The Wake Up Call That Changed Everything for Rob Tracz
Welcome to Journey to the Sunny Side, 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. Rob Trax is a performance coach to founders, athletes, and high achievers. But he wasn't always living in alignment. At one point, he was doing 17 client sessions a day, seven days a week, using alcohol just to shut his brain off. His health was slipping, relationships crumbling, and the hustle culture he thought was helping was actually hiding what really needed to change.
Speaker 1:In this episode, Rob opens up about his breaking point, his experience using Sunnyside to bring awareness to his drinking, and the personal story that led him to redefine what success actually looks like. If you've been stuck in go mode, get ready for today's episode. Hey, Rob. Thanks for coming on today.
Speaker 2:Of course. I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 1:Definitely. So let's jump right into it. Before you became a performance coach, you were grinding nonstop, as you said, and as a strength and conditioning specialist. Take us back a little bit. What was life like?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So right out of grad school, I kind of are you familiar with strength and conditioning industry by any chance?
Speaker 1:A little bit. So, like, as a college student, I did some personal training, which was man, that was rough. You actually you don't do much training. You do mostly sales.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. And as a strength and conditioning professional, it's, like, kind of similar. So you typically go one of two routes. You either go the collegiate kind of setting and hopes to work with a big big name school or eventually go on to the professional setting, or you go more of like the private sector, which is more of the entrepreneurial world.
Speaker 2:It's kinda like personal training. It's a lot of sales and marketing and such, but I found myself going the private sector and I was in working in this facility where it really gave me the freedom to build my own book of business, do all my marketing, do all my sales and such, and that was exciting to me because that allowed me to scale my book of business up to the point where I was essentially working fifteen, sixteen, sometimes 17 sessions in a day, which is Wow. Crazy, like busy, and I was doing that seven days a week for about three years straight, nonstop, just kind of grinding, grinding, grinding, and on paper that was awesome because it looked and it felt like I was successful, but at the same time my life was kind of falling apart. The relationship with the girl I was dating fell apart, my friends and family stopped calling me for birthday parties, weddings, and even on the holidays too because I would work Christmas, birthday, New Year's, Thanksgiving, etcetera, and and that was tough. So it was a busy grind of a period.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You know, you said something there that really hits home that I've gone through, and that is when you're busy, you think you're being successful. But then there's gonna be a breaking point. And speaking of breaking point, so you were sitting alone and you realized that you had no clients for the first time in months. How did that moment open your eyes?
Speaker 2:Yeah. It was it was it was a crazy experience because there I am. I'm working. I'm grinding, working all these hours. And in that moment of reflection, that was about a year and a half after my dad had actually passed.
Speaker 2:So in that period of what I call robot mode where I was grinding and just working nonstop, my dad had got sick with stage four pancreatic cancer and quickly about six weeks after his diagnosis, he ended up passing away. For a lot of individuals, you might think that that would be an eye opening experience itself, that maybe you were working too much and some form of regret was developing, and I felt really bad. And, thankfully, I was able to be by his side when he did ultimately pass, it was a very peaceful morning and such, but quickly after that, I jumped right back into working nonstop, and that full schedule then became a distraction from the life that I had built. And it wasn't until about a year later where I had that moment to kinda sit and pause because so many people were traveling and so many people were away. I believe it was Labor Day weekend, and I'm sitting in my apartment Friday night just, like, swiping through my phone, looking for clients, like, basically, like a bad dating app.
Speaker 2:I'm just swipe swipe swipe looking through looking through who's around who's around, and and nobody was around. And that forced me to kinda sit back and say, okay. Well, I have an open Saturday tomorrow. I have the rest of this Friday night. What do normal people do on Friday nights?
Speaker 2:And that's when I realized, like, hey. I used to go to the movies. I would go out with friends to dinner. I would hang out at home and have people come over, and and then I realized that nobody was around. I was virtually around people all day along with my clients, but I felt so isolated.
Speaker 2:And that moment there is when I was realized that, like, there's gotta be more to this. There's more to just teaching squat patterns and dead lifts, and and I know that there's more to me that I can share with the world. And I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to do, but that was the beginning stages of my prime performance coaching that I do now, and and that was the eye opening, like, hey, I do need to change. There is something more to me, but let's figure this out.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You know, you said something there. What do normal people do on a Friday? How did you see yourself?
Speaker 2:I at the time, I wore my busy schedule like a badge of honor. So I was considering myself like, oh, I'm a crazy. I'm pushing hard. I'm working, but it's all good. It's good.
Speaker 2:It's harder. I can push harder. I can keep going more, more, more, more just because I was chasing that financial milestone, and every time I hit a new milestone, it just kinda get pushed back a little bit further. And I think a lot of that stemmed from my competitiveness and my athletic background because, you know, you're trained as an athlete to always push, push, push, and dig a little bit deeper and push a little bit harder, and and I did that a lot with my grades, with my with my business, and it paid off and it was beneficial, but I lacked the awareness of when to turn it off and when to pull back on the reins. Ultimately, it was beneficial, but also it led to some dark times in my life.
Speaker 1:I mean, I can definitely relate because I was in that hustle culture. You know, I come from tech startups and, you know, the more you hustle, the more you succeed. And as I go, I'm I'm more of the anti hustler these days, to be honest. I mean, you gotta strike a balance, of course, you know, as you would know. I mean, I tend to work when I have the energy, which is most of the time.
Speaker 1:And then when I recognize that I don't have the energy, I no longer push through that. But also knowing when to turn it off because that's really where I got into a little bit of trouble around alcohol was because that was my shut off switch. Right? That was the only way that I could shut my brain down in the evening and say, you're not working anymore. And I know that you work with a lot of high achievers and they slip into what you mentioned as robot mode.
Speaker 1:What is that and how does it show up in our daily life?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So robot mode robot mode itself isn't necessarily negative. It's it's essentially that flow state. Like, you're working optimally. Everything is efficient.
Speaker 2:You're getting a lot done. You're you're achieving the success that you're seeking out to achieve, but the problem comes when we don't know how to turn it back off, right, like we were just mentioning. And when you get stuck in that robot mode for too long, you lose the human mode of yourself, and and you lose that consciousness and that awareness of what's going on because you're so dialed in on the task at hand and and while I was in that robot mode, like I was saying before, the relationship started falling apart, my health started falling apart and similar to you where, like, the alcohol at the end of the day was my turn off for the day. I'd be getting up at, 03:30 in the morning, caffeinating up so I can be ready to roll by 04:30 so I can get my training sessions in going until, like, eight or 09:00 at night and where I'd have a couple of drinks to kinda turn it off for the night and restart the next day. And a lot of high achievers that I work with struggle with that because they get stuck and they can't turn back off.
Speaker 2:And for myself it was also struggling to set the boundaries too, so anytime a client would pop in and I knew I needed to schedule more time for myself and I needed to back off, but anytime somebody would cancel and look to reschedule on my personal time, I would feel obligated to let them take that time over myself, and that just created this terrible spiral of constantly people pleasing and never really prioritizing myself.
Speaker 1:Isn't it wild how you can get so in the thick of things that you actually start to lose focus on what your North Star is and what you began with in the in the beginning? So for for you, in the first place, it was around health and wellness, and then you just said, my health was suffering.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, I'm supposed to be the epitome of health. Right? Strength and conditioning coach, working with a lot of d one bound athletes and semi professional athletes and even ex professional athletes. And these guys are looking to me to be a pillar of strength and and motivation and energy and all this other stuff, and I'm supplementing with way more caffeine than I needed to in the mornings and and alcohol and quick fast food in the evenings and not sleeping and sacrificing my training for other people, and it was, yeah, it was a bad bad bad spiral I was getting into.
Speaker 1:So you talk a little bit about unhealthy coping habits, which we already know we've touched on a little bit, you know, you also around alcohol to an extent. I definitely did. Many people can empathize to numbing out or drinking, and it keeps people stuck in this cycle. But you also emphasize awareness over restriction. Why do you think strict rules and willpower often fail while awareness creates lasting change?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think awareness gives you a different perspective on it. I think a lot of times when people jump in and they're trying to cut out or restrict, whether it's food, alcohol, or caffeine, or whatever they're kinda doing, that tells them that they can't do it. And then that makes it that much harder for them to stick to willpower because we have a lot of decisions that we're making throughout the day. And I think a lot of decision fatigue comes into play.
