Alcohol vs. Success: 5 Powerful Ways to Reclaim Your Life with Ruari Fairbairns

Welcome to beyond you'd why Podcast, where we go beyond just talking about your why and actually help you discover and then live your why. You see, we believe that knowing your why, that driving force behind every decision you make and every action you take, is the essential first step to really knowing yourself. It allows you to move forward faster and have a bigger impact. If you're already a fan of the show, then you know that every week we talk about one of the nine whys and then we introduce you to somebody with that why so you can see how their why has played out in their life. This show will be more powerful for you if you've already discovered your why. If you still need to do that, head over to whyinstitute.com and discover your why today. It'll only take you about five minutes. Now let's meet today's guest.

This week we're going to be talking about the why of contribute to contribute to a greater cause, add value, have an impact in other people's lives. So if this is your why, then you want to be part of a greater cause, something that's bigger than yourself. You don't necessarily have to be the face of the cause, but you want to contribute in a meaningful way. You love to support others and you relish successes that contribute to the greater good of the team. You see group victories as personal victories. You're often behind the scenes looking for ways to make the world better. You make a reliable and committed teammate and you often act as the glue that holds everyone else together. You use your time, money, energy, resources and connections to add value to other people and organizations. And so today I have a fascinating guest for you. His name is Rory Fairbairns and Rory was born on the Isle of Mull, Scotland. From an early age, Rory harbored a deep seated determination to make an impactful mark on the world. He left school at 15 to start his first business and eventually landed in London where he carved out a successful career as a senior oil broker. However, he quickly found himself immersed in a binge drinking culture, leading him to the profound realization that alcohol was causing him more harm than good. Taking a transformative break from alcohol, Rory was witnessed significant improvements across various aspects of his life. He became healthier, happier, more productive, and a better father and husband. Motivated by these personal improvements, he embarked on a mission to help others experience the same positive changes. In 2015, he launched one year no Beer to help people reassess their relationship with alcohol. The initiative quickly went Viral, attracting over 20,000 signups in its inaugural year. And so one year no beer was born. And its core value is deeply rooted in the supportive online community established by its initial members. Today, Rory takes immense pride in the fact that One Year no Beer is recognized as a leader in preventive behavior change, with ambitious plans to diversify into numerous other behavior changing models beyond alcohol. His previous experiences, particularly the harmful alcohol culture he encountered during his tenure in London, continually drive his work. Rory, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you for having me on. What an introduction. Thanks, Gary.

There's a lot to unpack in there and so why don't we start here? Rory, where are you now? Where do you live currently? I'm sure everybody hears an accent.

I live in Majorca in Spain. Sunny climates, usually sunny most days. A rain day is a light dusting and then the steam evaporates it back up again. Beautiful part of the world in the middle of the Mediterranean.

Awesome. Well, we're gonna go back in your life and we'll figure out how the heck you got there. Take, take us back at, you know, where were you born? We heard that, but tell us a little bit about it. What were you like in high school?

So, I mean, well, let's just paint the picture of the Isle of Mull, okay? This is a beautiful island off the west coast of Scotland. Many, many islands off the west coast of Scotland. But extremely rural. I mean, it's two ferries to get there, one of which is 45 minutes, you've got a landmass which is sort of 30 miles north to south, 50 miles east to west, and 2,000 people there. And I know them all. Jimmy, Murray, James, you know, you get, you get the picture. And everyone waves hello, everyone knows each other, all of that lovely stuff. But also the west coast of Scotland. If the west coast of Scotland was a country in its own, it'd be one of the highest drinking per capita alcohol consumption per capita in the world. So it's very synonymous with drinking culture. And my parents moved from England. They were both born in England. Three of my four grandparents are Scottish, but my parents moved up there and because they moved up to the island, they were considered incomers and English. That's during that time in 1980, it was only a decade or two prior that if you were Scottish, you were stoned to death. I'm kidding. Not that bad if you're an English rapper. Sorry. But you know that that is kind of what we grew up in, so we didn't really fit in. I was one of five kids I figured out pretty early. I mean, I was, I came out at 10 million miles an hour, my mum said, and slept four hours in every 24. Interestingly, now we now know that there's an intrinsic link between sleep deprivation in babies and things like neurodivergence and adhd. And so, you know, that poor sleep routine is actually what has unfolded to change my life in significant ways. So cause, effect, effect, cause, which one was it? Anyway, growing up on this, on this island and being super hyperactive and being one of five kids, I figured out pretty quickly that the fastest way to get attention, which was very, very difficult to get attention in a family of five with busy parents, was to set things on fire. And I was very good at it. I, I went around breaking things, smashing stuff. Smashed up my first car in my early teens, 13 years old, writing off my parents car. So there was a lot of destructive behavior. And yet on the flip side of that, my parents saw giftedness, which they would say, they would say you're special and you're gifted. And I mean, I guess that's true. I did absolutely no studying for my exams when I was in my early teens and I got six ones and two twos. I spent the entire time out on a motorbike, running around on the hills with another friend who got, you know, mostly fails. And everyone was like, you're a jerk. How do you manage it? So I was very intelligent, very bright, but there just wasn't a place for me. I just didn't fit in. And I think that, that, that kind of division in there, which I can see partly in my own children, but I can see a lot in other children, you know, that, that, that inability to focus, that adhd, that feeling of stuff kind of creates this. I don't belong, I don't fit in. I, I'm not accepted, I'm bad, I'm naughty. And, and you start to create this Persona. And I honestly think that if I'd grown up in a more civilized part of the world, I'd probably have gone into care. But because I grew up on the island of M and never knew it was easier to maintain or control that behavior. And what, what was so interesting is, you know, now working with entrepreneurs, many entrepreneurs now, seeing how neurodivergence is so intrinsically linked into use of alcohol and things like that as a numbing agent, just how many people resonate with that background experience of not fitting in, not feeling accepted, being bad and naughty, being the disruptor, wanting attention. And then they kind of, you create this Persona of I'm going to go and Going to go and create my own thing. Guess what? We've become entrepreneurs.

Yeah, I could see that. So if we were to, you know, in the US we call it high school in Scotland. What do, what do you call it? Primary school or.

