Sometimes we tell ourselves we can’t possibly drink less because we’re surrounded by temptation or that we’d really love to take some time away from drinking, but it’s just not possible because so many of our activities revolve around it. I will tell you, I had both of these thoughts myself in my own journey. This is episode 487 and I’m explaining why you should rethink the purpose of temptation and also why avoiding it often leads to questioning your own success.

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.

All right everybody, let’s talk about temptation today because I will tell you it is one of the most common things that I hear people say again and again, why it’s so hard to drink less, why it’s so hard to say no. People will tell me all the time, “I’m just surrounded by temptation.” And I totally understand this because I felt this way too for the longest time.

So, people will tell me, Rachel, my partner drinks every night so there’s just always alcohol in the house. They aren’t going to change. Or they’ll say, my friends always want to drink when we go out or all of our plans seem to revolve around alcohol. A lot of people will talk about how they need to entertain clients for work and they have to take people out and it’s just alcohol is kind of part of the job. Someone is always asking if you want to drink or if you want another. So I really do understand how frustrating this is, not only because I’ve been there, but also because I hear this come up so often and I know how it can make you feel like change just isn’t possible for you.

Right? When this is your experience, it is very easy to conclude, yeah, well, of course it’s hard for me to say no. Look what I’m surrounded by. And I will tell you this, of course, your environment matters. Certain people and places and times of day and situations can actually trigger your desire to drink. They can become cues in your brain for alcohol. And you know what? Maybe it would really help you to get all the alcohol out of your house, even just for a little while, or to avoid that favorite restaurant or that bar where you don’t actually even have to place a drink order because it’s just waiting for you as soon as you walk in. Or maybe it would really help to get your friends or your partner on board and have them always stop asking, hey, do you want to drink or do you want another?

So I’m not trying to suggest that none of these things matter. What I want you to consider though is that there’s a difference between changing your environment to help make it easier to say no and believing you can only succeed at saying no to temptation if you can control your environment. These two things are not the same. Because the problem ultimately is that we can’t control our environment. We cannot be in control of everything all of the time. We cannot always control when alcohol is going to appear or when people are going to suggest a drink or when we’re going to be offered a drink or when it shows up or what our friends and our family do.

We can try to avoid certain situations. We can tell people in our lives and the people that we love our intentions, we can ask them to support us, we can let them know what would be helpful, but that doesn’t mean that we have total control. You can say to your significant other, you know what? Please don’t suggest getting drinks or don’t offer me another. But can you guarantee that’s going to happen? No, of course not. And maybe you can guarantee that they won’t do it, but can you guarantee that other people won’t do it? No. You can get rid of all the alcohol in your house, but what happens when your neighbor shows up on a random Wednesday night with a bottle of wine? What happens when the people you’re with decide that they want another round?

If your success depends on temptation not showing up, what happens the moment that it does? This is something I really want you to think about because it’s something that I struggled to come to terms with for the longest time. I felt like because I was surrounded by temptation, because I lived in New York City, because so much of my social activities revolved around going to bars, because it often was a part of my job, entertaining, going to dinners, I felt like I just was never going to be able to succeed. And that was really depressing. It really felt to me like success was outside of my control because I couldn’t change my environment. I couldn’t remove all the temptation, and temptation was the thing that I constantly was blaming. I was either blaming myself, ‘Hey Rachel, you don’t have enough discipline, you don’t have enough willpower, you just need to learn your lesson,’ or I was blaming temptation.

And I watched this back and forth happen with people that I work with all the time. Sometimes we make changes to our environment so that we are less tempted to drink or less tempted to have more, and sometimes they work. And then you know what happens? We immediately discount our success. We immediately will say things like, yeah, okay, I didn’t drink this week, but that’s because there wasn’t any alcohol in the house. Or, yeah, I mean, I stopped after two, but that’s because my husband knows that I’m trying to cut back, so he didn’t suggest having more. Or we’ll say things like, yeah, I didn’t drink this weekend, but that’s because I didn’t see anyone. I didn’t go anywhere.

So often when we’re actually successful at controlling our environment, all of a sudden it feels like the success that we had isn’t really our own. Like we still can’t trust ourselves even when we succeed, or like we can only succeed under the absolute perfect conditions. What I want you to understand is how this idea that you need to control your environment, you need to avoid temptation, may be part of what’s keeping you stuck. What you can do instead is reframe temptation as an inevitable part of the learning process.

