← How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
I Chose My Girlfriend Over Johnnie Walker: Love Lessons from 1,000 Days Sober (Part 1)
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If you struggle with dating, you’re probably addicted to something. Maybe it's “liquid courage,” or settling for so-so relationships, or choosing porn over approaching women. In this 3-part sober dating series, dating coach Connell Barrett shares his...
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I realized in that moment, I don't want to drink this to me. I see this as poison.
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Maybe I'm afraid of the way I love you, baby I'm amazed at the way you pull me out of time you hung me on maybe I'm amazed on the way I really need you.
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All right, welcome back. The how to Get a Girlfriend podcast. I am Connell Barrett, a dating coach, and I wanted Paul McCartney from 1970 Wings to take us into this episode because I'm amazed and I want to share something that I'm amazed about with you today. Today you're listening to my 1000th straight day as a sober man. I quit drinking a thousand days ago today. This episode is dropping on November 25th, and I quit drinking on March 1st of 2023. And today, November 25th is my 1,000th day of sobriety. And I'm actually at a Paul McCartney concert today. While you're listening to this episode, Paul McCartney might be singing maybe I'm amazed in Chicago, where I am right now, at least today, as this episode drops with my girlfriend in Chicago. And this is a special episode because, you know, there's a lyric from maybe I'm amazed maybe I'm amazed at the way I love you I'm amazed the way you love me all the time, baby. I'm a lonely man who's in the middle of something that he doesn't really understand. I was in the middle of something that I didn't understand for many years. I was in the middle of dependency on alcohol. I had a problem. I had a drinking problem. And now that I'm a thousand days sober, I want to do an episode about my struggles with drinking, my dependency on alcohol, and how I overcame it finally for these last 1,000 days. And this is actually going to be the first of three episodes I'll be doing about sober dating. All about sober dating. And. But even if you don't drink or even if you don't have a problem with drinking, I think this episode will be really important for you because even if you're not a drinker or not dependent on drinking like I was, you're very likely addicted or dependent on something that's hurting your dating life. You might be dependent on watching porn, which can hurt your motivation to go out and meet women because you're blunting your sexual desire. You might be addicted to procrastination, comfort, where you say, you know what? I really want to go out today and take some chances, meet some women, ask out my crush, approach that woman at the gym I see every day. But you might be addicted to procrastination, putting it off and staying comfortable. Maybe you're addicted to masturbation. You know, maybe you spend too much time pleasuring yourself and that can hurt your sexual desire and keep you from being motivated enough to go out and meet women. There's a lot of different things we get addicted to. We get dependent on. My dependency was drinking. And I want to share with you my story and how it relates to my journey of improving myself and my relationship. My girlfriend Jess is with me in Chicago. We're seeing Paul McCartney together and we're spending Thanksgiving together. And I quit drinking for her. She never asked me to. She didn't know I had a problem. She just thought, oh, my boyfriend likes whiskey. But I actually quit drinking. I did it for myself. But she was my big motivator and I'll share why in a moment. But the bottom line is everybody is addicted to something. And if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably dependent on something that's hurting your dating life. And today I want to help you. So stick around because near the end of the episode, I want to give you three really powerful game changing steps that can help you break any dependency, whether it's booze or whether it's porn. Maybe you need liquid courage to even think about approaching a woman. I want to break you of that dependency. Maybe you think you need porn. Maybe you're addicted to staying comfortable, staying in your comfort zone. Whatever it is, I'm going to help you. I'm going to give you three really game changing steps that helped me that you can use to break out of whatever you might be dependent on. And I want you to become dependent and addicted to taking chances and dependent and addicted to finding love and getting great at dating and finding your girlfriend. That's what I want for you. So we start today's episode back almost a thousand days ago, April 1st, 2023. And I'm at a bar here in New York City. It's my girlfriend's 30th birthday and I'm standing at the bar and the bartender's in front of me. There's music playing. It's Jess's 30th birthday. People are laughing, having a great time here in New York