If you’ve ever thought pouring a drink is easier than doing the work of stopping myself, you’ll want to listen to today’s episode. Sure, saying yes to a craving feels easy because it’s the familiar path, but familiar and easy are not the same thing. This is episode 438, and I’ll show you what’s really going on in the moments when the drink feels like the easier choice and how to reframe what’s happening so that the work of change doesn’t feel harder than it has to.

Whether you want to drink less or stop drinking, this podcast will help you change the habit from the inside out. We’re challenging conventional wisdom about why people drink and why it can be hard to resist temptation. No labels, no judgment, just practical tools to take control of your desire and stop worrying about your drinking. Now, here’s your host, Rachel Hart.

Rachel Hart: All right, guys. Welcome back. I am here again with Adriana Cloud, who is a coach with me inside Take a Break, and we are talking about a topic that comes up a lot when we are working with people inside the membership. And that is about the amount of effort and time and energy that it takes to do this work and to retrain your brain if you want to have a different relationship with alcohol. So Adriana, why don’t you tell us kind of what that usually sounds like when you are helping people inside Ask a Coach?

Adriana Cloud: Sure. It’s usually some variation of it’s too long. It takes too much to sit down and write down what I’m thinking. It’s just so much easier to just pour a drink and not think about it. It’s a matter of time, it’s a matter of the mental energy that it takes. And so, we hear this often is that, well, it’s just so much easier to drink. This work feels like a lot of effort.

Rachel Hart: Yeah. For, you know, people who are new, who might not be familiar with the work, I want to let you know that the two foundational exercises that everybody is focusing on, no matter your drink archetype, we work on these in the membership. These are foundational exercises inside the ultimate guide to drinking less. There’s not some sort of like, you know, secret exercise that we only release if you’re a member. These two exercises are the same. 

The very first exercise is name and notice. So, it is really that pausing to notice that you’re having a craving and articulate it either internally to yourself or verbally. I personally like doing it verbally. I think that there’s a lot of power to just say out loud like, “Oh, I’m having a craving right now.” So it’s that name and notice exercise. And then exercise two is once we have created that pause and also started interacting with it differently, right? So naming and noticing is, even though it sounds very simple and it sounds kind of like, “How could this possibly really be effective?” You’re doing something very different from what you normally do when the craving appears, right?

So, rather than kind of leaning into the craving and fantasizing like, “Oh, yeah, when I get home, this is going to be so good,” or kind of pushing it away, resisting it, trying to ignore it, to just really state what is happening truly is creating a new neural pathway. So that’s the first thing. And then the second exercise that we have people, and again, no matter your archetype, always coming back to this is the ask and listen exercise. 

So, the entire approach that we have with this work is about not just learning a different way to work with your cravings, but believing that they have intelligence. They have wisdom for you. That your cravings are not these things that like, it’s not like whack-a-mole, right? It’s not about just like, “Oh, there it is. Make it go away, make it go away,” but using them as a stepping stone really into understanding the habit on a deeper level. And so, that ask and listen exercise is about posing a question. Again, this is something, we give a lot of examples for what the question can look like. It’s not that there’s one magical right question and that is going to unlock everything. It’s about developing the muscle of essentially responding to yourself with curiosity.

And so those are the two foundational exercises. I know you mentioned writing it down. People don’t have to write it down. I think it can be great to write it down, but it’s also something that you can do wherever you are. But these foundational exercises, they are the thing that I think a lot of people push back against, even though it’s not particularly taxing to do, but it is an interruption that feels like, isn’t it just easier to have the drink, people? Like, do I really have to name and notice and ask and listen? Like, let’s just pour the drink. Let’s just open up the beer. 

So just for everyone who is new to the work, I wanted to give that framework of what it actually looks like, what we’re actually talking about when we’re talking about putting in the reps or doing the work or, you know, when people are kind of frustrated about the amount of time and energy and effort that they have to put into retraining their brain.

