Season 3 Episode 2 - Resolutions & Words

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Kevin: [00:00:00] Welcome everyone to another episode of the Reframeable podcast, the podcast that brings you people's stories and ideas about how we can work to reframe our relationship, not just with alcohol, but with stress, anxiety, relationships, enjoyment, and so much more. Because changing our relationship with alcohol is about so much more than changing the contents of our glass.

This podcast is brought to you by the Reframe app. Reframe is the number one iOS and Android app to help you cut back or quit drinking alcohol. It uses neuroscience to reframe your relationship with alcohol and unlock the healthiest, happiest you.

My name is Kevin Bellack. I'm a certified professional recovery coach and the head of coaching at the Reframe app.

Emma: And I'm Emma Simmons. I'm a certified life coach with Reframe app. Welcome.

Kevin: How's it going?

Emma: Great! How was your Christmas?

Kevin: It, it went well. It was pretty chill, pretty relaxed. Not, I mean

Emma: Was it white?

Did you get a white Christmas?

Kevin: No. It's actually 52 degrees Fahrenheit today. I don't know what [00:01:00] that is in Celsius for you, but it's not bad. And yeah,

Emma: away 30 and divide it by 2?

Kevin: I don't know. I go and I type 52 F to C in Google and it tells me it's 11 degrees.

Emma: Yeah, see, take away 30 divided by two.

Pretty close. Yes. Take

Kevin: away 30, 22. Oh yeah. Okay.

Emma: Yeah, it works. Is it work

Kevin: all the time?

Emma: I don't know. But I'm pretty sure that's what I've trained my head to think.

Kevin: Okay. I'll have to tell you how to convert

Emma: miles to kilometers yet. That one I haven't figured out.

Kevin: Because that's essentially it because it's cause the formula looks a lot more complex.

I like yours a lot better. Cause it's 52 Fahrenheit minus 32 times five ninths, which is basically half. So. I think the five nines always threw me off.

Emma: Yeah. And that makes my head hurt.

Kevin: Take away 30 divided by two. I like it

Emma: roughly close enough

Kevin: for miles. I use like 60%. [00:02:00] So if I do what 10 miles, no, 10 kilometers is six miles.

I don't know if that's true or not.

Emma: Neither, but that sounds good. Sure.

Kevin: It was colder. It was colder on Christmas where this is a couple of days after. So it's warm. I mean, I just had a sweatshirt on for a walk today and yeah, this is unseasonably warm for this time of year in Ohio.

Emma: Nice. It is, I don't know what the temperature is in New Zealand.

It'd be low twenties, I guess. Somebody double it and then add 30. So seventies maybe, is that right? Maybe.

Kevin: 20, 68. Yep.

Emma: Hey, look at me go. Quick math. Yeah. Yeah. But it's only, it's early in the morning. It's just gone nine o'clock. So it's, it's still cool for summer, but I'm in a t shirt. Ready to go to the beach.

Just kidding. I've got to go to the supermarket and get all of the stuff for camping. If you're following along with the camping [00:03:00] saga.

Kevin: Yes. Kevin,

Emma: I think you're the only friend I've found that is this is a terrible idea. Everyone else is Oh, have fun.

Kevin: Seriously.

Emma: Yeah, you're blatantly lying. This is

Kevin: Have you described it to

Emma: them?

Kevin: Have you told them about the long drop?

Emma: Yeah, no, I I don't know if, yeah, maybe people don't quite realise that we like freedom camping. I don't even know if it's called freedom camping. It's Yeah. And a paddock with no services and a field on

Kevin: paddock is after the last episode. I was like, can you tell me what a paddock is again?

Cause I, I, I know, but I didn't know in this context. And it was a farm. It was basically what I thought it was, but yeah.

Emma: I didn't realize paddock was a New Zealand specific. It's not like a, a more, not a [00:04:00] commonly used. In America, what would you call it? You would, yeah, you would call it a field,

Kevin: a field. I think, yeah, just a field.

It was what I was yeah, I don't know. Look, I'm not, I'm, I'm not a fisherman. I'm not a camper. Uh, I'm a former accountant I'm not really, not that that means anything but I just, I'm not roughing it. Let's just put it that way. I've done that before a little bit, but there's always been electricity running water and no long drops.

Emma: Yeah. Yep. No, the long drop is I mean, don't get me wrong. I've used a long drop before. Like I've gone, so in New Zealand, you can trick. Some of the most beautiful treks in the world, and we have Department of Conservation huts and so they're little huts built in the middle of nowhere. Usually no electricity no running water, often and often a long drive, so it's like an outhouse, I guess.

Yeah, I guess you'd call it an [00:05:00] outhouse, but it's a hole in the ground. It's a very big Deep hole in the ground. That's why it's a long drop.

Kevin: Yes. As we talked about before this, yes, using an auger to drop or an ogre. But the I was thinking, and this is the thing I learned today, I think, but whatever, I'll use it now.

I'll come up with something else later. Is that I was just thinking it was the two of you going camping and Not thinking that you said there is a bunch of families and this is already dug and all of that and it just got grosser And grosser the more you talked about it. So

Emma: Good luck. Yeah, so it's a yeah, it's a family.

So our neighbors Family have been doing it for I don't know 30 years 40 years maybe They always go out to this farm and they've camped there Every year for 40 odd years, and it's like a family tradition. So we're kind of tacking on with them. So, I mean, I guess I'm [00:06:00] blessed that the long drops already dug maybe, or maybe I'm not because the long drop is already being used.

It's not

Kevin: fresh. Oh, that's, that's why I'm like, it's got grosser and grosser. The more I started to learn about this, it didn't get better. At least let's just say that it'd be fine. You have fun.

Emma: This is the kind of support we give each other in Reframe. It's, I'm going because a fellow Reframer said she needed support because everyone else up there is camping and asked me to go with her. And this is the kind of support and love we give. And

Kevin: this is the sentence that Emma continues to tell herself over and over again every day until she goes.

But it's

Emma: for a good cause. It's for a good cause. It's for a good cause. Yes. Yes. It's for sobriety.

Kevin: Even though there's many other options we could do this is the best. That's a good segue into [00:07:00] what we're going to talk about. You're going to ring in the new year.

Emma: I'm ringing in the new year, sober in a paddock with.

a heck of a lot of drunk people. But I am, I will be sober and I will be proud and I will be enjoying every moment of ringing in the new year. Probably won't stay up till midnight, seems excessive. But I will get up early on the 1st of January. And I might watch the sunrise. That sounds beautiful.

That sounds fun. That sounds lovely. Sunrise over the beach.

Kevin: That yes, sounds good.

Emma: That sounds good. And I will be with my beautiful sober friend and my family. And that sounds lovely to ring in the new year. Yes. But yeah, today's topic we're talking about new year and making changes. Not that camping's a change.

I thought I wanted to make this year, but here we are. Training things. Training things.

Kevin: There you go.

Emma: Changes. But yeah, [00:08:00] resolutions, words of the year, all kind of things that come up around this time of year about that people talk about. It's kind of a hot topic on, you know, what's your resolution for the year?

Which, interestingly, Kevin and I both aren't so keen on resolutions.

Kevin: We are not. I just hosted a men's meeting where I believe when it came up as part of the topic, it wasn't part of the necessarily part of the topic, but I said, or share on anything like that, and I was quick to say that I think resolutions suck and.