City. Place a bar in Chelsea. And I had just completed my 30th day of sobriety a month prior. I said, you know what? I'm gonna take a month off of drinking. I called it Parched March. My last drink was on February 28th of 2023. And I said, I'm going to spend 30 days sober, parched March. And my plan was simple. Stay sober for 30 days and then quote, unquote, celebrate my sobriety with a drink at Jess's 30th birthday party on April 1. And I thought, that's a good plan. And here I was at the bar a month later, and I'm all ready to toast my girlfriend. I order a Johnnie Walker of black on the rocks, which was always my beverage. The bartender slides it to me. I look over. Jess is gorgeous. She's in a red dress. She's talking to her friends, Amy and Dan and Mariah. And a couple of my clients came. My good buddy and my client Nick. All these friends are here. And I'm holding the glass and holding this, this glass. The ice is clinking and it looks very familiar. It all feels familiar, you know, the cold, the cold frosted glass in my palm and the amber liquid in the glass, the sound of ice in a rocks glass. And I looked at that drink and I said, I have no desire to taste this. I thought, what am I doing? Why am I going to toast my sobriety with a glass of alcohol? And I realized in that moment, I don't want to drink this. To me, I see this as poison. I see this as a glass of poison. And I realized that looking at that glass, about to take a drink, I was about to waste something incredibly precious. Something incredibly precious that I created over the previous month. Because when I quit drinking a month earlier, and it was just going to be for 30 days, before I knew it, six or seven days in, I lost about five pounds, six pounds. Now, a lot of that was water weight, but some of it was fat. And I was sleeping better and I was feeling better. And to my pleasant surprise, when I finished a long day of work, I wasn't aching for a drink. I certainly craved it for about a week, but I wasn't aching for it. And all of a sudden, I could see my face and body start to slim out a little bit. And I realized what that what I had in front of me, that drink, it was just like poison. I didn't want to drink it. And I had something so much more valuable in my life. I had a newfound sense of worthiness, of self worth. I had something really precious. I had my sobriety back. And I think that's why that glass of Johnnie Walker looked so repulsive to me. Because I had spent the last 10 years telling myself, I'll quit tomorrow. Tomorrow. Tomorrow, Tomorrow. Every night. Not every night, but so many nights over the previous 10 years. I said, all right, tonight's my last drink. And then three scotches later, I would have the beverages. Maybe I'd go one or two sober days, but then I'd have another drink. And then I tell myself, okay, tomorrow, tomorrow I'll quit. I cannot tell you how many times I took a walk around my neighborhood here in Manhattan on a. On an evening, usually it would be like a Saturday night. And I'd say, okay, here's my last drink. A couple little mini bottles in my pocket. And I would say, okay, tonight's my last drink. Tomorrow I'll quit for good. Basically, every night was December 31st for me. January 1st never came. New Year's Day never came. I poured my quote unquote last glass of alcohol hundreds and hundreds of times over the previous decade. And every time it was the same lie. I told myself, this is the last one. I'll turn over a new leaf tomorrow. And that's the pattern of addiction that I realized. It was negotiation. I was negotiating with myself. Not unlike when you see a beautiful woman and you think, oh man, I would love to go talk to her, but you know what? I don't have the confidence today. Maybe tomorrow I'll do it. Or losing those last five pounds. Oh, tomorrow I'll start hitting the gym. Self negotiation, negotiating with yourself. So you make deals with yourself. You bargain, you delay, you promise, and nothing changes. Now, again, maybe it's not booze for you. Maybe it's, I'll approach a woman tomorrow when I have more time. I'll start that gym program on Monday. I really got to stop going to you porn so often. I'll delete the porn apps or I'll delete my porn history and stop going to YouPorn tomorrow. The substances change from person to person, but the pattern doesn't when there's dependency. And then for me, what really called me to finally make a change was there was a moment in the preceding month. So again, I quit drinking on March 1, 2023. And a few days before then, there was a moment where the wall started to crack. It was 3am and that night I had done my usual pattern of two or three scotches followed by late night binge eating. Not that I was eating a huge amount, but I would. I would keep myself from eating a normal regular diet because I wanted the booze in my stomach to enter my bloodstream and get that buzz, get that sense of, yeah, drinks. I am in the zone. And this night I had one too many drinks and one too many bites of some kind of late night pasta. I wake up at 3am and I was choking on vomit in bed. That me choking on vomit woke me up. That had never happened