5 Things That Happened When I Quit Alcohol For 7 Years

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Core Promise
• 0:22 The Decision That Changed Everything
• 2:09 From Struggle To Conviction
• 5:21 Sharing The Story Online
• 6:34 First Client Breakthrough
• 8:21 Becoming A Provider
• 10:08 Being A Better Brother
• 12:05 Marriage And Identity Shifts
• 14:59 Serve Others, Then Yourself

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Welcome to the Stop Drinking Podcast, where we help you make stopping drinking a simple, logical, and easy decision. We help you with tips, tools, and strategies to start living your best life when alcohol free. If you want to learn more about stop drinking coaching, then head over to www.soberclear.com. When I stopped drinking alcohol seven years ago, I knew for sure that life would get better. After drinking for close to 10 years, it was impossible for it not to. I knew I'd sleep better, I'd have more clarity, I'd have more energy, and I'd just feel more confident and positive about the future. And very quickly, when I stopped drinking, within a few weeks, those benefits all started materializing. What I didn't realize is just how huge the benefits would be. And there have really been five moments that have stood out to me on this journey of not drinking for seven years, because all of these five things were evidence that that decision was paying off better than any decision I could make. Stopping drinking alcohol was the number one decision I've made in my entire life because it's the gift that keeps on giving. I heard a great quote, and it was sobriety delivers what alcohol promises. It's pretty deep, but it's true. If we've not met yet, my name is Leon Sylvester. I'm the founder of Soberclear.com. We work with business owners and professionals, and we help them get control of their drinking with a scientifically validated approach. The system that we use, the Soberclear system, has been validated by an academic psychologist. There's a scientific report that you can find on Google Scholar that shows how we get a 96% client-rated success rate, and we've had people get results in as little as 24 hours. Don't get me wrong, that doesn't always happen. Usually people take three, four, five, six, maybe seven days. But if you want information on how we can help you stop drinking alcohol without AA and therapy and willpower, if you click the link in the description, there'll be a short video to watch. And then once you've watched that video, you'll be able to apply to join the program. And then me or a member of my team will jump on a short call with you to really just figure out if it's a good fit. So if you want information on that, click the link down below and let's get into the very first thing. Now, this is literally what the foundation of my entire journey of not drinking for seven years is built upon. And I'll explain why in a second. But when I struggled to stop drinking alcohol for close to 10 years, I was trying so many things. I read dozens of stop drinking books, I, you know, tried going to AA meetings, I read the big book, I got a sponsor, I did the step work, I tried going the religious approach where I went to church, I fought the urge with willpower, moderation attempts, you name it, and nothing worked. Now, these things, they sometimes helped. Sometimes I could stop drinking for a month, sometimes six months, but something would always pull me back. However, what changed seven years ago is I actually made a decision. What I didn't do was try and stop. What I didn't do was tell myself I'm just gonna stop for 30 days. I didn't do anything like that. Neither did I call myself an alcoholic or need to pray to get through the cravings. What I did instead is I decided to stop. And it was, I'm not even joking, it was the flick of a switch, and I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I was never going to drink again. And that might sound crazy, that might sound scary. I'm not saying you need to do that right this minute, but I felt free. For the first time ever, I felt pure freedom. I just felt like it's done. Like it was this huge wave of relief, just it's over. I am free. And it was the best feeling ever. Now, at the time, I didn't realize just how much power that decision would have, because what happened next is that decision led into other decisions. And what I mean is that if you've drank alcohol for a long time and you've tried to stop and failed, what you're actually doing here is you're telling yourself that when you commit to something, half-heartedly, you fail. And that spills into every area of your life. If you tell yourself you're not gonna drink and then three days later you're drinking, how committed will you be in the gym? How committed will you be with your family? What about your business, your career? And you might be that person that's thinking, ah Leon, my career is fine. But how's your health? How are your family? See, when you drink alcohol and you break those promises to yourself, it affects your entire life. But when I stopped drinking and I made a true decision, the conviction I had for every area of my life was amplified by 10,000. I'm not exaggerating. I immediately got back to the gym and I knew that I could get back in shape. I immediately started a personal training business and I knew I could build it. And then what happened is I started going in the right direction and it was working. But what I did is that same level of conviction I had in my decision to not drink was what I did with my health, right? With my career and my business. And then once I'd got a bit of momentum with my personal training business, I said, well, hang on, why don't I just take a bigger step? And what I did is I booked a one-way flight to Thailand. I moved to Asia because I had something that I didn't have when I was drinking. I had belief in myself on levels that I'd never had before. See, I'd always wanted a better quality of life when I was drinking, but the relationship I had with