 As James Swannock here, I'm going to read out an email that I wrote to my daily newsletter email list a couple of days ago. If you're on that email list, then you will have already read this email that I'm about to read out. And if you're not, you can join it by going to alcoholfreelifestyle.com and you can download the free guide there or the free book which outlines my method for you to get power over your drinking. It could mean reducing, it could mean quitting entirely, it could mean quitting for a period of time, and then afterwards choosing moderation if you feel like you can do that. But in any case, just a warning, if you do join my newsletter list, I should say I do send a daily email, so 365 emails in a year. It's a lot. I would encourage you or I would dissuade you from joining that list if you don't want an email from me every day. But if you do want my words of wisdom, you can go to alcoholfreelifestyle.com and subscribe to the newsletter. So here's what I wrote. The subject line was Christian Erickson's cardiac arrest. Here we go. Did you see the news this weekend about Denmark's soccer player Christian Erickson? I was shocked when I woke up Sunday morning here in Bali, Indonesia to learn that Erickson had collapsed on the pitch during Denmark's Euro 2020 opener against Finland. Thankfully he survived and is in a stable condition after he was taken to hospital. As a Tottenham fan, I feel I am almost friends with Erickson because he played many years for the club I support. The news felt shocking to me. It made me realise the fragility of life. Life can be over in the blink of an eye. There were heroes that emerged on Saturday. After Erickson collapsed, the 32-year-old Denmark captain Simon Chah quickly secured his teammate's neck, cleared his airways and administered CPR until medics arrived. Just a little side note here, just interrupting the email. If I didn't pronounce his last name correctly, apologies for any Denmark fans here. Is it Simon Kajae or is it Jair? I'm not sure. It's spelled K-J-A-E-R. If you're listening and you know how it's pronounced, please do let me know. Send me an email at James at alcoholfreelifestyle.com and let me know if I pronounced it correctly. Alright, let's get back to the email that I sent. The captain then consoled Erickson's distraught wife Sabrina Kvist Jensen, wrapping his arms around her as the Intermalan midfielder received treatment. British television personality Pierce Morgan later tweeted, Denmark's captain ensured Erickson didn't swallow his tongue when he was unconscious, gave him CPR, told the squad to form a protective shield around him, consoled Erickson's horrified wife and has now led his team back into the game. You, sir, are a hero. It got me wondering what I'd do in a similar situation. Would I step up or cower away? I think we all want to believe we would step up, right? But why do we need a shocking situation like what happened to step up in the first place? Why can't we just step up now? I've been reading a lot about Stoicism recently. I've been digesting the book Meditations by the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius who lived between 121 AD and 180 AD. Aurelius writes about the Stoic precepts he used to cope with his life as a warrior and administrator of an empire. Ascending to the imperial throne in AD 161, Aurelius found his reign beset by natural disasters and war and in the face of an inevitable pain, loss and death, offering at the core of life, Aurelius counsels Stoic detachment from the things that are beyond one's control and a focus on one's own will and perception. The Stoics believe life is supposed to be challenging. Difficulties will always show up. We are quick to complain about a situation, but who said life should be easy? That's what we're here for, to face and overcome challenges. We're meant for this. It's how we learn to persevere. It's how we mature into a mature human being. Who would you be without challenges? If you pour yourself a nightly drink, pass out, then wake up in the morning, only to roll over in bed and go back to sleep. Are you just drinking and snoring your life away? If you continue not to be present for your children, are you depriving them of their best life? If you continue drinking irresponsibly, how will you grow into the mighty person you naturally are? I say, don't wish for life to be hard, but neither wish for it to be easy when it gets tough. Rather, wish for the strength to deal with it. That is an opportunity for growth. You're being tested. I'm being tested. Are we the ones who accept the tests and tackle them head on? Or are you the one who throws in the towel after the first hit to the chin? The Stoics say life is supposed to be hard. They say it's unfortunate if you don't have to face challenges. If you've never lived through misfortune, you have passed through life without an opponent, which means you can never, ever know what you're capable of. That's why the Stoics were engaged in life. They knew that we grow in challenges, not in ivory towers. You're facing a tough situation right now. You know your drinking habits are not serving you. You know your life doesn't work the way you want it to work. You know you're unhappy with where you're at. You know you're still reading my emails. You can unsubscribe at any time, but you don't. You're still reading pondering. Maybe you've been reading my emails for years. You may have even replied to me one or two times, only to then ghost me when I started emailing you back. I invite you to accept your current drinking challenges as a chance for growth. Maybe getting my help and working with me will be a formative experience you'll be grateful for. It's not if life will throw punches at you, but when and how you respond to it. Will you respond in a positive and growth-oriented way, ready to tackle it, just like Christian Erickson's teammates did on Saturday? Or will you respond like a victim, complaining and throwing in a towel at first indication of difficulty? Do you see this as a chance to learn and get stronger? Or will you get frustrated and stay stuck in your own mediocrity? I've made my choice. So have my past and current clients. That's why they're moving powerfully forward in health, wealth, love and happiness. Is it finally your turn? Remember this, when it gets tough, remind yourself the tough is what you're here for. It will make you stronger. And I signed at James, helping high achieving men and women regain control