to me. And I want to, I don't want to overstate this. It wasn't life threatening. I wasn't in danger of dying like a rock star or anything like that. It was just like spit up in my mouth woke me up. It wasn't life threatening at all, but it was jarring. And that just so is not me. I am not the kind of guy who wakes up in the middle of the night vomiting from some kind of substance. Even though this is what was happening to me, I remember thinking, who am I who wakes up puking up pasta primavera and Johnnie Walker black? What kind of person does that? And that was a wake up call number one. It was one of two or three wake up calls. Wake up call number one was waking up puking in the middle of the night like Mama Cass or Jim Morrison or something. And then a day or two later to morning, I step out of the shower, standing, standing in front of the bathroom mirror naked. And I saw what I'd become. I looked in the mirror and I saw this belly, this big swelling belly, dull eyes. I looked tired, I looked bad. And I had gone. I. It's not that I wasn't working out, it's just that I was avoiding looking at the scale. And I remember I got on the scale that same day and the scale, for the first time in my life, I saw 200 on the scale. Now my ideal weight, I'm 616261. But I'm pretty slender guy. I've always been a pretty slender guy. My ideal weight, probably 165, 170. I never hit 200 in my life. That was wake up call number two. Now alcohol was not the pro, the only cause of that. But when you're drinking five, five or six days a week like I was, there's always alcohol adjacent food, right? Late night pasta. I loved having Toblerone. Chocolate with Johnnie Walker black chocolate with whiskey. Oh, man. Proof that. Proof that there might be a God. So I'm looking at the mirror, I see this bloated pear shaped person. I have skinny legs but a big gut. And it was repulsive, just repulsive. I get on the scale 200 pounds repulsive. Just 30 extra pounds of denial hanging on my frame. And then a third wake up call came, which was, and this had happened a Few times already. But I was starting to deal with erectile dysfunction. I don't mean whiskey dick. I mean, my girlfriend and I were getting it on, or trying to, but I couldn't get it up. I couldn't get an erection. I don't mean after a night of drinking. I mean, you know, Saturday morning when there was no active alcohol in my system. And by the way, Jess is beautiful, sexy, incredible. It wasn't her. It really wasn't. It was me. Or specifically, it was the inflammation, it was the toxins. It was my body shutting down to an extent, shutting down that part of me because I kept pouring toxins into it. And that really was a third wake up call for me. I remember thinking, okay, you're 30 pounds overweight, Connell. You're now in your 50s. Anyway, you have this beautiful 30 year old girlfriend who you are so in love with and you can't please her. What if you can't police her anymore? It's just a matter of time, right, before she's going to find somebody who does look good, shirtless, who can please her, who is younger and more virile. And I started to see the cost of my addiction. And I wasn't just looking at the current cost. It was costing me self esteem. I was literally avoiding the mirror. I would not look in the mirror, at least not shirtless, because I didn't want to see that big bloated belly protruding. And I didn't get on a scale for so many months until that day. I finally weighed myself and saw 200 for the first time. I think it was 201. And that was a huge wake up call. Now, even with all of that, even with all of that happening in mid February of 23, I knew, you know, the vomiting, the 35, 40 pounds heavier than ideal, the erectile dysfunction, I. I knew, I knew I had a problem, but. But I was. I still hadn't made a real decision. I kept delaying. I kept saying to myself, well, you know, it's okay to drink when I'm with my clients. I'm out. And I'm out at night in the bars doing approach training with my clients, what's wrong with the drink? Or I'm out with my girlfriend, what's wrong with what's wrong with the drink? So I kept negotiating. I kept telling myself that everything's fine, you just need to lose a few pounds and cut down. Then I found an incredible book that really pushed me over and made me say, this is the end, I'm going to change my ways. I Hit full threshold. I found a book, a man named Alan Carr, C A R R. He wrote a book called the Easy Way to Control Drinking. Alan Carr passed away several years ago. Actually passed away. He died of, of lung cancer. Because he was also a long term smoker. He was a big smoker and a big drinker before he quit and created a couple, wrote a, wrote a few best selling books. The one I read is called the Easy Way to Control Drinking. And I thought, what a cool title. This sounds good. I want to control my drinking. Doesn't mean I have to quit, it just means I need to control it. But it's a really sneaky title because you're reading the book and he's making these incredible arguments about why we don't need alcohol. He talks about how liquid courage doesn't exist. Three things in this book hit me