 Should you cut out your existing friends because you no longer drink and they do and they're corrupting your mind? Well, when you quit drinking it is very possible that you will lose some friends. You may proactively choose to cut them out of their life or to just move on or you may just find that you just naturally gravitate somewhere else. So yes, you will lose some of your existing friends possibly. You don't have to. You don't need to. Because when you are alcohol-free and you're feeling great in that choice and you're powerfully drinking water and soda water and you're feeling great and you're awesome, it doesn't matter what social group you're in at all. You can be a chameleon. You can like float into a group of people who are drinking heavily and you can just powerfully have a great time while not drinking. You can float into another group of people who are not drinking heavily, who are drinking only on occasion and you can still remain alcohol-free and love it and enjoy it. You're a chameleon that floats between social groups. I'm James Swanig from the Alcohol-Freedom Formula. There are links down below to help you get started on your quitting drinking journey. When I quit drinking in 2010, did I lose some of my friends? Not initially. Did they challenge me on not drinking? Yes. I had one friend, one of who I told him that I was about 20, 21 days not drinking and he said, Do you want to drink from the bar? I said, Yeah. He said, What do you want? I said, a soda water. He goes to the bar. He comes back five minutes later. He gives it to me and then I look at him and he's got this little smirk on his face and just before I sipped it, I was like, did you put vodka in this? And he went, Oh yeah, I did. I was like, well, you don't want to know what I said to him then, but I wasn't happy. And so you will find people in your life who will do this. They will literally not understand or comprehend that you are not drinking and they may try to like sneak alcohol into your drink like my friend did and you might be a little bit irritated by that or a lot irritated like I was. I get it. Now, I didn't make a conscious choice to cut that friend or cut the friends that I had. I just continued on my alcohol-free journey and what happened was is that I started naturally attracting a different type of friend into my life. I just started to gravitate towards people who didn't need alcohol to socialize. I started getting into health. I started getting into a little bit of meditation. Some years later, I got more into that, but at the time I just kind of dibbled and dabbled in it and I did start going to the gym. I ran a half marathon. None of these things are excessive. None of these things are like addictive, like physical behaviors. Like just because I give up one thing, I'm now going to go and be addicted to like this health. It was just a natural kind of beautiful flow to starting to be attracted to healthier choices and attract people who made healthier choices in their own life. So I didn't consciously say I am no longer hanging out with this group of friends and that's it and that's done. No. No, I didn't do that. I just kept hanging out with them, but then started spending more time or increasing amounts of time with this new group of people that I hadn't been exposed to previously. And I didn't even have to go and seek them out. They just found me because when your energy is health and presence and you're into growth-minded things, you tend to just attract people who are into health and growth-minded things. It's just one of the laws of the universe, right? The law of attraction. So should you cut out some of your friends? Well, the word should is a story, right? So should we? Yeah, maybe. Maybe some of them don't serve you. Maybe some of them are draining you. And so maybe it is smart for you or it serves you to consciously say I no longer want that friend in my life. And if that's the case, that's okay too. I'm 43 years old as I'm recording this and I can tell you that the friends I have today are different from the friends I had just five years ago. People that I may have hung out with for a year or two, five years ago, some of those people I haven't seen in that amount of time, not because there was a falling out, not because anything dramatic happened, but just people just go their separate ways. And that's life. And that's okay. Should you make a conscious decision to cut someone out of your life who's encouraging you to drink when you don't want to drink? Maybe or maybe not. That's a choice you have to make. Is it okay if you deliberately cut them out? Yes, that's okay. Is it okay if you don't cut them out? Yes, that's okay. There's no judgment around this. There's no right or wrong. But if someone is draining you and not serving you and you consciously want to go, not they're cut, I want to move on, then do it because don't worry. There's a whole new beautiful social group here waiting for you. Gone are the days where if you were ostracized from one group that that meant social isolation. No, now we have Facebook and meetups and Instagram and a way of connecting to people. I don't mean like connecting to people online. I mean using those online platforms to connect to people where you can go and meet them in person. So to be clear, I'm not saying cut your friends and go and join social groups online. I'm saying use those social groups online to connect with people who you can meet with, meet in person. Now just now I'm filming this right now. The camera person who's filming this right now, Ryan, is a health conscious traveling person. Show us. Turn the camera around. There you go. Good on you, Ryan. Okay, come back. Ryan is a positive, healthy guy who's out traveling the world in Bali doing cool, epic stuff. There's a reason why we attracted each other into our lives, why he's filming me now doing this, why he's into this. Ryan did my 30 day no alcohol challenge program back in I think 2015, right? Flip the camera around. That's correct. 2015 you did it? Yeah. So you found me online and why did you do that? Why did you find that group? Flip it around again. You know, it just kind of found me through one of those social circles. There you go. Spin it around. So people are just attracted to people who are on the same frequency. I had a program called the 30 day no alcohol challenge which helps people quit alcohol and Ryan somehow found that program and did the program and then quit alcohol. Yep. So when you do that, you just naturally start to find new groups of people. So should you cut your resisting friends? Maybe. Is that scary? Yeah, I get it. But will you be attracted to and find and naturally be magnetized toward the new group of people who bring you up and energize you and push you and hold you accountable and you get to learn new cool, epic stuff. Yes. So yes, you will lose some friends. Maybe either proactively you'll make the cut or maybe it'll just naturally happen and that's okay because you are on a path to growth. You're on a path of health. You're on a path of presence. You are on a path of living your best life. So get out there and make it happen. Get out there and live a beautiful alcohol free life. 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 produce 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 JamesSwanick one, or you can direct message me on Facebook at JamesSwanick official. 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.