Yeah, primary school. Primary school in the beginning and then you go to high school after that.

Oh, high school. Okay. So if we were to see you in your last year of high school, what would we see?

Yeah, again, it was. Struggled quite a lot at the, at the final part of, of high school. And I was sort of going through all that, all of that time in my life. I was still doing well in exams and things like that, so it wasn't necessarily into a lot of trouble with the head teacher. But, you know, I threw a, through a table, through the math window and smashed the window open one day.

A few sort of crazy moments like that. I wasn't particularly violent, but it was always about trying to get a lot of attention and being disruptive. Um, and then part of the, the drive, I think psychologically at the young age, again, I look back at this and help a lot of people around here that fit, not fitting in can develop some very, very low feelings. Being ADHD much later in life. I was then diagnosed with bipolar as well. So adhd, bipolar. The erraticness and franticness and then the lows and highs and the lows are, are unbelievably low, incapacitating low. And they can come and have done throughout my life, but I think in some particular times When I was 13, 14, I tried to commit suicide. The first attempt I ended up in hospital getting my stomach pumped. Really was a cry for help. And I remember the judgment about cry for help. That really stuck with me for a long time. And I tried to educate people about that. That the feeling that somebody feels when they want to take their own life is overwhelmingly the understanding that you are the problem. That everyone's life gets better when you go right. It's not, it's not like a conscious choice. And people say it's so selfish. How could they do that to somebody? Well, how could they continue to live and be that person that is fucking everything up for the people around them? Think about it from the other perspective. So I don't know what attention seeking is for suicide other than somebody tried, believed that they would be better off not here. And let's just talk about it from that perspective. And the second attempt, I, you know, I tried to hang myself from a martial arts belt. And my parents came back early from their anniversary dinner at the time and discovered me dangling from the, the, the stairwell. And they were obviously utterly shocked and traumatized and all of those things. And all the way through this journey, desperate for me to see what they saw. Emotional bit. What they saw was giftedness, uniqueness, something that was, could even be disruptive, right, that needed to be, needed to be looked after, but the world didn't see that. And, and so I really struggled inside that. So they wanted me to.

My dad was a. One of the. I'm sorry. My dad was. Worked for childline, a support core, amazing guy, gave a lot of his time for that. And he would often have very, very traumatized children, incredibly difficult, abusive families in the city and stuff like that. And here he was on the Isle of Mull supporting these kids who were being beaten, abused rate you know, meant, I mean just amazing. But what he knew whenever he got a child on the phone was at the base minimum. I just have to give them hope. And hope is what will pull three people through. You look at now the science of cancer, you look at the, the recovery rates and all sorts of injury, people getting through problems, this is the single one thing that will pull people through any kind of murkiness is hope of a future, is how powerful our brain is. And so he really encouraged me to, to find some hope. He wanted me to find some hope. So he said, you know, why don't you write a letter to somebody who inspires you in the world? You know, you think you can go and do something great. I think you can go and do something great, right? Write a letter. So anyway, have a thought about this. Now, my dad was called Richard. He used to run a recording studio amongst many, many, many other businesses. God bless him. He tried and everything on the Isle of Mull. And I knew another. I mean, he loved Richard Branson. So I was like, I'll write a letter. Richard Branson. So I wrote a letter to Richard Branson and I said, I'm a whole bunch of stuff about who I was, but I said, you know, I'm, I'm going to change the world one day and I'm looking forward to having lunch with you. Which again I think is highlighted the uniqueness of my brain from somebody from the Isle of Mull. Thinking along those lines, I never did get a reply. So lunch was on him. Wind forward a whole bunch of years. But that then kind of set in motion something so long winded. Answer to your. To your thing. Because what I then was like, no, I, I need to, I need to start this journey Now I need to. So I wanted to start a business and my father wonderfully encouraged me to. So I set up my first company at 15 and left school before the legal age. And my dad had to go into the school and fight hard. He was like, my son is not going to be here if we keep sending him to school every day. And so anyway, setting up that first business was an unmitigated disaster. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, but I read the VAT book from front to back in excitement setting up this first company. So yeah, that started this entrepreneurial journey of mine.

And what was that first business?

Well, I was effectively reselling PCs computers on the Isle of Mulligan. So I set up this Ultimo Media and you know, set up the whole store advertised in the local paper and I was buying them in the city from a, from a reseller colleague there and I'd sell them on the Isle of Mull. I didn't sell many PCs. I mean you could count them on one hand. What I did do quite well at is selling my time at training people how to use a computer. People would call up and I kind of got into that and they were like, could you show me what to do here? Could you come and fix this? And I'd go around and show them what the mouse did and all of those kind of things. So yeah, it, it didn't do particularly well, but it was a really interesting first foray into business.

Okay, so that one doesn't do well. What's your next step? What are you thinking? Where do you go next?

I couldn't sell anything, so I was like, I need to learn how to sell. So I went straight into the lion's den and I took a job in the big city of Glasgow in Scotland, selling door to door. Selling door to door is hard enough. Selling door to door with two hundred and fifty rain days a year in a climate that is usually 10 degrees Celsius is absolutely miserable. And you could be out there banging on doors, hearing your off going, my life's just not worth this. But I became the top salesman in Scotland. He actually generated. We came up with this idea one day. Me and a few pals, we were sitting there going, look, it's really hard to get in these doors. Every time you open the, you open the door, they see the suit and they slam it. We were like, who does get in? Instead of the gas man, the gas meter reader guy, the postman, the milkman, the gas meter reader guy. So I went down to the Hardware store, bought a tool belt, a scruffy shirt, blue jumper. I got a gas meter reader key, hung it around my neck, and I knocked on the door and I didn't really look at them. There was no hi. Like a salesman. I was just like, hey. They went, come in, I'll put the kettle on. So I went, do. I went from doing like five deals a week to doing 10 deals a day and being paid, you know, 60. 60 pounds a deal. And so all of a sudden I was staying in the Hilton Hotel. Every single weekend. I was going out to a club that went to every single, you know, buying bottles of champagne. I would buy two bottles of champagne at a time, drink out of one and give away the other. Crazy. And then I kind of got a taste for money and success. And then I was like, right, I need to get into corporate sales. So I started a corporate sales business for three years working for Caterpillar plant machinery. And during that time I was like, I need to get back to running my own business. I then tried four other companies. I had a sales agency, like a call center, selling other tech businesses. I tried to set up an isp, an Internet service provider, which never really got off the ground. Lots of you could more call them projects and businesses. It was just disaster after disaster. And I'm like, okay, I'm not Branson.

