Try this powerful David Goggins mindset shift to help you quit alcohol

The weather warmed up a bit last week where I live, which means it’s time to start catching up on my podcasts again.

One of my favourite things in the world is going on long walks on a trail near my house and listening to audiobooks and pods.

It’s the ultimate multitask: get some exercise, get some fresh air, learn something new.

Anyway, I was being a bit of a baby this week, and that’s usually a signal that I need some David Goggins in my life.

Goggins is a former Navy Seal, ultramarathon runner and the author of one of my favourite self-improvement books of all time, Can’t Hurt Me (affiliate link).

Goggins can be aggressive and abrasive, and he swears like, well, a sailor. But that’s why I love him so much.

Sometimes the thing you need the most is a good kick in the a**.

So I was listening to his interview on the Joe Rogan podcast and one thing Goggins said in particular got me thinking about the process of quitting alcohol.

Small wins every day

Recently I wrote an article called “Instead of fixating on long-term sobriety, try thinking in streaks.”

Here’s what I wrote about what prompted that piece:

“I recently started a Twitter account to get the word out about my quit drinking writing, and one thing that stands out to me in the recovery community is how hard people are on themselves.

“Without question, it’s no fun disappointing yourself. If you’ve set a goal to quit drinking and you slip up, you’re never going to feel great about it.

“But the level of despair I see from people on social media who’ve had a slip-up after a lengthy period of sobriety is absolutely crushing.”

I made the following suggestion:

“If you don’t focus on the process (and dare I say it, on some level enjoy the process), you may never reach the end goal.

“Any massive victory in life — I’ve written about this before in a piece about my favourite self-help book — is the result of compounding little wins every day.

“The improvements day-to-day will be imperceptible, but the long-term results are gigantic.

“Quitting drinking forever is overwhelming. Quitting drinking for today is very doable.”

Rather than seeing it as “failing” at long-term sobriety, think of it as an opportunity to learn and then start a new sober streak.

Now, there’s a difference between making excuses for your mistakes and changing your attitude and mindset — and that applies to everything in life.

For Goggins, many of his challenges are physical.

Navy Seal training is one of the most onerous things you can undertake. Running 200-mile races in the blazing heat is almost unfathomably hard. Same for setting world records for pull-ups.

Taking on such ludicrous goals means Goggins is used to what normal people call “failure”.

There is no failure

Here’s what Goggins told Joe Rogan about the idea of failure:

“People say, ‘how do you handle failure?’

“I fail a lot, dude. I fail all the f**cking time.

“I don’t look at failure as failure.

“I look at failure as your first, second, third, fourth, fifth attempt.

“I look at them as ‘attempts’. I don’t look at anything as ‘failure’.

“Not trying is failure. That’s not some after-school special sh*t, but when you’re able to go out there, there is no failure.”

If you’re trying to quit alcohol, you are probably going to slip up a lot in the early going.

As I wrote here, I initially made the decision to get daily drinking out of my life back in 2019. It’s only now, in 2023, that I feel relatively confident in my ability to keep alcohol at bay.

The reason for that is that I never gave up after “failing.”

Mistakes are opportunities to learn

Here’s what Goggins said about how to deal with setbacks:

“I don’t quit. I may not make it the first time, but I’ll come back. I’ll call an audible. I gotta get my head back in the game, I gotta figure this s**t out.

“It doesn’t mean you leave, it means you study it more.”

This is the approach I eventually took.

I studied. I tracked. I learned. I wrote down how I was feeling all the time. I wrote down what worked and what didn’t. And eventually I figured out a strategy that has worked for me.

Never look at your own unsuccessful attempts to quit alcohol (or accomplish anything, really) as a failure.

As Goggins said: “Failure is a big word that gets people down and s**t. We give so much power to words. I don’t. I take the power right away. I didn’t fail s**t.”

If something doesn’t work, don’t get overly discouraged.

Try something else.

And then do it again and again until you figure out something that works.

You can’t fail if you don’t stop trying.

Thank you so much for reading this piece all the way to the end! If you enjoyed it or found it inspiring, please give it some claps so others can find it! I love hearing from you in the comments, too!

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