeah, it's true. Like I'll be honest, january was tough and there were two specific instances that occurred for me in the beginning that had an impact on me being held accountable by people who were gonna push me to be my best. And that's why I think it's so important to surround yourself with people who are not going to enable you but are going to challenge you to be the best version of yourself, even if it means tough conversations, even if it means tough love that is true love.
Speaker 1:So January, I'm on like day five of doing dry January and the first seven days were hard. The first weekend was hard. It's this habit, five o'clock, that time of day, it's this like subconscious you know, like conditioning in your brain that this is just what happens at this time. Like you wake up, you brush your teeth, five o'clock rolls around. You make dinner, you pour a glass of wine, right, it's this whole habitual routine. So I'm on day five and it's hard, and I remember I was with my trainer, riley, and I said to him like look, I'm doing dry January, it's kind of difficult. And he just looks at me and he goes oh, I'll just do it with you. And just like that, I had an outside person to be held accountable to my trainer, who I was going to show up and see every day and who's going to push me physically hard every day. Right, you think back to that accountability. I went into the reframe app. I did that. My husband was also doing dry January, but now I had an outside influence, an outside person who wasn't necessarily part of my family unit that now I'm being held accountable to. That I'm going to see every day that I don't want to disappoint.
Speaker 1:And in fact, there's another very specific moment around, like day 23, where I really did almost give up and I almost started drinking again and my friend Brittany was out here visiting me from North Carolina. We went up to Sonoma. We were going to go do a day at the spa and go out to dinner and we arrive at this really fancy hotel and they greet us with a glass of champagne and I'm like, oh, it's a special occasion, you know you're out visiting, it's once in a lifetime. Blah, blah, blah and she goes. I don't think you really want to do that. She goes. I think that you will regret this decision later. That is a friend. That is a friend who is going to hold you to the highest standard of yourself and that is a friend that every single one of us deserves to have in our lives. And so having a friend like that, who is going to push you to be the best version of yourself, and not the friend who's like, oh, you did a good enough job, like let's go celebrate, that's the type of friend you want in your life. That's the type of person that you will need in this journey and sobriety if it is something that you're choosing to do or just test out or just you know, see what happens.
Speaker 1:But I will say, after those first 30 days, I noticed such a significant change, not just in my body recomposition, which is really what it all prompted I wanted to see results at the gym but it was also the way in which I was able to show up in my workouts, my sleep, my patience, my ability to be a good mom, just being excited about every single day. It was really hard to get me down, to piss me off, compared to how easily irritable I used to be. So I hit those 30 days. I'm like this is awesome. I'm going to do another milestone, like let's go. I can't remember if it was 90 or 100 days. I believe the goal was 100 days and that was my next goal. I said another milestone. So even still I'm not thinking like, oh, this is going to be for forever, let's just hit these milestones.
Speaker 1:But then I got so far into that next milestone of moving toward 100 days that I honestly even stopped checking in on the app because really at my core I had started to fundamentally shift. I was moving officially from that conscious competence to subconscious competence to unconscious competence that this way of being was just starting to become such a part of my subconscious that this was just who I was now. I was somebody who doesn't drink alcohol, and when I hit that 100 days, I remember telling everybody that I'm like I just don't think I'm ever going to drink again. My life is just so much better without alcohol being a part of it. And so I want to share with you now what I've learned about high performance, what it's done for my life, the positive changes that I've experienced about becoming sober after becoming sober.
Speaker 1:So number one is sleep. Oh my God, sleep. I cannot even put into words just how much my sleep has improved. I used to wake up every morning 2am, 3am, light clockwork, and I'd be up for hours just ruminating on terrible thoughts, this catastrophic thinking, this anxiety. I couldn't turn my brain off. I'm like what the hell is wrong with me? Is it just because I have anxiety? So I wake up in the middle of the night and I have all of these crazy ass thoughts. Let me tell you, they all went away and like fast too. In the first week I would go to sleep and I wouldn't wake up until the next morning. It was like a legitimate deep 7, 8 hour, solid, beautiful, glorious night's sleep.
Speaker 1:Talk about high performance. Talk about being able to show up and bring it when you get to work, when you're leading your team. When you sleep like that compared to maybe getting five hours of sleep the night before because you were up all night thinking thoughts in your brain because alcohol kept you up, it had such a negative impact on my sleep To now experience the opposite of that, I can't even imagine ever going back and having my sleep disrupted, because it is such a piece of that ability to be a high performer for me. All right, the next thing that I want to talk about is body recomposition. This is what I was really ultimately going after. Initially, I was so focused on the health benefits of being sober and removing that additional 300 calories from my daily caloric intake that I noticed an almost immediate effect in what my body physically looked like, specifically my core bloating, all that stuff, old genes that didn't used to fit me, fit me now this happened all within three weeks. It was a noticeable change.
