Alcohol Minimalist: Change Your Drinking Habits!

Hey, it's Molly from alcohol minimalist. What do you do in this October? I would love to have you join me in my more sober October challenge. What do I mean by more sober October, it simply means that we're going to add in more alcohol free days than you currently been doing, whether that's one or two or 31. It's up to you, you get to set your own goal and that's why it's more sober October. You can check it out and learn more at get got sunnyside.co/molly It's totally free. I've got prizes, I'm going to be going live every week to announce the prize winners. And it's just going to be an awesome event. So I would love to have you join me. You can learn more at get.sunnyside.co/molly and you can get registered today. Welcome to the alcohol minimalist podcast. I'm your host Molly watts. If you want to change your drinking habits and create a peaceful relationship with alcohol, you're in the right place. This podcast explores the strategies I use to overcome a lifetime of family alcohol abuse, more than 30 years of anxiety and worry about my own drinking, and what felt like an unbreakable daily drinking habit. Becoming an alcohol minimalist means removing excess alcohol from your life. So it doesn't remove you from life. It means being able to take alcohol or leave it without feeling deprived. It means to live peacefully, being able to enjoy a glass of wine without feeling guilty and without needing to finish the bottle. With Science on our side will shatter your past patterns and eliminate your excuses. Changing your relationship with alcohol is possible. I'm here to help you do it. Let's start now. Well, hello and welcome or welcome back to the alcohol minimalist podcast with me your host Molly Watts coming to you from well, it's a pretty low key, sunny, looks to be going to be kind of a perfect day around here. It has been sunny, it has been hot. It has been glorious. And while I know it's September now and I know that the rain will eventually come. This literally might be the best month ever in Oregon. I think September is my favorite. It's football season starting I get to light my pumpkin spice candles legally, right. And the weather is perfect. So, again, if you haven't visited the Pacific Northwest, this is your opportunity, folks. Today on the podcast, I am super excited to share with you a conversation I had with Ramon David Ramon is the founder of brain first. It is a company that is Earth grown evidence based nutritional products. He's also the founder of the brain first Training Institute, which delivers accredited applied neuroscience and brain based training for dedicated to coaches, performance consultants, leaders, educators and trainers. But you just got a lot of experience in terms of talking about the brain. Right? I you'll hear me say to it, you're kind of all about the brain. Ramon spent years analyzing scientific literature, conducting research, and drawing on two decades of training and coaching experience and got his master's degree in neuroscience to take on these two projects that he's got. He's now also just started or changed his podcast to call it the human optimization podcast, which I really love. He talks to world class experts, and they discuss science based tools to help you optimize your own physiology and master your mind and unlock your potential. I just loved talking to well first of all, he's from Australia. So come on. I love talking to the Australians. Their accent is just so brilliant, and it's so much fun. So I think you're really gonna love this conversation. And if you want to check it out, Ramon all of this stuff will be in the show notes in terms of where you can learn more about products about the classes. And just more about all at the podcast in terms of just educating yourself on all the power of your beautiful, brilliant human brain, which as you know if you're around here long enough, is what I tell you is the key to overcoming your habits and to creating a peaceful relationship with alcohol. So, here is my conversation with Ramon, David. Hey, Ramon, thank you so much for showing up. And for joining me here on the alcohol minimalist podcast. It is great to be with you. And I really appreciate you taking the time. Thanks, Molly, great to be here. So super exciting I reached out to you asked you to come on to the show, because one of the things that I talk about all the time is neuroscience and neuroplasticity, and really understanding how to work with our brains, so that they can, you know, we can work with them instead of against them in terms of at least in terms of creating a more peaceful relationship with alcohol. That's what I focus on. And for helping people that I say all the time, it's, it's really a meta skill. And it's really about learning so that you can again, use your brain in the very best way. And you are kind of a guy who is all about the brain. So tell me about that. Tell me where you kind of where this passion for neuroscience came from? And a little bit about your journey? Yeah, so it's a bit of a long journey. Actually, I probably always had an interest in not necessarily neuroscience, per se, but definitely in psychology, physiology. What's going on in the mind, what's going on in the body actually started out way back when we were talking probably 25 years ago now in the health and