Adriana Cloud: Yeah, and I think sometimes why people think it’s it takes too much effort or there is a bit of resistance against naming and noticing and then asking and listening is that there’s this assumption that the goal is and I should then just arrive at a point where I decide not to drink. As if that’s kind of where we’re leading people to get to. And I want to say, that’s not necessarily the case. You still get to decide whether to have the drink or not. 

So the point of sitting down or standing up or however you actually – wherever you are and however you do this is not to try to talk yourself out of having the craving and out of having the drink, but to just notice what is going on through your mind and to more intentionally choose. But I do think some of the resistance comes from noticing a craving and then thinking, “Oh, now I have to sit here until I can talk myself out of it and say no.”

Rachel Hart: Right, or like I shouldn’t even be having it. I mean, this is a big thing that comes up quite a bit. People feel like, “Oh my God, it’s too early in the day,” or I was actually just answering a question about someone who was having people over, she was hosting a dinner, and she was like, “I’m having a craving for when the party is over,” right? Like when I’m done hosting the dinner, like why is this even here? What is going on? 

And so I think that’s a really important piece to remember that, you know, it’s not exactly like you said, it’s not about talking yourself out of it. It’s that so many people, what they find incredibly, incredibly frustrating, but I think both of us were in this same boat, is feeling like your drinking is happening on autopilot. It feels like it’s happening to you. And the brain’s ability to do things without putting a lot of mental energy can be incredibly powerful and amazing and efficient. And when it comes to a habit like drinking, when it comes to really any behavior that you want to change, it doesn’t feel great to be on autopilot.

And so that’s what we’re trying to really build the muscle of. It’s not like, “Oh, we name and notice and then we get curious and we ask and listen because wink, you’re supposed to say no.” It’s because if you don’t like feeling like you’re on autopilot when you drink, well then we need to figure out a way to interrupt it. And so this is really slowing down, it’s naming what’s going on. You know, it’s noticing what bubbles up just when you try to slow down. 

Like just naming and noticing, I think brings up resistance in people because what will happen, they’ll have both thoughts and feelings that will bubble up about like, “But I don’t want to go slowly. I don’t want to have to be thinking right now. This is supposed to be my time where I don’t have to think.” How do we make more conscious decisions around alcohol use? And this truly is the foundation for it.

Adriana Cloud: Yeah, and I think there is some false economy here happening when people think, “Oh, it’s just easier to have the drink because is it really easier to have the drink?” It’s just a different kind of effort that you’re expanding to then justify why you needed it, the regret that you might feel the next day, or you’re still thinking about alcohol. It’s just that you’re – it’s different thoughts. Maybe you’re not asking questions about it, but I guarantee that you are still thinking about it. And so, I think it’s a bit of a shortcut that we tell ourselves, “Oh, if I just have the drink, then I’m somehow saving myself this mental effort.” But I don’t think we’re saving anything at all. I speak from personal experience, obsessing about my drinking even when I was choosing to drink.

Rachel Hart: Yeah. I can remember so many times where I was just like, “F it.” You know, like, I don’t care. I don’t want to think about this. I don’t want to, I don’t want to have to restrict myself. I don’t want to have to feel deprived. And so I would give myself permission to just be like, “Okay, just let’s just go on autopilot. Let’s just have as much as we want and not think about it. Let’s just fall into that pattern.” And my pattern, of course, was drinking very quickly, going back for more, believing that more was better. 

But like you said, there was a lot of effort and energy and thought that was happening later on. It’s not like when I gave myself permission to just be like, “Who cares?” It’s not like all of a sudden I saved myself effort and energy because later on, just like you said, I would wake up and devote a lot of time and a lot of mental suffering and draining my energy about the fact of why I couldn’t figure this out and why this was so hard for me, and why do I keep making the same mistakes? And why can’t I learn my lesson? And, you know, it’s a little bit, I talk about this with the idea of disappointment. And I think it applies here.

So I often say, you know, disappointments coming either way in life. There’s no version of our existence where we just get to erase disappointment. So we can be disappointed in the moment because we’re having the craving for more and we’re saying no to it. So we can have that disappointment, or we can be disappointed later on because we made a commitment and we didn’t follow through. Because we repeated a pattern that we said to ourselves over and over, “I don’t want to do this again.” So, I kind of feel like this struggle around energy and effort and then time spent, it has a little bit of the same flavor here. 