I'm not. I'm a serial failpreneur. And, and, and, and I think that's the truth. And I remember being back on the Isle of Mall one day, drinking in the pub and sitting there to a mate and telling him about all these failed businesses. And he was like, so how did this one up? And I'm like, well, you know, and they're all lessons, right? You know, lesson number one, never have your accountant write your legal documents, you know. Anyway, so then I told him about all these stories and he said, you know where I think all the failed entrepreneurs go? They go on this TV show, the Apprentice. You should go there. So I, I didn't watch much tv, finished my fifth pint, went up, filled out the application form, surely enough wine forward later. And I was going on the show, second series in the uk, heading down there for the show, signed the contract, all that stuff outside on the day, geared up, mom, I'm going in, I'm going in. And the producer comes out and says, look, after waiting four hours, I'm sorry you can't explain, but you're not going on the show this time and we'll send you back to Scotland. Huge rejection And I was like, no way am I going to Scotland. So they put me into the airport and I saw the next flight was departing out t Ibiza and I thought, I'll go out there, went out to Ibiza and there I bumped into an oil broker, told him my story and he got me a job as an oil broker in London. Whenever I sort of tell that story, it's like with all this stuff and continuing on now, we'll just keep going forward, just like Steve Jobs said. You never ever, ever understand. Looking forward, it doesn't make sense. You couldn't even describe it looking forward, it only makes sense. Joining the dots, looking back and you know, I didn't get hired by Lord Alan Sugar on the Apprentice. I got hired by David Houghton and I spent 13 years being one of the top oil brokers in the world and you know, built a huge career.

Let's talk about something before we, before we get there because what's different about, at least from my perspective, what's different about where you grew up from the United States is the role that alcohol and pubs play in socialization and everything else. Maybe spend a couple of minutes on that. Like, what was it like the, the alcohol scene where you were.

Describe that. Once you get into, I mean it's another, you know, so building those businesses and everything else. I was partying a little bit in Edinburgh. I was having fun at weekends I'd still do a bit of party drugs, not a huge amount, but bits and pieces and weekends I'd have fun. I wouldn't really do anything during the week. When I, excuse me. When I joined the finance industry and London, I was like, oh my God, half this office is shit faced every freaking day. I'm not kidding. Some of these guys are going off the desk at midday and they're drinking three, four bottles of wine themselves at lunch and coming back and finishing off. I was like. I remember watching the window one day. Now this is, this is many years ago. The window, what is that? So in London, financial capital of the world, we set, we used to set the crude oil price, right? Brent north, north oil fields. Now most oil in the world is priced against Brent. Some is against WTI in the US most is priced against Brent. 80 odd percent of the world's crude oil is priced as a differential to what we set each day. How did we set it? We had 10 guys wearing different caps on their heads on phones for 10 minutes shouting and screaming at each other. Most of them absolutely smashed out their heads and then sitting around going right, well how much did I sell to you? Well, I did four cargos to you. Well, four cargoes, that's like 20, 40 million bucks, right? I did three to you. Did you sell to me or did I sell to you? Serious? And you're like, oh, my God, that world's. You know, thankfully it's moved on to electronic platforms. I tell this story now and people are like, thank God we're on electronic electronic platforms. Yeah. And I wasn't. You know, I'm sure you've seen Wolf of Wall street, right?

Yeah.

I wasn't at that absolute extreme level. Whilst we weren't throwing midgets around in the office. Sorry, for a joke. There were, there were some really, really crazy stuff. I mean, I put on some huge parties in, in my time and a lot of entertaining. So some of that entertaining, I could just be going for a lunch and you could be sitting there and think, fuck it, I'm not going to go back to the office. And you would start drinking at midday and finish at six o' clock in the morning. That could happen maybe two, three times a month. Some lunches were fairly sensible, but usually there was heavily drinking on it. Right. So if you go to lunch, you're going to be drinking and the expectation is to be drinking. And I'm sorry, guys, but they won't do business with you if you're not drinking. That's a fact. You can't sit there and tell me that's not true because they wouldn't do business with you. Just like. No. And this is something so interesting now, being on the other side, did I. I really believed that my business would go under if I took a break from alcohol. And it's what stopped me for a long time from changing my relationship with alcohol. I couldn't possibly believe that was true. And then I discovered it was all. And so there are some people who won't do business with you because you drink alcohol, but they're 1% of the people who you think that is. And that's the truth about all of this. All of the stuff we think are the downside of changing a relationship with alcohol or not drinking. 1% of it is true. 1% of it is. So anyway, the, the culture was, was, was fierce. And I met my wife. We met drunk, of course. We, we partied hard together. We started to have a family. As soon as we, I think, into pregnancy, all of a sudden she was changing, right? Physiologically she's changing, she's going. All these hormones pumped into her that are like, be safe look after the kid. We must prepare, create a nice house. I'm still fucking me. I still want to go and get shit faced all the time. And I think many, many, many men struggle with, with this part. We don't get the gift of those hormones. We have to psychologically choose to change. Meanwhile, all our mates are going, don't be a dick. Oh, you know, in finance industry, when I first told them I was getting married, the guys went, good, man, get the first one in early.

So the expectation is you're going to go on 1, 2, 3 marriages while you work here. So the pressure and everything else and everyone's just like, oh, don't worry, her being miserable at home, that's just normal. So that was, there was this growing part of this is causing stuff. You coming home five o' clock in the morning on a Tuesday and not being able to find your keys and just choosing to fall asleep on the doorstep. And her waking, opening the door with a crying baby at 7 o' clock in the morning to find her husband asleep on the doorstep is not very conducive to a successful marriage is all I can say.