fitness industry. And I worked in health and fitness for about 10 years. As a personal trainer, then as a health coach, and then on the speaking circuit is to fly around the world and give talks on health and fitness and then got into training health and fitness professionals. And during that time, as particularly when I was on the speaking circuit and traveling around and delivering seminars and workshops, I used to attend a lot of seminars and workshops, and kind of that was my personal development junkie phase, if you will. Yeah. So I used to go around, teach train, and then attend seminars, everything from hypnotherapy, right through to behavior change, and nutrition, all sorts of things. And around, I think I would have been maybe late, maybe late 20s, early 30s, trying to figure out, okay, what do I want next, what's the next stage of my career. And once I wanted something that was going to not just keep my interest for, hopefully, the foreseeable future, but I was also going to leverage everything that I had already done working with people, because I love working with people, and I love helping people, and everything to do with the physiological stuff, and also incorporate some of the psychology as well. And then I started to look a little bit closer at neuroscience. And I kind of started to incorporate some neuroscience, or what I thought was, you know, neuroscience based techniques, strategies, approaches with clients. But when I started to dive in a little deeper, at this time, you know, we're talking, like 15 years ago, now, there really wasn't much out there in the way of practical science or evidence based strategies and approaches, you kind of had a couple of brain gurus out there saying, you know, the brand is wonderful, the brain can change, you know, it's amazing. And that's great. But, you know, what does that look like? What do we do? What are the steps? What's, what's the approach that we take? Or you had the sort of hardcore neuroscience, you had to dive into the literature? You know, read a lot of papers, analyze the literature, figure out, you know, what was a good study? What was a bad study? And then, okay, how can I now turn this into something that I can use with my clients that, you know, when they're turning up saying, Hey, I just want this result. And I'm starting to talk about neuroplasticity, or, you know, neuro chemistry and they just kind of switch off and like, right, I need to bridge this gap somehow. Yeah. And that's when I'm, I really decided to, to change careers. I went back, I did a master's in applied neuroscience, I started conducting applied neuroscience research studies, and really diving in and sort of saying, Okay, there's nothing here. Maybe I do need to spend the next few years really diving in and learning this whole field. And of course, it wasn't just a few years, it turns into a lifelong pursuit because you're a science is such a massive field. And then from there, I started sharing a few things, particularly with colleagues, and they're like, Oh, this is great. Is there more And, of course, I shared everything that I couldn't. And that was really where what is now brain first training institute was born out of a really a frustration with not having access to things that I could use that when you euroscience, based with clients, and even with myself, yeah, well, there's a real there is a disconnect between like, I mean, because neuroscience is great applied neuroscience is wonderful. And just like you said, it's mean, it's massive, right? I mean, what we don't know about the brain probably still exceeds what we know about it. But the disconnect in terms of being able to make that accessible to like the average human and make it understandable and applicable, totally, you know, still needs a lot of work, I'm sure. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And even when I'm creating new programs, or even content, trying to get it out there, but I have all these different approaches and frameworks to try and take what's in the literature and make it not just usable in a practical way, you know, it's got to have some utility, but to be able to communicate that in a way that makes sense to people that they're interested in, they don't just kind of a switch off. Well, there's so much technical jargon, that they're just like, I have no idea what you're talking about. Right? Right. Just that glazed over look like yeah, totally, exactly. Don't don't care. Don't know, don't want to. Yeah, yeah. So that was when, you know, we started, and I was doing a bit of coaching at the time, still, even, you know, going through and doing the degree and doing the research studies. And so I kind of combined all of the things that I was interested in, in this sort of neuroscience way. And I think in the very, very beginning, we call it like your coaching institute, or something like that, because I didn't even have a brand and have a name for it or anything like that. And then, of course, these things evolve. It's now become rainforest Training Institute, I think about four, maybe five years ago, we launched the first applied neuroscience certificate for coaches, we've now got a number of different offerings. And we essentially engravers Training Institute, train coaches, counselors, psychologists, helping professionals, people in leadership position who use coaching, in