Something strange has happened during lockdown, people are drinking less

Why not drinking alcohol during lockdown is transforming careers, bodies and relationships!

At first, lockdown triggered a booze-fest. 

The extra stress of juggling working from home, schooling the kids,  the freedom from long commutes, more time, loneliness, boredom, and overwhelm combined to create the perfect conditions for drinking to thrive.

But then something unexpected happened.

People started to stop.

Why?

Because they’ve had enough.

There is a growing army of alcohol-free adventurers who are over the hangovers, bored of the tiredness and can’t be bothered-ness. 

They want their time back, their energy back, the brightness in their eyes back, their bodies, health and fitness back, their mojo and smile back!

While the start of lockdown created the right conditions for excessive drinking, the simplicity of life also produced the perfect petri dish to create a direct link between alcohol and poor performance in business and life. 

The tiredness and grumpiness could no longer be blamed on the early starts, long commutes or late nights.

The lack of motivation and poor productivity that followed wine-o’clock each day was glaringly obvious.  

For the first time, it’s been possible to see all the potential extra spare-time of lockdown being evaporated by hangovers. 

As lockdown progressed and without the distraction of “client entertaining”, or the classic quick one after work that ends up being 4, business professionals started to sleep better, feel better and perform better. 

Ah-ha moments are now widespread. 

The penny is dropping on a mass scale as thousands of business professionals are making a direct link between ‘not’ drinking and improved performance. 

The alcohol-free advantage 

For the last 10 years, while running a busy brokerage, I have been on a mission to inspire business professionals to take a break from the booze and gain, what I call, the alcohol-free advantage. 

For years I was stuck in a traditional rut of working extremely hard to achieve some success in the hope this might make me happy. 

When I finally reached that place of traditional career success, I realised that chasing this false dream had left me almost broken - I was overweight, unfit, dreadfully unhealthy, with zero time, lacking motivation, my career had stalled and I was unhappy.

So I did something that almost no other broker had done before. I took a break from the booze and started thinking like an office-athlete. And everything changed.

The rise of the office-athlete 

As a broker, I was told my business would fail if I did not get out there and “entertain clients” by drinking. They were all wrong.

Taking a break gave me the confidence to optimise all areas of my life from sleep to nutrition. As a former professional athlete, I suddenly realised that my new business career goals were no different from those of an athlete, therefore it was time to start acting like an office-athlete. 

Business boomed

Without hangover food, and late-night takeaways my diet became nutritious and consistent.

Without the can't-be-bothered-ness of hangovers, I found the consistent motivation to exercise daily, which resulted in me losing 3 stone (42lbs) and dropping my body fat from 35% to below 10%.

And my sleep just got better and better as science shows us alcohol destroys sleep.

With more energy and fitness I found the time to study part-time while running the brokerage, which led to a masters degree in positive psychology and coaching psychology, which will hopefully turn into a PhD Jan 2021.

There was even more time to write two books, ’The 28-day alcohol-free challenge’, and ‘Let's Do This! How to use motivational psychology to change your life’ and create two more entrepreneurial businesses, while still running the brokerage and make it home for dinner!

The tangible rewards of the office-athlete approach were that new brokerage grew 7x bigger in half the time it took me to grow the previous one.

Most important of all, my relationships blossomed in the office and at home.

This led to the co-creation of a movement called oneyearnobeer.com which has now reached over 1 million people and inspired over 100,000 active members to take a 28,90 or 365-day break from alcohol.

Then I realised that this was way bigger than alcohol, this was about totally rewriting the rules of success using the science of wellbeing to promote a new way of working that is leading to unparalleled success. 

Because the old system of success that suggests: hard-work + achieve = happiness 

Is broken!

Most of us are great at hardworking, pretty good at achievement but struggle with happiness. And to reach traditional “success” our bodies, minds and relationships are too often left strained or broken! 

This can’t be a success, right?

This is why positive psychology, which is essentially the science of wellbeing, is showing us that the success formula is the other way around.

The new success blueprint that is backed by science, my personal experience and has helped 100,000’s of people transform their performance, suggests you become truly successful by first optimising your well being or happiness. 

Happiness ——> Success

Surely this is ultimate success - To achieve big and do it with a smile on your face?

This is the office-athlete approach to performance. 

We optimise all areas of health including sleep, alcohol, rest/recovery, relationships, nutrition, movement and meaning to create a foundation of wellbeing or happiness from where we springboard into traditional career success.

If you would like to know more about the office-athlete approach to business and life click this link: