You know that feeling the morning after you drank too much? When you’re lying in bed and thinking to yourself, “Ugh, I’m never doing that again,” and you really mean it? Maybe you even do what I used to do. You list out all of your regrets, all the money wasted, the things you wish you hadn’t done or said, how awful you feel in that moment, and you hope that if you can just hold on to those regrets, it will be the fuel that you need to never make the same mistake again.

This is episode 466 and today I’m talking about why focusing on your regrets never really works long term and what you need to focus on instead. Because this was one of the most important shifts that I made in my own journey in changing my own relationship with alcohol. And I don’t think that people talk about this nearly enough.

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.

I spent years trying to change my drinking, wondering why I couldn’t drink normally, why sometimes I would have a couple drinks and I would be fine, and other times I would wake up like, what happened last night? That love-hate relationship that I had with my drinking lasted from my teenage years into my early 30s. And for almost that entire period, I focused on one tool and one tool alone in order to try to change. I tried to use regret as my main motivator. I would focus on the downsides of drinking too much. I would make lists about everything that I hated about my drinking. I would read up about the things that alcohol does to your body and how it affects your sleep and your skin and how it poisons you. I would try to make the case to myself over and over again that I should never do that again, I should never drink that much.

And I remember thinking at a certain point, when I had so many years and so many attempts at trying to change and nothing really lasted for long, I remember thinking, maybe I just don’t feel bad enough yet. Maybe that’s why I haven’t been able to change. Like there was some sort of level of rock bottom that I hadn’t hit yet, but once I hit that, maybe then something would finally click.

That thinking kept me stuck for such a long time because here’s what I didn’t understand: regret is an unstable source of motivation. It’s only as strong as how bad you feel in the moment. And the moment that you start to feel better, even just a little bit, the evidence that you’re trying to use to motivate change starts to disappear. Not because you’ve stopped wanting to change, but because the motivation you were using was entirely dependent on feeling bad. But you’ve probably discovered that even with all of the physical and emotional suffering, even with all of that, it can start to naturally diminish the further you get from the moment that you regret.

Now, that’s not to say that your regrets disappear entirely. You can still feel really cringy or, you know, oh, just like, I don’t even want to think about what I did or said. And that can still happen five days out or 10 days out or a month out, but the intensity probably isn’t as strong as the moment the next morning when you opened your eyes.

And I want to say this: using regret as a motivator, it isn’t something we just do with alcohol. This is really something that we are taught to do with anything and everything that we want to change in our life, especially things that feel compulsive. So we do this with food, with overspending, with spending too much time on our screens. We try to use feeling bad about our behavior as motivation to change. And then we wonder why our motivation doesn’t last.

So what I want to talk about is what works instead. And I will tell you, the shift that changed everything for me and the one that I now see changes things for the people that I work with is moving from trying to run away from how bad drinking too much makes you feel and moving toward who you want to become. So instead of, I don’t want to wake up feeling like this again, or I don’t want to have created these consequences for myself, it becomes, I want to step into this new version of myself. It’s about moving toward a new identity.

And I want to be really careful here because when I’m talking about identity, I’m not talking about the identity of being someone who drinks or someone who doesn’t drink. I mean the identity of who you want to be in the moments when you would normally say yes to that craving or yes to the excuse or yes to the urge. Who do you want to be in that moment? And the reason that identity-based motivation holds up so much better is that it’s not reliant on you feeling bad. You’re not measuring it against how you feel on your worst morning; you’re measuring it against a version of you that hopefully feels truly exciting.

And here’s where this piece about identity-based motivation gets really interesting because the identity that you’re moving toward is not going to be the same for everyone. It really depends on your drink archetypes. It depends on why you’re drinking in the first place, why you’re going back for more, when you’re drinking. It depends on really the context of the behavior. So the drink archetypes, right, these eight different patterns that influence why we drink and when and how much we drink, they really are the key to finding an identity-based motivation that’s going to work for you. And when I work with people on finding that more stable fuel of motivation, what they discover time and time again is that it is always coming back to their drink archetypes.

So, for example, if pouring a drink is how you finally give yourself permission at the end of the day to stop working or how you treat yourself after a day spent putting everybody’s needs before your own—this is something that shows up with the Reward archetype—then maybe the identity you’re building has nothing to do with being able to white-knuckle your way through your desire. Maybe it’s about becoming someone who can truly let themselves rest even when there’s more you could be doing. Or maybe it’s about becoming someone who takes their own needs seriously, rather than spending all day long putting them last. That is a completely different goal than, “Okay, I just need to not drink tonight, or I just need to stop drinking after two drinks.”

Now, if drinking is a way for you to access your fun, your silly self around others—this is something that really came up a lot for me. That can show up with the Connector archetype, it can also show up with the Mask archetype. Maybe then the identity you’re working toward is being able to access more of that version of yourself whenever you want, regardless of whether you have a drink in your hand. Notice these aren’t goals that depend on your regrets. And they’re always going to be more motivating than telling yourself, “I just don’t ever want to feel this way again.” Because I would tell myself that again and again and again, and somehow I would just find myself repeating the same loop over and over because these goals really are about who you are becoming rather than a feeling that you’re trying to avoid.

And I will tell you, learning more about your drink archetypes is a really great place to start figuring out how you can build more identity-based motivation for you. You can take the quiz. It’s free at FindYourDrinkType.com. It will show you your top two archetypes that are getting in the way of drinking less. Because the work of changing your relationship with alcohol, it looks different depending on your archetypes. But once you understand the archetypes that are showing up for you, so much of this work really starts to click.

So here’s what I want you to remember: focusing on your regrets is always going to be an unstable source of fuel. It’s not a failure of willpower, it’s not a sign that you don’t want change badly enough when that motivation starts to diminish. It’s a problem of trying to rely on motivation that requires you to feel bad. So when you stop focusing on your regrets and the downsides and the consequences of drinking too much, you can start asking yourself more powerful questions, questions like, “Who do I want to be?”

Who do I want to be when it feels like if I don’t have another round, I’m going to be missing out on a good time? Who do I want to be when I think to myself, “Ugh, one more drink won’t hurt?” Who do I want to be when I have all the reasons in the world, “I really deserve this drink?” Those answers aren’t going to be focused on your regrets. They’re going to be focused on the version of yourself that you’re trying to step into.

And honestly, for me, that was so much more exciting and motivating. It was a path that I wanted to head down so much more than, I just don’t want to wake up feeling like this again. And that switch is what finally led to change, not only for myself, but when I work with so many people, this is the piece that they have been missing.

All right, that’s it for today. I will see you guys 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.