10-Minute Mondays: 5 Steps to Bounce Back from Slip-Ups (Guilt-Free)
Welcome to Journey to the Sunnyside, the podcast where we have thoughtful conversations to explore the science of habits, uncover the secrets to mindful living, and of course, your own mindful drinking journey. This podcast is brought to you by Sunnyside, the number one alcohol moderation platform. And if you could benefit from drinking a bit less, head on over to sunnyside.co to get a free fifteen day trial. I'm your host, Mike Hardinbrook, published author, neuroscience enthusiast, and habit change expert. Welcome to another one of these ten minute episodes.
Speaker 1:I'm excited to get going. If you're on video, you'll see my background's different. I'm actually traveling from Scottsdale, Arizona on the way to Boulder, and I'm stopped somewhere in the middle in New Mexico. So I wanted to make sure to get this out before Monday because the feedback I've been getting has been really positive and that really motivates me to keep doing these no matter if I'm on the road or at home. So thanks for joining me today and let's jump into a very important topic that's very common and that is dealing with slip ups.
Speaker 1:And the first thing I want to address is the negative self talk. Most of us, when we slip up, we tend to beat ourselves up a little bit and say things even to the extreme of I'm weak or, you know, I'm failing at this, or I'm just not strong enough. And it's quite the opposite. So this is just a part of the journey. This is not a reflection of your character.
Speaker 1:If you slipped up along the way and, you know, no major successes have a direct line from this is what I want to do to here's where I am. In other terms, no business, no entrepreneur ever got to their highest success without some speed bumps, without obstacles and challenges along the way. And definitely without questioning, you know, can I do this? And the fact that you're feeling bad is actually an indication of how strong you are because you have these high goals. You want to make a change.
Speaker 1:And if you were actually weak willed and not strong enough, you wouldn't have even started in the first place. So point number one is remove the negative self talk and reflect on where you are right now, maybe what the challenges have been, but move it into a proactive space and just basically tell yourself, Hey, I can do this. All right. So let's move on to step two and that's what I would call surfing the day. So you may have heard me in other episodes talk about urge surfing.
Speaker 1:So this is about acknowledging the fact that you have this urge to have a drink. And this is about sitting with that feeling, letting it build up, but you are just acknowledging it. You're not engaging with it. You're not taking action on it. And one of the things that's working against us when we slip up and probably overindulge the night before, the next day, our minds, our bodies are depleted, and this puts us into a low mood, a low depressed state.
Speaker 1:So in those low states, you're not really thinking in the most positive of ways. So just like you would with surf the urge and let it build, acknowledge its presence, but not take action and not really take it so seriously. Right? You let it subside. Well, you can do that with the day.
Speaker 1:So this might be your day to just say, you know what? Today's not the best day and I'm just going to get through it. And I'm not going to make any major life conclusions about where I am, who I am, how strong I am. I'm just going to say, Hey, you know what? Today's the low day.
Speaker 1:Because a lot of people will really resist against these days. They, how can I flip this day into a good day? And I'm not telling you not to do that, but there's also another way that doesn't take so much mental energy and focus. And then also, you don't flip it into a good day, you feel bad. Like, why can't I pull out of this?
Speaker 1:And so why don't you just surf the day and say, today, I'm just going to get through it. I'm in a low mood. I'm going to take it easy on myself. I'm not going to beat myself up. And tomorrow is another day and I'll wake up.
Speaker 1:I'm going to feel better. I'm going to think clear. And maybe I can problem solve a little bit clear because I don't have these things working against me. Because what you have to realize is that alcohol depletes many minerals, vitamins, the central nervous system, all these things going on in your body and in your brain are not at an equilibrium. You are not at homeostasis at this point.
Speaker 1:So it's not just like in your head, it's actually a physical thing going on. And so keeping that in mind and giving it some time to reset will set you up in the long run for making better decisions on what your next step is after this slip up. Okay. So step three is really looking at this from a problem solving angle, and this is a learning opportunity. So, of all, thank yourself for stopping and pausing and saying, you know what?
Speaker 1:I messed up, but I'm going to learn from this. So it's all this mental setup that I told you about earlier, but now being a little more proactive at this step. So I want you to take pause and maybe reflect on what it was about that situation that made you break your commitment and take it a step further. Is there anything in the past where potentially you've done this multiple times where you can identify a pattern? And sometimes it's just one of those freak occurrences where there is no pattern.
