Feeling Stuck? Zoom Out to See Your Real Progress
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, Hardinbrook, published author, neuroscience enthusiast, and habit change expert. Welcome back to Journey to the Sunnyside.
Speaker 1:I'm Mike Hardinbrook. And on this ten minute Monday, I wanna start by asking a simple question. When's the last time you zoomed out on your progress? Now that's a little bit of a funny question, but the reason I'm asking it because most of us live zoomed in. We're tracking today, maybe this week.
Speaker 1:Did I drink last night? Did I stick to my plan? And if the answer feels like no, it's easy to label the whole effort as a failure. But here's the truth. One day never tells the whole story.
Speaker 1:Progress really shows up when you pull back and look at the big picture. And that's what we're going to do today. We're going to zoom out on the past thirty days, on the summer, and even the year so far. Because when you do, you're going to notice things that you can't see when you're only staring at today. And here's the cool part.
Speaker 1:If you zoom out and you see progress, great. You get to celebrate. But if you zoom out and you realize you're not feeling as good as you want to, well, that's also powerful too because it tells you what to do next. Now there's a whole reason why zooming out works, and this reason this perspective shift is so powerful. Psychologist Steven Kramer studied motivation, and he found something called the progress principle.
Speaker 1:So they discovered that the biggest driver of momentum isn't hitting some massive milestone. It's noticing the small wins, which I emphasize often here. But there is a catch. Those small wins, they're easy to miss. Your brain is wired to notice problems and threats more than steady improvements.
Speaker 1:So one slip up, one late night, one drink too many can feel louder than dozens or even more positive choices. And neuroscience explains this too. Dopamine, the brain's reward chemical isn't released every time you make a healthy decision. It's released when your brain expects pleasure. And that means that you can take a ton of positive changes and still feel like nothing is happening simply because your brain hasn't learned to register it yet.
Speaker 1:And that's why zooming out matters. It gives you a factual wide angled lens on your progress that your emotions might be hiding from you. So let's walk through this together. You can just listen, you can reflect, and if you're able to, you can jot down a few notes as we go. So think back over the last month.
Speaker 1:How many times did you swap maybe a night, an event, or any other kind of occasion where you normally would drink and decided not to? Were there maybe nights where you stopped at one or two instead of finishing the whole bottle? Did you maybe wake up with more energy on certain mornings? Individually, those things, they don't always feel huge. But that change, it doesn't happen over a perfect record.
Speaker 1:It happens because dozens of little choices like these start stacking up together. So now that we thought about maybe the last thirty days, think about a season as a whole. How did you navigate the summer? Barbecues, vacations, weddings. Did you experiment with different strategies?
Speaker 1:Maybe a simple pause, alternating drinks. Did you maybe take some more alcohol free days? As you're thinking about some of those strategies, how did it go? And most importantly, what moments did you actually remember from the summer that aren't necessarily all around drinking? Chances are it might be around food, might be about conversations, might be about time with family and laughter.
Speaker 1:I know for me, time outdoors, and it wasn't about the drinks themselves. And that shift in focus is progress. Now let's zoom out even further because a lot of us do this kind of introspective work and zooming out only around the New Year. But it's August something. Why not now?
Speaker 1:Why can't we do it in the middle of the year? So let's go all the way back since January. What chain do you maybe drink less frequently? Are you maybe more mindful about when and why you drink? Maybe you simply started paying more attention in a way that you didn't feel before.
Speaker 1:Maybe you even started listening to this podcast and making some changes. Behavior research shows that even just tracking your habits makes you more likely to change them. And that's exactly what we do here at Sunnyside and why it exists to help you see what's really happening, not just what your emotions tell you about a single moment. And maybe when you zoom out, you'll notice something else that you don't actually feel as good as you want to. Now we're talking a little bit about these wins, but I want you to maybe think about this.
Speaker 1:If you zoom out and you notice something else, maybe you don't actually feel as good as you want. Maybe you're still tired more often than you want to be. Maybe your mood isn't where it could be. Maybe you're just not feeling super proud of yourself. But that's okay.
Speaker 1:That's feedback that you're listening to. And your body and your mind are telling you something needs to shift. And by looking back, you realize, you know, maybe you skip this or don't do that. But over time, that's adding up. But when you realize, okay, it's not really going the way I want.
Speaker 1:Let's get back on course. That's empowering because it means you can start steering differently right now. And we really get to determine our destiny. And our destiny isn't made up in these giant leaps, these fast forward moments from where you were to where you wanna be. It's made in your daily decisions.
Speaker 1:Every single day, you get a chance to lay another brick, to shift course, to choose better. So zooming out helps us see where we've been, but it also shows us where to go next. Now, here's the other side to this. Once you've zoomed out, you need to zoom back in because perspective is only useful if it translates into action. And behavioral scientists call this the goal gradient effect.
Speaker 1:We're most motivated when the next step feels close and doable. So instead of thinking about the rest of the year, bring it back to this week. And here's a simple framework. We're gonna call it the three a's, awareness, adjustment, and action. So awareness, Take what you saw from zooming out.
Speaker 1:What's working? What's not? How do you feel in your body, your energy, and your mood? Example, I noticed that I'm sleeping better on the weeks that I had more alcohol free days. So if our observation was that we slept better on the weeks that we had more alcohol free days, let's move to adjustment.
Speaker 1:This is the second a. So now with that observation, choose one small lever to adjust this week that aligns to that. It could be add one more extra alcohol free day, or maybe you could start to experiment and cut drinks earlier in the night to align to better sleep. And this isn't about doing everything. We zoomed out, now we're zooming in.
Speaker 1:It's about tweaking one thing that makes a bigger difference. So we're gonna turn that adjustment into a clear specific step. So obviously, if you're using Sunnyside, you can set that day as an extra alcohol free day. But you can also go one step further. For example, this Thursday, I'm making an alcohol free night, and I'm gonna plan a workout for Friday morning.
Speaker 1:So that's a simple reset loop, awareness, adjustment, and action. And every week, you can run that loop. And that's how these micro choices build into long term progress. And if your zoom out showed you that you're not where you wanna be, that's okay, first of all. And today can be that turning point.
Speaker 1:You don't have to fix the whole picture at once. Just start that one daily decision tonight, tomorrow, this week, and that's how we start getting momentum and consistency. Okay. So in closing, whether you've been feeling stuck or you've just been too busy to really take notice, take a moment today to zoom out. Look at your month, how your summer went, how your year to date has been going.
Speaker 1:Your progress is there. And if it's not, you know what to do next. And once you see it, zoom back in, focus on today's choices because your future is built on the decisions that you make right here, right now. Thanks for hanging out with me today. I hope you have a beautiful week, and cheers to your mindful drinking journey.
Speaker 1: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.
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