hard. Liquid courage does not exist. In other words, Carr says that alcohol doesn't give you confidence. All it does is it numbs your fear. It shuts down your overactive brain that's focused on the thing you're afraid of. So you feel brave because you can't feel the anxiety anymore. I thought that was a really cool insight. He also made the point that you can have everything alcohol gives you without the drinking you want to socialize, you don't need. You can hold a glass of seltzer, you want to relax, you can watch a movie, play guitar, take an improv class. In my case, if you want to celebrate, make it hot chocolate, not a hot toddy. And I think the biggest realization I had from Carr's book, he wrote something he said toward the end of the book. He says, okay, I gotta confess, I'm paraphrasing now by the way, but Carr writes the title of this book is a bit of a bit of a manipulation. This book is not about controlling drinking. I just wanted you to read it. He tells the reader, you can stop and should. Sure you can control drinking. You can have one or two drinks now and then. But why would you want to have one or two glasses of strychnine? Why would you want to have one or two glasses of poison? And he said that word, poison. And that really was the ice cold water or ice cold vodka I needed to have thrown on my face. When he said poison, I realized that's true. Alcohol is poison. And I am, by the way, I am not bible thumping here that you or anybody else should quit drinking. I needed to because I was dependent on it and I had a problem with it. Nothing wrong with Having a drink. But for me, when Carr said, sure, you can have alcohol every now and then, but you can also have strychnine every now and then. You can also have a glass of cleaner, bathroom cleaner, every now and then, but would you want to? Because that's what you're doing by drinking. And that was the end. That's when I knew I had my last drink. Late February. And in his book, he said, have your last drink. Literally, make it. Make it a. Make it a sacrament, make it a celebration. Pour your last drink. And I did that on February 28, 23. Poured my last drink, a couple of Johnnie Walker Blacks. Go out. Go out with what you want. And even though I told myself 30 days, there was that little voice that said, maybe this will be it, maybe this will be it. And the other thing that really pushed me over the edge, really made me get to that decision where I knew it was over. It really is about. I was afraid of losing my girlfriend. My girlfriend, she's the most important person in the world to me. She's love of my life. I. All the work I did in all my years of dating and working on dating and becoming a dating coach, everything led me to her. And I realized that if I didn't quit drinking, there's a really good chance that I would lose her. Not today, not tomorrow, but what if I gained 20 more pounds? What if I developed health issues? What if I got. Was completely unable to please her emotionally or sexually. Why would she want to be with me? My girlfriend Jess can have a million different guys in her life if she wanted, but she chose me. And I realized I had to become a better man for myself and to keep her. That was my story. She never said that to me at all. This is my interpretation, but I needed that interpretation to create leverage on myself. I made the stakes sky high. I told myself on February 28, Connell, you've got to stop drinking or else you are going to be fatter. You are going to be a full alcoholic. You'll probably die before you're 60 from liver cirrhosis. That was the path I was on. Literally. I was on the path to hospitalization someday, to losing my girlfriend, to just not being the man I. I was put on this earth to be. And, yeah, so March 1, 2023, made that decision. I said, 30 days sober. I had fun with it. I told everybody, parched March. I'm enjoying Parched March. You know, there's dry January. There's some word for February. I forget what it is. But then I Said, hey, it's parched March. I remember Jess and I went to a friend's Friday night cocktail get together at a nice apartment and wine was going around and this was on St. Patrick's Day of 23. And somebody asked me if I want, asked me if I wanted a drink and I said, ah, no thank you, I'm doing a parched march sober St. Patrick's Day. And that was my first over St. Patrick's Day since I think Obama was president. It'd been a long time since I'd not had a drink on Patty's Day. And again, it was just a plan to. I told myself, just do 30 days, just do 30 days. And I remember on St. Patrick's Day, not only was I not drinking at that little get together, but I didn't even want any. That felt incredible. And I could see in the mirror my face was getting less bloated. I had dropped eight or ten pounds two weeks into March. Again, much of that was water and just inflammation, but some of it was fat. I was looking better, I was sleeping better. And I realized, oh my God, I am happier. I enjoy being sober more than I enjoyed the brief, the brief buzz and state change that alcohol, that alcohol was giving me. I was sleeping better. And I'm very happy to report I