how to use neuroscience. And then, a few years ago, I thought, well, there's probably a whole bunch of other experts out there. And I'd like to start connecting with them and talking with them. And let's see if we can start helping people across the range of different topics and things that I'm not an expert in, even in within this field of neuroscience. We started brain first radio, and I started bringing experts on. And I think it was around that time, I thought, wow, I always wanted to have a product business as well. I've always been massively into health and human optimization. And I didn't want to create, you know, just another supplement company that sells vitamins. So, in fact, it took probably about 10 years to figure out, okay, how am I going to do this in a way that is evidence based, it's drawing on good quality research that we now have. But it's something that aligns with the way that I want to approach things from a nutrition standpoint. And then out of that, a few years ago, we formulated our first nutrition product, we've got, I think, a couple out now a third and a fourth about to come out. And so then yeah, we've now got the brain first nutrition the other company. And then as we have spoken about, we rebranded breakfast radio into the human optimization podcast. So that's kind of now my little projects and, and really get the share a lot of information from experts, and we've got some solos and more solo podcast episodes coming out on really, what does it take to be an optimized human being you, as we say, optimize your physiology master your mind and unlock your potential. So we've had over the last three or four years, you know, experts from all around the world who are real, you know, leaders in in their in their respective fields. And of course, there's a slight neuroscience angle on many of these episodes, and really trying to get that information out there in a way that's, again, it has some utility, we've got practical takeaways, what are things that people can do and they, you know, as they listen to the episode, they're like, right, I'm going to implement that. And I can do it today. I can do it tomorrow. And it's going to make a significant difference to the quality of my life. And that's really what all of these things are about is helping people to to optimize their life to live a more meaningful and fulfilling life. Life that they enjoy. And hopefully one that is long. And, you know, also introduces this idea of healthspan being able to, to be healthy for as long as possible as well so that we can enjoy life. Yeah. Oh, I love it all. I love it all. Because that's, you know, while I tell people all the time this podcast is dedicated, specifically to people who are habit drinkers who are maybe either, for myself, I come from a history of an adult child being an adult child of an alcoholic, as well. And so this is definitely dedicated to helping people change that habit, because that habit can be so disruptive in people's lives, and certainly does not help people create their best lives, right. But all of the stuff that you were just talking about, about, especially about mastery of the mind, and because it's not about just controlling the action of drinking, it's not just about whether or not people are drinking, because people do not turn to alcohol to, you know, out of out of just a sheer habit, they do it because they are trying to change how they're feeling in the moment. And so understanding how they can actually influence that. That option of how what they are actually feeling by changing how they're thinking, is something that was really kind of news to me, in terms of I really wanted to blame, or didn't want to understand the connection. I liked to look outside and think that the circumstances in my life were what were causing me to feel XY and Z, as opposed to realizing that I really had agency within that process to choose another perspective, and that that perspective was really everything. So mastering the mind, and really understanding that is part A, and then Part B is really understanding the neuroplasticity and the neural reaction of habits in the brain and why the brain is so dedicated to creating habits in the first place. Right? I mean, not necessarily a bad thing, but it is a necessary thing, Are we our brains wouldn't have enough energy to do all the other processing. But in terms of habits that don't serve us, right, yeah, tell me about kind of what you see as the role of neuroscience, and especially for people that have habits that don't serve them. Yeah, it's funny. One of the things I like to say about habits is there's no such thing as a good or bad habit according to the brain. We label it good or bad. Or we could say it's helpful or unhelpful, beneficial, not beneficial. But essentially, the brain just wants to put things on autopilot as much as possible. Because, like, primarily, conservation of energy, we evolved in an environment where food was scarce, like, we didn't have the resources that we do now. And we didn't have the availability of things like going to the fridge opening, opening a door, and pulling out whatever food we essentially want, or ordering something online and having it delivered in 15 minutes. Like, that is a very recent thing. And so, for the longest time our brain has, and we still have, you know, we've got this million year old brain still, then it's gonna probably take a long a really long time to change that as a, I guess, a core operating procedure, process principle, whatever we want to call it. But really, we need to our brain nervous system is all about energy management, and particularly conservation of energy for survival purposes. And so it's like, right, this is a repeated behavior, I'm getting some kind of reward from it on a neurochemical level. Therefore, I'm going to repeat it, because it must be good for me that I mean, it's a basic way of looking at it. But we can essentially apply that here. I think one of the one of the really interesting things and I studied Affective Neuroscience for a number of years, the neuroscience of emotion. And it's what I did my first research study on is the what's going on, actually, when we're pursuing goals and the impact of emotion on goal pursuit. One of the really interesting things I think, is this mix of how emotions really impact everything that we do. And even emotions can become habitual, we find some find something about some kind of emotional state. Like let's say it's, you know, particularly with everything that's going on in the last few years, we have you know, quite a few people I'd imagine that would be, you know, we could describe that as feeling quite empowered to express their rage or when they express their rage when they express anger when they express some kind of really strong emotion, like anger or rage. And they can, people can feel a lot of a lot of control there. So why wouldn't we, if we're getting something like feeling a sense of control, when perhaps we've been living through a time where we've held our sense of control has been taken away from us? Why would we not want to access that state again, like it can feel very powerful to feel enraged, right, sometimes can feel quite out of control as well. But it is something that we have a level of control over. And it's a very powerful state. So even something like that, when I'm experienced, I'm experiencing some kind of emotion. And why would I not want to access that again, and of course, the more we access that, the more we strengthen those circuits associated with that state, and therefore, it becomes that easy to access it in the future. And so, again, we can even have habitual emotions. And so when we combine things like the power of an emotional state, with the habit forming processes in the brain, we've got a really powerful combination that is going to almost draw us towards wanting to repeat certain behaviors. And of course, some of these behaviors can be very destructive. In fact, I was reminded last night by my partner who doesn't really drink at all, and of course, living in Australia, we live in a culture where there's a lot of alcohol. You know, it's actually really quite beneficial for me, because it means that I don't drink much at all. Whereas if you know, she did drink, then it would be much easier for me to just simply because the environment that we're in, right, so that's really, really quite fascinating to have that. And when we're talking when you were talking about the alcohol before, I was thinking, Oh, what a great approach alcohol minimalist, not telling you to eliminate it, but certainly going to be some benefit in reducing it. Particularly because not only is it so powerful, but we live in a culture where, you know, isn't alcohol, it's probably one of the only drugs or definitely the top one or substance that alters our state particular emotional state. That it's unacceptable. If you don't drink, social situation, you're the weirdo. So yeah, it's so bizarre. It's such an odd thing. No, it's off. It's it's, it's quite comical. I was just talking to my, my last week's guest was she's promoting or she's publishing an alcohol free magazine. We were talking about that. I was saying that, you know, it's also kind of a it's obviously it's a societal thing, right? Because we actually like remember, when, at least here in the United States? I definitely do. I've never been a smoker. So smoking to me is not something that was ever really of any appeal. But I remember very specifically, when, in most places, public places in the United States, we went from being smoke, you know, like people could smoke and smoking part of the restaurant and there was a nonsmoker. You know, right. And then it just got shut down. And then it was no smoking anywhere in like, public spaces. No smoking on airplanes, no smoking, right? Period. And the smokers were like, I'm sure, just like what, you know, and, but everybody else was like, Yeah, who like What took you so long? And now, like, if you went into someplace, and you started to try to light up a cigarette, I mean, I really feel like people would be like, What are you doing? Like the tide has turned whereas back in the 1970s, in the 1980s, everybody smoked, you smoked everywhere, you know, and it was again, it was kind of like alcohol back then like to be the nonsmoker was kind of you were kind of the odd man out. I really wonder, I wonder if we will get to that stage because alcohol is the number one drug of choice for people. Illegal drug of choice, right? So having this very conversation about the smoking, you have day, and God I remember when people used to smoke on the plane, remember that smoking section? It was like a curtain that they