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Kevin: 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 ReFramer, a Certified Life Coach and Thrive Coach with ReFrame from New Zealand. Hey Kev, how you doing?

Kevin: Hey, good. Good. How are you?

Emma: I'm good. It's [00:01:00] been a busy week. Kids are still on school holidays down here, still summer holidays. Excuse me. So kids are doing activities, arranging play dates.

I swear I'm busier in the school holidays than I am when they're actually at school. And working, and yeah, Uber mum plus working mum. Busy time, but at least it's sunny out and it's warm.

Kevin: As I look out in grey, sunless, snow covered, my phone says feels like 10 degrees.

Emma: This, like I find this really funny now and I'm on my little high horse that I've got somewhere and it's all nice and warm, but give it What four months and I'll be like, yeah, shut up about your summer.

I don't want to hear how sunny and warm it is. It's wet and cold and muddy.

Kevin: Yeah. See, but I don't mind this. I like this. Yeah. It's negative 12 Celsius here. Okay. It's fair for anyone who cares.

Emma: I don't think anywhere in New Zealand gets negative 12. [00:02:00]

Kevin: I just,

Emma: I, like we have snow, we have mountain ranges, we have decent ski fields, but even then I don't think it, I don't know, maybe I'm wrong.

Kevin: And that's the feels like it says 21 degrees feels like 10. So 21 is negative six Celsius.

Emma: Yeah. All right. We'd get there. Yeah.

Kevin: Wind chill. I got Lake Erie quarter mile away. It's chilly.

Emma: None of this sounds exciting to me.

Kevin: Yeah. I prefer this to sun, but, Sun, but just heat. I don't like heat.

Emma: No, I'm like a lizard.

I will lay on a rock in the sun and just. Defrost my insides. Yeah. Love it.

Kevin: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm always covered. I, yeah, we go to a [00:03:00] beach or something, shirts off for 20 minutes after that long sleeve shirt back on, hat on. I'm good. I don't even, I don't even mess with it anymore. Just because, yeah, let's get some vitamin D and then let's cover up the tattoos and yeah, protect the investment in ink.

Basically it's, yeah,

Emma: it's probably why the tattoo on my back is all faded and

Kevin: maybe, yeah, I don't know how much that how much all that factors in, but I won't take much of a chance anymore just because, yeah. The one time I did go to the dermatologist to get checked, which I should probably go back.

She was looking and I didn't have as much as I have now, but I remember her looking at this one up on my right, like a top of my right arm. And it's brown brownish colors in it. And I have freckles and all of that stuff. And she's this is probably the hardest and she's really good.

[00:04:00] Dermatologist like older. She's this is one of the most difficult places that I've had to look through the tattoo and all that. I'm like, yeah. That's probably when I was like, I should probably just stop going in the sun just to be careful of that. That's

Emma: probably, I thought you were going to say stop getting tattoos.

I was like, that doesn't sound like the right answer.

Kevin: No. That's like me. I just got another coffee mug this week, my, my transfer addiction of coffee mugs. But I'm like, yeah, the answer isn't less mugs. It's just more shelves.

Emma: 100%. I agree.

So this week. Where we thought we would revisit our resolutions or our words of the year, see how we going do a check in, revisit, touch base on, we're coming to the end of January. This will come out on, I think, the 31st of Jan or the, the last couple of days of Jan. Where are we at and what happened?

What next? What hap what, what happens after? January.

Kevin: What's next? [00:05:00]

Emma: What's next? So my word for the year is I said, I was going to say was need. It is need. I need to remember that. No. Yes. Mine is need, yours is when. I almost got the two confused. When? Yeah. Clearly it hasn't embedded in for me yet because I can't even remember my word very well.

Kevin: You need to remember your word.

Emma: I need to remember my word is need. What do I need? Although that being said, so I actually, when I think about need, what do I need? To remember to check in with myself about what do I need, which is a fun little circlica. Oh my gosh. Circlical thing going on in my head.

Circlica. Yeah. Those two words. Nicely. Circlica. Yeah.

Kevin: You could just blame everything though on no, that's a word, that's how we say it in New Zealand. That's what we say down here. I'd be like, okay.

Emma: Sure. And then everyone in New Zealand and potentially Australia would be like, She's absolutely bullshitting you, Kim.

Kevin: Focus.

Emma: Ah, so I forward

Kevin: focus. You were saying something about focus. I wasn't [00:06:00] telling you to focus I thought.

Emma: I, um. I noticed that last week I wasn't paying attention to what I need, and I wasn't eating well, and I wasn't sleeping well and I never know whether that's like a chicken or the egg scenario, like if I don't sleep well.

I gotta wake up and just go straight for coffee and then potentially forget to have breakfast and then if I don't have breakfast, then chances are, like, I'll get to three o'clock and be like, shit, I haven't eaten anything today, which is terrible. I've just had coffee all day. And then because I've had, I'm having coffee so late, then I don't sleep at night.

And it's just this horrible spiral. So I think I'm like a small one I had at least was that I picked up pretty early on in my like little. Lack of self care spiral that I need to stuff my face with food and get my ass to bed [00:07:00] with a book, not a phone. And I need to implement those good habits that I know do really well for me.

So yeah, I guess I did pick up on what I need a little bit. But that kind of feels what do I need on a basic sense? And that doesn't necessarily feel like I'm growing or improving. But I guess it means I'm not going backwards.

Kevin: What do you mean? That's what I need in a basic sense.

Emma: Like food

Kevin: and nourishment and sleep.

