Journey to the Sunnyside

When old patterns start pulling at you, it helps to have something deeper than a vague goal to come back to. In this episode, I’ll walk you through a simple statement of purpose that can help you reconnect with why you want to change and who you’re becoming along the way. This is a practical reset for the moments when mindful drinking feels harder than expected.

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Sunnyside is the #1 alcohol health app that helps you drink less without any shame, guilt, or pressure to quit. Optimize your alcohol habits to achieve benefits like sleeping better, losing weight, feeling more energy, and saving money. We know that an all-or-nothing approach doesn’t work for everyone, so we focus on helping you set your own goals, celebrate small wins, and build a lasting system of accountability. As a result, 96.7% of our members see a big drop in their drinking after 90 days.

We now offer Sunnyside Med, a new program that provides access to compounded naltrexone, a medication that can reduce alcohol cravings at the brain level, offering a more clinical pathway for people who need it. Sunnyside Med is a complete, holistic approach to help you drink less or quit, including coaching, community, habit change, education, and more to help you create longterm change while the medication does its work.

Disclaimer: This podcast is not intended as medical advice, and the views of the guests may not represent the views of Sunnyside. If you’re concerned about your health or alcohol use, please consider seeking advice from a doctor.

Creators and Guests

Host
Mike Hardenbrook
#1 best-selling author of "No Willpower Required," neuroscience enthusiast, and habit change expert.

What is Journey to the Sunnyside?

Journey to the Sunnyside is a top 1% podcast, reaching over 500,000 listeners every week. It’s your guide to exploring mindful living with alcohol—whether you're cutting back, moderating, or thinking about quitting.

While Sunnyside helps you reduce your drinking, this podcast goes further, diving into topics like mindful drinking, sober curiosity, moderation, and full sobriety. Through real stories, expert insights, and science-backed strategies, we help you find what actually works for your journey.

Hosted by Mike Hardenbrook, a #1 best-selling author and neuroscience enthusiast, the show is dedicated to helping people transform their relationship with alcohol—without shame, judgment, or rigid rules.

This podcast is brought to you by Sunnyside, the leading platform for mindful drinking. Want to take the next step in your journey? Head over to sunnyside.co for a free 15-day trial.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in our episodes do not necessarily represent those of Sunnyside. We’re committed to sharing diverse perspectives on health and wellness. If you’re concerned about your drinking, please consult a medical professional. Sunnyside, this podcast, and its guests are not necessarily medical providers and the content is not medical advice. We do not endorse drinking in any amount.

Speaker 1:

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another one of these ten minute Mondays. And today, I wanna talk about something related to my past and what worked for me, and it's not something that I talk about all that often here. And this was early on. It was before I had any sort of framework, before I wrote a book, before the podcast, before any of this.

Speaker 1:

There was one exercise that actually helped shift something for me. And this is not something that I added on later once I had it all figured out. This was one of the first things that actually worked. And I think it's underrated compared to a lot of the things that get talked about in this space. And it's gonna sound almost too basic, but it's writing down two very specific things.

Speaker 1:

And I wanna walk you through that today with an exercise on both of those. So if you've been listening for a while, you already know that I've covered why willpower alone doesn't really hold up. There's a whole episode on that if you wanna go deeper. But the short version of that is by the end of the day, your brain is reaching for what's familiar, and what's familiar many times is having a drink, whether you want it or not. And the fix isn't more discipline.

Speaker 1:

It's having something already decided before that moment hits. And the best way to do that is to write it down before the moment arrives. And before you go anywhere that it couldn't be this easy, stick with me. Because I talk about this in my book through the lens of motivation, specifically that motivation is value times likelihood. In that, we repeat things when we believe they'll give us something that we value, and we believe that they're actually going to work.

Speaker 1:

And alcohol is one of those tricky things because in the short term, and this is a part that we have to be honest about, it usually does what people are asking it to do. If you're stressed, it can take the edge off. If you feel awkward at a party, it can loosen you up. And if the day has just been too much, it can feel like that clean line between work and the rest of the night. And, of course, I've talked about this in the last episode that that was one very specific thing for me.

Speaker 1:

I worked from home. I had flexible hours. I had no real boundary between work and everything else. And at some point, it took me a while to actually see this really clearly, that pouring a glass of wine became that signal that the day was over. And it wasn't just the drink.

Speaker 1:

It was the ritual. It was my brain had learned that this is how we shut things down. So, of course, I tried to just remove the drink, but I wasn't replacing it with anything. I was resisting something that the job still had to do, and that's why I kept coming back to it. Now what changed wasn't finding more willpower.

Speaker 1:

It was actually giving my brain something better to move toward and writing it down so that it was existing somewhere else outside of my head. Now I did extensive research behind why writing things down matters so much, And I referenced a study in the book that found that handwriting activates areas of the brain linked to memory, to imagery, and to visualization in a way that typing or thinking can't even touch. And I noticed this in my own life. When the pen hits the paper, something slows down and the thought becomes real in a different way. It stops being something that I'm thinking about and instead it starts being something that I'm doing.

Speaker 1:

So I break this into two different things because they do two different jobs. And before we get into those two pieces, I want you to pay attention to this part. There's a difference between saying, I wanna drink less, and writing something like this that we're gonna talk about down. I wanna drink less is it's vague. It's abstract.

Speaker 1:

Drink less is more of a direction, but it's not much of an anchor. It doesn't tell you what you're trying to protect. It doesn't tell you what matters more in that moment. It doesn't give you any kind of clear decision to return to when the end of that day, you're just fried. So the goal is to make it more specific, not just I want to drink less, but more like I want clearer mornings, I want to trust myself when I make plans, I want to be present at night instead of checked out.

Speaker 1:

Now, if you notice, I want to drink less and I want to trust myself when I make plans, you're not reducing something. You're actually choosing something. So the first thing we're going to write is something I call the statement of purpose. And this is the direction, who you are becoming through this, not just what you're stopping or reducing. So when I wrote mine, it sounded like this.

Speaker 1:

I greet each day with an open heart and a clear mind. With every sunrise, I feel grateful and steady. In my home, I cultivate a space of calm and connection for myself and my family. I am living my dream, and I'm taking the steps to reach my fullest potential every day. Now that might not resonate with you, and that's okay.

Speaker 1:

The goal isn't to write something impressive that you can show to somebody. This should be personal to you and should feel true and something that you can come back to on those hard days and use it to center yourself. Now let's move on to the second piece. This is your declaration of intention, and this is where most people don't go far enough. The statement of purpose is the who, the who you want to become.

Speaker 1:

This is the what and the when. This is where you put a real commitment around everything that you're doing. So for example, starting today, I'm committing to following my Sunnyside Plan for the next seven days. My focus is on getting clear mornings, better sleep, and more trust in myself. When this gets hard, I'm going come back to this because those things matter more to me than short term relief.

Speaker 1:

So that's the idea, just making a declaration, planting that flag in the ground. And you can make yours about a week. You can do thirty days, sixty days. It doesn't really matter. And you can also make it about taking more days off, staying within your drink target, or maybe taking an extended break.

Speaker 1:

Doesn't matter. The point is that it has a start date. It has a clear commitment and a reason that you actually care about. Now I want you to realize this is not just a note. This is a contract with yourself.

Speaker 1:

And just looking at it in that way, that shift, it can be subtle, but you can definitely feel the difference. Okay. So I'm going to give you some tips to work through both of them. Before you write anything, ask yourself honestly, what does alcohol give me in that moment? Does it give me relief, maybe reward, or a way to shut off for the day?

Speaker 1:

There's no shame in the answer. Just look at it and answer clearly. Then ask the other side. What does it cost me later? Is it my mornings, crappy sleep?

Speaker 1:

Am I short the next day? Do I lose trust in myself? So really think through those because that trade off, that's the raw material. Once you see that clearly, what you want back becomes pretty obvious, and that's what's gonna go into both of these documents. So first, write your statement of purpose, who you're becoming, and then write your declaration, what you're committing to, when you're starting, and what you're doing it for.

Speaker 1:

Put those both somewhere that you can actually see them, read them, reference them, because the whole point is that when drinking gets hard later, when the day has been long and your brain is starting to negotiate, you're not gonna be trying to figure out in that moment. You're coming back to something that you've already decided when you were in your highest state, when you were clear. And if you're using Sunnyside, that's what sits underneath the plan, the tracking, the check ins, the daily goals. And this is what gives some of that structure a little bit more depth in the meaning. It's the reason behind the numbers.

Speaker 1:

And when that plan starts to feel like maybe it's flexible, this is what you go back and reference. So again, write this out. What does alcohol give you in that moment? What does it cost you? What do you want back?

Speaker 1:

And what are you committing to? Answering those is going to give you your anchor. Okay. That's it for this episode. In the next episode, I'm going to take you into more of a day to day framework using this as the foundation.

Speaker 1:

Because once you have this, the question is, what do you actually do with it when more of real life starts to hit you? That's gonna be the five minute reset for when drinking gets hard. So keep a lookout for that. If you got anything out of this episode, please rate and review wherever you're listening to. Of course, I love to hear from you.

Speaker 1:

Send me an email, mike@sunnyside.co. And until next time, cheers to your mindful drinking journey.