pulled across. I'm like, how that's gonna work. It's crazy. Like you look back at some of these things, you just think what were we thinking? What were all society thinking? Yeah, yeah. Well, we well, yeah, I think that I was gonna say, I think that and I really wonder if in 30 years, people will be looking back at this and saying, you know, looking at at society now insane. What? What were they thinking drinking all the time? That was their answer, you know, I mean, I don't know. Hey, everyone, just A quick break in the show to talk with you about Sunnyside. Now you've heard me talk about Sunnyside on the show before. I've had Nick and in the founders here as my guests, I am just so impressed with them. They are deeply mission driven. They are building a service to help millions of people create a healthier relationship with alcohol with no pressure to quit or feel guilty. So you know, they are very aligned with everything I talk about here at alcohol minimalist, I wanted to share with you some thoughts and comments made by people in my group and my clients who use sign a side. I checked it out and was pleasantly surprised. I've used a few tracking apps and despise to them. But the support the daily check ins and the plan. Yes, the plan. I signed up for three months yesterday and actually looked forward to the check in today. I have no doubt this tool is a step forward for me. I just want to thank you to everyone who recommended Sunnyside in this group and all of your advice throughout, I'm having the best start to a week of moderating Since I fell off the wagon in January, you work the plan, and it works. Thank you everyone. Now you don't have to take my word for it, you don't have to take their word for it, I want you to check it out for yourself, go to www.sunnyside.co/minimalist to get started on a free trial today. It's certainly the movements in in the world or at least in the United States, for sure. And I think in ethic in Australia, too, I have quite a few group members that I talked to down in Australia and you know, the sober curious and the and the dry you Aries and the mindful drinking movements. And all of this helps at least have a conversation. One of the things that I really want to work on with people and help people understand is because we have this kind of construct with alcohol where you're either broken, and you can't handle alcohol, right, your disease tick, you have a problem. Or you're like a normal drinker or you're sober, right, there's just like there's just very, there's there's very minimal room, or there's very little room for a perspective where we want to include alcohol or in our lives in a I say as a minimal way, and really understand the scientific trade offs that we're making. Because it is an agent that affects our neuro chemistry. So we have to be mindful about it, we really have to, and most people just aren't educated about it. And I don't think it needs to be some good, bad evil, you know, right, wrong, moralistic kind of discussion. It's just really an informative, educated conversation about how we include, if we're going to include alcohol in our lives, it really should be in a very minimal way, because it's just simply not that good for us. Yeah, yeah. It's, it's funny, if I think back to all of the times when, you know, at the end of a long day, it's that I could really use a drink state. It's purely just wanting to change the state that I'm in. And I know with so many of the clients that I've worked with over the years, regardless of whether it's alcohol or something else, it's so much of this is driven by the need to change our state. And I think if we began to learn how to regulate our emotions at a much earlier age day in school, that overall in our culture, and society would be far better equipped to be able to manage things like this and not not have that real draw towards a quick fix of y know that within minutes of taking a sip, I'm going to feel more relaxed, and it's going to change my state. And in fact, I can even remember sometimes when, you know, particularly if I've had a really stressful day I've had a lot on, I probably had a bit too much caffeine, and I want to change my state. I probably if I really paid attention to what was going on and really was quite mindful about the state that I was in, I'd probably get this I get the sense that I wouldn't even need the alcohol to change my state. It's simply the act of moving towards something that I know is going to change it and my brain is going to begin to change. And I'm sure that would even start to feel more relaxed before the alcohol has actually even had an effect. And I think is the insight in that is it's about changing our emotional state. Like, yeah, and if we can optimize our physiology, and move towards operating in a way where we have better self regulation, we have some emotional regulation skills. We are acting more mindfully as we move throughout our day. And just generally, as we go about, you know, acting on the world, that we will have so much more. I only use the word control, because we're an active participant in generating our emotional states, but we certainly don't control them. But let's just say we would have more agency, I think, use the word agency. Yeah. Yeah. I think that it's, I think the thing that yeah, just like you said, like I said, most people think that