never had and have never had a single knock on wood, no pun intended. I have not had a single issue with erectile dysfunction in the last 1,000 days. Not once. Proud to say, and I'm no scientist, I don't know for a fact that the booze was creating that, but I'm 98% sure because I have not had any issue since. And I was sleeping better. So Jess and I were making better, more passionate, wonderful love. I feel all of a sudden I was back. I felt amazing. And I went out with my clients, going to bars with my clients. I didn't. Not only did I not drink, I was proud to not be drinking and helping my clients approach girls and not needing alcohol as fuel to do it. And I just felt fantastic. And so what I would do to replace, I realized, I realized something early on and being a self improvement coach really helped me. I was able to coach myself in a sense, even though Alan Carr's book was coaching me. I listened to, to that book many times, the easy way to control drinking or control alcohol. But I knew what was going on. I knew that alcohol was giving me a state change. It was allowing me to go from a stressed out, you know, logical, oh, tough day. Boy, this client was a Pain in the butt. Oh, this business problem. And then I would, you know, 7, 8pm would come around and. And whiskey was a way for me to change my state to something that felt better. But I just replaced the change of state instead of alcohol. I listened to a really funny podcast or I watched a great movie or a podcast about a movie, or I played piano or guitar, or I take an improv class. And when I do improv, I get drunk without a drop of booze. I feel great when I'm doing improv, so I take improv classes instead of drink. So part of the secret to fixing addiction, at least for me anyway, I can only speak for myself, was understanding what. What. What need, what emotional need, what, what state change was occurring. The alcohol was creating and just creating it in a different way for me. I just wanted to go from stressed, stressed out and logical to loose and light and relaxed. And alcohol does it quickly. And I had to work harder to do it by watching the movie or taking the improv class or. Or calling a friend and having a fun conversation, catching up with an old friend. I had to work harder. But I was getting the same state change, just without the alcohol. But I was also getting something so much more, more valuable in return. Self worth. I felt so good 30, 20, 30 days in. And so I had the self worth. I was performing better in bed. I looked better, I felt more confident. I could see the weight coming off. I'm sleeping better. I just. I felt 10 years younger. I didn't even mention my back problems I had. I threw my back out about a month before I quit drinking. And again, I'm not a physician. I'm a. I'm a date doctor, but I'm not a doctor doctor, but I. I would bet my life savings that my back problem was at least exacerbated by my drinking because I had all this toxicity in my system, all this inflammation that made whatever caused my pulled muscles in my lower back. It lasted a month, or about three weeks. Three weeks of walking around like a human question mark. I was not in a good physical place. And I know I would have recovered more quickly had I not been drinking. So it's Jess's 30th birthday, April 1, 2023, 30 days sober. I go up to the bartender, Johnny Walker on the rocks. He hands me that drink, and that little voice says, you don't want this. Ew. This is poison. It was almost like that. That what I call the higher self. I tell my clients, we all have a higher self and a lower self. It's like my higher self was saying, don't do this to me, don't drink that. You don't want that. What's it going to do? It's going to give you a quick buzz, but you're going to feel so much guilt, you're going to throw away the last 30 days. It's like the voice of my slimmer, more virile, more results oriented champion inside of me took over and said, you don't need this. And yeah, I looked at that glass and I saw it for what it was to me was poison. I knew that I didn't need a glass of Johnnie Walker or any alcohol to toast my girlfriend. I toasted her that night with, with ginger beer, with seltzer, and we had a great time. And I, I just remember knowing that that really was the end of my drinking. And that was a big moment of truth for me. A big moment of truth also. I just, I just know how my mind works. If you're anything like me, your, your brain loves a streak. I love a streak. I love a hitting streak in baseball. I love, I love, I don't know, working for 10 straight days and crushing it. I love a streak in sports. I love getting all my first serves in tennis. And my brain loved the fact that I had gone 30 days sober and I knew I'd have to start over again if I had that one drink. And I was done. I was done with tomorrow. My new resolution or my new decision came, became, you know what? No more tomorrow. Every day with me had been December 31st. Partying, drinking, New Year's Eve. And then January 1st never came. My new mantra, which I recommend you adopt for whatever your higher level behavior would be. My new mantra became