However, the influences I was around, it was normalized. It was just. That's funny. So you know that I think a lot of people are stuck in that about what the normalization is. And this is the, hey, this is all normal. Everyone's doing this, everyone does this. Everyone has hangovers and regret. Everyone ends up in A and E now and again. Sometimes we get in our cars and drink, drive. Sometimes everyone's in that place. But then actually inside, very quietly, their little intuition, their soul, their truth of who they are is going, no, Gary, this isn't you or Ruri, this is not you. You're. You're more than this. You're better than this. And we use alcohol to drown that out. We use alcohol to go, shut up, let's have another pint. And I know this is about, you know, meaning and finding your why, but meaning and finding your why and not finding your why is one of the major drivers of compulsive behavior. The major reason why addiction is so rife is because we are lacking in meaning and purpose and we are lacking in giving and contributing. And so this is why we really help people figure that out. But that's another part of the story.

Yeah. Okay, so let's keep going with your story. So now you're working for the oil company. Yes, as an oil broker.

So and then, yeah, 11 years into that, I was like, hey, my boss, I think what happened is over time, this growing gnawing, as I said, of, of alcohol causing you trouble, mate, you know, and, and no one, I mean, you bring that to your boss. And my boss was like, what are you talking about? You committing commercial suicide if you stop drinking. And you're like, so you mean I'm going to lose my house, my cars, I'm going to lose all this, you know, shiny. I'm going to be a failure as a broker when I'm trying to be the top one in the world. You know, that's what I was so focused on. That's all going to go if I just stop drinking, I'm not going to do that, right? And then, and then, so there's all of this fear around it. I started meditating on the train to and from work. I got introduced to this thing called Headspace, which we now all know, but this is back in 2013. And I, I was using it on the train as a way to change between who I was at home and who I had to be at the office, who I had to be to be this successful broker. Those are two different people. You wouldn't have brought my wife into who I was. Really being there, that didn't mix. So I was using this as a way to change in that thing. And the thing about meditation and why we use it so much on our programs is that what meditation does is just that daily practice, starting to practice and building that practice, it starts to build a gap between stimulus and response inside our brains. It's really fundamentally, it's about awareness. Okay, so you're getting awareness of your breath, but you're actually getting awareness of your truth. You're getting awareness of the real voice inside. And when you've got a gap between stimulus and response. So stimulus, being fucking tired. And I'm stressed, responsible response being, I'm going to have a drink. Which most people, there is no gap there. They just link those two together. Stress, drink, those two are the same. What happened was the gnawing grew louder, almost to an inescapable noise. Alcohol is holding you back. Alcohol is holding you back. This is not you. You are not this person. You are not this person. And so as that grew louder and louder and louder, I couldn't ignore it anymore.

This.

So that's why I said to my boss, I'm taking a break from Boots. So I jumped in, did a 90 day break. And on that break of 90 days, I was absolutely blown away. I mean, the lights came on, you know. You know that film Limitless where he suddenly gets access to every area of his brain. Holy shit. Boom. And suddenly I was faster on the trading floor. I was smarter. I was showing up. I was the only broker who wasn't pissed on Friday, Thursday, Friday, and miserable, depressed, anxious on Monday and Tuesday, maybe even Wednesday. So now, all of a sudden, I had this edge in the market. Lost a ton of weight, got fitter, faster, healthier, happier, better dad, better husband. I mean, my relationship flourished. Of course it did. I wasn't asleep on the doorstep on Tuesday nights, you know, so it made a significant impact. I just want to really iterate. Iterate something here. This is the most important thing. I know we hear this a lot now, but there was no rock bottom. My life didn't fuck up. I didn't need to wait until things had really fucked up. And there is a. There's a big part of the whole, I'd like to change my relationship with alcohol, please, that says, oh, well, you have to reach rock bottom. No, you don't know. You can choose whenever rock bottom is. It's your choice to create the moment of psychological rock bottom, but you do have to get fucking honest with yourself. And I think, when was yours? So.

The decision in part came from that meditation element. And there was. There was a few factors that roped up into it. Right? So I was arguing with my wife. She had a lot of anger, very tumultuous childhood, abusive childhood, a lot of trauma, and she had a lot of anger. She would always blame me and the booze. I was like, you're just freaking angry. And so I wanted her to change her anger. She wanted me to change the booze. And then I realized, you can't change somebody else. You cannot change somebody else. The only thing you can ever do is lead by example, and especially in our marriages. So that's when I said, okay, I'm going to go on an anger management program. And so I went on this anger management program, and the first day it said, alcohol and coffee are the two biggest instigators of anger. The first thing I learned was I have a lot of anger, which I wasn't appreciative of before. And secondly, I was like, okay, I'm going to ditch alcohol and coffee. And all the change came from there. So I didn't need to get to that rock bottom moment, and neither do you. And I think the most important thing to avoid rock bottom is about being truthful with yourself. Because the truth is, if you are regularly consuming alcohol, it is already costing you. It is already costing your Health, your mental health, it's costing you your dreams. It is stealing away from your dreams. I love that whole phrase. Right. It comes from whatever it is. I can't remember the top name but alcohol, which is the removal of the spirit. So it sucks the spirit out of you. The definition of alcohol, I completely destroyed that. So I'm sure if you do a Google, you'll find somebody who can actually say that properly. So.

Yep, I went off track.

Yeah. So okay, now you're doing your 90 day off alcohol. How did the people in your brokerage, in the oil broker world feel about it? Was what we said was going to happen, happen?