I was like, okay, maybe I shouldn't be that harsh on them. But there was a lot of good discussion around it. And, and I quickly tell people why I don't like them. Even word of the year, which I like more, I only like it now if personally, and again, everybody, whatever you like, do it

Emma: whatever works for you.

Yeah.

Kevin: And if it works for you, do it. If it doesn't work for you, like these things sometimes don't work [00:09:00] for me or a lot of times then yeah. How can you change it? What else could you do? Yeah. And someone had said about, you know, changing that word to cause like resolution, I'm resolved to do this.

And there's all kinds of what happens if I don't do this thing that I'm resolving to do. And but it was more, you know, some people refer to it as, you know, setting intentions for the year. Kind of look at it as taking a look at what, what are my values? What are the things that I that are important to me?

Ultimately, yeah, finding that I like to bring it back, which I'll talk about a lot, probably as close as you can to today. That's why I like if you want to do a resolution, do one for January, do one for the first week of January do a monthly intention resolution, change it up as you go. Hopefully.

January, I'm going to focus on patients. How am I going to do that? And then come up with some tangible [00:10:00] ways to incorporate that. And that's, that's kind of where I go with it a lot. But

Emma: as you were talking, I was thinking, or I was reflecting on a few years ago, I'll make quite a few years ago. I decided that I was going to run a half marathon for my 30th and my 30th year.

I was going to run a half marathon. And so I started this training program and it was, I think it was only 10 weeks long and I say only, but It was a really long time to have that resolution that I was going to run a half marathon and I needed to train for 10 weeks. It was a long slog to have that same one resolution.

Goal and keep working towards it every day. And it was a very specific goal. And I guess resolutions are the same. If you've got your resolution for the year is,

Kevin: I don't know,

Emma: be healthy. But you know, that's quite vague. How does, how does healthy look for you? It's healthy going to the gym every day is healthy.

Running a marathon is healthy. Eating better is, [00:11:00] you know, I guess a goal for the year to be healthy is good, but it's. It's vague, and it's long, and you can lose motivation.

Kevin: Yeah, you can lose motivation. And, you know, even some of those things you mentioned, like eating better. What does that mean?

Cause obviously, obviously that might mean something different to you than it does to me and someone else, but that's still vague. It's how do I eat now and what's better and how do I want to go about it and what's sustainable. And so coming up with You know, those, that kind of aspiration or resolution or goal or whatever.

And then, and then asking yourself, what are the behaviors that can help me achieve that? And, and really just. You know, it's a good, it's a good practice, um, that I've learned is, yeah, what's that aspiration? What are the behaviors that can help me achieve that? And what are the best, you know, out of those [00:12:00] behaviors, what are the things that are going to be, have the highest impact to what are, what's going to have the highest impact and what can I get myself to do?

There's a whole bunch of things like that go into that. I was actually an exercise in the not to. They're off this book right away, but I am I, I am a tiny habit certified coach and we're doing the book club for it in about a week and a half. So I'm, I'm kind of immersing myself in it more, but

Emma: I need to get my hands on a copy of that book.

Yeah,

Kevin: that's a great. I mean, I I've done we repeated last, last January, we did the atomic habits book club. And I've loved that. I've always loved that book. And then this year I got into tiny habits by BJ fog and it I feel it's. It's a more in depth immersion, immersion, to use that word again in habits.

Like, how do I form habits? How do I do it day to day? How do I incorporate it in? What's [00:13:00] effective? Versatomic habits, I think, is broad. I feel it's broader, but there's a ton of great, there's so many great thoughts and and metaphors and ideas. And information related to habits and atomic habits too.

Like it's not they're, they're similar yet different. But they're both great. And it's just what works for you.

Emma: I think, I mean, I, I did the book club with you last January. And it was great for helping me follow by washing whilst we were doing the book club

Kevin: but

Emma: I do, I remember you'd probably know better than me, but I'm sure that they talk about resolution, like news resolutions and why often they fail.

And I, from what I remember, one of the things they talk about, or maybe I made this up myself, who knows is often people will go in, you Too hard too fast like they're like I'm going to be the fittest healthiest version of myself So I'm going to eat a raw food diet and I'm gonna run 10 kilometers a day And I'm going to be sober and I'm going to [00:14:00] get 10 hours of sleep a night and I'm gonna do I'm gonna completely change my life and it just it's just too much.

We can't change all of that in one Has like all at once and so I think yeah, tiny habits, change a tiny, change it, make it tiny. You know, if you are big on resolutions, try making a tiny resolution. Like I'm going to eat one more piece of fruit per day than I did last year, or I'm going to, I don't know, walk 100 steps more per day than I did last year.

Yeah, 10 steps more. I don't know. Tiny.

Kevin: You know, that's atomic habits talks about getting 1 percent better every day. Right? So that could be maybe that's a 10 steps. Maybe that's 100 steps more each day. But it's funny that they're, they're all saying the same thing. If you look at the cover of atomic habits, it says It's buried underneath all these other books, but I think it says tiny changes, remarkable results.

Tiny habits says the small changes that change everything. What are they telling us? Small [00:15:00] tiny. Yeah, but it's with small changes that, you know, it's only by doing small changes that we can get things that are sustainable to use that word. And, and get things that. Stick, but can be, can be incorporated into our life because we try and do, like you said, too much, too quickly.

Too big, too quickly and all that, and you know, you, you kind of alluded to the Olympic power lifter last last episode, but it's when you go, you know, if I go back to the gym to lift, you know, just because I lifted, you know, I did a lift and I had 300 pounds on the bar when I was, you know, 400 pounds, 300 pounds, whatever, when I was 20.

Emma: Doesn't mean you can do it today.

Kevin: Doesn't mean I won't end up in the ER by doing it today. Like I have to start slow and I have to work my way up little by little and you can't. And that's it then. And once you get there, guess what? If I worked up to [00:16:00] something, I'm not saying that much, but if you work up to a certain amount of weight that you can handle.

If you want to stay there, you have to consistently show up and do it. And it's how can you show up even in those small ways, little by little, until they become habits, until they become behaviors that are ingrained. And we don't, We don't like that, though, and I don't like that and I'm a, you know, I know

Emma: you're the habits guy.

What do you mean? You don't like it?

Kevin: That's the thing, but I always feel like I'm the 1st to say I feel confident saying I'm a habits expert who struggles with his habits, you know, just and just because I know. These things doesn't mean that it's still not difficult, or I still don't try and do too much or, you know, that I might not be ready for, but I recognize it and I try and adjust along the way.

And. Looking at it, just you know, the way I look at it [00:17:00] now, it's like, how can I show the big thing I asked myself is how can I show up to do these things? So what, you know, on the topic of like resolutions and, and you, you kind of alluded. So if my, I'll say if my aspiration is to be healthier or to eat better, you know, then you can come in and what, what are the things that I.

Can get myself to do, I can get myself to, you know, Oh, if I eat more fruits and vegetables, that'd be, that would help. Okay. What do I like out of that? You know, I like apples. Let's say how can I get myself to eat an apple a day? Okay. Well, And that, that could be easy, right, to say, oh, I'm just gonna eat an apple a day, not, not an apple

Emma: a day for a whole year is a, is a, I would get bored of that apple.

Kevin: Okay you can change it up along the way, but let's just, so let's go back for January. I'm gonna eat an apple a day. Okay. And then I'll switch up in [00:18:00] February. But You know, it could be easy or it could be very difficult. It just how, how do I work that apple into my daily routine? And I believe it's an atomic habits.