myself was pretty average. But this was the first big moment. It was making that decision. The decision that I'd been scared to make for so long, I just made it. It all happened because I'd rebuilt a paradigm where I started to see alcohol for what it was, but it was the best feeling ever. And if you can just make that decision as well, I promise you one thing, it'll be the best thing you've ever done. So, the second thing that happened, and a quick precursor here, but you'll see how all of these things are 100% related to you and your journey at the end of the video. I'm not trying to boast, I'm not trying to like show off. All I'm doing is giving you a taste of what's to come. But what happened in my journey is I stopped drinking alcohol and I went a full year. I didn't think about it, there was no problems at all, and just everything was going in the right direction. I felt like things were linear. I felt like things were just progressing the way I wanted them to, rather than just being on this never-ending roller coaster. Now, long story short, is I started sharing my journey on the internet. I talked about being one year sober, and the video got 5,000 views and hundreds of comments, and people loved the message. And at first, I didn't think much of it, but as I made another video talking about my experience, again it had such a positive response. And it felt like a calling. I felt like there was a problem here that I'd fix that I could help other people solve. So I started trying to help people. And at first, I had no idea what I was doing. I was talking to people, I was asking them what they were doing, what they tried, what's worked, what hasn't. And after a while, I had this group on Facebook where I maybe had a hundred people in there, and I said, all right, I'm gonna create something that people can watch and hopefully they get the same mindset shift that I had. So I built a course. It was two hours long, it had spelling mistakes. I did it as fast as I could because I just wanted to see if I could create something that genuinely helped people. Now, what happened next blew my mind. I gave it to 50 people and all 50 people stopped drinking. Now I'm joking. It wasn't that easy, right? I gave it away and nobody watched it. And I'm thinking, man, what am I gonna do with my life? But then a few weeks passed and somebody sent me a message. And technically, without this man sending me this message, the program that I have today, the company I've built, would never have happened. Who knows what I'd be doing right now? I might be a window cleaner. I don't know. But somebody stopped drinking. They watched this two-hour video training, and that was it. And I remember getting this thing from him, and he's like, whatever you want, I'll do a testimonial, a video, I'll put my name on it. I don't care. And this moment, it was like a rush. I was like, oh my gosh. I remember showing my now wife, and I said, Look, it's this guy's made a video. He's not drinking and he doesn't want to. He's had the exact same mindset shift that I've had, and he's had the conviction to decide. And that was the start of sober clear, of you know, helping hundreds of people now stop drinking alcohol, making the largest free resource on the internet, helping people stop drinking, this YouTube channel. But that moment just changed everything because something shifted inside. I knew that I had something that other people needed, and I knew that it would change their life. And this is why I've been able to make so many videos now. Because I know that when people are ready and they want to change, the approach that I've got for them works. And that shift was massive. And again, at the end of the video, I'm going to explain what was actually going on in my mind during each of these shifts. Because when you actually understand the internal shift that was happening, you'll see what I'm talking about. But this brings me to the third big moment. And I'm not gonna lie, the next three things, they may come across as boastful, but trust me, they're not. They're just things that I've experienced that have happened in my life. To be honest, I didn't know I'd share some of these because they are personal, but it doesn't really matter. But the third big moment that happened is I met my girlfriend, who is now my wife. So my wife is Thai. She comes from a place in between Bangkok and Chiang Mai, kind of in the north of Thailand. And her family have a restaurant. Her mum does big catering for hundreds of people. And my wife's mum had built her own house. And she'd had a mortgage for it, she'd built it, you know, it's a beautiful home. And around this time, this was when I turned my financial life around. When I was drinking, I was in financial ruin. I was borrowing money off my family. My finances, they weren't looking good. But by this point, the coaching business was taking off. Me and Or, we were in a serious relationship now. It looked like we were gonna stay together for a very long time. So, one thing that we did is my mother-in-law, what we did is we withdrew a lot of money and we paid off her final mortgage payment. And we got it as cash, we had this wad of money, and we gifted it to my mother-in-law, and we did it in front of my wife's grandparents. And listen, this was one of the most fulfilling things I'd ever done. Just a few years ago, all I was thinking about was me and my drinking, and how can I get the next drink, and you know, I didn't care about anybody else. I was selfish. I put me first, my drinking came first, and I don't really care. And to do something like this, it was a little bit out of character to who I used to be. But I was changing, I was growing. And I remember doing this, and again, there was another shift. And I'll come back to the shifts in a minute at the end of the video. But doing this just solidified things. It was such a good feeling doing that and doing something for somebody else where you don't get anything in return for it. You're just giving freely, and it was