Yeah. No, it was the opposite. I mean I grew my business by another 50%. We crushed the market, reduced our costs by 30%. Who would like those stats in their business over the next year? 50% growth with 30% reduction in costs. How about that? Unbelievable. We had one of the top entrepreneurs, well known on the TV in the UK come to our program. He says, after the program he says, ruri, I have just discovered that I've spent the last decade operating on 80%. I don't know what that's cost me, but it's millions. People just don't realize it. They, they have no idea. Do you know the psychological long term impact after a binge session or, and binge session. Right. It's, it's not even that many. It's like four heavy drinks. That's considered a binge drink. I mean that's for breakfast for many of us anyway. The, the psychological impact is two weeks. You're still in that psychological thing. If you're drinking every single week a depressant, then this thing is effectively depressing your whole life and you don't realize it. You're seeing it through a depressed, anxious lens. You might say, well, I'm not depressed, but do you feel sad? Do you feel, do, do you struggle sometimes? Are you, are you lacking in motivation and energy? Are you? And the plethora of health impacts now that we know are unbelievable. We're only just starting to see the truth about the science. Ultimately when we drink alcohol, we are drinking a poison and it permeates fat and water almost instantaneously into the bloodstream. So it gets into every organ, every fiber, it gets into our brains and it's 100% poison. Right? So, so it creating inflammation. We now know it's directly attributable to many cancers. And we are starting to see more and more that it actually creates a lovely bed for cancers to grow with inflammation and all sorts of things like that. Anyway, the health thing, there is now, no denying it, there is no healthy benefit to alcohol. Coming back onto where I got to, I actually went on for a whole year. Amazing. Couldn't believe it, you know, so many improvements in my life. I mean, then I chose to have a drink again, but it wasn't one, it was many. And that's when I realized that abstinence does not equal control. And it kind of, you know, I launched One Year no Beer, which was designed really to help people take a break from alcohol to see the benefits themselves. Ultimately, what we saw was, oh well, I mean, I started off originally just being very evangelical. I'd be out on the street going, here, here, ye stop drinking. It's amazing. And people would walk past going, fuck off, go to the pub. And I was like, okay, well that doesn't work. So how can I get people to see the advantages and the benefits themselves? Because everyone is looking for what is gained just by a four week break from alcohol. Energy, productivity, more happiness, better health, better mental health, lost weight, improved injury, improved performance. This long list goes on of the benefits. So everyone's searching for that. They can get it from this simple thing. I know, let's create a challenge. Dare people, let's say, hey, this is just a challenge, something cool you can do. Be friends with your pub. You know what, I'm going to do a challenge now. We launched that 10 years ago now, no, nine and a bit years ago now. And like you said, it got a lot of traction. Very early on it was all about getting people to take a break from alcohol. And we gave people access to community and support and all of those things. But in the back of my mind and during this, my own personal journey, I was like, I don't want. I'd gone into a pigeonhole that people were like, oh, you're sober. And I was like, no, I don't like that word. And, and I was like, you know, I'm happy to have a drink, I just don't want to drink loads. And so what I went on was this journey to try and understand, you know, what drives compulsive behavior. Can I have a completely take or leave it relationship with alcohol? Because the world out there at the moment says that's impossible. They said you've had a problem, you're an addict, and you're always going to be that way. And what you need to do is come and do these 12 steps, which is the only way to do it, by the way. I just want to say if anyone ever says this is the only way, they're fucking lying, full stop. There is no only one way. We know that intrinsically, right? So anyway, I went on this journey, I invested. I mean, I was lucky, right? I've been an oil broker, so I had plenty of wealth and I could continue to invest in unbelievable personal development and programs. I've worked at the German Neuroscience hospital. I've done all types of therapies and stuff like that. And over this sort of eight year period I came to understand that. We know. And I've worked with some amazing scientists. Yale University Sterling University, UK US we know what drives compulsive behavior. We know what drives compulsive behavior. And in the vast majority of those things, these are things that you can change. So why aren't we talking about this to people? And so two years ago now, we launched an immersive program using technology, digital data evidence. We use some really cool tech to show people with clarity what is driving the compulsive behavior and then coach them through changing those things. Over 600 people through the program now. Profound results. We are now working with some universities to publish our studies clinically about the performance of the program. It is amazing, game changing. Currently working on.

Hopefully an initial pilot into the U.S. military, the NFL, amazing program. And I think it has the opportunity to rip up the very, very broken rehab industry because we can prevent that. And that's what we are all about. There's a lot of services out there for addiction. There's a lot of services out there. If you are pouring whiskey on your cornflakes and homeless and I haven't yet figured out how to really solve your problem yet, I will. But for all of those people who are before that, for all of those people who are maybe just drink a little bit too much, maybe they, when they, when they go for one, it's actually eight and they don't know why. Maybe they experience regular blackouts. Blackouts being I can't remember what we did. Maybe sometimes they don't know how they got home. Maybe they just have a glass of wine every day. Maybe they once a year they do a month challenge. And yet straight after that challenge they're gagging for a drink again and they go back to exactly how they were. For all of those people, for all of the people who wake up and go, hell, I wish I didn't drink so much last night. Even if it's once a month, I'm here for you because we can solve that. We know what creates that we can help you change that. And people are not talking about that. Do you know, I just want to go into this because I get very passionate, as you can see, Gary, and you don't even get a word in edgeways. Just interrupt me. But here's an example. Dr. Rajita Sinha, amazing addiction researcher, 35 years studying addiction. Head of addiction research at Yale University, 35 years studying addiction, 150 peer reviewed studies, wonderful lady. Two years ago she turned around to Yale University and she said, I want to change the name of the department. And the board were like, what? What are you talking about? She said, I want to change it from Yale University study for addiction to Yale University Study for Stress. Because addiction is just the outcome, okay? Now if addiction is the outcome of an inability to deal with stress, then surely we should be telling people this, surely we should be educating people that an incredibly stressed out central nervous system is always going to desire compulsion. Those two things is a straight up match. So if you don't learn how to self regulate and reduce this stress, you are either going to just stop drinking and turn it into porn, gambling, caffeine, social media addiction, work addiction, the world's most acceptable addiction, or we can actually help you solve this. And I'm not in the game of getting people to swap their addiction from one thing to another just by abstaining from a certain substance. What's the point in that? Let's actually heal people.

Okay, Now I can interrupt you for a couple of things. You said.

I paused.

I was going to go back to a couple. If I'm listening to this, you said a few things that.

So sorry, you said a few things.

That we brushed over that I can imagine. If I'm listening, we'll say, hey, wait a minute, you didn't, you didn't add anything to that. And so one of them was you said a year later you drank and then you had a lot of drinks. But you didn't tell us what happened after that. How did you, where, you know, what, what was the, did you go off the deep end for a while and now and then back or like, what happened?