It’s like, listen, we’re going to be putting in time and effort somewhere, right? So we can put the time and effort into, “Okay, I don’t really want to name this craving right now. I just want to go on autopilot, but I don’t really like being on autopilot, but I’m going to interrupt. I’m going to name. I’m going to decide that it’s important to me to have a more conscious relationship with alcohol,” or I’m going to have a lot of, you know, effort and energy on the back end. A lot of just, I think about how much time I spent wallowing, you know, and feeling so bad about myself, but also feeling really bad for myself. 

I just was kind of like swimming in like a pity party for myself because what really went along with my own shame about my relationship with alcohol was this kind of deeply held belief that something was different about me, something was different about my brain. You know, I talk about this like kind of truly believing, like deeply believing that I had lost the brain lottery, right? When they were just like handing out brains, like, you know, I got the one that just didn’t work so well.

And so much of that shame for me fueled a lot of wallowing. It fueled a lot of self-pity. It fueled so much of like, “Why me? Like, why is this a problem that I have to deal with?” And so there was so much time and energy spent hanging out in that place. I do think it has a little bit of that flavor of like, it’s coming either way. So then we have to decide, well, which place do I want to devote more time and energy? 

And listen, like, not to say that I don’t ever in life get caught in a shame cycle or feeling like self-pity or feeling bad for myself, but I think very much having the understanding and the realization now when I watch myself doing this, really understanding like, “Oh, I’m somehow seeing myself as separate from everyone. I’m somehow identifying myself.” And again, this doesn’t have to be with alcohol. It can be with anything. I’m somehow identifying myself as like, I’m having something like that’s only unique to me and that other people can’t relate to. And so it’s become a little bit of a cue for me to recognize like, “Oh right, you are not this special snowflake, Rachel.” I really know that your brain loves to be in this space of, “Oh, like, you are a special snowflake. Like nobody else is struggling with this.”

But to me, like that has been the journey of saying like, “Yeah, I want to put in time and effort to no longer be on autopilot when it comes to my relationship with alcohol and with drinking.” And again, it’s like learning anything, right? When we’re learning any skill, it’s going to take time and effort and it’s going to take more focused attention and energy than once it becomes more of a habit, more of something that your brain can kind of do automatically. 

And that’s what I think, you know, like the beauty is when we’re working with people inside the membership and they’re talking about how they’re noticing themselves asking questions of their cravings, but it’s just kind of happening automatically. It’s not something that they have to consciously think about like, “Okay, well what like, now it’s the ask and listen tool and like what question am I going to ask?” So these things also will start to become second nature and you will need to devote less energy and effort towards it.

Adriana Cloud: I think there’s a lot to be said about confusing familiarity with ease. Like because we’ve done something so many times, it feels easy and like we don’t have to think about it anymore. But those are not the same. Just because we’ve done it a lot of times and we do it on autopilot does not mean it’s easy or that it actually feels good at all. And the other thing that I want to mention is how we think about effort in the moment versus what happens later. Because yes, maybe in the moment it is easier just to say, “Well, F it. I will just pour the drink and not think about it right now. I’m not going to name anything or investigate what thoughts are causing this feeling.” 

But you will be paying for it some way or another later on, whether it’s a hangover, whether it’s disrupted sleep, how you talk to yourself the next day. There is a hidden cost, and that’s a different type of effort that you will then have to expand elsewhere. So like you were saying, the effort is coming one way or another. It’s just where do you want to apply it? And yes, maybe in the beginning, it does feel a bit harder to sit down and practice these tools because let’s just be honest here, most of us don’t know how to sit with our thoughts, how to name our feelings. We are not taught this as children. We have to learn this the hard way. 