Speaker 1:Talk about confidence. When you feel good, when you look good, you are able to. It's just a thing in your confidence, in the way that you carry yourself, the way that you feel about yourself. That was massive. That was a huge difference. I noticed almost immediately Then my physical health at the gym. I feel like a whole new beast was born.
Speaker 1:Talk about being competitive. Talk about wanting to be great. This took it to a whole new level. There was no excuse anymore for showing up and not leaving it all on the court. Talk about being a great athlete man to be able to step into this different level of performance athletically, physically, at 37 years old, I'm in better shape now than I was when I was 16. Maybe I'm not as fast, I don't know. I'd be interested to see. It's a whole other beast. That competitive greatness that's coming out at the gym physically now also comes out in my team. I'm talking on my team meetings and I'm excited about things. It's a whole other ballgame. It's a whole other level.
Speaker 1:Another benefit about being sober and being alcohol-free a lot of my relationships changed. This is one of the questions that comes up a lot. It's like didn't you lose a lot of friends? Yeah, honestly, I have fewer friends. I remember saying to one of my friends that I was doing this and like, oh well, that's not fun. I'm like dude, what kind of a comment is that? Here I am trying to do an incredibly difficult thing to have a better life, and that's your response. Really, even if it's a joke, that's not cool with me. Yeah, I don't go to very many parties. I don't go to mom's nights out to go get drinks and talk about stuff that, quite frankly, I don't really care about. You know what. I am so much happier for it.
Speaker 1:I now have deep, meaningful relationships with a select few people, all of whom I connect with on a much more intentional and spiritual level, all who see this bigger vision that I have for my life and who are supporting me in getting there. Talk about surrounding yourself with people who are going to hold you up to the greatest version and vision that you have of your life and I get to do that for them too. In return, that reciprocity of love and kindness in my friendships is like nothing I have ever experienced before, and I am just so immensely thankful for that. That does not exist. Those connections do not exist when you are drinking on a consistent basis and have these, quite frankly, meaningless surface level conversations with people. It's just different. It's just been a different experience for me.
Speaker 1:The biggest change, though, I will say, has been in my relationship with my son, and this is so, so special to me. People always ask me don't you feel like you're missing out or worried you were going to miss out on things? It's like no man. It's the opposite. My favorite part of the evening now is snuggling with my son. For as long as it takes him to fall asleep, I get to just look at him, I get to just be with him and soak up all of his sweet and innocent energy and his love, whereas before I would be wishing he would fall asleep faster so I could just get back to my show and join my glass of wine, so that I could finally relax after a long day of being a business owner, being a mom and doing all the things. It's not like that anymore. There's so much more space and room and ability to hold gratitude, and that really was like.
Speaker 1:My biggest fear in being sober was that I'd be missing out on things. I would be missing out if I didn't drink anymore. I'd be missing out on going out to dinner. I'd be missing out on wine tasting. I'd be missing out at holiday parties. What I did not realize until after was that I was missing out on so much all along because of alcohol. Such a freaking gift man to have this experience that I am eternally grateful for.
Speaker 1:And the whole other part of this journey of sobriety for me has been about high performance. Right at the beginning of 2024, my goal, my thought, my question was be curious about your greatness. I want that for you. What does your greatness look like? You want to be a high performer, right, that's why you listen to this podcast episode. I want to be a high performer. I want to crush the competition. I want to be willing to do what others aren't. I want to give to this world every ounce of who I am, every last ounce of self, in service to my higher purpose.
Speaker 1:And my definition of a high performer included somebody who doesn't drink alcohol, and I look at these greats. I look at these great actors, these great performers, these great athletes. Look at Taylor Swift. She apparently does not drink when she's on tour because she can't operate for highest performance when you're drinking right. There are so many athletes who have either stopped drinking alcohol or never drank, simply to begin with, from a performance perspective. So I'm looking at this whole journey in 2023 of being the best I can possibly be and guess what? Absolutely does not serve that greater purpose Alcohol period, and that became one of those non-negotiables for high performance for me, and I'd invite you to think about that too.
Speaker 1:Like, what are your non-negotiables for high performance? What are you doing that you are dedicating your life to in order to be a high performer? Sleep, exercise, eating well, taking care of yourself. You know, if you're on this path of considering not drinking alcohol, maybe it's time I think about, too, like as the leader of my team, who brings the energy I do? Right, you think about the coaches of these great teams. They are leading the energy of those teams. That is your job as the leader. That is a part of my job and service to my team. That's the greatest thing that I can bring to the court for them right.
Speaker 1:And so now, without alcohol, my level of energy is through the roof. My mental clarity is sharper than I have ever experienced in my life. I'm able to make better decisions, I see a greater vision, I open up and listen to my intuition to guide me with massive changes and opportunities that we've been creating in the business and in my brain. None of that exists, with alcohol still being a part of that story, and I think about, too like, for what reason was alcohol even here? Why was it even a part of the story? So I can let loose and have fun. I can do that without alcohol, and in fact, I would argue for me at least that alcohol does just the opposite of letting loose and having fun. It holds you in a vice grip and is a force over you in such a controlling and powerful way that I don't want to go back to a space ever again where I have to even hold the brain. Capacity for something like that in my life Not here, not in the high performance arena does not exist.