of alcohol and their lives since 2015. And then there's a little PS section here. PS, the doors are officially open for the next group of high performers ready to regain power over alcohol and their lives with my help. If you're interested in joining our monthly 90-day experience, reply to this email with the word ready and your cell phone number. I will text you within 48 hours or my head coach Victoria English will text you. So that was the email and that's a little glimpse of what one of my daily emails sound like. It's not all just about quitting drinking and overcoming alcohol. It's about lots of things to do with life, musings, self-development, pondering the universe, existential existence or existential life. Yeah. So if you want to email me and give me some feedback on this email, I would be all ears. You can email me at James at alcoholfreelifestyle.com. The easiest way really to feel confident enough to email me if you don't feel confident is just to get on the email list because a lot of times I say to folks in the emails, just reply to me and let me know what you think or reply and ask me a question. And I check the email every day. I like getting them. I read every email. I don't necessarily respond to everyone. But sometimes I get emails from people saying, you're a snake oil salesman in a scumbag and why are you charging to help people quit drinking and all other kinds of nastiness. So I don't reply to those people, but I do reply to everyone else. In fact, I wrote an email where I shared a lot of the hate mail that I get, which is still fascinating and perplexing to me, that I would receive hate mail for producing and providing a service that genuinely helps people and gives me immense satisfaction. People seem to have their lives transformed. Could they have transformed their lives without me? Of course they could. At that time in their life, they weren't and they hadn't. And so they hired me to hold them accountable and give them support and give them access to war cost coaches and accountability. And as I say to the haters who email me these kind of stuff, I say like 95 to 99% of the content that I coach is on the internet for free. It's out there. It's me. You just look at my YouTube video. You listen to my podcast episodes. If you Google my name, James Swannick and alcohol, there are dozens of magazine and newspaper articles where I've outlined my formula for quitting drinking. I've been on other people's podcasts. You can get it all for free. It's all out there. And for those people who want the additional coaching and accountability and support and some more individualized help, I guess, I've got paid programs. I don't make a secret of it. Project 90 is one of them. 30 day no alcohol challenge is another one. Anyway, I don't want this to be about the hate mail I get. This was about maybe hopefully an inspirational message and just to bring your attention to the fact that if you want to get a daily dose of motivation and inspiration and some pondering of the universe, feel free to join the email list, alcoholfreelifestyle.com is where you can go and download the free guide and that will automatically get you on the daily news little list. And thank you so much for listening. Thanks for supporting. And I was looking over the podcast episodes just now before I hit record on this one. Wow, it's crazy. Our downloads have been going up every single month, increasing every single month since we launched. We've been going now exactly one year. Thank you so much for your support. It's amazing how many people send me messages and say, wow, I love the podcast, really inspirational. Thanks for sharing those kind of stories. A lot of the episodes that I've been doing have been with people who graduated the 90 day program because I find that those folks have the best insight for you if you're trying to get power over alcohol because they were where you might maybe now struggling to overcome their drinking habits, struggling to level up their life. And then they're able to provide insight as to how they were able to overcome that and get clear and now have lifetime power over over drinking. But I'm all ears. I'd love for you to suggest some people for you'd like me to interview. Excuse me. If there's anyone you want me to interview on the show, if you'd like me to interview you, if you've got someone you'd like to a topic that you'd like me to talk about, please do email me at James at alcoholfreelifestyle.com. I'd love to hear from you. All right, that's it for now. Thank you for listening. Thanks for being a supporter of the show. And I hope this was helpful. And I'll talk to you on the next one. Thanks for listening to the alcohol free lifestyle podcast. I want to load you up with some free stuff right now. So if you want to go to JamesSwanick.com slash guide, I will send you my quit alcohol guide, which has helped six figure entrepreneurs and top professionals reduce or quit drinking. You can also text the word quit guide to the number 44222 if you're in the US, of course, it doesn't really work anywhere outside of the US. But if you're in the US on your mobile phone and you'd like that guide, text the word quit guide to the number 44222 or you can go to JamesSwanick.com slash guide. If you'd like to schedule a free 15 minute call with one of my top coaches, just an exploratory call to see if or how we can help you, then you can go to JamesSwanick.com slash schedule, or you can text the word project 90 to the number 44222 if you're listening in the US on a mobile phone. That's JamesSwanick.com slash schedule, or you can text the word project 90. That's one word project 90 to the number 44222. Feel free to send me a direct message over on my Instagram account, which is at JamesSwanick. You can also watch video episodes of this podcast and a series of other educational videos on my YouTube channel, which is JamesSwanickOne, or you can direct message me on Facebook at JamesSwanickOfficial. And finally, a request. Would you please now write a short review of the podcast inside of the Apple Podcast app on your phone or on iTunes on your desktop computer? Would you please give the show five stars and write a quick one or two sentence review? This will help the show get in front of even more listeners potentially transforming someone's life. You can rate and review the show inside of your Apple Podcast app on your phone or over on iTunes on your desktop. Thank you so much and I'll catch you next time.