He talks about do I want my, you know, if I want to eat apples, do I put them in the crisper drawer in my refrigerator that I never open and I only open to throw out the shit that's in there? Or do I put them in a bowl on the counter where I can pass by him every day?

Emma: If you're our family, you put them in a bowl on the counter and then just let them still rot because no one eats the damn apple.

Kevin: Like a time lapse of just, yeah, the apples are rotting.

Emma: I think we've got that typical family of, you know, the kiddos like, I love apples. I'm like, yes, okay, we'll buy a kilo of apples every week at the supermarket. And then one week. There's a whole kilo of rotten apples in the fruit bowl. And you're like, what happened to the apples?

And like apples anymore. They're gross. I'm like, okay. So what are we like this week? Bananas! Okay, let's buy a kilo of bananas. [00:19:00]

Kevin: Now all of a bunch of bound bananas. Okay, we got to make banana bread now.

Emma: We have a banana mausoleum in our freezer. Ready to make banana bread. Banana muffins. Banana.

Sorry, so I quit,

Kevin: but so then it's okay what do you, what else do you like what, you know, maybe it's maybe then you what's making that hard to eat those things, or maybe it's maybe we mix it up with not just all of one thing, or you know, what's making it hard to do what can make it easier.

Maybe it's just a mixture of different things that you have that you put out or

Emma: Okay. So if you're, so say your resolution or your goal or what have you for January was like you 2025 wanted to be your year of sobriety, what would you like, what would your approach initial approach be if you're maybe, I don't know if it's your resolution or yeah, you're like your curiosity. Your intention for the year.[00:20:00]

Kevin: So, yeah, so I'll say you know, I'll keep using the word aspiration, right? Um, I'll say. If your aspiration is to reduce alcohol or change your relationship with alcohol, so regardless of what that looks like to you what are, I would say, start with just where reframe starts with is what's your why?

Right? What's your reason for wanting to do this identifying? And this can be for any thing, you know, Oh, I want to eat better. Why? I want to move more. Why, why is that important to you? But you finding that reason why something's important to you is important. And you know, and then asking yourself like what are the reasons that I might do or not do that thing now?

And identifying some of the maybe key. Issues that I have or, you know, that come up for why don't I eat better right now? What stops me from that? [00:21:00] What, why how does alcohol show up in my life right now? Do I drink socially? Do I drink by myself? Do I drink for stress? Do I drink for you know, for me, I could probably, I would have probably said, I drink for all, you know, all of it.

Yes, and all of the above. But. Looking at those and recognizing because not all of those are the same. So you can't say I'm going to do this for everything because, you know, if I want to change my relationship with alcohol and so doing something socially is going to be different than being at home after work by myself.

So I'm going to have to do different things there or, you know, have different. A different plan. So not all things are created. Yeah. Not all things are created equal. So, but same thing, like I'm going to have to eat out and I'm going to eat at home and So, how can I [00:22:00] focus on adding in and one of the things eventually is so what's your why identifying things that those reasons why I might drink to say, you know, to use your, um, question related to alcohol.

And then how can I, you know, I always like thinking of like the habit loop from Atomic Habits goes, and I did an episode on this on the Reframeable podcast called The Habit Loop, but, you know, I used Atomic Habits where it said cue, craving, response, reward, and that's the habit loop. You have a cue, kind of trigger something in my head that says a craving to have a drink.

But what he says is the cravings for a reward. It's a, it's for a so I, I, the cue is I pull my car out of the garage at work and I start driving and that's the [00:23:00] cue that kicks off like, Ooh, I want to have a drink when I get home. And that's what I think the reward is the drink when really it's. Q craving response, get a drink reward, relax.

So there's that you know, looking at that habit loop, it's what is the reward I'm looking for at any particular given moment for anything there, and how can I change that response to give me like that reward? If I'm, if I'm craving connection with somebody, so we were going to go out and have a drink, it's okay, if I change my response, because I don't want to do that, because I don't want to have a drink. To sit at home and watch TV or read, I'm not giving myself the reward I was looking for, a connection. So how can I change that to maybe you know, maybe it's not that night or something, but maybe how do I change that to be to give myself that connection with somebody without alcohol, [00:24:00] if that's what I'm trying to do.

Emma: You know what the funny thing is about, that I've learned through being alcohol free, Is that the connections you make when you're sober, when you're going out and you're chatting with people are so much deeper and so much more rewarding than they were when you were shit faced at a bar. Not even necessarily shit faced, but after a couple of drinks at a bar.

I don't know, repeating the same story over and over again or it's just, it's nowhere near as deep. And then, you know, you go out with sober people and you have these great conversations about really interesting topics and you really get to know them. And it's, it's one of those things that absolutely blows my mind that if you were craving connection, going to a bar to have a drink to connect with people is, it's, I don't know.

It's like an oxymoron, right? Like it's, it's, it just blows my mind. It's one of those, one of those interesting things that I've noticed about on my journey.

Kevin: Yeah. And it can't, it can be, I mean, you could still connect that way. You're like the change [00:25:00] response, right? It doesn't have to be find, People who don't drink,

Emma: you know,

Kevin: it could be, I can still, let's say, meet my brother out at the, out at the bar.

If I, if I feel up to it right, like right now I could early on, I might have said, you know what, I'm, I'm not gonna, how about we catch up tomorrow for coffee and, and, you know, in the morning and do that instead. But that response can still be, maybe to go to that bar, but. What's the response when I'm there?

Maybe it's first be telling them ahead of time. Yeah, that's fine. I'm not, I'm not drinking just so you know. And then when I get there, what am I going to order? You know, all those things you know, we talked about a little bit in the last episode to research that

Emma: menu.

Kevin: Yeah. And you know, so the response isn't necessarily avoid either, but it's asking yourself, being honest with yourself and be like, can I do that thing comfortably?

Is that what I want to do? And we can always take a break for a while to, you know, we don't have to [00:26:00] force ourselves into doing those things. But how do we change the response?

Because I would say, you know, a lot of times we think that I used to think alcohol was the reward. Right, in that scenario, because, ah, there we go, I'm, I never thought of it as relaxation being the reward or something like that.

Emma: And I think that's probably one of the tricky bits is because our brains know that alcohol kicks in quite quickly, like it will give us that, that sense of relaxation quite promptly.

Whereas, you know, going for a walk outside or perhaps having a bath or doing some yoga, it takes longer for that relaxation to hit. For that reward to hit. So I think that's, I don't know, I guess something to be mindful of if you are starting to think about giving up alcohol is that it's not like a quick fix.

Like it's a, it's a long, slow process [00:27:00] of, not, that makes it sound arduous, but it's, It's not instantaneous. You're not going to necessarily see the rewards immediately. You're not going to experience them necessarily immediately. Oh, I remember people like a lot of people, like I'm quitting alcohol to lose weight.

And that was one of my why's when I first started, I was going to the gym, working out Doing HIIT exercises regularly and I was like, I want pop and abs. That's what I want. I can't get them and my PT or like social media or whatever tells me that if I quit drinking alcohol I'm gonna get a six pack and have pop and abs.

That's what I'm gonna do. I'll quit alcohol. That'll, that'll do it. Yeah. I've gained so much weight, , but that's, I mean, that's because I substituted alcohol with a lot of candy. Yeah. My brain is still craving sugar, dopamine quick hits. Yeah. So yeah, I absolutely substituted alcohol for coffee and candy.