Speaker 1:2023, my company, ev Academics. We saw our best year in business to date. Do I think that being sober played a role in it? I like to think so, because I was a different leader. I was a different person bigger risks, more calculated risks, more aligned shifts in the business, because I was clear minded, level headed, able to make decisions without any sort of emotional attachment to things. That's another area of strength as a leader that I want you to be able to develop. That I've been able to develop in being sober is emotional intelligence, that ability to be unimpacted. That is like nothing I've ever experienced before to be detached in a good, healthy way, and in fact, I talked all about this in episode four, where I talk about those five phrases that I repeat to myself daily as a leader. Being sober is a huge part, for me at least, and maybe for you. If you go down this journey of being unaffected emotionally by things, I've realized I can handle anything and that, no matter what, I'm going to be okay. That is a powerful place to operate from as the leader of your teams. And this last point even though it doesn't have anything to do with high performance per se, but really I think it's a secret sauce to high performance is the most beautiful thing that's come out of this journey of sobriety has been my spiritual journey to better understanding myself, to better understanding my higher purpose.
Speaker 1:I experienced a lot of loss in 2023. And I do not think the experience of those losses would have been nearly as profound as they were if I wasn't sober when my grandmother passed away in May of 2023, I was left with this moment of awakening to the fact that we, like our physical bodies, are simply a vessel of a message of our purpose here on this earth. Like I remember seeing her and it was her body. And she was not there. It wasn't her. The body is just a vessel. And I remember going into the gym saying to my trainer dude, this body does not matter, it's about our spirit. And like to have that moment to get to experience that type of understanding. There is no way I would have been able to emotionally or spiritually be available for that if I had been drinking alcohol at that time to escape and handled a loss of somebody that was incredibly close to me in my life. My grandmother was the first person that I was very, very close to who died my entire 37 years on this earth. I have been so blessed. I've never really experienced death in a closeness like that man. I'm so thankful that I was sober during that time.
Speaker 1:Over that summer of 2023,. I also lost a beautiful childhood friend to suicide. It was awful and devastating. And then my cousin shortly thereafter passed away from a freak situation. And then in December I know it's not the same as the loss of a human, but we very suddenly lost one of our golden retrievers, huckleberry, who was like a child for us. He'd been with us for 10 years and I remember in the moment of Huck's passing I'm holding his head in my arms as we're saying goodbye to him, and it's just such an emotional experience and I felt this message from him at that exact moment to make my life count. And my life simply cannot count if I am a shell of myself, if I am disconnected from the innermost parts of who I am, and I truly believe that for all of us, for you, listening to this podcast episode right now, alcohol is holding me back from my greatest potential for years.
Speaker 1:Being sober is one of the greatest gifts I have ever ever received in my life, and I just truly wish this feeling and this experience for everybody in some capacity. And so when I sit back and I think about you know what are some of the greatest lessons that I've learned throughout this experience. I would say that the biggest takeaway as it pertains to business is, if you want to know, like the secret sauce to getting to the next level or breaking through that ceiling in your business. For me, it's been being sober and truly leaning into and understanding the spiritual part of who I am, more so that I can fully believe in what's possible for me in this life, what's possible for the impact that I get to have on other's lives, and that realization does not happen without this journey into sobriety. And so if you are even considering what life could look like without alcohol, I'd invite you to kind of go through the same stages of awareness that I did right.
Speaker 1:Use the listening to this episode as perhaps that permission that you've been kind of seeking outside of yourself to try 30 days without alcohol and just start to notice, bring awareness to exactly what it's providing for you in your life. What are you receiving from this decision? And if you're considering becoming sober and you do need to seek professional medical assistance in order to do so safely, there are a variety of services that you can reach out to, including the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. They have a hotline. It's confidential, it's free, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year of information service for individuals facing substance use disorders. That phone number is 1-800-662-HELP, and I just want to thank you guys so much for listening to this episode.
Speaker 1:I know it's my story and I talked a lot about myself, but I really hope that you find this a story of encouragement, if you're curious, and a story for hope if you're struggling, and if anything that I mentioned lands for you or resonates with you.
Speaker 1:It would mean so much for me to have you share this with someone else who may be struggling, who just perhaps needs to hear this message from a different source or a different perspective, because you sharing this message could quite literally change the course of somebody's life. We never know what one thing we say or share could have that domino effect on somebody. So thank you so much for joining me on this journey and sharing this with you guys. I hope that it shed some light in, perhaps, something that you're going through and something that you're struggling with, and if it does, please always feel free to reach out to me on Instagram. I would love to hear from you. All right, you guys, I will see you next week on the podcast. We're going to be talking about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and belief in your team and how that plays into creating a beautiful team culture at your business. All right, have a great week, you guys, and we'll see you next week on the podcast.
