Ruari Fairbairns Recap: Leadership & Alcohol

I'd like to ship you a free copy of my book Habits of High Performers. If you come and join the 2026 goal setting workshop, I will ship you one of these today. The link is in the notes. Please come and join me to set up the very best 2026 you could imagine. If you've set up goals in the past or New Year's resolutions and they haven't substantiated, I'm here to help you across all the key pillars of your life nail your goals. I'll see you there.

Would you like to connect personally with some of my podcast guests? They are arguably some of the most influential leaders and high performers on the planet. Each month, members of my hpc, the High Performers Club, get to connect with a leadership titan in an intimate Q and A. They also get access to powerful high performance leadership coaching and much Masterminds. There's only 20 seats at the leadership table. You can apply today by going to www.jjlochlin.com HPC.

Well, as many of you will know, on the last episode we had Ruri Fairbairns, who's the founder and CEO of One Year no Beer. Yeah, you heard me right. One year of no alcohol. And what this is all about is not getting you to quit alcohol for life, but simply to change your relationship with alcohol. And essentially, Ruri believes that we all can moderate our alcohol intake. And so I found it quite fascinating. This was a couple of years ago, Caroline, my partner, said she was going to do it. And, and I just thought it was a little bit crazy. I thought, why would we do it? Like, you don't have a problem, I don't have a problem. We have a few drinks, no big deal. But the more I looked at it, I was like, wow, well, okay, across a week, I'm going to be having two or three nights where I have a couple of drinks. It's not a lot. But then I thought, okay, it adds up. And then there's the odd night where it's maybe four or five drinks, maybe even six. And for me that's like totally normal, like not an issue. So certainly I didn't feel like I was on any alcoholic spectrum, but certainly I had a quite a frequent relationship with alcohol. So I slept on it, woke up the next day and I said, caroline, look, let's do it. Let's do One Year no beer. It's a challenge. It's just a challenge. And when I looked at it like that, I was like, okay, it's not no alcohol for life because I don't know if I need that or want that. And I just thought about how that impacted my business, my life.

As a dad. Like, when I'm a little bit groggy the next day, even if it's a couple of beers, just a little bit groggy. So I thought, you know what? I'll take on the challenge, go for a year. It was right before my birthday. It was right before a huge event where I was welcoming a bunch of VIPs and there's going to be lots of champagne. But I did it, and I thought, there's no time like the present. And what was interesting is I shared it with some of my friends and some of my clients. And at first they were like, what? You're not going to have a drink with us anymore? And then when I said, it's a challenge for a year, like, oh, that's so cool. That's awesome. So it changed from kind of being berated to that's cool. So I just want to share some of the key takeaways from my interview with Ruri for you, and if you think it's something you want to do in terms of just changing your relationship. He has an incredible 90 day challenge. So it's a little bit more than dry July or sober October. So, yeah, something to think about. But the one thing that I kind of took away was, you know, Ruri said, if I can get someone to try one year, no beer, I'm almost guaranteed to change their life, their family's life, and the people around them. And I just thought, what an incredible mission, what an incredible commitment. And he's had thousands of people, including top executives, athletes, run of the mill people, like thousands of people go through this and have transformational results. Now, what I found fascinating that he shared was that he can still have a beer when he chooses. And he said it might be three or four months, and then he has a beer because he chooses to have it. So it's not that he's telling everyone to quit, but it's a total shift in the relationship. And I actually challenged him around that, like, hey, you're the founder of one year, no beer, and you still have a beer. What's with that? He says, this is not aa. This is not designed to make you abstain for life. Simply. It's for people who want to shift the relationship. And you know what? I. Before I committed to this, I started to kind of think about, you know, productivity and energy and irritability. And I thought, okay, what's the cost of Having, say, two to three or four beers, what's the cost of that the next day? Well, I'm definitely not as productive. I'm definitely not as energetic and possibly a little more irritable. So if I just had one of those days a week, which I did sometimes, it was a couple of days a week where I had two to four beers, that means if it was just one day a week across a year, well, that's 52 days where I'm operating subpar. I'm a bit lazier and a little bit more irritable. That's almost two months worth of lacking in productivity, lacking in joy. Now, when that goes to two days a week, which often it was two days where I had a few drinks, that equals three months of lacking in productivity, lacking in that joy and elation, because after a few drinks, let's say you have three or four drinks the next day, you're not operating at your highest level. Of course you're not. So when I weighed that up, I said, okay, this has got to be done. Let's give it a go. And it really did help. And here was a few things that Ruri shared with me. And he said, look, it's about changing your perception. And one of the big things. And I really resonated with this. He said, look, a lot of people say, I don't want to give it up. It helps me relax. And he says, well, actually, no. The science shows that it's ruining your REM sleep, your deep sleep. It's ruining that. So it actually doesn't help you relax. And he said, look, James, alcohol is poison. Like, we know the actual substance of alcohol is poisonous, but it's the most readily available drug on the planet. And he says, james, if you were to give up heroin and you told your friends, hey, I've given up heroin, they would celebrate and be like, this is legendary. How can we support you? But when you give up beer or alcohol, you get berated for it. So he says, james, it's the only drug on the planet that you get berated for stopping it. And he started to explain why. And he explained this whole idea of tribalism and that we have this innate tribal psychology, and it's this prehistoric brain, and it gets triggered when you try to leave the tribe. And our families and our friends, like uncles, aunties, they were celebrating with alcohol since we were kids, right? That's what we did. That's for most of us, we were surrounded by that. And so when you go to your people, your family, your friends say, hey, I'm stopping drinking. They, they think, whoa, you're leaving the tribe. So what do they do? They try to get you to stay. Oh, just have one, come on, have a bit of fun. Those things are just built in so that people stay with us, stay in the tribe, don't leave the tribe. But when you treat this as a challenge, let's say for 90 days, all of a sudden you're not leaving the tribe, you're just doing a challenge. So that's how I approached it and certainly like my own experience.