And it can feel a bit uncomfortable and it can feel like, “Oh, I don’t know what feeling is this? What even is a feeling? How do I know?” So, it’s not the easiest task when you’re first starting out, but it’s so important to remember that this is something we could get better at with practice. The more time you spend sitting with your thoughts and getting to know your feelings, the easier it becomes until that becomes automatic and then no effort is required because that’s just who you are now, someone who notices their thoughts and feelings.

Rachel Hart: And who moves through them more quickly. I think that to me has really been the massive realization of deciding to do this work around my drinking and deciding to do it in a way that was so different than how I had approached it time and time again, which is let’s just make a rule, like let’s just finally find the magical rule that is going to stick, or let’s just finally find like, let’s just figure out how to become this person that’s just like so disciplined and has so much willpower. I tried for so long trying to approach it that way. 

And when I made that shift to say, “You know what? There’s something positive about my relationship with alcohol, even though I can see the downsides. It’s helping me in a way. It is serving a purpose. It is fixing a problem for me.” When I was doing this, I essentially was starting to interact with my archetypes even though I hadn’t, you know, I hadn’t actually created them yet. But I had this understanding that was the piece that really needed my attention.

If it always felt like, well, drinking is the only way to feel better after a bad day, or to feel like I can access the carefree fun version of myself when I’m out with other people, if it’s the only way to ever feel like a dinner or a party or a celebration is special, then I’m always going to be in this place of feeling like I’m missing out. I’m always going to be in this place of feeling like, well, I can say no, but it doesn’t feel good to say no. And I just knew that wasn’t sustainable. I knew that wasn’t going to work. 

And so, you know, going down this path and getting curious in this way, which took me down the path of learning about the think-feel-act cycle, like you said, being able to really articulate my thoughts and feelings and no longer kind of approaching my drinking as if it just kind of happened to me, as if it was, you know, just the what happens when you have an “addictive” personality or just the end result of having like a brain like mine that didn’t have an internal off switch that other people seem to have. So when I, you know, went down this path, it taught me the skill, right? It taught me how to show up different with my cravings and how to get curious, but it also was the foundation. This is what I didn’t realize back then.

It was the foundation for really understanding and knowing how to just move through the difficult points of my life faster. Not to erase them, not to never have them, but to know like, “Okay, I get in a fight with my sister or my husband, or I’m having a bad day, or I just feel so awkward about something that I did, or I feel envy or jealousy or disappointed or angry, like whatever it is, the human experience.” To be able to use all of those moments to gather insight about myself, to gain some wisdom and understanding and have insight about what was really happening beneath the surface. 

I think so often we interact with these moments from a place of, “I shouldn’t be feeling this way. It’s wrong that I’m feeling this way, and how do I stop feeling this way?” It’s so strongly from this place of judgment and shame and resistance rather than, “Okay, I’m feeling this way. Now what? What do I do with it? How can I actually use it?” And that’s why I’m always saying this to people. I think that the work in The Ultimate Guide, the work that, you know, we are actively kind of helping people do the reps on inside the membership, it truly is the meta skill for changing everything in your life. That is the wild thing that I still feel, I still feel kind of like pleasantly surprised every time I recognize that the work that I did to change my relationship with alcohol changed everything.

Adriana Cloud: Yeah.

Rachel Hart: It changed everything for me and in this really amazing, beautiful way.

Adriana Cloud: And we can even take the example of this question itself because, okay, so the effort and energy it takes, it takes more to do the exercises or to use the tools than it does to drink. But you can apply this to any other situation in life and let’s say that’s true. Let’s say we could somehow measure how much effort it takes to sit with your thoughts and apply yourself and really be curious and spend some time feeling uncomfortable potentially in order to move closer to the goal you want to have. Why is that a bad thing? 

And if you even learn to question the question itself, to start to question the resistance, that skill in itself, you can then apply everywhere else in your life where you notice that, “Oh, it’s easier not to do anything, or it’s easier to just float along and not make a change. It’s easier to just do what everyone else is doing. It’s easier to do what I’ve always done.” Okay, but does that mean it’s a good idea? What if it’s still worth it to do something else and to try something new, even if it’s uncomfortable, and even if it does take effort? And so, even just sitting with this idea of it takes more effort and energy to do this than it is to open the bottle of wine, even that teaches you different skills that you can then apply to any other situation in your life.