So, you [00:28:00] know, didn't quite work out how I planned. But I found different whys along the way. You know, when I dug deeper into my why, it wasn't just about getting abs. It was about being healthy and, you know, mental health and physical health and being a better mum and all of those things. Better sleep was something that I didn't realize I would get though.

Sorry, I've gone off on an absolute tangent.

Kevin: We, yeah, we have, we, we have a little, but it's, I think it's all kind of relevant to this, but yeah, like some people, some people will start to cut back or quit and they will. Yeah, feel great. Get better sleep. Drop a few pounds. Other people, I'll just say won't and, and you know, I, I might have been a mixture of all those types of things.

I might have slept better, but yeah, I, I. You know, when you remove something like alcohol, you know, it's going to, you're going to, like you alluded to, like the [00:29:00] sugar the sugar monster comes out, the sugar monster is real and, you know, there's, there's ways that we can help that and, and manage our blood sugar better or.

I don't want to say better, but man, you know, work to manage our blood sugar and increase, you know, I know I always have read that, you know, increasing like protein intake or making that more of a focus can help with blood sugar, which can help with sugar cravings and things. I mean, there's ways to do it.

I kind of, in the beginning for me, I was like. Just don't drink, eat the candy, do what you need to do. And

Emma: harm reduction, right?

Kevin: Yeah. And, and, and I didn't really, and I, but in doing, in working on the one thing, you know, going back to, let's say a resolution or the habits in that, but by, by working on that one thing, I could focus on that one thing and not be spread in a bunch of different.

areas. Now I could focus on sleeping [00:30:00] better and nutrition and movement and all of that, but I always, I always put it back to, okay, but if something has to give, I want it to be those other things and not this one thing that I'm focused on because I know if I focus on this and I, if I try and maintain that consistency, I'll eventually get to Be able to focus on those other things too.

And

Emma: that's a really good point. I think a lot for a negative wisdom, I give a lot of new reframers or people giving up alcohol new to this sort of journey or cutting back, make that your focus. So don't, you know, don't focus on giving up alcohol so that you can get better sleep and so that you can lose weight and so that you can be healthier.

Just focus on giving up alcohol or cutting back on alcohol. Make that your focus and make that your priority and protect that at all costs. And the other stuff will follow, like it's, it comes along with it, but you do just need to, [00:31:00] I don't know, make, make a sobriety or make reframe almost your full time job.

You know, do the app, do, click all the buttons, do all the things, focus, focus on it as much as you can.

Kevin: Yeah. Yeah. And whether that's going to. Making a resolution okay, I'm going to, you know, attend more meetings. Okay. What does that mean? Add them to your calendar, do that kind of stuff. That means if that, Hey, I'm cutting back.

I'm going to track my drinks in the app. I'm going to set targets and. Shoot for those and, and kind of figure out what happened, you know, what made me successful at hitting targets on these days? What made me not hit targets on these days if I'm not hitting them, right? Whether that targets two or zero or whatever you know, whatever it is and Yeah, but doing something, you know, being consistent with that and adding in little habits and okay, when am I going to track my [00:32:00] drinks, I'm going to, I don't want to get too far in the weeds with some of this stuff, but it's when am I going to do my reframe daily tasks?

When am I going to do my gratitude journaling or, you know, Oh, am I going to do a, I did the miracle morning my first year. Obviously I'm going to do that in the morning. You know, how am I going to do it? And it's just, okay once I get my coffee, then I'm going to sit down. And I mean, now it's more like I get my, you know, I tie a lot of things you'll hear on here to coffee, because if there's one thing if there's one thing that's consistent in my life, besides let's just say sleep, it's having a cup of coffee.

There's been one day that I can recall in the last decade that I haven't had coffee and it was in July when I was sick and I was in a head of fever and in bed all day and headache. My head was killing me. And it was

Emma: probably worse because you were having caffeine withdrawals.

Kevin: It was only in I'd say this is a good thing.

It was only because I, I kind of felt it in mid [00:33:00] afternoon a certain familiar twinge in my head that I was like, Ooh, that's caffeine. I'm like, okay, let's add that on top of it. But I was. Yeah but you know, having that, what can you tie the habits that you want to add into is important and, and yeah, what are your ABCs what's your anchor, what's the behavior you're going to do and how can you celebrate it just a little bit, even if it's giving yourself a high five or just the satisfaction of doing something that you enjoyed or whatever.

But I anchor things a lot to coffee. So after I get my coffee, I will. Open up my journal and that's my habit. I love

Emma: the idea of Kevin walking around his house being like, high five me,

Kevin: I've done, I do that, I'll, I'll, boom I walked around one day, I, I was, I test out various celebrations, um, one day I walked around giving myself a fist bump and I was like, boom, and just all day, anything I did, literally anything I did that I planned on [00:34:00] doing, I, I, you know, Yell it out.

Boom. Now, that was me working from home. No one else in the house. The next day, my wife was at home working and I did not do that. But find the things that you can do that because, you know, there's a quote in tiny habits that I haven't posted the note right here. But it says I change best by feeling good, not by feeling bad.

And it's. Yeah, we can, we can change because we feel like we have to you know, alcohol is not serving us and we can, but. We can also make ourselves feel bad about that, but how can you look at it by, by making these changes towards, towards something that you want and with resolutions, I'm going to tie this back a little bit here you know, looking forward to the new year, how can you, what are those resolutions that you want?

What are the things that you want, the specific feelings, the specific things you want to [00:35:00] accomplish and. How can you shift that perspective to what you can gain versus what you might be, feel like you're losing.

Emma: Mm, I like that, like what's, yeah, make a resolution about to, to feel good, it shouldn't be punishing, it shouldn't be restrictive.

I mean, maybe restrictive's the wrong word, but I don't know, if your goal is, we keep going back to be healthy or eat healthy, because I guess it's quite a common one but if your goal is to eat healthy but why, it shouldn't be because, because I want to do it. It shouldn't be restrictive, it shouldn't be punishing, I can't think of the words

Kevin: to articulate it.

Yeah as an example so I told, my wife said this morning we apparently have another tube of peanut butter, cookie, Whatever it was, it wasn't made and she's so I can make those cookies today. And I, and I [00:36:00] told her, I'm like, nah, it's day one. And I mean, that means I've eaten too many cookies over the holidays and things like that.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. I don't care. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed every single one and it's fine. But I went back to her later and I'm like, you know what? Make the cookies. I'm like, cause the way I was going about it in my head, I already saw, like I said before, I saw the extreme nature where I was going to go.

And I knew for me, that's not sustainable. So my thing is, you know, there's various ways of doing it, but. I was like in my head, I'm like, you know what I'm going, I'm going to, I don't like coming up with anytime I used to do 75 hard or things like that, where you have to come up with a kind of a way to eat you know, I would try and make it sustainable and I wouldn't be too strict, but I would remove certain things.

And so this time I'm like, you know what I'm going to do as far as a habit is concerned is, and I don't even like doing [00:37:00] this, but I'm not, I don't get too. Hung up on it anymore is. I'm going to just track, I have an app, I'm just going to track the food I eat. And not to look for, I don't care how many calories, I don't care what the makeup is of it, but I'm just gonna, and I could even just do it in a and this is actually the one of the things in the power of habit by Charles Duhigg, where he talks about keystone habits, where, you know, The NIH did a study in, I want to say, 2009 where they had people track their food in a food journal one day a week.

