I hear people say this all the time about their drinking. They’ll say to me, “Rachel, I know what to do. I’m just not doing it.” And it feels so true. It really, in the moment, can feel like an honest assessment of your situation. But here’s the problem: it’s not true. And the more you tell yourself that you know what you should be doing in order to drink less or in order to not to drink, the more you are going to stay stuck in the very cycle that you want to get out of.

This is episode 462, and I’m breaking down why this thought is not true and what you need to tell yourself instead if you want to make headway with drinking less.

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.

Okay, so I know a lot of you listening consume a lot of content about how to drink less, how not to drink. You listen to my podcast, you probably listen to other podcasts. Maybe you’ve read the ultimate guide to drinking less. Maybe you follow sober or sober-curious accounts on social media. So you’re consuming a lot of content, but you’re not yet where you want to be with your relationship with alcohol. Right? You got the information, but you’re not making the progress that you want.

This place can be so frustrating, but I guarantee that at some point in that frustration, you have said to yourself something along the lines of, “I know what to do, I’m just not doing it.” And the reason why I can guarantee that this is true is because I hear some version of it probably every single week when I’m working with people inside Take a Break. It is one of the most common thoughts that I hear. It’s also a thought that I still hear myself think around certain issues because it doesn’t just show up with alcohol. It shows up with money, it shows up with food, it shows up with so many things that we want to change when we’re not making the headway that we want.

Right? And what happens is, you get into this cycle of, “I know, I know. I should drink less, I should stop earlier, I should not give in to the urge, I shouldn’t believe that excuse, I should just say no.” And then you remind yourself, “I’ve read so much, and I’ve listened so much, and I’ve watched all this information about alcohol and the habit and the brain. And I’m still not doing what I’m supposed to be doing. I know what I know. I’m just not doing it.” And this feels so true when you want to change a behavior.

But what I want to suggest is the reason you’re not making the progress that you want, the reason you’re not getting the traction, is not the reason that you think. In this moment, your brain lands on the only explanation that seems to make sense: “I know what to do, but I’m not doing it.” But here’s the thing: when you tell yourself this, you make yourself the problem. Right? Because then it’s, “Well, I have the information, I’m just not executing it.”

What I want you to consider instead is this: if you truly knew what to do in the moment, the moment that the urge appears, when you find yourself thinking, “I’ll just have one. I’ve been good all week,” or “This has been a really hard day. I deserve it,” if you truly knew what to do in this moment, then you would be able to do it. Not in theory, not when everything’s going right and you’re feeling calm, not when you’re reflecting about it the next day, but in the actual moment.

And the fact that you’re not able to interrupt the habit, that you’re not able to say no, means that you don’t actually know how to handle the moment. If you did know how, you would handle it differently. Listening to me talk on the podcast, reading my guide, watching reels on IG, that is not the same thing as knowing how to do something.

I use this example all the time with people. I am always saying, “Listen, if you didn’t know how to ride a bike and you watched a bunch of videos about how to ride a bike, and you read a bunch of books, and you listened to a bunch of podcasts about riding a bike, and then you assumed that all of that information was all you needed, and now you should just be able to hop on a bike and ride off into the sunset, you would be sorely disappointed.” But the fact of the matter is, we need more than just information. We need the experience of what happens in the moment.

Right? The experience of, “Well, what if I’m just avoiding getting on the bike at all because I think that I’m too old to not know how to ride a bike? And I don’t want to fall down. I definitely don’t want to embarrass myself in front of other people. Maybe I don’t even want other people to know that I don’t know how to ride a bike.” Or what about the moment when you wobble and you freak out and you hop off the bike because you’re like, “Nope, too much. This is too scary. I’m never going to figure this out.” Or maybe things are going great, and then you get into an accident and you get hurt and you skin your knee, and the thought of getting back on the bike is too much.

In the actual moment, when you want to drink, when you want to drink more, when the urge is there, when the excuses sound so convincing, when you have all of the emotions, all of the feelings, when your brain is like, “Listen, this is just what we do,” do you actually know how to handle that moment? And if you are giving in that moment, I would say to you, “No, you don’t.” You don’t know how to handle that moment. And not because you’re doing something wrong, and not because you’re never going to learn, and not because something’s wrong with you, just because you don’t have a piece of the puzzle that you need.

If you knew how to handle that moment in the moment, you would be able to. And the fact that you are not right now is not a failure on your part. It’s not a failure of willpower. It’s just a sign that you don’t yet have the skill. But when you tell yourself after giving in to an urge, after believing the excuse that one more won’t hurt, after you wake up the next day and regret how much you had to drink last night, when you tell yourself in that moment, “I know what to do, I’m just not doing it,” you are turning yourself into the problem.

Right? So you’re not asking, “What am I missing here? What skill do I need to build? What do I need to practice?” It becomes essentially saying to yourself, “What the heck is wrong with me?” You make yourself the problem because you’re essentially saying, “I should know better.” And that question, “What is wrong with me?” which, by the way, is something I struggled with for so long around my drinking, I will just tell you, it does not lead to change. It leads to one thing only, which is shame. Shame is never going to help you understand the moment. It’s not going to help you respond differently next time. It’s just going to keep you stuck in the same pattern.

So here is the shift that I want you to try. Instead of saying, “I know what to do, I’m just not doing it,” I want you to try this: “I don’t know what to do. I may have read and listened and watched a lot about alcohol and what people say I should do or how I should handle the moment or how I should respond. But me, myself, and I, in that moment, nope, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to handle it.”

This is actually an incredibly empowering thing to say to yourself because it puts you into a completely different headspace. When you acknowledge that despite having consumed a lot of information, you don’t actually know what to do in that moment, you don’t know how to handle it. You don’t know what to do with that feeling inside of you or how to respond to all the justifications that your brain is coming up with. When you acknowledge that you don’t know how to do something, then you can get curious. Then you can ask questions. Then you can actually go into problem-solving, which when you are in a shame spiral, I promise you there is no problem-solving happening there.

You can start to ask yourself, when you acknowledge that you don’t know what to do, “Okay, so what was actually going on right before I gave in? What was happening for me? What was I thinking about? What was feeling really hard in that moment? What was I saying to myself? Where did things feel like they sped up and things went really, really fast?” Answering these kinds of questions, this is what is so important. This is going to give you all the information that you actually need for you in your life, in your situations to figure out, “What do I need to adjust? How do I need to pivot? What do I need to do instead?” But you need those actual details, and you’re never going to get them if you keep telling yourself, “I know what to do, I’m just not doing it.”

When you are stuck in that belief, there is no problem-solving, there is just blame. It is so much more powerful to say, “I don’t know how to handle this moment,” rather than to insist, “No, no, I actually do know how to handle it. I’m just choosing not to.”

So the next time when you make a commitment not to drink and then you do, or when you tell yourself, “I’m only going to have a couple,” and then you go overboard, and now you’re regretting the decisions that you made, when you hear yourself thinking, “Oh God, I know what to do, I’m just not doing it,” remind yourself that thought is not insight, it’s just a sneaky form of shame. And what I want you to do is practice following up with, “Maybe I actually don’t know how to handle this moment yet.” And that’s okay. That doesn’t mean all my listening and my reading and my learning was for nothing. It just means that I need more information. I need help translating all of this knowledge that I’ve consumed into actual real-world experience.

When you tell yourself that you don’t actually know how to handle the moment yet, you give yourself somewhere to go rather than staying stuck. All right, that’s it for today. I will see you all next week.

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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.