every day is January 1st. Every day I make a decision to restrain from drinking and to be healthy and to be on that narrow road, that right path. And I really haven't looked back. I really haven't been tested or tempted in any significant way since. And I say that not to brag at all. Quite the opposite. It took me 10 years to finally get to this place. I'd been thinking about wanting to quote, unquote, trying to quit drinking for over a decade. And it took me that long to finally get to the moment of decision. So I've been sober ever since. Thousand days, I'm recording this, or I should say this episode is dropping on November 25th. Tuesday, November 25th, that has been exactly 1,000 days. And I go to bars all the time with my clients to help them Approach women. But I don't drink. Most of my clients don't either, for what that's worth. And it's not. I'm not even white knuckling it. I'm not even resisting temptation. I genuinely don't want it anymore. And that's exactly what Alan Carr said would happen. He's like, ah, once you really, once you change your associations with the thing that you're addicted to, you don't really want it anymore. Very true. And so my health, as far as I know, so much better now. By the way, I weigh about 169, 170 pounds. I've lost 30 pounds since I quit drinking. I have great sex with my girlfriend Jess. At least I have it. I hope she does too. I'm clear headed, I'm sharper. I have potentially saved my life. Potentially. Who knows, four, five, six years down the road I might have been looking at liver disease. A relative, a close relative of someone I know died of liver disease and they weren't much older than me. This person drank a lot. I remember when this person died and I found out why. It was this big secret that she'd been secretly drinking for decades. And I thought, man, that's the path I was on. That's the path I was on. But now today I'm in way about 170 and I look back pretty good. Shirtless at least I look better than I did. I used to look like a pear before a pear with toothpick legs, shirtless. And now I'm proud to take my shirt off. My girlfriend and I went to the beach or had a, had a beach weekend with some friends of hers and I was like taking my shirt off, nobody's gonna notice. But I knew I felt good about it. Nobody's looking at my shirtless body and saying, oh my God, who's that guy with the average but trim physique? But I look a lot better. Bottom line is I look a lot better. And anyway, I'm really proud of where I've come. But again, this episode is not just me saying, yeah, I'm sober. Everybody tell me how great I am. That's not what today is about. My addiction wasn't just alcohol. It was avoidance. I was addicted to avoiding alcohol or drinking, quitting drinking. I was addicted to comfort. I was escaping discomfort. I was negotiating with myself, delaying the life that I wanted. And you may not be addicted to a substance, but you could be addicted to something else. Maybe it's avoidance, safety porn scrolling in your dating life. You're probably for lack of a better term, addicted to comfort, safety. You're playing it safe, right? How many times have you seen a woman out in the world, that beautiful woman at the gym, gorgeous woman at the bar, and you tell yourself, well, I'll go talk to her if she looks at me, if she smiles, if there's no other people around her who might hear me approach her, and if she's wearing a sign around her neck that says horny for men to approach her, if all of those boxes get checked, then I'll go approach her. If that's you, then you are addicted to playing it safe with women. You're addicted to comfort. That's why you don't approach. So the drug is different, but the addiction is pretty much the same. So let me give you three steps to break addiction. At least the three steps I found helpful for me and my drinking issues and that also I've used the. I use these three steps to help some of my clients break out of the dependency they have on safety or avoiding the kind of action they want to take. And so here are the three steps. This is basically how to kick any habit, pretty much how to kick any bad habit. Step one is get brutally clear on the cost that this behavior is taking. What is it costing you? What is your addiction costing you? What are you missing out on? What's the emotional toll and what is the measurable toll? For me, the emotional toll was self esteem and low confidence looking in the mirror. I felt disgusted when I looked in the mirror. My 200 pound body and my big belly. And the other toll was going to be losing my girlfriend, getting dumped in a year or two or five or whatever, it would be. The ultimate toll I was forecasting for myself was if I stayed on that track, death, illness, just being a old sad drunk who didn't become the man he could have been and losing my girlfriend, my amazing girlfriend. And that getting clear on the cost that your dependency is taking on you is the first step. You gotta get clear on it now with my clients who are struggling with self doubt, maybe you're struggling with self doubt. You probably are if you're listening to this podcast. Still, you want