That's it. That's the only suggestion they gave them. And but little by little, those people started to track it maybe a few days a week. And they started tracking, some started tracking daily and some Would start to make connections and be like, you know, I notice every day at 10 AM, I'm getting hungry.

And so they [00:38:00] started, you know, okay, I'm going to pack an apple or a banana or whatever, you know, you know, to eat at my desk at work or whatever. And, but they start, people started making changes based on that thing. And they, they saw that people who tracked people who tracked daily, daily And again, this is just they were writing it down.

It's not like they're analyzing it in the in these some of these apps and stuff like that. They found they lost twice as much weight as those who didn't. And and that is what he called a keystone habit. It's a simple thing that we can do that isn't directly related necessarily to health or eating better or something like that.

But it Is one of those habits that it's giving us small wins because all the only habit I have to do is write down what I eat one day a week. If I do that, boom, check, give yourself high five. Sorry,

Emma: just tying that back [00:39:00] into sobriety. I know quite a few people and myself included when I started down this journey, I started on the cutback track and I guess the first step was to record how much am I actually drinking.

And. That was pretty shocking. I was like, I'm a pretty standard drinker. I might overdo it on the weekends or on a Friday night, but you know, I'm a pretty standard drinker, but I, I don't feel good. But There were, yeah, it was, it was shocking to see quite how much my standard drinking actually was.

And then once you have that baseline of oh shit, that's actually kind of scary, you know, where to from here? Do I need to cut back 10 percent a week? Do I need to, can I go All in, and go cold turkey which is what I did, but but obviously that's not for some people like we keep mentioning, you've got to keep yourself safe.

But yeah, noticing being aware of what you're consuming and that, what that habit is. It's really important to affect the [00:40:00] change.

Kevin: Yeah. And I would say even yes, that tracking drinks is a, is a great one too. I'm just going to go in and, you know, you can even do it. If you have an Apple watch, you can even I believe our, we do it via text too.

We can, but like finding that easy way for you to do that. But even if it's going in and I'm just going to read the daily task each day, I'm going to take three minutes, five, whatever, and read that daily task. That again, isn't really directly changing the drink that I'm picking up, right? Just because I read that.

But if I show up and I continue to do that, what's going to happen? I'm going to learn more. And when I learn more, I start to make changes. Same thing when, when I start to track my drinks, I'm going to think before I go grab another drink. I'm going to, and, you know, that could, I'm going to sit there and kind of.

Take a look [00:41:00] at oh, okay. I already had and that's where maybe I know some people like, oh, I go in the next morning and I put in the drinks that I had the night before and some people shift that then make as they do that. They say maybe I should do that. Maybe if I track it in advance or.

That night, maybe I make different changes. So maybe if I put in Oh, I'm going to grab another drink and I put one, you know, and

Emma: yeah,

Kevin: and it's, and it can be, you know, there's obviously it can, what works for you because some people might look at that and get discouraged or upset or, you know, whatever, but it's finding that thing that might work for you, but yeah, it can be.

Those types of things that, you know, just tracking it over time or just showing up consistently over time is where that, yeah, that change can start to take hold, or we can start to see [00:42:00] patterns and things like that. And then we can start to make changes like the 10 a. m. piece of fruit or it's just stuff like that.

You know, checking in with ourself and seeing that, Oh every day when I get home from work, that's when I want to drink because I haven't eaten anything since lunch. And maybe if I, and again, this isn't magic. This isn't going to be like, Oh, do you want to stop drinking? Just have a, have a snack mid afternoon.

But if we get home and we're starving, It's going to, it's going to play into that. So how can I maybe cure a little bit of that in advance? Like when we start to be proactive and see things in advance, then we can start to make changes.

Emma: Yeah. That witching hour was a big, a big one for me. Finish work.

I need to wind down. What am I going to do? Unfortunately, the solution for me was often, as I'm cooking dinner, have a drink. So [00:43:00] then, you know, you look at that habit and go how do I change that? How do I reward myself or wind down after work without having a drink? And some days it was Taking the dog for a walk.

We know that's my favorite hobby. Some days it was just going and laying down in bed for five minutes and having like just decompressing from work. But yeah, just breaking that habit loop of as soon as I finish work, I go to the kitchen, I start cooking because I work from home obviously. So, there's no like car ride to decompress or no commute to decompress, although I'm not sure getting stuck in traffic is decompressing anyway.

I,

Kevin: I, I turned it into 1 for myself.

Emma: I think it can be

Kevin: with because, yeah, I mean, I, I got to the point where, you know, as long as I didn't have to be somewhere right that 2nd if I got, I, I kind of calmed down. I was like. Okay, this is more time where I can listen to this book that I'm interested in or podcast or you know, what am I in?

And yes, I understand that people have to be places at certain times. And I, you know, there, [00:44:00] there are those times when I was Russian and swearing and all of that stuff. But Yeah, it was kind of like one of those reframes where I'm like, you know what? I don't give it. I don't need to be at work. So what if I'm 10 minutes late for work?

Is it that big of a deal? And some people, yes, I understand it will be yes, if I'm late to pick up my daughter or something like that. Yes, there are repercussions to certain things. I'm not saying that.

Emma: Yeah, but if you can reframe it to okay, I've got an hour by myself, what, I mean, you're stuck in a car.

Sure. But yeah, what can you do? Can you listen to a podcast? Can you listen to an audio book? Can you turn on a podcast? Some amazing nineties jams and just have a karaoke session in the car. Yep. So good. Yeah. Decompress.

Kevin: But yeah, having, and that's, that's a great point too, with working from home or just, you know, being at home, like if you, if you're not working and you're at home, how can you add in that decompression [00:45:00] there?

We have to be, it's almost like you have to be a little bit more proactive, I think, because at least I think so, because it's definitely, yeah, I mean, I do you live in your

Emma: studio?

Kevin: What's that?

Emma: Do you live in your studio? I only ever see you in your studio, your office. Pretty much.

Kevin: It is kind of a studio at this point.

I see I got my green screen and my ring light and all this stuff. Yeah some days. I'm

Emma: sorry. I derailed your train of thought. Oh, that's okay.

Kevin: I'm just gonna abandon it now because I'm not gonna get it back. It's fine.

Emma: The other aspect of this topic that we haven't talked about is the, or like a flip side to a resolution or what a lot of people are doing these days is a word for the year.

I did one last year and I think it worked really well and so I'm going to do a word this again this year for 2025. So my word for 2024 was enough and that I think is a word that was quite [00:46:00] it made me think. I like, I like the word because it's, I like using the word instead of a resolution because it's not black and white, it's not pass or fail, it's interpretive and it's creative and And for me, the word enough was, it had so many different meanings.

So have I done enough today? Have, is that enough? Have I done too much? Is that enough ice cream? Is that enough candy? Have I done enough to satisfy myself? So it was, there were so many different ways to interpret it that I could pull it into you know, When I was being reflective or

you know, thinking about myself and my journey, is this enough? Have I done enough? Am I enough? I am enough. I figured that out. Yay. Yay 2024. So yeah, so enough was my word and it, and I like that it was, I mean, I didn't intend for it to be that kind of broad or interpretive, which felt like a good word at the time but it turned out to be a good word.

[00:47:00] So, 2025, I'm going in, I think, I think I've settled on need for my, for my word for 2025 Is this a need or a want? Do I need another scoop of ice cream? Do I need another coffee?

Kevin: Maybe and yes

Emma: Do I need it do I want it do I need what does my family need from me? What does my job need from me? What does what does my body need right now?