Emma: Food and sleep is a pretty base level need of a human, right? But

Kevin: if you're not doing that, if you're not eating Consistently, you're forgetting because I do that too or I'll just grab whatever's quickest because I have too many meetings in a day or, and

Emma: grabbing a muesli bar or something.

Kevin: Yeah.

Emma: Terrible habit.

Kevin: Yeah. Yesterday. Yeah. It was a good [00:08:00] example. I went from 8 a.

m. to 11 p. m. It wasn't water wall meetings, but it was water wall meetings and having to get things done. They were on deadline or whatever. And. Yeah. Yeah, I had a, I had my normal bar in the morning. I don't, I did have my overnight oats, which were just something I grabbed that I made two days before I didn't eat.

And then I had another bar in the afternoon because I was like I don't have time just grabbing this. And yeah, I didn't eat really anything until seven, eight o'clock at night and was feeling it.

But yeah. I think that is. A basic need, but it is something that, we can also neglect very easily depending on, yeah, I've been chuckling that up good.

Emma: I was just to say, I think when I reflect on why I picked the word need, it was more [00:09:00] about. It was a little bit about making sure that my basic needs are met and maintained to be met, but it's more about what do I need to grow or get bigger or get better or get more, get, thrive.

Get thrive? That doesn't work, but get thrive. Get thrive. But I should put that on a t shirt.

Kevin: Oh what's that for? Just random shit I said.

Emma: But yeah, I guess in the, yeah, I can't the likelihood of me getting Thrive is less likely if my basic needs aren't being met, if I'm not sleeping, if I'm not eating properly, then the likelihood of me Thriving is unlikely. So yeah, all right I'll accept it's potentially not where, reflecting on my word, that's potentially not where I Thought this word was going to take me, but that's where we've gone.

But February is different. Let's see if we can [00:10:00] get thrive in February.

Kevin: Yeah, I was laughing. Cause I, as you said that the last time I was writing down on my pad here, hashtag get thrive yeah, and that's, and that's a great point. That's a great. Example of, we have this expectation of what we want this to look like, or what we expect this to look like.

And it's much different when we start really looking at it. And if we do really look at it and be like all right, first, before I go and need to grow, look at all this growth stuff I want to do, can't do that if I'm tired and hungry. Um, that's, yeah, that's a great, just like I said, it's a great example of how once we start out, and [00:11:00] then the rubber meets the road, as they say, or whatever you can, you go, I don't know if you know that

Emma: and

Kevin: you start going I'm guessing the rubber is on a tire, whatever and you start driving.

And then you're like, Oh, got to pick up some food along the way up. We got to stop and take a nap. Before, yeah, before we can. Do that next thing, whatever that might be. Cause yeah, what would you say looking forward to February if, okay, let's just say now that you're focused on this, okay, I need to set an alarm to eat or I need to put that on a eat lunch is do that, I check off actually because I am, it's easy for me to forget.

But, okay. I got that taken care of. Okay. I'm at least focused on sleeping or I'm reading that book beforehand and, and doing certain things there. [00:12:00] What's, what would be that next need for growth that you wanted to.

Emma: That is an excellent question, and I don't know the answer. Maybe I need to think about it more. I need to pay more, I need to put some focus into it. Yeah, because I don't know what my next step is of what I need to do. For me, I know what I need to do around the house. That doesn't sound fun though. I need to do yard work.

Although I enjoy doing yard work, ripping out weeds is very therapeutic. Anyway, yeah, maybe I need to pay more attention to what I need for growth. I don't know. Yeah.

How's your your when coming on?

Kevin: When? And that comes from yeah, if not [00:13:00] now, when? Meaning, if, why am I waiting for a certain point to do? This or that or whatever, um, it goes along with that whole there's never a perfect time and not getting any younger, uh, and stuff like that.

And yeah I did revisit this week a bit. Cause this week, yeah I, the 22nd is when I always celebrate that as like a, this year, six years since what I consider my bottom, whatever, whenever I decided to, when I actively, that was the night I did something to actually make a change.

And it wasn't anything dramatic either. It wasn't anything I was sitting on my couch having a little. breakdown and signing up for a therapist online telehealth shit, because I was like looking at all my options and I knew I had to do something. I knew I had to talk to somebody. [00:14:00] And that was definitely a, if not now, when moment.

So I was reflecting on that this week. Especially that night. But I kinda, I've done that a little bit this month. As far as. Trying to push through January is just, I can't get away from it. It's always busy. It's always a busy month. Back in my, when I was an accountant year end dealing with all that, that was definitely a a lot of hours put in and now, working at reframe.

The new year, everybody looking to make changes and we are dry and damn January challenges and all of that stuff. It's yeah, it's always busy. I try and do my best to keep and maintain the. Things that help me the little,

yeah, I like to call them my bookends. I just talked about that in a video that I just prepped for the challenge. But my bookends, the morning and evening [00:15:00] routines and yeah, I might have. In January, I have potentially one bookend a day, I don't get, I rarely get two bookends in a day with, and what that, what I mean is just, I can have a mindful morning, but maybe I'm working later and my evening doesn't, I I don't know whether it's my ADHD, revenge, bedtime, procrastination kicking in that's a thing for me for sure.

Yeah. Or if I go to bed early, this Monday I woke up at five. I went to bed early on Sunday. I woke up at five. I went out for a walk in negative seven degree temperature. Negative 21 Celsius. There you go. But got off from my walk.

I stretched that night, I. I was reading, I was doing the things, but it's maintaining that was, is always difficult in this time. So I just tried to at least do something each day. And [00:16:00] that's where I'm now revisiting. One bookend

Emma: is better than no bookends, right?