to approach beautiful women, you want a beautiful girlfriend, you want to take some romantic risks, but you don't do it. You're, you have doubt, you doubt your worth, you doubt if you're enough. And you got to understand what that's costing you. How many women have you not approached? What love, what kind of relationship have you missed out on? What beautiful woman think about think about 10 beautiful women you wanted to approach but didn't. Or three women you had a crush on but you never even asked them out. Do you realize that your self doubt cost you love? It might have cost you love and sex and the family. That's very high cost. And it's cost you self esteem, it's cost you emotional worth, at least in relationship to women probably. So step one, you got to get brutally clear on the cost. Just like I did. I saw the toll drinking was taking on me. And you need to see the toll that your, whatever your dependent behavior is. You got to see what it's taking on you. And step two, so basically get clear on the pain. Crystal clear, not to be an asshole to yourself, but it's only when our psychology, only when our, only when our minds see the pain where we say, I don't want any more of this, I'm done. This is too expensive, I gotta stop this behavior. In my case it was a actual behavioral pattern of drinking. In your case it might not be drinking. It might be, it might be a substance, but it could also be a mindset behavior. Thinking the very thought of, oh, you know what, I am just not enough for women because I'm too short and too shy. Well, that behavior, mental behavior is taking a huge toll on you, on your emotions, on your actions and on your dating life. And it's costing you the single thing that women love most in a man, which is confidence. If you don't feel confident in your worth to women, if you have thoughts and beliefs that tell you you are not enough, that is the same. You're pouring yourself a triple shot of self doubt every day. And you're doing the same thing I'm doing or was doing, but with actually with alcohol in my case. So you got to get clear on the cost. Step two, fall in love with the reward. Fall in love with the benefits, the rewards that will come to you after you change your behavior. In other words, focus on what's waiting for you on the other side. In my case, better sex. Continuing to be with my girlfriend, self confidence. Looking good shirtless. I actually wanted to take my shirt off at the beach this summer with my girlfriend and her friends. I usually hide. I'm that guy. I was always that guy who would keep his shirt on and like, you know, at the beach because I didn't want my tummy sticking out. So what's the reward you're gonna have when you quit porn or when you stop masturbating so much? When you stop avoiding Approaching women, when you quit junk food, when you lose the weight, whatever it might be, what reward is waiting for you? Think about the future girlfriend you want. Think about the confidence you want to feel the great sex that's waiting for you. Whether it's dating or a different part of life, the reward has to be just as compelling in a positive way as the cost is hurtful and painful to you. So step one, quick review. Step one, get brutally clear on the cost of this behavior. Step two, fall in love with the reward. What's it going to bring to you? How great's it going to feel when you finally get there, when you're free of this dependency, this addiction? And then step three is make the behavior daily, a daily ritual. The right action, the right behavior. Make it a daily ritual ritual. The right rituals, equal results. So for the first 30 days of my sobriety, I woke up and I had my. I do a morning thing I call confidence kickoff. I do, I do. I have my clients do it as well every morning. Get your head on right, get your head on straight. And I gave myself an incantation. Every day is January 1st. Every day is January 1st. You know how when you create a new. A New Year's resolution, I'm gonna hit the gym, I'm gonna lose weight, I'm gonna eat better, quit smoking. You make that resolution, and then it lasts for a few days. But then, you know, January 15th or so, 14th, 15th, you're back to your old ways. But for January 1st, you're. You're great. You're at the gym. You're crushing it. Every day, I told myself, every day of My life is January 1st. No more December 31st. So every day I recommitted to not drinking. I reminded myself of the benefits. I listened to podcasts about sobriety. I googled all kinds of information about how I was part of a trend. More and more people, more people are more sober today than literally any time in modern history. I felt trendy. And every day, I gave myself new leverage and a new reminder. The simplest leverage I had was just being with my girlfriend, just being with Jess, and knowing that I was doing everything in my power to be a good boyfriend and to be healthy and happy and vital for her and for me. For both of us, her and me wasn't just her, but she was a big motivator for me, obviously, as you can tell. So, yeah, make, make, make your new behavior a daily ritual. So let's game out a few possibilities here. Maybe you're listening to this and you say hey, Connell, you're onto something here. I've got to change my eating habits, make it a daily ritual. Every day is January 1st. Maybe it's self doubt. Maybe you realize. You tell yourself you're not good enough. You tell yourself you're unworthy of a great girlfriend or you're just not what women want. You've got to write a new and improved belief and say it out loud. Every single day. Every single day. Say to yourself, I am so worthy of an abundance of beautiful women because I have a good heart, I am intelligent, I'm funny. And then fill in more blanks that are resonant with you. And remind yourself and lots of women are going to love being with me. Remind yourself of your worth, your worth as your authentic self to women. Gotta remind yourself you don't, nobody else will. Rituals equal results. Maybe it's porn for you. Every day, remind yourself. I'm not saying don't masturbate. I'm just saying if you're addicted to it, if you have an actual problem, every day, remind yourself, hey, here are the benefits of me not going to you porn today. And then turn. Turn that new and improved mindset into the right action. So make your new and improved mindset a daily ritual. And if you're simply struggling with with a lack of dating success, then make your daily ritual one simple sentence. Everything I coach, everything I teach as a dating coach for men boils down to one sentence, which is take right authentic, courageous action every day. Take one authentic courageous risk every day. Do that every day for 30 days. You're going to have momentum. Approach one beautiful woman a day for a month. Ask your crush out tomorrow if it's appropriate to do so. Don't do it if she's your boss, but you know what I'm saying. Take one romantic right action, one romantic risk every day with courage and authenticity. You really can't go wrong. You really can't go wrong. So yeah, those are the three steps. Step one, gotta get clear on the cost. What's this costing me? What pain is this creating? What am I losing because of this behavior? Step two, fall in love with what changing your behavior will bring. Fall in love with that reward. And step three, make your new right action a daily ritual. So that daily that decision happens every single day, not just once. So ask yourself, what are you addicted to? What's it costing you? What would your life look like if you replace that behavior with something better? And what can you decide to do starting today? What can you. What can you do with your Life. If you begin to take action today, today can be your day. One of your 1000 day journey to an incredible outcome or probably something much that will happen much more quickly than a thousand days. Yeah. Anyway, your life will change the moment that you stop numbing yourself and you start choosing to take action. So I certainly hope that you decide to start taking action just as I did. Way too late, much later than I should have, but I still did it. And in my case, hey, it was better late than ever. Um, by the way, this is the first of. Of three episodes about sober dating. And I'm gonna. I'm gonna do two more episodes. I'm going to do another episode about approaching the art of approaching women sober, how to do it sober, how to go out for a night or a day sober in a way that works really, really well. And I'm also going to do another episode about some sober dating tips, especially through the lens of meeting women, having dates with women, and how to navigate this area of dating when you're sober or deciding to perhaps not drink on a date. Or maybe you are sober and you meet a woman who does like to drink. How do you handle that? What's the right way to navigate that? Or vice versa. Maybe you drink and she doesn't. What's the right way to navigate the world of dating when one of you is sober? Hopefully you. But it doesn't have to be that way. And. But yeah, I guess really I want to. I want you to ask yourself, what is your glass of Johnnie Walker Scotch? And when are you going to put it down? Okay, I'm gonna end with another song, another Paul McCartney song. This is a song that actually makes me think of my girlfriend Jess a lot because it's just such a warm song. And let's see if I can find it here. And let's see. Paul McCartney. Let me roll it. And there's something about the guitar in this song. It's so cool because it sounds like it's a. It's a McCartney clock. It's a McCartney Wings song. But it's. There's a. There's a guitar lick in the song that sounds so much like John Lennon that you could just tell Paul was making this a. An homage to John Lennon. Let me find it here. Let me roll it. I think it's under Wings. I'm just going through my iPhone here. Why am I not finding it here? Oh, here we go. All right. I'm Gonna let Paul McCartney play us out with Let Me Roll It, Wings. And I think you should roll it next. I think you should roll the dice, take some chances and start your January 1st, starting today. Until next time. The song is for you. Jess.
- [51:53]
B
You gave me something I understand. You gave me love. All this life and will Let me roll, Let me. Sam.