So listening to Needs rather than wants I guess. And that can be hard to do listening to what your body needs.

Kevin: Yeah and that's the, that's the beauty of the word of the year, because you can make it your own, right? Because just, just that right there, kind of in my head, need for me is more of a what is, what is, what do I need to do right now?

What is it? What do I need to do right now? What does everybody need from [00:48:00] me? It's not the, I like the check in of what does my body need right now? But. It feels more obligatory. And for me again, I'm not at all trying to convince you or anything. I'm just saying like the difference here versus want is what do I want to do right now?

For someone that might be just like if I just do everything I want to do, I don't want to do anything. Right. So, I mean, it's, how do you see it? And yeah cause yeah, it can be. It can be anything that resonates with you.

Emma: Yeah. So that's really interesting because for me, need is quite a kind, it feels kind and caring and loving, you know, like what do I need?

What does, yeah. Listening to my body, what do I need or what does my family need? Not not what are they demanding of me right now, but what do they, I mean, they might be demanding a snack before dinner. Do [00:49:00] they need a snack? Yeah, so what do they need? It was actually they need, they need a meal coach. They need some nourishment.

Kevin: Yeah,

Emma: so what? Yeah, it's more listening to kind of the, the the base, like the root, I guess, digging down deeper into why,

Kevin: which is a big,

Emma: a big, a big thing. Why is this happening? Why do I, why, why do I have this craving? Why am I feeling this? What do I need right now? Yeah. My dog needs her ball right now.

Clearly. Did you hear that?

Kevin: Yeah. And it's funny because I'll say. That yeah, I like that to whatever you told me your word. Within reason to whatever you told me your word was because it's meaningful to you and I like that.

I like that that's meaningful to you. Right. And we can use other people's ideas someone shared in the meeting today that they basically stole from another Reframer in a meeting, but they did the opposite and their word [00:50:00] was more. And it was more of the things that they wanted.

Whereas I'm assuming the opposite was, the other person was like, less. And they were like, maybe less meetings. Less time. Less ice cream. Enjoying this. Less, okay. We're going to have a, I feel

Emma: like we

Kevin: have to talk about the ice cream thing. Cause it's, I think every single example, do you need some ice cream right now?

Emma: No, I don't need it, but I want it. But maybe that's what does my body need? My body probably needs some sustenance.

Kevin: Yeah. Maybe your body needs some comfort and that would make your body feel good. And that's therefore what your body needs right now. If that's what it's telling you, I don't know.

Emma: Maybe my body does need ice cream.

Yeah. But I like the idea, I like both the idea of more and less as as your word and how do you Yeah. How do you interpret that? And, and that's open for interpretation and, and everyone can interpret it differently. [00:51:00] Yeah. And it's not, it

Kevin: all matters. It's how you interpret it. It's your word.

Emma: Yeah. It's your word.

And you don't have to. Tell everyone what your word is. You don't have to bandy it about. You can just kind of have it in the back of your mind. I had enough printed on a big piece of A4 paper behind the back of my computer screen for the year. And I didn't have to tell anyone what it was. No one looks at my desk necessarily or sees it.

But it was just this little reminder of, you know, is that enough? Have I done enough? Have I had enough? Yeah, you don't have to share your word with anyone and you can interpret it however you want and it can be fluid and it can change and it can

Kevin: I guess foster some growth. That's the goal is that what you mean, and, you know, I'm going to go there with, okay.

Okay. Emma, how are you going to incorporate need into January? I don't give a, I don't give a shit about the year the whole year. Let's just, how, how can you incorporate that? Actionably [00:52:00] into January, I can think

Emma: of a few things that I need, I need to drink less coffee though. I want to know, but I need to that it's a bad example.

What do I need? I need to listen to my body more and I think I need to, I'm getting better at listening to my body.

Kevin: Okay. So how can you, I'm going all stop you. How can you listen to your body more?

Emma: What

Kevin: does that mean to you? And how, how can you do that? Okay.

Emma: So when I feel like I can't be bothered getting up and going to the gym in the morning, the alarm goes off at 5am and when I think, nah, screw it, I'll cancel my gym session and I'll lay in bed.

What does my body need in that moment? And kind of being reflective of what I'm doing as opposed to what do I need. I might be tired, but I still, my body still needs to exercise. I know that I feel better when I exercise. So maybe I [00:53:00] don't go to the gym. Maybe I do some yoga at home, or maybe I just stretch at home.

Maybe I do go to the gym, but I don't give, you know, don't go absolutely hard out like I normally would. Maybe I only give as much as I can. So yeah, I guess checking in with my body and how I'm feeling, you know, I know I need to walk the dog every day because the dog needs a walk every day.

But if I'm tired or exhausted then perhaps that need can be reduced to a walk around the block or throwing the ball for the dog, you know, Hmm, how am I gonna apply need to January though?

Kevin: And maybe it is focusing on Something like, you know, what, because, you know, as you go, I mean, you might feel, oh, I need to get back into reading more or you know, that, and even with your example there, you wake up at 5 a. m. and [00:54:00] your body might need, you know, More rest, you didn't sleep enough, right?

So maybe that's, you know, and then, but, but somebody might look at that and say, you have to be honest with yourself too, right? Because if, if I wake up at 5 AM every day in January and every day, I'm like, you know what? I need more rest and that's fine. But what can you do? To adjust because how can you get more rest then, then don't schedule a gym session at 5:00 AM or go to bed earlier.

Maybe go to bed earlier. How can, how can I go to bed earlier asking these questions, right? Like, how can I. Help myself adjust. Yeah,

Emma: do I really need to be scrolling till 10 o'clock at night? Or do I need to go to sleep?

Good points.

Kevin: And I'm not, yeah, I'm just saying like that's, That's, that's some of the traps that we fall into of I, I need to wake up at 5 a. m. because I, [00:55:00] You know, everybody's waking up at 5 a. m. Do you want to wake up at 5:00 AM Does your schedule allow you to wake up at 5:00 AM Do what other obligations do you have?

And then asking those and figuring out what's best for you. Um mm-hmm. And yeah, like you, you mentioned like maybe I just do walk around the block. Maybe I just do a yoga session at home. You know, and that's why I like not being too specific with my application of, because you mentioned the half marathon and things like that, I did some races and that, but I would plan out in my calendar, all the runs I was supposed to do and where I, you know, Often kind of fell short on some going and doing some races is when I fell off my plan, instead of adjusting or changing, I would just be like, Oh, I'm so far behind on my plan. I haven't done that because I have, I always had to go back and do what I missed or whatever. Yeah. How can I just kind of [00:56:00] show up and where I'm at today and okay, maybe I don't run the half marathon.

Maybe I run the 10 K that day. Maybe that was too ambitious of a, of a goal or whatever. But then that's fine.

Emma: adapting to where your body's at, at that time, in that moment.

Kevin: It's good to push, you know, push, push ourselves is great. But, yeah,

Emma: what's that, what's that saying?

Change or growth happens in the uncomfortable. Is that they're saying? Something like that.

Kevin: Yeah, but also I like the, the quote of expectations are future resentments. Cause sometimes we set these expectations for ourselves with resolutions that we, you know, I'm setting this expectation. And. It might be too, it might be bigger than I'm ready for because there's maybe we don't factor in all of the change that has to happen in there.

And I'm not here to discourage anyone from resolutions. Of course you know, I feel like that's what I'm doing, but, but, but I'm saying it all goes for me. It all goes back to what can I [00:57:00] do if I want to read more What can I do on my worst day and still read? I can read one page, I can read one page

Emma: from a

Kevin: book, from a book.