Kevin: Yeah. And I certainly had some days with no bookends, but I at least had one the majority of the month. And that's, so that's where shifting my focus now, getting out of January. Getting past the work for the challenge itself. And so that's a little, not to say that there's, there's plenty of work always to be done, but a little more breathing room there.

And that'll be my focus too, because if not now. When am I gonna wait till March and, and that's it, you just keep, I'm not gonna beat myself up for not, starting out and, I'm running the tiny habits book club. I don't beat myself up for my habits when they go awry, like it's a work in progress and it's, that's why I.

Became a tiny habits certified coach because I wanted to learn more about it. I wanted to dive in more for myself. [00:17:00] Doesn't mean that I always do it. I do floss that one tooth every day.

Emma: Just the one. So you're not losing.

Kevin: Just the one. I guess it's typically because it's. It is between two. Yes.

Yeah. I've always had that conundrum. Yeah. Whenever but but yeah, the, uh, and usually it's all of them, but there have been a couple of times this week when it was just the one, cause I was tired and not feeling it.

Emma: That almost sounds like a Like a rebellious toddler being like, you said I only had to do one.

Kevin: And that's it. It's

Emma: just rebelling.

Kevin: Some, and sometimes I like doing that. I don't want to get into a hole. I feel like I talk about my one, I've talked about flossing one tooth for eight months now with all of my habit stuff. Cause that was one of the examples in the book. And then I was like you know what?

I'm going to try that. I need to floss my teeth more. And by more, floss my teeth. I floss it a couple of days before I go to the dentist. And when I need it, which isn't that often, right? It's not daily. Yeah. So it's not [00:18:00] daily, but it has been for the most part daily over the last eight months, because I've only had to floss one tooth and I made it easy for myself.

How did we get there? Why does it always go to no idea? Tooth flossing. Because I. At least still focused on doing, some things, staying connected with those little things that are helpful in my bookends to I'm still reading every day, even if it's just that one page. But I do want to do.

More stuff I need to get my ass moving more and getting out for those walks or I want to do more working out and stuff like that. And that's where my, if not now, when is kicking in and that's the. That's going to be a real focus for me moving [00:19:00] into February. So

Emma: yeah shifting gears from January to February.

How do you do that? Or what do you do? What are some solutions or ideas or

Kevin: just in general from month to month or related to specifically anything with January, Feb.

Emma: Both. I guess for some people, maybe they were super curious or maybe they were just doing a reset and doing dry Jan or damp Jan as a bit of a reset or a bit of a, refocus.

So yeah, what do you do shifting into February? Do you? Just drop everything and go, cool, that was done, ticked it off the bucket list and moving on. Do you Do you go, that was actually, I feel, actually feel really good and want to keep going? Or, how do you, what do you do? Yeah, moving from January into February.

But then I guess also month to month, but we are moving from January to February, so we should probably focus [00:20:00] on that.

Kevin: Yeah, with looking at the January challenge, like if you Came into reframe or on your own and just, you did a challenge, dry, damp, whatever, then I would say, what was your goal, right? Was it just to, like you said, was it just the reboot?

Was it just the reset a challenge itself just to see if you could do it or to yeah, just to go about it that way. In which case, then what, what is the plan heading into whether you dry or damp, whether didn't drink at all or later successful, a hundred percent or not, whatever,

so yeah, the, transitioning into a new month in general, I think I like to, I use the months as kind of checkpoints, right? They're easy checkpoints. You can use whatever you want. But, and I just happened, I was, I know I was mentioning this to you [00:21:00] earlier, like the eight, my my sober.

Anniversary, whatever, alcohol free date, whatever you want to call it was April 29th. So the 29th of the month always stands out to me. Especially early on, I was always like, oh, how many months? And now I'd still do the math because I'm just like, oh, how many is it now?

I, uh, you have to stop counting months, though, what, two years it's

Emma: like when you've got kids, right?

Kevin: Yeah, you can't say I'm 36 months anymore you can go up to 24, no, you can go up to 23, and then it's two years good to know, I'll give and a half but the 29th is always like that good day for me because I remember it and not that I don't remember the last day of the month either, because you can just see it, but I also.

I've done different things like at the last Sunday of every month, I would, I told Siri to put a shut up Siri [00:22:00] put a calendar event on the last Sunday of every month at six o'clock and just say, put it as check in or, and I was doing that to take a look at okay, how did this month go?

Let's reset, let's regroup. And what do I want to work on in the coming month? And yeah, so that's a good checkpoint for me. So using that, depending on how, like I said, if you did any of the challenges, if you were only. Hey, I'm going to do the dry challenge, the damp challenge, whatever, what is that transition?

If you're going to reintroduce alcohol or go, what's the plan after January is basically the question. And that, I always think if you're questioning it, like Oh, I feel good. What do I do? I always threw out to people. I'm like, just keep it going. If you don't know, like just extend it a bit.

Emma: Reflect on how you felt while you were doing the challenge. Did, how did you, and be [00:23:00] really like, brutally honest with yourself. How did you feel? How did you sleep? How did you feel? How was your brain? How was your mental wellbeing? How? How did it go? How did it feel? Did it feel good? Yeah.

So if you don't know, yeah, if you don't know what to do next, perhaps spend some time reflecting on how it felt, how the month went, how does, how did your choices impact your day to day life? And if you were doing say damp January and you're like, yeah, it was okay. Maybe this is the challenge to be like, okay, let's do sober February.

There's no cool rhyme for like sober February. Dry Feb. Dry

Kevin: Feb, yeah.