It's been two and two and a bit years since I've had any alcohol. I got to the one year mark and decided, let's go for a beautiful dinner. Caroline and I both celebrated one year and let's, if we want to, let's have a bottle of champagne to celebrate. It's a pretty big milestone. Went to this beautiful restaurant and of course drinks come before the food. So what would you like to drink? We looked at each other. The body language kind of said it all. Like, I think I just want a Heineken. Zero. And Caroline said the same, so. So that was that day. And we're like, cool, we don't really want to drink today. Maybe we'll drink sometime this year. We've done our one year, let's just see. But we've just decided not to. And it's not this big abstinence, it's not this big trying to convert people. It's just what it is. It's a changed behavior. We've just seen so many positives in terms of our energy, how our business grew, our relationship grew. You know, just there were so many pluses to it. So it was interesting. So certainly if you're listening to this, I'd say if you're thinking, oh, you know what, yeah, I do have a few drinks too many sometimes, you know, I would like to just give that a go and see if I can shift my relationship then, you know, go and check it out. He has a website, one year, no beer dot com. And it's really, honestly, it's easy and it's fun. And he's actually got a new program that's called Control youl Drinking. And it's for busy leaders, people who are busy in life. It's just an eight week program. And you go to controlyourdrinking.com. head over and check it out. It's quite amazing. What's different about this is there's neuroscience involved, there's positive psychology involved. Every day you're getting A short little snippet to help you embrace this challenge and change your habits. So really, really powerful stuff. And he was, when we chatted, he was really honest about some of his episodes. Drinking. Hey, I can be honest too. I've had nights when I've had way too many and I've fallen over and I've ended up at A and E. Like I go back to my teenage years. Wow. Some moments I'm just not proud of, you know, And I think many of us can reflect on that. And the one thing that I just thought was really interesting that he shared was the opposite of addiction is connection. The opposite of addiction is connection. And the root of addiction is. Is trauma. And we've got to think about that. You know, often many of us will self medicate through substances, through promiscuity, through addictions of various sorts, whether that be food, porn, whatever it might be. But at the root of all addiction is trauma. And we've got to heal that trauma. And part of this one year no beer program is that they have some powerful coaching in it. I wouldn't call it therapy if you have serious trauma. Please do consider going and seeing a therapist. But I just thought it was really, really interesting. And the whole idea of this neuroplasticity, you know, it means that we can change the brain and we can change the reward system. Really, really powerful. So, yeah, if you're interested in going, checking out, please do. But I just wanted to give you those key highlights. Hopefully they were beneficial, but certainly in my experience in my own life, and then my experience working with clients and corporate teams and athletic teams, alcohol is a big factor in what we do and how we connect socially, how we relax. But changing your relationship with it could be positive for you. So I'm not going to go all preachy on you. I don't believe in that. And if you enjoy alcohol and you feel that you're in control of it, that's great. That's absolutely awesome. But for those that want to go check it out, go check out Ruri Fairburns. One year, no beer. Control your drinking dot com. And yeah, just see if it's resonates with you. But for now, folks, until our next epic episode, get out there and lead your life on purpose.