Oh, I just, it's just I just come up with the end of the day, it's just a habit, I just pour open, you know, but in reality, if they, if they unwind themselves from that, that story of it just being a habit, they can understand that what they are really trying to do is just like you said, they're looking for relief, right, from the stress of the day, they see that they, they that they have created a habit pattern, and that they think that every time they think to themselves, I need a beer, well, when you think I need a beer, or I need a drink, or whatever else, it automatically fuels the feeling of desire. That's what you know, the brains like, okay, great, we got that wired, we know exactly how this goes. So it's understanding how that process works, that I really work with people to uncover for themselves. And understand because one of the terrible stories that we get told throughout our lives, or the just the, that's pervasive in society, mostly from the tenets of A and other recovery programs, and the 12 steps is that you're powerless over alcohol, you're powerless to change. And I just don't believe that one iota, I believe, most people have the power to change, it is just another it's a habit system that they've set up for themselves with alcohol. And I know I mean, myself, I had a 20 plus year daily drinking habit that was not serving me at all. And even though I walked around in this state of constant anxiety, because of my alcoholic parent in believing that I had an alcoholic gene and that I was destined, you know, all of this. And none of it was true, was just the stories that I told myself to keep you stuck in the habit, right? So yeah, there's a lot of but but the neuroscience and the brain and understanding how my brain worked, and how that habit system worked in my brain, was really important for me to understand, so that I could challenge those long standing stories and core beliefs that were driving my feelings of, you know, and, and perpetuating the habit, really. So that's why it's so important to me. That's why understanding and really, truly like you said, I mean, mastering your mind, and being able to become more emotionally resilient, is something we are not taught in school, it is something we don't really understand. Most of us didn't go to school, and become, you know, learn psychology and all me made me take one course in psychology, but we're certainly not brain psychologists, we're not understanding, we don't understand applied neuroscience and so, but every single person, it's really my belief that every single one of us can benefit. And it's really, I mean, at the heart of everything, it is how we feel about our lives, how we feel and perceive the world around us. That is our experience in this planet. Right? Yes. 100%. So without without, without understanding how it's happening, it's, there's little, little chance of being able to really optimize yourself or optimize how you're, you know, just feeling about the world. Yeah, yeah. And just having a little bit of knowledge about what's going on. I'm reminded of a conversation I had with a podcast guest I think it was about a year or so ago. And from what I know about the the evidence on pain, chronic pain conditions, that just learning about how pain works in the nervous system already begins to mitigate some of the experience if you will, of the chronic pain or chronic pain starts to reduce by learning about how chronic pain works. Yeah, isn't that fascinating? blows my mind. It's just amazing. It's still the it's the brain at work. It's like you're kidding, but it's also the kind of the same thing, kind of like you were about, about emotion. And I talk about this with my folks that because the brain because our beautiful I call it our beautiful, brilliant human brains, we have the ability to step outside of ourselves and actually see our own thinking, see our own cognition, have that future oriented prefrontal cortex. Because we're able to do that. Really just being able to articulate what a feeling feels like in ourselves. I talk with people, like, you know, okay, this is like, anxiety, like, okay, my shoulders are tensing up, my heart's beating faster, my breathing feels more shallow. And the minute that you start to just articulate that and do it, it really starts to dissipate, just almost automatically. It's like, amazing, right? I mean, this is this is a core skill, this is absolutely a core skill, I think everybody on the planet has to learn is to generate a level of awareness, when an emotional state starts to take hold, and increase in intensity, or change violence from unpleasant or pleasant to unpleasant or from neutral to unpleasant, to generate some awareness around what's going on in the body at that time. And just the process of attempting to label that emotional state is going to regulate the emotional state, right process, you don't have to get the terms exactly right. It's just, it's just bringing some awareness to what's going on in the body. And trying to label what's going on, that will have more control over what's going on, we'll have more influence in this process of emotion generation, that is a core skill I think everyone needs to learn. And, you know, all of this to say, and I want to just, you know, as we wrap up this conversation, because con is honestly, you and I could probably talk for two weeks