On my worst day, I can read one page. That doesn't mean I have to read, you know, I might want to show up and read 10 or a chapter or whatever, but not every day I'm going to be able to do that. I can still show up and I'll say after my coffee, open up my book and that's it. I'm done. I did my habit. I showed up.

Coffee before

Emma: everything.

Kevin: Coffee with everything. Tea, coffee, a glass of water with lemon in the morning. What, again, I'm tying it to, to that morning thing. But at lunch, when I eat lunch, I will, Open up a book when I, you know, when I get into bed, I will pick up my book like to kind of where, where can I put that thing?

What makes the most sense for me? And then if it does, if it's not working that place, I thought it would [00:58:00] change it. Where else can I put it? But I've gone off. I've gotten off the word topic.

Emma: What's your word for the year?

Kevin: I don't know.

Emma: That's

Kevin: it. Three words. I don't know. I don't know. You only have to have

Emma: a word.

I mean, it's another good point.

Kevin: I've done. Yeah, you don't have to. I've done it before. I've had, you know, I've shared, I shared one, I think it's 2020. My word of the year was Patient or patience because I felt like I needed more patience. I was, you know, I was, I was about. Seven, eight months alcohol free at the start of that year.

And I felt like I needed to work on that a little bit. And, but, you know, and, and some of the things I did was, okay, I'm going to continue to read more. I'm going to work on meditation. And one of the other things was I had to have a watch at the time where it would tap me on the wrist and say, you know, do you want to be mindful for a minute or whatever it said, that whole breathing thing that it does.

And I would always be like, nope, cancel.

Emma: I'm

Kevin: like,

Emma: [00:59:00] I'm too busy.

Kevin: But yeah, but I said, you know, starting that year, I'm like, as part of this whole patients thing, I'm like, every time that pops up, I am going to click. Yes. And do it for one minute. Yeah. And I can pretty much do that unless I'm recording a podcast right now and talking like this, I can do some deep breathing for a minute.

Even if I'm in a meeting, even if I'm whatever doing anything. And so that was like one of the actionable things I tried to do. And you know, along with some repeating, some affirmations related to it, and just, you know, write journaling about it a little bit. And I haven't really been successful at incorporating the word of the year since I've done them.

I can't even remember some of the words. I don't know this year. It's I have this thought stuck in my head that someone said the other day, and it is if not now, when and it was more of a, you know, a push to, you know, I'm never, I'm never going to be this young again, type of thing. And no matter what age I'm ahead.

And [01:00:00] so why not start that thing? Why not work on that thing? Why not try for that thing? Whatever it is. Yeah. So I was kind of like actually leaning towards like, when question mark being the word because of that saying and, and that meaning that it has for me of not to, I feel like it, it almost is going to push, you know, push, push, push, do the thing.

But. No, I think it's more of a, just a, it'd be more of a reflective question. And that's the other thing is with the word, a good practice could be, okay, how did I do with my needs this week? Like you can take a look at you know, do you know, what do I need this coming week? I like the Sunday night reflection.

Period that I usually incorporate just sorry, I'm putting you on there, but that's how did I do this week with my if not now, when type of thing you know, and just reflect on it could be [01:01:00] the action I take, you know, it's. Again, just because I say, like, how can you bring it into something tangible doesn't mean you have to be, like, doing something constantly about it.

Emma: So, when are you coming to New Zealand?

Kevin: If not now, When? I don't know. That's your

Emma: question for the next, for January. When are you coming to New Zealand?

Kevin: Yeah.

I don't know, my, my mind wants to say something about long drops and paddocks, but,

Emma: when you have evolved from long drops and living in paddocks.

Kevin: Oh, I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. Not this year. All right.

Emma: I'll keep asking you. Maybe next year. I'll remind you of your, of your word. My

Kevin: when. Yeah.

Emma: Your when. When. [01:02:00] When.

Kevin: Alrighty. Anything else

Emma: on the new year and making changes?

Kevin: I mean, we're

Emma: great at talking about things in a roundabout way.

Kevin: Yeah I mean, I would just say

a couple of things that stick out for me is give yourself time and Start small. Yeah, like I said tiny small Because it's hard to think about it this way, where , I might've said something about this on the last episode too, about my habits have been, you know, 16, 000 plus days in the making.

Right. Basically my whole life has led me to right now. And while it doesn't take that long to change habits, I've had things build up over many years, not usually not 16, 000 days worth, but you know, I've had things that, that I've done over even just the last year that I've built into my [01:03:00] days that if I want to change that, or, do it differently, it's going to take some time to unwind that.

So how can you, the things that we want to, I say, like our unwanted habits How can I put in wanted habits or behaviors? How can I add and crowd out? I like the word crowd out, the words crowd out. The, how can I crowd out the things I don't want to do with things I do?

Emma: You do that with gardening as well. If you over plant your garden. Then there's no room for the weeds to grow.

Kevin: Same theory. If you over plant your garden, there's no room for the weeds to grow?

Emma: So if you fill your garden with no, I don't want weeds. That's what I mean. So you crowd out, yeah, you crowd out your garden with the things that you do want, and then there's no room for the things that you don't want.

Kevin: Yeah, that's my bad. I the way, the way you said it in my head, I was like, you know, [01:04:00] you're like, there's no room for the weeds to grow and is how I heard it. And I'm like, it sounded like you wanted the weeds to grow. So I was like, wait a minute, I'm confused.

Emma: No, same, same. Like if you, if you fill your life with the things that you want and the habits that you want to succeed, then you know, the, the things that you don't want in the bad habits or the habits you don't want get pushed out.

There's no room for them.

Kevin: Yeah, I like the, I like the whole garden analogy for so many different reasons. There's, I've talked about that in the past a lot and the weeds can sometimes be tough to get rid of too. It's how can I dig this thing out?

It's not going to be necessarily like, Oh, I pulled this weed out. And that's never going to come back. Yeah. You know, we may have to revisit that. That goes back to it's not linear.

It's, you know, there are going to be times when we have to revisit things over and over again until we kind of work through it and replace it with the things that we want in that [01:05:00] garden.

Emma: Yeah. Nice. I love there's so many analogies in sobriety we can Yeah, do a whole podcast on analogies. I'll brainstorm that one for us.

All right, so I was today years old or this week's this week years old. It wasn't today that I learned this, but I learned this week that ham salad is a thing. We do not have ham salad in New Zealand. It's, I did not know that those two words go together. But I have learned that in America.

There is such a thing as a ham salad. When I think of a salad, I think of a lettuce heavy, garden y, vegetably thing, maybe with a little bit of meat, but it's a very vegetable heavy thing with sometimes a creamy dressing, usually like a vinaigrette kind of dressing, but definitely not a ham salad.

Chopped ham, mayonnaise, and some pickles, which [01:06:00] is what I believe a ham salad is.

Kevin: It's funny because you said this earlier and I was like, Ooh, yeah, no ham salad. No, that doesn't sound good. But then I just realized as I, cause I was like, I'm Googling it and I'm like, wait, what's ham salad again? And then it dawned on me Oh, cause like tuna salad, chicken salad, people, we don't

Emma: know neither of those things here either.

Kevin: Yeah. So for some reason you said ham salad, which I was like, I don't hear people talking about, usually it's like tuna salad sandwich or something like that. It's just something that you put in for a sandwich and I don't know.