No, what happened? I, I wanted to go out and do a controlled study. I wanted to have a drink. But I, I knew I was, I wanted to have a few. It wasn't just, I just want to go for one. So I went to the rugby with it with my good mate. I ride there. It was a queue five people deep and I was like, fuck that, I'll get two. So of course the night carried on like that. Two pints, two pints. Two pints, two pint. And the following day, I mean, no tolerance. I've had not been drinking for a year, right? But still the psychological desire to carry on like I did before. So the following day I was throwing up in the toilet with my daughter beside me crying and my wife storming out the door, and I was like, shit, you know, this is, this is not what I had planned. And so I immediately went back off it again. I did another year not drinking. And I think I was like, this is, I need to, I need to resolve this because I don't want to, to, to be like that. That's not the, that's not the piece. I still want to be able to enjoy, go out and enjoy a drink, but I don't want it to be at that level. I'm throwing up the next day and everything other. That's just that, that's not right. So that is what kind of led me to come up into this controlled peace.

So do you, like you said, you don't consider yourself.

Sober?

Sober, correct. What do you consider yourself? What's the word you use?

I mean, there are lots of different things, but you could call it mindful drinking. So I drink as much as I want, whenever I want. I just usually choose not to drink. And so as an example, I've just had two weeks, wonderful holiday with my family. I didn't touch any alcohol. Why would I do that? I'm with my kids. I mean, drinking alcohol is 100% selfish. It's about you getting out of your mind and then the following day you really pay for it. Snappy, tired, grumpy. I don't want to be like that with my kids. Why would I want to be like that with them on a family holiday? So that just doesn't show up then for me, when I. I think in part it's about changing associations. So a lot of the programming comes from marketing, and originally marketing, but now social conditioning. So marketing in a mass way happens first. And the alcohol companies have spent trillions of dollars doing that. So mummy wine time. But once they push the marketing hard enough, then society does it. So society is the one sending all the mummy wine time memes around and everything else. Well, the alcohol industry's done the job then. It's just a. Oh, look, it's fireworks. For them, it's a. It's a rolling stone gathering moss because they've now socialized the, the message. And so that level of manipulation has built neural pathways again and again inside Our brain, so it's in automatic pilot. So we actually have to consciously change those neural pathways. So most people have an association of steak is a red wine, and I had that for now. Now I'm a carnivore. I eat steak two or three times a day. I'd be drinking wine all day long if I still have that association. Thankfully, those don't exist at all. There's no correlation at all in there. So we actually have to consciously go on a journey of breaking those. And that's part of the. Part of helping people understand the complexity of our relationship, how much it's in autopilot, bringing it into awareness, and helping people change those neural pathways in there. The biggest one for people is the alcohol is the stress reliever, and they use it to cope. But what they must understand is that actually alcohol steals your coping mechanisms. That's exactly what it does. The very process of alcohol in your system, both physically and mentally, a it's very, very impactful on your central nervous system. So it reduces the amount of tolerance our central nervous system has for stress. Alcohol increases the production of cortisol in the moment when you drink. So it releases cortisol, that fight or flight element, but it increases the production of cortisol over time, which means regular alcohol consumption over time is going to continually reduce your ability to deal with stress. Now, when I talk to a business owner and I say, looking forward to the next decade, do you want to be able to handle less? Do you want to be able to freak out at lower amounts of stress? Or do you want to be able to handle much higher levels of stress calmly? There's only one answer to that. So you have to stop building your manufacturing of cortisol, which is what you're doing by regularly consuming alcohol. And when you kind of put them into the pictures with people like that, they're like, oh, wow, I should really stop doing that now. I should, like, calm down on that and help my cortisol return to a normal level. So just to summarize that, because I went off topic and I do a lot, but the element of, if you think about any element, individual element of why I drink. Oh, I drink to socialize. Oh, I drink to fit in. Oh, I drink because I have anxiety. I drink because I'm lonely. Oh, I drink because I'm bored. We need to do the work to disassociate those things. And we also have to recognize them for what they are because often they're driving it. You know, boredom, as an example, is a major Driver of compulsive behavior. People don't realize, especially successful business owners, they don't realize that they're bored. They. They thrived on the challenge and the absolute insanity of what is building a business, and now it's coasting. They're bored. So it's a major driver for them and they don't realize it. Sorry.

You and I met through the Genius Network, and what's interesting about the Genius Network is that most of the people in there don't drink. You don't really see many that drink either because they had a bad relationship with alcohol and changed it to where they don't drink anymore.

But.

But it seems like it's almost. You know, this isn't going to sound quite right, but it's almost kind of like the cool thing now to not drink.

Yeah.

Or the healthy thing to not coming that way. Yeah. It's flipped dramatically. Are you seeing that in a more of a global space or. Well, I would just say countries.

Just like somebody who's just gone out and bought a BMW and seeing that all over the place. I would say that most people in Genius Network are not drinking alcohol, is not seeing the truth, because I think still, from what I've seen, they drink. Maybe the reduction in the heaviness and everything else has come down massively or significantly. And there's more people. And I think what we saw with this as well, Gary, is we originally were called, you know, called One year no Beer, and we were challenged to stop drinking. And then over the years we saw that. I mean, some people would say it took me two years to sign up to your challenge. And we got them onto user interviews and it was like, why two years? And they were like, well, I don't want to stop drinking. And then we put out a piece of research with study university, over 40,000 people all over the world. And in it, we had a question which said, what would you like your relationship with alcohol to look like? And 6% of people said they'd like to stop drinking. Right. So 90. Well, 30% of them said they're fine as they are. So those ones are in denial. Will get them a bit further down the curve. The other 64%, they are saying that they. They would like to reduce how much they're drinking. So we can talk to a much, much, much wider audience. If we talk to people about reduction, if we help them control and reduce, it's just more fathomable and understandable and it gets actionable steps earlier. So that's what prevention is about. It's about going upstream at every stage. I think, I think that that was a big change for us. And it's the same conversation that's out there in the world. People are like, oh, wow, the rise of sobriety is huge and people are changing their relationship with alcohol. And yes, they are. But global alcohol consumption is increasing significantly in the US Alone. During the pandemic, the alcohol industry lobbied to have alcohol as an emergency product, as emergency service. So they changed the licensing laws that meant that alcohol could be delivered 24,7. In that year alone, alcohol consumption increased by 20%. They're expecting another 20% over the next five years. So. So this problem is not going away. And, and yes, there's a wonderful, wonderful paradigm shift happening. It's becoming more and more acceptable. It's becoming more talked about. But we are so far away from real mass change. And this is what I'm trying to champion. This is what I'm trying to, to encourage across everywhere. I first started going out onto some big podcasts at the beginning of this year and that's when I started to really push out that everyone needs to talk about control. We must talk about control. Do you know, I just saw all of these other programs, Sober influencers, everyone else, I saw all of their wording and messages and ads suddenly change towards control because people are like, oh yeah, amazing. Like, this is fantastic. I just need to keep spreading this word and constantly iterating for people to, so that they can see how can we help people earlier and make this paradigm shift happen quicker.

So what would you say is your goal, ideal scenario? This is what I'm trying to accomplish. What is it you're trying to accomplish?

That is wonderful. So when I wrote that letter to Richard about having a massive impact in the world, I kind of forgot all about that. When I started oil broking, I got paid too much and everything else. And when I got back into setting up one year, no beer and everything else, I. I got reconnected to that purpose. And that actually, that is intrinsically linked the lack of purpose, which was what was driving the drinking behavior. And when I got back into my purpose, it made it much more easy for me to control my drinking. So I believe that, that we can, well, a prevent a significant volume of people ever ending up in rehab or going down that route. I believe we can solve addiction and I want to believe that we can solve addiction and I want to be radical enough to challenge old science and old information and the status quo to say that we can create a solution for the for people here and the organization that I'm building can impact billions of lives. So I've been tested significantly on the journey many times. People said to me, Ruri, you've got a lifestyle business. This is a 5 million business with a million of profit. Enjoy it. I don't give a fuck about the money. That's not what I'm trying to do. This thing, this message, right, which starts with alcohol, which is if I can say some words to you, Gary, let's say you're regularly consuming alcohol or one of the listeners here with us now, if I can say a few words to you that gets you to think, you know what, I'm going to take a break from alcohol, then I could profoundly change your life. I could change the trajectory of your kid's life, I could put your marriage back together, I could improve your business. The impact is so wide reaching. So it's like this enormous gift of this message that can have a really big impact on so many people. And I think that is what inspires me the most about what I'm trying to do is just keep spreading that message. And inside all of that, that's just alcohol. Then you look at addiction as its peace or you look at compulsive behavior and how big that space is and how we can help solve people in different ways. And I just want to be in there helping people.

Here's something that crosses my mind all the time and maybe you have some thoughts on this.

But.

One of the challenges that I see is there is no definition of ideal. Like what is the ideal human? What are we shooting for? What is the end game? There's no answer to that. So you can't, you have nothing to measure against meaning if you're trying to. You know, in sports there's an ideal way to shoot or number. You know, there's percentages. There's things that are like ideal that you look for. I don't know what that would be in a human. So everybody's struggling to figure that out. There's no right there isn't.

It is only in forward motion that we are identified there. The boat is just a here. If it's not in motion, it is only through direction that we are given definition. So human beings need struggle, we need challenge. And so the actual art of living is the pursuit of a better version of yourself. It is growth and that's it just keep growing. I think I talk about this towards what? Well so.

Right. So that's so vague that it doesn't give much unless you spend enough time thinking about it. That concept doesn't resonate, probably because you don't know what. Like, what are you talking about? Towards a better. Towards a better. There's no but.

Doesn't that just. Isn't that just divined by the individual? So I can't tell you that you need to be fitter because I don't know how fit you are.

Right.

Who can't tell me that I need to be a better businessman because you don't know how successful I am. So.

Right.

So, but. So it's down to the individual about what their target is. We need something to aim for. Absolutely. But it is in the pursuit that we feel that sense of identity. And I think it's in the pursuit of a greater goal and a greater thing and perhaps linked into all of this because is. Is most importantly if we want to.

Live a good or happy life. And I'm not saying I'm running around being happy all the time. That's not the case. I mean, I'm building a business. It's stressful and bloody difficult. And there's also troubles with marriage sometimes and difficulties with kids and accidents and incidents. Right. I said to the team this morning, I think the reality is I'm just somebody who is going from broken to a better version of myself. And I'm on a journey of trying to share what my learning is, encouraging others to go on that journey, and okay, I could be fitter. So that's great. I've got a goal of doing Hyrox and I've got this goal letter. I've got growth. I just read, and maybe you agree with this or maybe you don't, Gary, but I just read the first half of Adam Grant's new book.

The Economist Adam Grant. I can't remember the name. It will come back to me. It's really good. And he says, so looking at all of the numbers and crunching all the numbers and thousands of people in studies, as he is an economist, looking at all of these statistics, he said, the definition of success is not from skill development. The definition of success is from character development. And we should be focusing on character development over time. Character development over time almost always leads to success. So more grit, more determination, more discipline, more productivity, more showing up for yourself, more positivity. So those elements of ourselves are the bits that create that growth. And I think that's the journey that we're on.

One of our mutual friends, Joel Weldon.

Joel says, yeah, Joel always. He's our. So he's a speaker Coach, for those of you that don't know him, and he's part of the Genius network, but one of the things that he always says is that if you use a word that might have multiple meanings or your audience isn't sure what it means, you have to define it.

Yep.

Concept has been so powerful for me in every presentation or speech that I give.

And so when you use the word broken.

My mind goes to the word what is unbroken. Then if you're broken, what is unbroken? What am I looking for? Define unbroken. So we know where we're going. So the ship is going somewhere. Just going seems futile sometimes, versus going somewhere, right? Hey, why don't you just go across the ocean? Like where? Like where? Just go.

Just.

Just go over there. You just go forward. You'll end up somewhere. Like where? Where the hell? Yeah. The whole point of you on that ship is just to go really? Like where?

And that's if you can define or somehow encapsulate unbroken, we can have such a different conversation. So this whole why thing that I developed, that's what it used to be like as well.

Who, what is, what is? If I turn that back for you and we say that we're on a journey, you're on a journey, we're on a journey.

What is it that you are aiming for in terms of a version of yourself? I mean, I could. We could. I can paint the goals and talk about the things and look at my. My vision board up there about the things that I would say that I'm trying to do and accomplish in my life. But again, that's not specifically what you're saying. What you're saying is what is the opposite of the thing that we're trying not to be?