Speaker 1:It just is what it is. It happened. But now you can take note of that circumstance so that if it comes up in the future, it doesn't become a pattern. So take pause at this point and basically evaluate the situation that you were in, or maybe the state of mind you were in, or maybe the environment that you were in and take pause and take a look at what that looks like. Okay.
Speaker 1:So the next step, we're going to go and take those observations a step further. And this is something that our brains do on autopilot. So habits are formed to conserve energy and we have a trigger and urge and action and a reward. And so let's first start at the trigger level. So the trigger is, as it says, it's pretty self explanatory, something that causes us to have this urge.
Speaker 1:And when we have this urge, we have a point to either get past the urge and not take an action, or we take that action. So when we take that action, it's usually tied to wanting a reward. So when we have a reward after taking the action, that causes the cycle to go around and round. So when we have the trigger and at the end we have the reward, it causes this loop because the brain says, well, when I have this trigger and I take this action, I'm going to get a reward. And so what we want to do right now is break this and interrupt it at either the trigger or the urge level.
Speaker 1:So what can we do when we're evaluating what happened during this slip up to say, this really triggered me. Was it an emotional state? Was it an environment that you were in? Was it a specific person? Was it sort of a routine or a time of day?
Speaker 1:So start thinking through what were some potential triggers that caused you to have an urge to want to drink. And some of these will be unavoidable. Life happens. It's just, you're in an environment you can't avoid. Maybe you're going through a stressful time.
Speaker 1:Well, you can't make that stress go away. So if you get this urge, what are some things then that you can do that would interrupt the urge level? What are some mindfulness practices? Could you go for a walk? We already know that you can get past an urge or a craving fifteen to twenty minutes, right?
Speaker 1:Or what are some mindfulness practices? Can you meditate? Can you breath work? Can you call a friend and maybe distract yourself? There's all kinds of different practices that you can do that would interrupt at the urge level.
Speaker 1:So I really want you to take your first observations in the last point and then apply them here in these two categories, triggers and urges. And what can you learn and then plan for in the future. And then on step five, if you are using Sunnyside and you're tracking and planning, well, you might already have a plan for the rest of the week and you might have a drinking day set. Well, if you slipped up, you have the opportunity with moderation and mindful drinking to make up that slip up. So where in your plan can you potentially make up where you messed up?
Speaker 1:And I don't even like using that term. You didn't really mess up or really slip up. It's just part of the journey. Like I said, nothing's going to be perfect. No Olympic athlete, for example, ever started training for the Olympics, never ate bad, never skipped a training day, but they kept moving forward.
Speaker 1:They kept persevering until they were at that moment of glory for themselves to be at the Olympics and hopefully get a gold medal. And so you need to think about it in those terms, give yourself that grace, that curiosity. And then in this moment, where can you make it up in Sunnyside or however you're tracking and planning, which if you're doing moderation and mindful drinking, is essential to getting to your success. And what I really want you to do at this point is to stay curious, to be in this problem solving mode and observe how you are in each step. Because once you start being observational to these patterns, once you start going through life and saying, you know what, I bet if I do that, I might be having these triggers.
Speaker 1:And if you say to yourself, well, I think it's okay because I have these different fallbacks at the urge level. I could do EFT tapping. I can do breath work. I can go for a walk. So I have confidence to walk into this situation where I know I might have triggers that cause urges, but I'm confident because I am aware.
Speaker 1:And when you stay curious and when you stay problem solving, that's going to get you to where you want to be. So I hope this episode was helpful. And if you are finding value in the podcast, the best way you can do to support it is by leaving a review on whatever podcast platform you're listening to. And I just wanna wish you a great week, and thanks for listening. This podcast is brought to you by Sunnyside, the number one alcohol moderation platform, having helped hundreds of thousands of people cut out more than 13,000,000 drinks since 2020.
Speaker 1:And in fact, an independent study showed that Sunnyside reduced alcohol consumption by an average of 30% in ninety days. And as one of our members shared, Sunnyside helps me stay mindful of my drinking habits. It's not super restrictive, so if I'm craving a glass of wine with dinner, I just track it and I move on with my week. If you could benefit from drinking a bit less and being more mindful of when and how much you drink, head on over to sunnyside.co to get a free fifteen day trial. You'll get access to everything that we offer, including tracking and planning tools, coaching from our experts, a vibrant community of people just like you, and the motivation and advice to stay on track with your health goals, all with no pressure to quit.
Speaker 1:That's sunnyside.co.
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