Emma: If you talk, if you said tuna salad to me or tuna salad sandwich, I would think it would be like green tuna flakes with some lettuce and maybe some tomato.

In a sandwich, in a, in a slice of bread, not. Mushed up with mayonnaise.

Kevin: Oh yeah. So do you not like mayonnaise or?

Emma: No, I like mayonnaise. Just perhaps not that much of the mayonnaise or not. Like it [01:07:00] sounds mushy.

Kevin: And I don't like any of these that we're naming here, just so you know I'm not a fan because of what you just said, it's I'm biting into it.

I'm like, no. Yeah, I'm not a big tuna fan unless it's sushi either.

Emma: Although, I'm trying to think. We would have, would we call it an egg salad sandwich? No, we would just call it an egg sandwich.

Kevin: Oh yeah. Egg salad sandwich. Yeah,

Emma: we would And but that would be egg mushed up with a bit of mayo put on Yeah, a slice of bread.

But we would probably just call that an egg sandwich.

Kevin: Not yet. Another thing I don't eat, it's salad. Yeah. I, I'll have, we like, we'll sometimes do like breakfast for dinner where we make a a breakfast sandwich where it's like scrambled egg bacon, cheese. Not a thing in New Zealand. Breakfast sandwich? Oof, breakfast sandwiches are good.

Emma: Just leave the toast out. I don't eat it, just bacon, eggs. Tomatoes, hash browns, just fry it all up. Okay. Also good, yes. Just another fun little [01:08:00] cultural difference that I have learnt through the connections that I've made through Reframe. I didn't think New Zealand and America were all that different and then, you know, someone says that they're having a ham salad

Kevin: yeah,

like I said, I don't hear ham salad too often, but maybe that's a local location thing too. I don't know. I heard more tuna salad.

Emma: Yeah. It's apparently it's quite divisive. Divisive. Is that the right word? Derisive? Dividing.

Kevin: Dividing. So divisive. Yeah.

Emma: Yeah.

Kevin: Yeah. Yeah. Um, All right. I was today years old in the, in our men's meeting when someone who

self proclaimed cannot grow a beard called beards make up for men. And I was kind of like, yeah, I can see it. It, it's, it's easy. It covers up like my face. Cause

Emma: of

Kevin: course that,

Emma: which is how [01:09:00] I

Kevin: feel about it because I've, I feel like I want to,, my daughter who is 17. When she was one or two, I think I look back at the pictures to see when I started, like I had facial hair, but it was like very short stubble.

, but since she was two, I've been slow, my beard has slowly gotten bigger and bigger and, or more and more just cause I don't know, I just, I like it. And I've jokingly said I'm just gonna, I feel like shaving it. I'm just gonna shave it all off, which I'm not because I'm kind of scared of what's under there right now.

Not just, not just what's under there, but just what, what my beard looks like. I can just

Emma: imagine you with a white, yeah, white chin and then a tan from your nose up. I'm not really tan,

Kevin: so I'm not what you would call tan. And that's you know what? Yeah. It hides blemishes. It hides all, you know, but

Emma: do you still have to groom it though? Right. Like you can't if you wake up in the morning, [01:10:00] does it go a bit like, do you need to, especially

Kevin: if I sleep on my stomach, which I kind of go between side and stomach.

If I sleep on my stomach and my face is on the pillow, like you got, it's just going to I don't wake up with bed head cause my hair, I can just Scrape back and, you know, just kind of run my hands through it a little bit and it go, it, it looks the same. But my beard can just be a little crazy in the morning.

So a little bed beard? Yeah, you have to groom it. My biggest thing is when it gets cut too short, is I can't do this. You grab it. That's like your

Emma: habit. Yeah.

Kevin: It's, it's like a comfort thing. Yeah. And when I don't, my hand just kind of falls right off and Yeah. I don't like it at all. So I would have issues if I totally I'm going to do it one day, like when she annoys me and I'll just show up like to something with

Emma: clean shaven.

Kevin: Yeah, but I don't even I don't. It's kind of scary. It's been

Emma: and then you got to go through the itchy stubbly face

Kevin: in [01:11:00] years. Yeah, that's not. Yeah, because I can you can grow back pretty quick because I sometimes shave off the sides and it grows back pretty quick. But Anyway,

Emma: I feel like there are two things reframers watch for and play games with you without you knowing in meetings and one of them will be when you touch your glasses and the other one will be when you

Kevin: stroke your beard.

So, yeah, someone said in a, in a meeting, it's I feel like every time I play a game every time Kevin touches his glasses, it's one extra day sober, which is the day that I learned that I touch my glasses way too much. Yeah. Kind of like when I say, yeah people, people like to tell me things I do and say and I'm just like a walking self conscious, you know, with all my little words and things.

Yeah. I understand. Yeah. No. Yeah. The fart chair. Remember that?

Emma: Yeah. I remember the fart chair

Kevin: that squeaked. Yeah.

Emma: Sounded like you were farting constantly on meetings.

Kevin: And then I moved [01:12:00] to, I brought my standup desk that I made up here. So I got rid of that. And then people were, you know, somebody would be like, you're moving around too much.

Emma: Look, at least you don't have culturally very different terminology that I navigate in the meetings.

Kevin: Yes.

Emma: It's a, it's a fun time in Emma's head before, actually, it's usually after something comes out and then I'm like, Oh shit, could that possibly be taken any other way? Or I see the chat blow up and someone's Oh my gosh, did she just say?

Kevin: Oh yeah, that's What did I just say? I might be like, did she just say that?

Emma: Does she know what that means? I

Kevin: don't think she knows.

Emma: Emma does not know what that means.

Kevin: Always fun. Hey, I am whatever I realize this podcast alone, luckily for technology you don't get all the uhs, ums, [01:13:00] you knows, and likes from me because

Emma: you edit them out. You don't edit out my, mm, mm, mm.

It's more

Kevin: of an mm, mm. So,

Emma: My grunts.

Kevin: Yes, I leave all of your, I leave all your stuff in and I only edit my stuff out. No.

I'm an equal opportunity editor. That. If you I'll just close this out then because all

Emma: tangents successfully covered we're done.

Kevin: Yes. We'll save any others for the next time and we will talk about our, I already forgot my word, when, when and need and how we might be incorporating that in the future.

But yeah, thank

Emma: you.

Kevin: Yeah. And, and next, I believe next episode we can also probably recap on the long drops in the paddocks. I think it should just be about that. I think it's just. Yeah,

Emma: I think,

Kevin: yeah, I think you need to take some [01:14:00] video footage on there. We can incorporate it in the YouTube video just for

Emma: I'll do a reconnaissance mission.

Oh yeah. I'm doing it for for science, for science, for research.

Kevin: Oh, good luck is all I'm going to say on behalf of all of the. Reframeable podcast listeners. Good luck. All right. With that, thank you all for listening to this week's episode of the reframeable podcast brought to you by the reframe app reframe is the number one iOS and Android app to help us cut back or quit drinking alcohol.

It uses neuroscience to reframe our relationship with alcohol and unlock the healthiest, happiest you. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like subscribe and share with those you feel may benefit from it. And if you have a topic you'd like us to cover on the podcast send us an email to podcast at reframe app.

com topics, tangents, whatever you'd like. If [01:15:00] you're on the reframe app, you can feel free to give it a shake when you're in the app and let us know There as well. And I want to thank you again for listening and be sure to come back next week for another episode. Have a great day.

Emma: Bye friends.