AF Feb. AF Feb. I don't know.

Emma: We'll work on that.

Kevin: We'll get back to you. Yeah,

Emma: we'll brainstorm that one. But yeah, maybe that's, February is the shortest month of the year, so it, if you are, if that's one of your hang ups of 31 days is a really long time or [00:24:00] 28 is less so yeah, maybe you do try doing.

Going out coffee for alcohol free for February.

Kevin: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. We'll have to think of something else for this. Yeah. On a meeting recently, like share I didn't want to do January. I can't remember the exact reason, but they're like, but I'm doing February. I just wanted, it's the shortest month and it was just psychologically speaking. It was more of a kind of like that whole thing.

I don't want to start on a Monday for something because. It's I'm just going to start on a random day, or I'm not gonna start on January 1st, cause I don't like that. I'm going to just keep doing what I'm doing, working on what I'm working on. And then in February, I'll tackle this.

And I always throw out the, if you do like the J a January challenge, I used to host on a thousand hours, [00:25:00] dry that page and a thousand hours is. 42 days. 41. I

Emma: hate it when people say it though, because the best part of a thousand hours dry was that I didn't know how many days it was.

And so I was just, cause I started my sober challenge with what my sober career journey with thousand hours dry challenge. And that worked for me because I wasn't counting down from 42. I was counting up to a thousand. And then it just kept going because I didn't know when I didn't have it marked on the calendar when I was going to be at a thousand hours

Kevin: to 42 as well.

Emma: I know my brain didn't look like that.

Kevin: I know

Emma: it was like because

Kevin: I do think it is like the hours I think is psychologically different. And it's, it is that because days is very

it's what we always talk about. And we can mark it on the

Emma: calendar. Yeah.

Kevin: Yeah, whereas, oh, a thousand hours on this many hours we don't, our brains don't think like that. As much, so it is that more, [00:26:00] I don't know how I would put it. But yeah, it's a different mindset,

Emma: slightly more abstract way of thinking about it or yeah, it's just, that's

Kevin: good.

Emma: I don't know if it was, yeah, that's a good point. Like you can still count up from one to 30 in a month, but it was almost like when I was doing monthly challenges. The 30th the month was like the end date. So when you're running a marathon and you pass the finish line, you get to the end, you collapse in a heap because you don't have to run anymore.

At least that's what I do. And so that was the same kind of mindset. With drinking, month long stints of sobriety or month long stints from drinking, it was like I had just had to get to the finish line and then I could be an absolute train wreck again.

Kevin: Yes.

Emma: But yeah, something about a thousand hours when you don't actually know where the finish line is per se.

I don't know, I changed my mindset. Sorry, I [00:27:00] derailed your comment on And that's fine because

Kevin: What you just said though about it made me absolutely anxious because when you don't know where the finish line is with a, something that is finite, I was sitting there thinking I was imagining running without knowing how far I had to run.

And after a while I would be like, all right,

Emma: give

Kevin: me a percentage. How far am I? How far am I into this? And technically it's not 42 days. It's 41. 67 days. I had to yeah, because I hosted on that page. So I was always figuring out. It was always a thing figuring out when the challenge, cause we did rounds of it where we would okay, on April 1st or 16th or whatever day we picked, we're starting it.

But anybody could do it at any point in time. It wasn't like you had to join us, but it was just something to do together. But yeah, I had to sit, I was sitting there thinking if it ended, especially if it ended on my day that round, I [00:28:00] was like, okay, 0. 67, like what time of day?

Is it officially over? My comment was I, we used to say that we used to do a thousand hours dry challenge for January and we called it dry January for overachievers because you get those extra. 10, 11 days in there and I did like that because, and I share that often if somebody is I don't know what to do, I'm always like, go a thousand hours and see, just extend it a bit and you don't have to don't have to decide.

And this is a nice little way to. Again, challenge yourself and extend it a bit and then, and you could keep doing this. I'm not saying that, but okay. You get to the 11th or 12th of February and you're like do I continue on for the rest of the month and then revisit?

Emma: Almost halfway there.

Do you? Yeah. Just keep going.

Kevin: Yeah. And I don't mean to say it like, okay, it sounds like I'm just going to keep kicking the can down the road which you could, [00:29:00] but if you, especially if you don't, if you're unsure. Look at the positives of whatever you do, anything, whether it relates to alcohol, whether it's some challenge with or not even challenge, like it's something that you're okay.

In February, I'm going to walk outside every day. I got to revisit that and be like, Oh, how's that working for me? Do I want to do something else? Is it causing.

Emma: Yeah, it's actually the one when it's like minus 21 degrees or whatever. Or could I walk on a treadmill inside or could I, yeah, I don't know.

Yeah. Being outside is

Kevin: no, no one's ever said I could walk outside or I could do burpees and chose

Emma: I was trying to think of something you can do. That's like inside, although. Doing burpees inside is probably not, also not a great idea. Or maybe you, I don't know, because, not everyone has a treadmill. I don't have a treadmill. Maybe you do star jumps inside. No, also jumping inside. Again, Emma, quit [00:30:00] with the jumping brain.

We have

Kevin: a, yeah, I have a treadmill. I'd still rather go outside.

Emma: I do, Very much. There's something about, it's obviously fresh air and oxytocin and smelling the soil and yada yada that

Kevin: there's no soil smell right now.

Emma: It's just snow. Does snow smell?

Kevin: Only if it's, God, I was going to go I'm guessing yellow snow.