such a good feeling. And I didn't honestly think I'd ever tell anybody about this. I did this years ago now, so you know, I wasn't doing it to go and tell people one day, but it's a beautiful thing that happened, and I wanted to share it with you. So let's get into the fourth moment. When I drank alcohol, I'm 33 years of age, but I have a younger brother who's 19. We have a huge age gap. He's actually a different father, same mother. And I remember even when I was drinking alcohol, my brother was very young, because I was in my 20s, and I remember writing things down like, you know, why do I want to stop drinking? And I'd write about my brother and the example I want to set to him, and then I'd drink again. And the cycle would repeat. But having a younger person in the family was helpful because you kind of have to set an example. Now, don't get me wrong, I didn't set a great example for a lot of his life, but now he's older and he understands alcohol and these problems. I am setting a good example. Or at least I think I am, and it's a lot better than it was. Now, one amazing thing that's happened with my brother is he had a bit of a tough time growing up. I'll keep this short because I don't want to embarrass him, but he went from kind of going down the wrong direction, mixing with the wrong crowd, and just being naughty, and you could kind of see where that life path was going. He'd tell me stories and I'd I'd almost get a little bit scared. I'd be thinking, I just want you to come and live with me, don't go back to England. But over the past two years, that guy has gone through such a huge transformation. He's put on, you know, I don't know, 10, 15 kg of pure muscle. He was literally about to just end college and just quit, to getting three distinctions in his work, which is like 4.0 GPA or free grade A's, getting into university, now studying a marketing degree, and I'm just so proud of him. I just can't believe he's managed to go from where he was to what he's doing now. It's amazing. And I'm not taking any credit for that, but I like to think that, well, isn't it much better that I'm setting this example for him than the example I set, you know, seven years ago. So that's a really nice thing that's happened. And just knowing that I can be there for him, if he needs anything, I'll be there. He came and spent two months with us during summer because we wanted to reward the amazing results that he's had and all the effort that he's put in. And just seeing him go to university, it just makes me feel so good. Now, the fifth moment and the final moment is that I got married. I became a husband. And this only happened a few months ago, it wasn't long ago. But honestly, I didn't know I was gonna get married, especially when I stopped drinking. I just spent so long not even thinking about the future because I didn't plan ahead. I wasn't thinking that far forward. I was just thinking about me and my drinking right now. And getting married has been amazing. There's been a shift in my heart and it just feels so good. It feels so good that this is it, we're all in for life, and it makes me so happy. And hopefully, hopefully my wife will say the same. Maybe she's got another version of this. I'm just kidding. But with all of these five things, again, I'm not telling you these things because I want you to go, wow, look at Leon, because I'm sure you don't care. But here's what's actually happened. I spent 10 years of my life identifying as somebody who drank alcohol. There were points where I thought I was an alcoholic, but that was my identity. I was either a drinker or somebody struggling to not drink. But my identity, the way I viewed myself, was as a drinker. But all of these milestones and moments that have happened in my life were confirmation that my identity was changing. I went from a drinker to a non-drinker, which was the foundation of everything. I knew that I wasn't going to drink again, and it filled me with so much confidence. The next identity shift that I had was I started to see myself as an entrepreneur. When that person stopped drinking alcohol, I knew that I could help other people. Then, with paying off that final payment of my mother-in-law's mortgage, I knew I was a provider for my family. I could provide them with resources to make their life better, which was just so much better than how I used to behave. Then, next, I became a positive example for my younger brother. And then finally, I became a husband. And these shifts in the way that I viewed myself are just night and day different to the way I saw myself when I drank. See, once you stop drinking alcohol and you're a non-drinker, what you want to do is just move on with your life. Solve that problem so then you can start having identity shifts. So you can start seeing yourself as something more positive. What you don't want to do is live the rest of your life in that non-drinker phase. So many people out there make not drinking alcohol their number one identity. And you want to know the truth? How selfish. I don't know if you noticed, but the four big shifts that I went through, technically, they're nothing to do with me. They were all to do with other people. Being an entrepreneur means you build things for other people to use that help them. Being a provider means that you give to other people. Being a positive example means that somebody else benefits from that. And being married means that the person that you're marrying gets a huge benefit. You know, being married is about serving the other person. None of these things were actually about me. When you stop drinking alcohol, you get out of this selfish phase of your life and you can start being there for the people that you love in ways that you just can't imagine. I promise you, if you stick on this path, it'll change everything. Thanks for checking out the Stop Drinking podcast by SoberClear. If you want to learn more about how we work with people to help them stop drinking effortlessly, then make sure to visit www.soberclear.com.