Yes. I don't have a good answer. I don't. I haven't spent enough time.

I don't have an answer.

Okay, so. Yeah, and maybe. So when I embarked on this journey of trying to find my why, there was no end point, and when there was no endpoint, I never knew if I was there. So if you don't know if you're there, is this really my why? It doesn't have any value if you don't know what it is. And so it's kind of like sort of maybe think this is my why? Well, what do you do with that? Nothing. But once I found that there were nine different whys, that's when it became so valuable, because we had an endpoint. We had a point where that. Where we could say, okay, now this is your why. Now we can use it. Now it has value. Now you can. For you can not think about it, but you can actually be it. And I'm wondering if there's the same sort of thing when it comes to broken versus unbroken. We know what broken is, right? But what is unbroken? What are we shooting for? Give me something to aim towards so that we can say, oh, hey, I'm making progress one day instead of just the Dalai Lama. Yeah.

So maybe. Does that make it any sense?

It does. I just don't think when it comes to humans, I don't. I think this is what I. Because I would say I'm on the other side of the fence to that, to that definition, I don't think that exists. I don't think we heal. It's not a fixed place. Having done so much work, 30 years of talk therapy, counseling, coaching, and everything else, I'm not sitting here going, I'm healed, guys, look at me. I'm your messiah. No, my fuck. I'm saying I'm a little bit less broken. And, and, and I'm. And I'm less hedonistic, I'm less angry, I'm less self destructive. I don't set fire to things anymore. And I have a marriage which is better communication and better everything else. And I have a more stable business which is profitable. All of those things are the production of the work. They're not fixed. And the healing goes on and continues. So I don't think there is, I don't think there is a destination. There's just a journey.

And that's what I thought when I started on this journey. I spent probably eight years of just helping people try to get closer to what their why was. Until one day I was working with this big group of lawyers. There was like 50 lawyers in this room. And I was told I was just going to speak for like 45 minutes and bring somebody out of the audience, help them discover their why. And once I did that, then the next person wanted to go in the next and the next thing. So 14 hours later, I'm still on the stage helping people discover their why. But halfway through the day, this lady raised her hand, she's an attorney, and she said, hey, Gary, how many whys are there? And I, I don't know. I never thought of that. Yeah, I never even considered that as a possibility. So until I was tasked with thinking about it, I didn't think about it. And I thought it wasn't. You know, there can't be just a finite number. And so I wonder if the same thing applies to this whole thing of being unbroken. I don't have the answer. I just know that you spend a lot more time thinking about it and studying it. What is unbroken? And if you can define it, even if it's an area.

We could shoot towards that area. But to just go out in a boat and sail with no dis direction and just say, just make progress, that doesn't sound very fun to me. You know what I mean? It's just aimlessly making progress. Okay, aimlessly making progress. That's what you want me to do? All right.

Yeah, I'm going to challenge that because I definitely don't feel like I'm aimlessly making progress. I think I invest significantly in my personal development and I see significant benefits from doing that. And every time I do it, I level up and I level up and I level up and that keeps me going on the journey. So there's no, it's not aimless or anything like that. I definitely don't feel like that. And if I was feeling aimless, I know that I'd be driven for compulsive behavior. But this is interesting and this is why we should link up more because lots and lots of people will discover and is part of our core program that a major reason why they were drinking is because they haven't really got aligned to that why and that truth. And so, yeah, it's, it's, it's a big part of helping people. So well done you.

Yeah. And, and, and for sure we can find some ways to collaborate on, on what we're doing. But it's just something that, until I was challenged with something I thought I couldn't figure out, but then I couldn't figure it out. But once I was challenged with it, then I was like, well, let me go figure this out.

I'm. I'm going to take it away and think about it.

That's exactly, that's exactly what my point was.

It took me a while. I'm thick skinned. No, I will definitely reflect on that bad boy.

So, Ruri, if there's people listening now that want to connect with you, want to follow you, want to be part of what you're doing, want to help, what's the best way for them to connect with you?

The best way to connect is head to one year, no beer. Com. So you'll find all the stuff, programs, things like that, complete control, our wonderful program is up there to connect with me personally, I'm R. Fairbairns on most channels or Ruri Fairbairns. Is R U A R I. I'm literally the only one out there in the world. So if you put Ruri Fairbairns into Google, all sorts of craziness will pop up, including videos of me hanging my head out of a train and things like that. As a. A lot of I've had over the years of the craziness I used to live and don't anymore. Just not very often anyway.

All right, last thing. What's the best piece of advice you've ever been given or best piece of advice you've ever given?

So. Well, I love this. I think inside all of that, both being given and give, is this idea of stretching out the timeline. Because I think once you get connected to this, why, this purpose, this thing that you see is it's not about getting it done quickly or making an exit or creating anything like that. It's a way of being. It's who you are. It is in your fabric. And when you look at it like that, and I say, well, I know that the more I speak about it, the more I talk about it, the more people I meet, the bigger it gets. I just have to keep doing that and keep doing that and keep doing that. So it stretched out the timeline for me. In the beginning, I wanted to build a business and. And, you know, make some money and all of those kind of things, in a way. And then I changed all of that to be like, this is a mission. This is a beachhead. Just keep going. So it became from I need to do this in years to this is decades, and this is who I am. So that changed things for me.

I love it. I love it. Well, Rory, thank you so much for being here. I know we probably went a little bit over time, but that's my part to not do with you.

So thanks so much for taking the time. Worst guest I've ever had. No, if you never. If you watch the video, you can see Gary going, cut, cut. And me just talking over the top of him.

No, I'm kidding.

That's not really what was going on. I loved it. I loved it.

So thanks. Thanks, Rory, for being here. I appreciate your time.

Thank you for having me on.

I really hope you enjoy today's episode and that through today's guest, you heard how important it is to know your why and how impactful it can be in your life and the lives of those around you. Be sure to head over to whyinstitute.com and discover your why today. Remember, the more you know about yourself, the more you'll know about others. I'm Dr. Gary Sanchez, and I'll see you on the next episode.