I'm guessing yellow snow smells. But I don't know, I'll have to go outside and see is there a, I can't imagine a finger on it if it, if there is like a, smell fresh cut grass or something, you can smell those things. I'm drawing a blank on that. Stay tuned for the next episode when we talk about the smell of snow.

Emma: Oh fun times in our brains. But yeah, no, there is there's exercise, which is amazing for us and then there's outdoor exercise, which is, I don't know, a different, [00:31:00] almost feels like a completely different thing. It doesn't have to be, outdoor exercise till you're sweating up a storm.

It can be gentle walking where you don't sweat at all. Don't raise a sweat, but you're outside and you're moving your body. My point being Circling back if you're you know, your goal for the month of February or January or whatever was to exercise outside every day But then you go actually it's the middle of winter and it's freezing and I'm actually not enjoying this how can you like let's revisit it.

You don't have to completely drop your goal of I want to exercise every day, but perhaps it's, yeah, I want to exercise every day rather than I want to exercise outside every day, or maybe it's, I still want to get outside, but I do it at midday when it's not absolutely freezing, or maybe I need to invest in some really decent thermal lined clothing, beanies, hats, gloves, says someone [00:32:00] who's doesn't live in the snow.

Yeah,

Kevin: beanies, hats, gloves, coat, yeah, all the things. The under, I had the under armor leggings on underneath my joggers or whatever. And yeah, some boots yeah, you got, and that's, that is, if we set out to do something for the month and we recognize, then we start and we're like, yeah, I wanted to do that because I wanted to, because someone said something about it, someone else was doing it, whatever we saw it.

And that's I referenced Tiny Habits before and his his pack person approach PAC is person, action, context, and how you can troubleshoot things looking at what you just mentioned, the, whatever I'm doing, can I get. As a person, can I get increased my skills with it?

If it's not working, is there something I can [00:33:00] do? And let's just say, something workout related, increasing my skills could be watching YouTube videos to how on proper form on how to do burpees or whatever. So you could do that. You could the help yourself by the context and like getting different tools, making sure that you have the right gear for it, making sure that, um, that you have a warm enough gear that you have the right clothes or shoes or whatever it is for whatever you want to do equipment.

Or the action piece of it is, can you make it smaller if it's, and he talks about how. When our motivations high, if our motivations high and we're troubleshooting it, then, what are the skills that you could add in? What is the other stuff that you could get for motivations?

Low, make it smaller. Don't say, don't sit there and tell myself I have to go outside when it's negative seven degrees and walk and blah, blah, blah. I have to. [00:34:00] Go into my basement and stand on the treadmill, maybe push start, and anything else I do after that's extra credit. I don't have to keep going with it.

Um, how do you adjust is getting to with that? And because that's like looking back, that's part of that. Okay, I'm looking back at this month. What went well. What do I want to improve on? What can I carry forward with me to next month? How do I adjust it? If I want to keep that going.

What was making it difficult if I did have trouble with it and going through that kind of checklist there?

Emma: What felt good? What didn't feel good? Yeah. What did I enjoy? What did I not enjoy? Don't get me wrong. Sometimes there are going to be things in life to do with our goals or our habits that we don't enjoy.

But if you're not enjoying it is, can you tweak it to make it slightly less unenjoyable, slightly more enjoyable.

Kevin: Yeah. And that's the whole topic we're talking this week in the book club too is celebration too, because yeah, you [00:35:00] don't want to, we don't do as humans. We don't do things that are painful for long.

Unless there's some benefit to it. Or we might do it, but we're not going to like it if we're miserable, that's not good. That's not going to, and I always try and look for things to be, if I'm going to work something in, I want to, I want it to be sustainable.

Therefore, I want to like it and celebrating in some way, there's a lot to that. But that's going to, if we feel good about something, and we celebrate it right away. Give myself a high five, give someone else a high five. Just share it on my stories and social media.

Just even marking an X on my calendar that I did that thing right there. And saying something or thinking something good about that. That's what hardwires these things into our brain, these habits, these behaviors not. Oh, if I do this for all of January or all February, I'm going to reward myself with [00:36:00] this.

I think that's not how behavior change works because, we, again we won't do things for too long if there's not a benefit to it. And looking out days, weeks, months in advance for that benefit isn't. Going to necessarily help it take hold.

Emma: Don't get me wrong. If you've done dry January or damp January and you've stuck within your goals and you're and you've, and you come to 31st of January, absolutely reward yourself, celebrate yourself somehow.

However that, there's, yeah, there's rewarding yourself as in I've achieved a milestone, but then there's also celebrating the wins as they happen to reinforce that habit in your brain that this shit is good. Let's do this again. This makes me happy. This makes me feel good. I want to do this again.

Let's reinforce that. Yeah, exactly. I was going to say

Kevin: Yeah, it wasn't definitely not saying that because the, even going into the app and on, on that day, Hitting my target, hitting [00:37:00] getting that green coffee mug for zero days, or, hitting my target on on a day on the damp challenge, celebration pops up and it's, it's all the things that, that happened there that celebrating it right there.

We might not see it that way, but that little bit can help. But acknowledging ourselves to each day that's where different activities like, whether it's, I'm not gonna just thinking of something that you're grateful for the day or, those types of things.

That's where that positive stuff helps.

Emma: Yeah. I think in the beginning for me, I was thinking, I was just thinking back to my beginning days of some, I remember someone saying, In one of the first meetings I was on pillow to pillow, and it's a phrase that you'll hear a lot in the in the recovery space or the sobriety space and my little win or like a little celebration or acknowledgement.