about the brain and never be done talking about the brain, right? Is that, you know, doesn't have to be scary. It doesn't have to be like a situation where you're like, well, golly, there's just so much to know and so much to learn, every small step that you take forward and really become just it increasing your own awareness of how this happens and what's going on and you don't have to be a neuroscientist, you don't have to have a degree in applied neuroscience, you don't even have to be you know, a science nerdy go poach like me, I mean, you just really can get the the brass tacks here. And really, we use the those those pieces to implement positive changes in your life that you can start right away. And that's what's so great about the brain, nothing, you know, we are not at, we are not held hostage by what has happened in the past, we can actually create a different ending. And we can revise that story and it takes work. And our brains love the old stories, because they're, well, they're well lubed paths down the brain. But we can do it if we and especially just becoming more aware of it. Yeah, actually, it's one of the principles of brain first, you don't have to learn everything about how the brain works to start using what you know, take, you know, some of the information from from this podcast, you know, put it into action, learn a little bit more, like it's not it doesn't have to be an overwhelming thing. And, and just use that to begin breaking the patterns of behavior that you've labeled as unhelpful, not beneficial, and not serving you in what you're trying to accomplish and the vision you have for your life and your future. Like break those patterns. And I think that's really the start, get some education, listen to some podcast episodes, start breaking those patterns, implementing what you learned. And then, you know, I think if we do not take this approach to everything to learning to, you know, formulating a new product to take you to to creating a new training program, like our Master Practitioner program that just finished creating last take me years to put that together. One break every day. And then after a few years, you look back after a month, you look back and go Well, I built a wall. Right after six months. Oh, I've built a room. And then a couple years later you'd like Man, I've completely changed the house. Yeah, yeah, brick every day. Yeah, I say that all the time with folks. It's not, you know, I don't want you to to succeed in a 30 day break from alcohol. I want to help you succeed in a lifetime relationship that is peaceful. And that that takes work daily, right. I was saying this to in content that I was creating, but people quote that Rome wasn't built in a day, right? Because when Rome was complete, everyone looked around. And it was so magnificent. And of course, Rome wasn't built in a day Rome was built every day. Right? And that's how we, that's how we do it. We build it every day. And you have to keep going. No two ways about it. This is not a, there's no end block in sight. But what I love about it is, it can be really awesome. And I have found learning about the brain to be super exciting. And really, just like I said, it's opened up so much more possibility for me in my life. And I think it's true for everybody. Yeah, absolutely. I love that. Okay, Ramon, tell everybody where they can find you. And I'm going to link everything in the show notes, folks. But where's the easiest places? Oh, go. Now, I know. I think the look if if you're wanting some information, education, and just some general help and guidance in how to optimize your physiology, master your mind, unlock your potential liver more happy, fulfilling, meaningful existence and operating as your best self, go to Rod david.com. Ra mo N. David calm. That's where our human optimization podcast is. And then from there, you can find the links to all the other stuff to breakfast Training Institute, the supplement company, the all the other stuff. But at the end, if you're just wanting some information to get started, or you're wanting to dive a little bit deeper into maybe some of the neuroscience, then we've got a ton of free resources, starting on that site there. And then you can connect with me on social leaf, if you want to. Awesome. So Ramon david.com. Folks, I again, will link that in the website. I linked that in the show notes. I mean, and obviously, you can find Ramon, and his podcast is an reminder, I've just lost it after I said that out loud, because I want to call it brain first radio. And I know that's right. We've just changed yet. So it's the human optimization, podcast, human optimization. So that sounds pretty, you know, we want to be all be optimized folks. So check it out, available on all the major podcast players. And Ramon. David, thank you for joining me in the morning hours. They're in Australia. Do appreciate it. And thank you so much. Thanks, Molly. This has been great. Thank you for listening to the alcohol minimalist podcast. This podcast is dedicated to helping you change your drinking habits and to create a peaceful relationship with alcohol. Use something you learned in today's episode and apply it to your life this week. Transformation is possible. You have the power to change your relationship with alcohol now, for more information, please visit me at www dot Molly watts.com