Speaker 2:And then at the end of the night, that ice cream or that drink or those snacks or something, it becomes that much harder to stand against. And especially if we have high pressure, stressful careers or we work in industries where we gotta change directions or role switch and play a lot wear a lot of different hats, that wears us down. And as disciplined as you wanna be and and you put that and you attach it to your identity, and then you're kind of lying to yourself, and then regret happens if you do, like, stumble or step back and then it's kind of the all or nothing kind of mentality in today's world where, like, oh, if I say I'm gonna do this, I can't do anything else. But I think when you look at it from the lens of an awareness and and understanding and and looking at the bigger picture, I think that allows you to give a little bit of leeway and understand that it's okay to be human and it's okay to slip up here and there or or give yourself a little bit of wiggle room. And and I think that's where the awareness really separates it from the game.
Speaker 1:I mean, I, of course, agree with you on that. I think that, you know, anything that I'm trying to do these days, I really look at it like, is this something I could do long term? Or is this just something like I'm gonna really I'm stepping into it and I'm pushing myself so hard that by the end, it's gonna just go off the cliff. And I don't do any of that anymore. And I don't know that I'm lucky a little bit that I'm wired that I've always sort of thought that way.
Speaker 1:But I see it so many times in people like, for example, I was in this coaching company for quite a while. A lot of people would do the seventy five day hard and they would get tons of results and, but they just drop off, you know. It would just totally fall off. You would see them in a couple weeks and then maybe in a couple months, you'd see them posting that they're gonna do it again and it was this cycle and, yeah, there's some great things going on there but nothing lasting. And I'm not trying to toot my own horn but, like, I tried it.
Speaker 1:I already eat pretty good. I like to read. The drinking thing wasn't hard. There were a lot of things I was doing, but, like, there were times when I just oh, I forgot to take a picture of myself, so technically, I had to start over. And I was like, this is dumb.
Speaker 1:I do most of this already, and I think that's the whole point of this. So why do I need to restrict myself for seventy five days to prove to myself when I've sort of already built a lot of these things in it? So I think that bringing that mentality is hard for a lot of people, especially both around alcohol and food, which we're both talking about, and fitness. Like, they think that they have to go all in on it, but that what do you think about that? Is that like a recipe for disaster?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, so I think 75 hard, I think, is a is a good challenge. I think it's tough and I think it is hard. And I think though that it might be a little bit out there on too much at one time because you're kinda stacking up so many different things that you kinda have to you have to follow, otherwise you're not perfect on it or whatever, and I think it's a good challenge to go through, and I think a lot of people when they dive into making these major changes in their lives, they think it's the all or nothing and there is no boundaries or deadlines that they can kind of break and change and reassess and see how things are going. Like in terms of business, nowadays, I might be super exhausted, I might be tired because I'm going through a sprint season with a lot of like, speaking and workshops and things like that, and I'll push myself a little bit harder if I know that there's a deadline coming up kinda soon where I can readjust and take a little bit of, like, a downtime then to allow myself to get back into it.
Speaker 2:But whereas when I was back in robot mode, there was no boundary of of an end zone or a deadline. It was just push, push, push, pushing, keep pushing because that's who I am. I'm I can grind it out forever kind of thing. Now having the awareness of, okay. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna try this. I'm gonna try this for the next ninety days or I'm gonna try this next or or four weeks or whatever the month, I'm gonna really push myself, and I'm gonna stick to one or two things to minimize the craziness that I have to change my life, and then I'll see, like, if I'm enjoying this or if I find this being super beneficial, then I'll continue to do it. And something similar to that was my morning routine that I used to do. I used to wake up super early, practice my Spanish gratitude journal, I would meditate, I would get a little activity in, I would plan out my day, and I would get all this other stuff done, and it was great, and it felt good when I would get everything in, but I became a slave to that as well. And if I couldn't get everything in and if I couldn't meditate for a full thirty minutes, it would throw off my whole day, and then in back of my head, it would affect me, and sometimes that would appear in different conversations or meetings I would have because my attitude would be a little off because I knew I didn't get x, y, and z in.
Speaker 2:And then I realized, like, hey, there's no real right way that you have to do x, y, and z. It's like, you give and take. You can push with it. And if you're flexible enough where you're still benefiting and you're putting in the effort, I think you're still coming out as a winner on top.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, I can relate it. The it's this, like, tightrope you gotta walk because on one side of it, when I talk about, like, oh, this is, like, too extreme and you can't sustain it, that doesn't mean don't push yourself. Don't step into something that you know is not sustainable, but but have realistic expectations. Like, I'm gonna try this for this period with the intention of coming out, like, maybe I'm somewhere if you imagine two points, I'm a little bit closer to that person that I wanna be, even if I'm not gonna be able to sustain the exact version of that in the extreme side of things, you know.
Speaker 1:And and I think that, yeah, you push yourself, but also you wanna create an environment where it's not so difficult that you won't even get start it's a, like, it's a non starter. Right? Because that that first step is just too big. So it's okay, I think, to step into something a little bit more manageable. And so I actually wanna ask you because before we hit record, you said that you used Sunnyside early on.
Speaker 1:So I really wanna know because I think that's what I'm talking about here is that when little steps forward, and it I mean, assuming that you're young that just, like, wanting to be, like, I swear off alcohol forever was probably a nonstarter for you. Did you feel like maybe Sunnyside was that right choice for you at the time?
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah. Definitely. Because it wasn't one of those, like, apps where just basically just tracking every day, like, oh, how's, like, sobriety every single day? It was it was a tool because you could check-in on, okay, bringing awareness, right, to, okay, how many drinks am I having over a bigger picture of time, like, okay, now you're are you starting to move towards where you want to? Because I didn't wanna give up alcohol forever.
Speaker 2:I just wanted to monitor and and pay attention to it so I could benefit myself from it, so I can continue to show up as a better version of myself. And my experience was that being able to have somebody else to kind of check-in and seeing where I'm at and how I'm doing over, like, a day to day and a week to week and a month to month kind of process was such a cool experience for me because it was it wasn't like an all or nothing, but it was, hey. I'm actually moving towards this. I'm cutting back on the amount of drinks I'm having, the amount of days that I'm drinking, and it was just like, this is this is incredible, and it was super cool because it was like, you could said that I was just texting it, so it was like I'm texting a buddy and it wasn't anything too crazy,
Speaker 1:and I just loved the whole experience of it. Yeah. Do you remember I know it was a little while ago, like, where you went, where you started, and where you went to?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So when I had first started, it was probably right around after my dad had passed and I had that realization that, okay, things need to change. I need to kind of figure out, like, where I'm gonna be making moves in my life and the career that I wanna be building. I had realized that I was spending too much time drinking and then excessive drinking on the weekends, it was just a huge, huge role for me. So I was probably in a situation where I was drinking probably seven days a week and then excessively on the weekends and then would just slow start, the next week would be kind of like a haze and gotta start back at square one and that helped me kind of tracking and bringing awareness to which days were really the worst for me and then allowing me to then start adding in dry days.
Speaker 2:And then from there, I was like, okay. How many dry days can I get to? And then it was like, okay. Well, now I am going out to networking events. Now let me, like, check and make sure, keeping myself in check.
Speaker 2:I Do actually wanna drink, or do I just wanna hang out and be social? Or, like, it was crazy because there was, like, this hole that I had dug myself into thinking that this is what I needed to do for work and connecting with more people. And then using Sunnyside, it really allowed me to see that there is a different way of going about it, and you can still use it as a social tool, I guess, with drinking, but then you don't need to be excessive. Like, there's there's a whole another world that you can lean into and and still enjoy the best of all different worlds and perspectives.
Speaker 1:It's so awesome because for every one story that we hear, there's probably a 100 that we don't get to. You know, like, if we didn't have this podcast conversation, I would have never known that was your experience and that you I mean, it did exactly what is intended, which is bring mindfulness and awareness and then tools to support that and now lasting habits, whereas now you don't feel like you need to rely on it for the rest of your life because you've you've set that pattern, you've brought that awareness and mindfulness into your life now, and so you can just move forward and leave that part of you behind.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. It's it it was such a great experience, like I said, and it was made it super easy and I think that's the biggest thing too. Right? Making it easy for people, just like going to the gym.
Speaker 2:Like, if I write a perfect program that I'm like, this will guarantee you will get results. If you're not gonna follow and if it's not easy enough for you to follow and stick to it, you're not going to do it. And it made it like kept me with it continued to give me my autonomy and my ability to do what I wanted to without telling me this is exactly what you need to do. And I think that also played into it, made it very great for me.
Speaker 1:That's where we'll pause for today. In part two, we dive into the exact frameworks Rob now uses with his clients to protect their energy, stay consistent, and avoid the crash cycle. We talk nutrition, dopamine, distractions, and how to know when you've crossed the line from helpful routines to unhealthy pressure. Make sure you're following so you don't miss it. 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 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.
Speaker 1: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. That's sunnyside.co.
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