I didn't even know what it was at the time, but looking [00:38:00] back now, reflecting back now, I would get to bed and my head would hit the pillow. And I don't know if it was a sigh of relief or just like a fuck yes, like pillow to pillow. Another day heads on the pillow sober. And that was my, my, like my little like fist pump.

I've done it. So yeah, that was just my daily little, I didn't even know that I was doing it. How cool is that? My brain was just like automatically Acknowledging my wins. So yeah, it doesn't need to be like a, I'm going to celebrate with a manicure each day, or I'm gonna get a massage

Kevin: at the end.

I'm gonna get a Yeah. Yeah. I'm looking forward to that tattoo that I get when I hit six years or one year or a month. Yeah.

Emma: I'm planning my two year tattoo, I am. Oh

Kevin: yeah. I got, I'm chomping at the bid now. It's been too long. We got plans.

Emma: Yeah. But yeah, it doesn't have to be like, yeah, absolutely.

Do little celebrations and I think almost there. I [00:39:00] think the daily or maybe not daily celebrate But like the small internal celebrations acknowledging the milestones for yourself almost need to be quite internal and self reflective of Let's not get that validation externally. Let's get that validation internally.

So that's like high fiving yourself. We're doing a little dance party or a little fist pump or Something like that. And just for yourself, that, that means something to you and then save the big external rewards for the rewards at the goal, like getting a massage, like getting a tattoo, like getting, going for dinner, going for brunch, going for,

Kevin: I don't know.

Yeah. Having that cake, having whatever

Emma: cake for breakfast. Is that appropriate? Maybe.

Kevin: What's a donut? It's cake.

Emma: A waffle? Pancake? Pancakes. Pancakes is breakfast food. Yes, smelled it. Pancakes for breakfast.

Kevin: Exactly. Yeah, what did you just say there? It was, I think, cause I think we have, and I'm seeing this a [00:40:00] lot talking with people about, behavior change and our habits and this whole concept of celebrating, Early often, like when you remember to do your habit or the behavior, whenever you are doing it, after you do it, when your head hits the pillow at night, after my head hits the pillow, I'm going to think of something good from the day.

And I'm going to say fist bump. I'm going to say, hell yeah, whatever. Like We think that we have to earn a celebration and yeah, we do but we feel like it Hey, I think it's ingrained in us that I didn't do enough to celebrate

Emma: And

Kevin: it's no you if you did anything Celebrate it if it's something that you want to keep doing because yeah what you what you celebrate and repeat and do that, you're going to start to feel good about more and [00:41:00] more as you go and more quickly be able to add these types of things, whatever they are into our life, because what we're feeling positive about them there is this, I think whole.

Societal. I gotta get to the end of the year and be perfect. And I gotta do all the things and I'm not there yet. And I gotta wait to celebrate. I didn't earn it and all this stuff is bullshit. Now, if you're, if I didn't do anything today that, that was on my list or that I I said I was going to do this and I didn't.

Okay. But what else did I do? , did I just sit around and do nothing? Okay why did I do that? Did I need the rest , you could go down all these rabbit holes of just because I didn't do necessarily what I said I was going to do, but I did all these things over here, but I'm ignoring this because it wasn't this list.

It's okay, but you created a whole new list today and got all that done. [00:42:00] Add everything to the list. I love the ta da list. I, since I learned that when I need that, I pull that out. And ate lunch did I achieve today? Check yeah. Showered first thing. Check my ADHD takes hold and I'm like, I have plenty of time.

And then it's I got to be somewhere at the hour. And

Emma: I've given myself like

Kevin: five minutes. Yeah. I can do it. Anyway, going off on a tangent with all that, but it's a reassessing though, what we were talking about, like heading in from going from one month to another, celebrating those wins, but also thinking about, yeah what's next.

Emma: What worked? What felt good? I think that's what trying to get really reflect. I keep saying reflective, but that's my, maybe one of my biggest tools is actually thinking about what felt good. What did I enjoy and being like, okay let's repeat that. Let's replicate that. If that feels good to me, [00:43:00] let's repeat it.

And if that doesn't feel good what doesn't feel good about it? So maybe you did. And maybe you did dry January, and you had a couple of slips and, let's reflect on those slips, what Or slips or, let's not even call them slips, just, you had a couple of drinks, had a day or two where you had a couple of drinks.

Let's reflect on that. What happened in that scenario? Did it feel good? Were you drinking because you wanted to celebrate? Were you drinking to enhance that moment? Were you drinking out of frustration or out of stress? Yeah, let's reflect on that and think about did that drink make you feel good?

Only you can answer that question to yourself really honestly. No one else can tell you how you felt or knows how you felt in that moment.

Kevin: I would probably have answered that.

Yeah, I felt good. But how did you feel the

Emma: next day?

Kevin: How'd you feel the next day? But even if it's just a little bit and it's just what were you, if it was something where I didn't want to drink and I did, [00:44:00] and if it felt good what were you looking for in that moment? Like, Why did you feel that?

Okay. I'm going to do this or screw it. I'm going to do this. However, it came out, did what did you feel you needed in that moment? And what did that give you? Cause yeah, I feel good, but it gave you something and it gave you, I was stressed and I, felt looser or more relaxed afterwards.

Okay. That's where adding in something, I don't know what the million different things that you could do to de stress and relax and help yourself there, but it's just a matter of identifying that and being like what could I do throughout the week to help me there? What else could I add in?

And it's not all about adding in. What else could I take out that's stressing me out?

Emma: Yeah. Two pronged, two pronged approach. What can I take out, but also what can I add in? Sometimes you can't take out the job, although many of us would like to you can, you can't just quit your job.