Rachel Hart: You know, it’s easier to sit on the couch and watch TV than it is to lace up your shoes and go outside. There are so many areas in your life where you will find that this same thing will apply. I think the ultimate question is, is avoiding expending effort, is doing the easy thing bringing you closer to the person that you want to be and the way that you want to show up and the life that you want to lead? 

That’s where I always come back to because it’s not like I don’t have these moments myself where it’s just like, “Ugh, I’m tired.” This is the thing, it’s like, yes, I’m in a totally different place with my relationship with alcohol and now the ability to just name and notice and get curious about a craving and watch things bubble up and let it pass feels like, “Yeah, that’s fine.” But it’s not like I don’t have challenges in other places. That is the thing that I have really started to embrace. 

We’re just going to have more and more, I don’t like calling them problems, but we’re going to have more and more places for us to grow and to evolve. And every time, whatever I’m working on in my life now to my new kind of next level to grow and evolve, when you have that moment of, “Yeah, it’s like easier not to do anything, or it’s easier to do what I’ve always done. It’s easier to avoid this. It’s easier just to sit here.” To just go back to that bigger question, “Is this bringing me closer to who I want to be and the life that I want to lead?” And, you know, I always discover that doing the easy thing is not, it’s not taking me in the direction that I want.

Adriana Cloud: Yeah, and I do want to come back to the point about familiarity because if we replace this word easier with more familiar, it changes the perspective so much. Like, is it is it easier? Is it just that it’s more familiar and what I’ve always done? And I do want to say part of the reason why I finally decided it was time to quit drinking was because I was tired of how much mental energy I was expanding on thinking about my drinking. And for me, it was slightly different from what you’re describing. 

I didn’t think I had a defective brain, but I just at some point could no longer deny that I was spending so much time thinking about my drinking in terms of did I have enough wine in the fridge? If we were going out somewhere, would there be alcohol there? Or if people were drinking faster than me, if someone was pouring wine, did they pour more in their own glass than they poured in mine? And all this just obsessively watching other people’s drinking, watching my drinking, wondering what people were thinking about my drinking. All of this was still effort in a way. 

It still took up mental space, and at some point, I just got exhausted of having alcohol take up so much energy. So, I just want people to question when they say, “Oh, it’s easier just to have the drink,” to really be honest with themselves. Is it really easier? How are we measuring this? Because I think we’ll find if we’re honest that it’s not easier at all. It’s just slightly different and perhaps more familiar.

Rachel Hart: Yeah, and to, you know, I’ll just add on this final note that to remember that when you are doing what is more familiar, you’re always going to be reinforcing one of your archetypes. And that’s why I think the work around the archetypes is so important and so powerful to really understand what your brain is learning here. So it’s not even just a matter of, “Oh, I woke up and I, you know, regret what I did last night or I feel hungover,” but to really understand what your brain is learning on the deepest level. And so I always encourage people to go back there. 

If you guys are not familiar with your drink archetypes, there’s a free quiz you can take at FindYourDrinkType.com. That’s a great place to get started and I really encourage you to check it out there. So thank you so much for joining me, Adriana, for this conversation about ease and effort and what is really going on when you notice that resistance inside of you to doing the work.

Adriana Cloud: Thank you for having me.

Hey guys, you already know that drinking less has plenty of health benefits. But did you know that the work you do to change your relationship with alcohol will help you become more of the person you want to be in every part of your life? 

Learning how to manage your brain and your cravings is an investment in your physical, emotional and personal wellbeing. And that’s exactly what’s waiting for you when you join my membership Take a Break. 

Whether you want to drink less, drink rarely, or not at all, we’ll help you figure out a relationship with alcohol that works for you. We’ll show you why rules, drink plans, and Dry January so often fail, and give you the tools you need to feel in control and trust yourself. 

So, head on over to RachelHart.com and sign up today, because changing the habit is so much easier when you stop trying to go it alone.