Now, I’m not suggesting that on day one of deciding that you’re going to make a change to surround yourself with it. But I also don’t want you to swing all the way in the other direction of, well, if I can’t make a change because of my environment, then I’m doomed. And I also don’t want you to go into the place of, well, and if I am able to control it and then I have success, then the success doesn’t really count. It wasn’t really mine because I didn’t have to face temptation. Temptation isn’t something that we can ever fully eliminate from our lives. This is true of alcohol, but it’s true of anything that you feel like you have a lot of desire around. Temptation is something that we need to learn how to work with.

Yes, you can do the work to structure your environment, to put up guardrails so that it is more supportive to your goals. But you can do that work also knowing that you will never be able to fully control your environment and that’s okay. Notice when if you do that, when if you try to make things more supportive, if you try to set up guardrails, and if you have success, if you immediately turn around and then pretend that success that you had, it doesn’t really count.

The goal really is just to stop treating the presence of temptation as if it is the problem. Seeing alcohol doesn’t determine what happens next. Wanting a drink, having a craving, having an urge doesn’t determine what happens next. Someone offering you a drink or offering you another doesn’t determine what happens next. Yes, these moments can set a familiar pattern in motion. But that pattern is something you need to see and understand and learn how to work with so that you can ultimately learn how to intervene with it.

Every time you encounter temptation, you have the opportunity to practice something different, to notice your knee-jerk reaction, to notice the excuse or the justification that you have, to notice what you are telling yourself will happen if you drink and if you don’t drink, to notice all of that and create some pause. You also have the opportunity to notice when that knee-jerk reaction just unfolds, when you just gave the automatic yes, you acted on your desire, it happened and realize that you can still change course. This is something that I think we forget. We assume, oh, I acted on the desire, I said yes, I ordered the drink, the waiter came and said, would you like another? And I just said yes without even thinking. Now there’s nothing I can do about it. But of course, one of the most powerful things to learn is that we always have the ability to change course even when the automatic pieces of the habit have started to unfold.

This is where the work is, not to avoid temptation forever, but to realize it’s part of what your brain does need exposure to. Again, this does not mean that you need to seek it out and surround yourself with it. If you feel better not having alcohol at home, you don’t need to keep it there as some sort of test. If there are certain people that you find it really difficult not to drink around or you know that you always drink too much when you’re with them, you don’t need to accept every invitation to see them. But there’s a difference between giving yourself some breathing room and hiding out.

I needed a lot of breathing room when I was first starting this work. I remember very vividly getting out of a different subway exit on my way home just so I wouldn’t walk by a wine bar as I was heading to my apartment. That was an important thing for me that I needed to do at first. I remember declining invitations from certain people in my life who I knew that time and time again when we went out for a quick drink after work, it often turned into stumbling home at 2:00 a.m. But I also knew that my success ultimately could not hinge on having to always take that subway exit or always turn down every invitation. I knew that I needed some breathing room to get my feet under me, but I also knew that I couldn’t hide out, that hiding out wasn’t going to be sustainable either.

Giving yourself breathing room sounds like, I’m making this easier for myself right now while I’m working on building these skills and understanding my drink archetypes and understanding the ways in which I have come to believe that alcohol and drinking is necessary for certain things. I’m giving myself some breathing room while I’m trying to figure this out and understand why saying no feels so hard. Hiding out sounds like change is only possible if I never have to face temptation.

I remember thinking so many times to myself that I would be able to succeed if I could just decamp to a cabin in the woods and not be surrounded by all of the temptation in my life. But that was also kind of depressing too, the idea that I could only do it if I wasn’t around my regular life. Giving yourself breathing room and hiding out ultimately are two very different beliefs.

Ultimately what I want you to understand is that the goal is not to have perfect control over your environment, which is good because none of us ever have perfect control over our environment. The goal is to start developing and building the skills that you can rely on when your environment doesn’t cooperate, when unplanned moments and unplanned things happen, when temptation shows up and you weren’t expecting it.

So the next time you find yourself thinking, ugh, this is so hard. I’m just surrounded by temptation, I want you to pay attention to what you’re making that temptation mean and what you’re telling yourself is possible. Are you viewing temptation itself as the problem, rather than something that you can work with and learn from?

Ultimately, what you’re trying to build is the ability and the knowledge that temptation is unavoidable and it can actually be a helpful part of changing your relationship with alcohol. It can actually be a really helpful piece of the puzzle to show you what is happening, parts of the habit that often feel very unconscious. It can show you how the habit is unfolding in the moment, and it can show you where you need to have skills and where you need to have different responses to your brain and essentially where you need to focus your work. Because the skill that you’re ultimately building is simply deciding what happens next.

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