Many of us what can you add in [00:45:00] instead? Maybe you add in a lunchtime walk or maybe you add in a. I don't know, yoga session straight after work, or maybe a rage run straight after work. I don't know. Maybe add in something. But also I like the idea of taking burpees. Rage burpees!

Kevin: Alright, their burpees are already rage.

Emma: Let's turn that into a thing, instead of rage running, rage burpees.

Kevin: I'm already enraged if I ever have to do burpees, don't worry.

Emma: I would rather do burpees than go on the rowing machine. Controversial opinion.

Kevin: I guess it depends on how many burpees I have to do versus how long I have to row. What?

Emma: That's a very good point.

Kevin: Yeah. If anybody wants a rowing machine, we have a rowing machine downstairs that I haven't used in years. Yeah. Almost pretty much unused. Yeah.

Emma: Sorry, I took us on a tangent and I can't remember where [00:46:00] we were.

Kevin: I might have taken us off rage walking. Ray, talking about like the, how do you de stress those things? You walk at lunch or, and we talked about rage burpees. Rage burpees. Yeah.

Emma: Yeah. What can you add in if you can't take out what's causing that stress or that discomfort? What can you add in?

If you can take it out, amazing, do that.

Kevin: Yeah, that's, yeah, what's the easiest yeah, it's not always about adding more and more in, because that's the last thing we want to do half the time. That's what stresses us out. It's oh, I gotta do another thing. It's nope, you can. But also you don't have to, if you do add something in, Start small, don't add in, a hundred burpees 20 minutes of meditation.

Add in a, when I have, after I sit down with my coffee, I'm going to take three deep breaths. That's my mindfulness piece. And just add that [00:47:00] in and then see how you feel and then take that sip of coffee. That's almost like a celebration of itself. Especially the first sip. But it's that first sip.

I know. Yeah. So, that's the other thing that we might do is we might go too big.

Emma: Yeah. Or I think that's something that a lot of I certainly did when I, First, started reframing, started not when I started reframing, but when I got serious about sobriety was I think I tried to add in too many things and I definitely got a bit of recovery fatigue.

I was trying to do all the things and I was trying to do all of them at a hundred percent, which, you can't do 10, 100 percent you got to do 10, 10 percent you know, that's how math works. Sure.

Kevin: As I look up, I'm sitting here doing the math, doing that math in my head. I think I know what you mean.

Emma: Yeah. Yeah. Like you can do 10, like you said.

Kevin: Yeah.

Emma: You can't do 30 minutes of meditation plus a one hour run. Plus [00:48:00] a one hour waits training, plus walk the dog for half an hour. Plus, there's just absolutely not enough time in the day. Not enough hours.

Kevin: Yeah. I have my journal here where I was doing my morning pages, three pages a day, and what did I.

What did I get? I got the biggest journal. I thought it was a normal 8x10 paper size. No, it's like 11x14. Yeah, it's and I remember going in here somewhere in the beginning, cause I was, doing my morning pages, just writing, you're supposed to write three pages and you can get a small book and three pages.

I would get the

Emma: tiniest little book.

Kevin: Yeah, that's what I would recommend. But I was sitting here and there's a little, I'm going to show you my. Stuff that I have, like this one day, part of my three pages was like, I'm trying to think through, I was like focused on my morning routine. And then I just drew right from five to 11 o'clock.

I'm like, I just drew my morning and overall. [00:49:00] And I started putting things in and I'm like, everything you want to do doesn't fit here. Look, here's the evidence.

Emma: Physically, there's not enough. Yeah.

Kevin: Something has to give like we, Oh, I want to do all this. It's fine. I'll fit it in. But then we can beat ourselves up for not fitting it in.

But we don't take the time to look and say That wasn't very realistic, was it?

And that's why

Emma: reflection is so good.

Kevin: Yeah. And that's why I was just going to pull this back to that. It's and this is all kind of the stuff that we should maybe take a look at when, for me, like on the 29th, when I take a moment to sit there and reflect or look through my calendar or look through my camera reel, I've done that where it's just like what happened this month?

And I looked through my. Oh, that's a good

Emma: idea. Looking through your camera reel. I hadn't thought of that. I like that idea.

Kevin: Yeah.

Emma: That's probably just a month of screenshots of memes. That's fun too.

Kevin: Mine [00:50:00] is a bunch of videos of me in front of the green screen for dry and damp January. My camera reel any, I get so much anxiety.

Pictures of the most random shit around just funny, or I'm always nervous. If someone's no one should flip through it's not anything bad. It's just stupid shit. It's just Oh don't flip. What day are you on? What did I do that day? Yeah.

Emma: It's almost as telling as someone going through like your Spotify history.

Really? You like that song? Really? You took a photo of that? Really? You screenshotted that?

Kevin: Yeah. Yeah, I did. Yeah. That's half the shit that I'd probably just take a picture of and send to my wife to annoy her or use the invisible ink when you send it so that she's I don't open anything up from you at work. That's invisible ink. It would have been like our dog in the backyard going to the bathroom or something. Yeah, it was just random. [00:51:00] I thought you missed them and you wanted to see them today.

Yeah.

Emma: For Christmas, not this year, last year, I followed our dog Bruce around for a month taking photos of her. Doing her business in various locations and printed them out and gave them to my husband as some bathroom art.

Kevin: Nice.

Emma: I've

Kevin: seen that recently, someone doing that where they like a picture of their dog.

Yeah. And, but they framed it big and put it like above the toilet or yeah,

Emma: right next to the toilet. Yeah.

Kevin: Okay.

Emma: Yeah.

Kevin: Nice. I like that.

Emma: Absolutely stole that idea off like Instagram or whatever, that was not an Emma original, but it was funny. Nonetheless, except that my dog is black. She's a black, fluffy spoodle.

The photos didn't turn out so good. I need a professional photographer to follow my dog around for a month.

Kevin: What's a spoodle?

Emma: I think you cockapoo in America. A cocker spaniel crossed with a poodle.

Kevin: Oh,[00:52:00]

yeah. So you're going spaniel. Yeah. A spoodle sounds like a. Cockapoo sounds like a

Emma: bird, like a cockatiel.

Kevin: Yeah, I like spoodle better, but it also sounds like zoodle, or like zucchini noodles. Like a food or something? It sounds like some kind of noodle.

Emma: Yeah.

Kevin: Like spaghetti squash noodles. Spoodles. Alright.

Emma: Alright, so what did we learn this week? What are our tidbits?

Kevin: I learned that it's super easy for us if we just say a funny word to go off on a tangent.

Emma: So this week I learned, and I'm not going to give a heck of a lot of backstory, other than, okay, so Kiv, I've got two daughters. So I know what it's like living with two daughters. I know how to feed two. Young girls, two daughters. I learned this week that it is unnecessary to cook three kgs of mince for a 16 year [00:53:00] old boy for dinner.

That is an excessive amount of mince. That's what I learned this week.

Kevin: Okay, and it's funny because now that I'm reading it on here with the note that you made and when you told me before I was confused, but I thought you were saying that he Eight, three kilograms of mince meat, ground beef, whatever which is as we looked up 6.

6 pounds. I thought you said that he ate all of that. That's why I was confused earlier. Okay. So that's excessive. It might be. It was

Emma: excessive. Okay. I over cated, I cooked enough nacho mix to feed a rugby team because in Emma world, in Emma brain, a 16 year old boy is, eats a lot, is a bottomless pit.

Like you hear all these stories. I don't have experience with teenage boys, so I don't know. So we just wanted to make sure that I had enough food and I drastically over cated. So now we have a freezer full of nacho mix. Yeah,

Kevin: [00:54:00] it'd be one thing if he brought a friend too, but, and, but just him by himself, he's probably trying to, not pig out or and eat six pounds of

Emma: To be fair, it was the first time I'd met him, so he was probably trying to be very polite and not Go fast into the whole bowl of nacho mix, but

Kevin: This

Emma: week's old when I learned that a single male cannot eat three kilos of mince

Kevin: can maybe if it shouldn't,

but that being said I'm like, I'm the youngest of four boys. So I remember the stories and I was, I remember it vaguely. Like the closest to me. It was six years. Yeah. He's 51. Yeah. Yeah. Six years older than me. So it was like six, seven and eight years, six, seven and nine years older than me.

So when they were in high school, I was a little shit, and they were all big football players. Like my mom would make five pounds of mashed potatoes for dinner. One meal. We went through a [00:55:00] gallon of milk. She made them drink a glass of water before they even sat down to eat so that they would maybe drink a little less milk.

But yeah, the amount of food they had to make and there's just me. Then I would be the only one left because I was the little runt that you get the smallest and I would sit there forever and I just didn't eat. So they had to set a timer for me and you Better be done by this time or not get anything else and all that stuff.

I was the opposite end of the spectrum for that. I don't know. But yeah, with those three all playing football coming home, I just remember the five pounds of potatoes and a gallon of milk among other stuff.

Emma: I can't wrap my head around. How did your mother actually mash? That amount of potatoes.

Potatoes.

Kevin: I don't know if you got instant. I don't know. That's gross. Yeah. But you gotta take some shortcuts, some .

Emma: Yeah, I know some

Kevin: somewhere. I don't remember. I'll have to ask.

Emma: I'm [00:56:00] not yucking your mom's yum. But yeah, instant potatoes. We had instant potatoes when I was at boarding school and I can't ever again.

Maybe she didn't batches. I don't know. Maybe I should interrogate your mother instead of interrogating you.

Kevin: Ask her so we were talking about this on the podcast. Can you give us a rundown? Nice potatoes.

Emma: Yeah. . Yeah.

Kevin: I remember going grocery shopping with her and we had two grocery cart we were pushing around every two weeks or month or when, however often we went.

I don't remember. Again, young, I don't know. I don't

Emma: remember.

You call met that full boys. That

Kevin: was probably a common phrase. Yeah. . I can't remember what my name was, Elizabeth. They didn't even have a boy's name for me, ready. They're like, it can't possibly be another boy. Yeah. It can't possibly be another boy.

Dammit. Yeah, uh,

Emma: awesome.

Kevin: Alright. Reflect, reassess, [00:57:00] revisit that word, that resolution, whatever that might be. How can you reframe, I'll throw that one in too, that re yeah, anything else you want to mention? Just

Emma: get curious about it. Get curious about your feelings over the past month, or get curious about what you want going forward as well, or what you need.

Kevin: And when you're going to do it now, and if not now, when are you going to do it? Any other words we need to touch on there? Burpee.

Emma: I think we,

Kevin: Rage burpees, hashtag get thrive. All right. And 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 app to help you cut back or quit drinking alcohol. It uses neuroscience to reframe your relationship with [00:58:00] alcohol and unlock the healthiest, happiest you. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like subscribe and share with those that you feel may benefit from it. If you have a topic you'd like us to cover, please send an email to podcast at reframe app.

com. Or if you're in the reframe app already, give it a shake and let us know. 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.