This week’s Friday Ramble continues the theme of identity and energy, because it has been following me around like a bad smell lately.
Strap yourself in. This goes deep.
For those new to the Friday Ramble, this is where we talk about anything that has popped into my head this week to showcase life, sobriety, and why staying sober matters in the real world.
Hopefully, you can find some fun or relief in knowing I am probably crazier than you, even with 8.8 years of sobriety, a counselling qualification, and two adorable fluffy cats.
Although Luna and Twiglet are struggling in this heat. We had the groomer round on Wednesday, and they are now about half a cat lighter each with the amount of fur she trimmed off.
“Don’t explain your philosophy. Embody it.”
— Epictetus
Something that has been a big shift in getting sober, staying sober, and then trying to actually thrive in sobriety, is that I am now a conscious thinker of my life.
Sometimes too conscious.
I question everything, to the point I have to leave ChatGPT alone before it becomes my second therapist, business coach, editor, philosopher, and slightly weird robot best friend.
But there is a gift in that too.
When you start paying attention to your own patterns, your energy, your thoughts, and the little nudges that keep coming back, you become more self-aware.
And self-awareness is where change starts.
When I was drinking and drugging every weekend, I never consciously chose anything I wanted to do.
I followed every other unconscious soul into the pub, got shitfaced, and repeated that for almost 20 years of my life.
For most of that time, I didn’t give a single thought to what I actually wanted my life to look like.
That is scary.
But it also happens all the time.
Get up at 7am.
Breakfast.
Work.
Home.
Dinner.
Sleep.
Repeat.
People stay in that cycle for a lifetime.
Not because they are stupid, lazy, or broken, but because they never stop long enough to ask:
Is this actually the life I want?
At some point, if you want a life that feels truly yours, you have to think more consciously about what you want.
After all, if you can’t see it, you can’t build it.
Sobriety was the start of me consciously choosing the life I wanted.
At first, that choice was very simple.
I believed I could stay sober for 24 hours, so I did.
Then I did it again.
And again.
Day by day, I kept a promise to myself, put the work in, and showed myself I could do hard things while the rest of the world was still getting drunk.
That gave me belief.
Then I started feeling this new energy, which I had spent years numbing myself to.
During my drinking and drugging days, I reckon I was operating on about 30% of what I was capable of.
Maybe less.
Sobriety showed me that energy can feel almost relentless when you start doing things that feed your soul.
Until you burn out, obviously.
True story.
Sobriety gave me the energy and confidence to try things I thought I might like.
I failed at a golf travel business.
I set up a counselling and personal training business.
Then I wrote the first Sober On A Drunk Planet book.
For the next five years, I poured my soul into writing about sobriety as I saw it.
Those books were all me.
My weird little way of looking at alcohol, addiction, growth, chaos, health, mindset, and trying to live sober on a drunk planet.
At the same time, I was doing sober podcasts, seven seasons of them, guest podcasts about sobriety, social media posts about sobriety, and spending most of my life talking about sobriety.
And then something strange happened.
My energy started to drain.
I would log onto Instagram and my feed was obviously all sober people talking about sober things.
At first, that world helped me.
It gave me connection, purpose, and a place to share what had helped me.
But eventually, it started to drain me.
Something that had given me so much joy at the beginning started to feel like a straitjacket I couldn’t shake.
My identity had wrapped around me so tightly that it started to choke me.
That’s the danger of identity.
At first, it gives you direction.
I am sober.
I am an author.
I am a golfer.
I am a coach.
I am this.
I am that.
It gives you something to hold onto when you are rebuilding yourself.
But if you are not careful, the same identity that saved you can become the thing that suffocates you.
Because then you stop living.
You start performing.
You start asking:
What would a sober person post?
What would an author say?
What would a serious golfer do?
What would people expect from me?
And slowly, without realising it, you stop listening to your energy and intuition.
You start trying to keep up with the version of yourself that other people recognise.
That is where I think identity becomes dangerous.
Not because identity is bad, but because we cling to it too tightly.
Sobriety was never meant to become a prison.
It was meant to open the door.
This is also why The Sobriety Blueprint has taken me so long to launch.
I was working through an old identity problem while my logical brain kept saying:
You’ve written the books.
You’ve helped people understand alcohol differently.
Now offer something more structured to go alongside it.
And that made sense.
It still makes sense.
I am very happy to have launched it, and it will continue in the background for the people who are serious about building a new sober life.
Because one thing I do have energy for is helping people make the most out of their lives.
But not in a sober coach or sober guru kind of way.
That doesn’t fit me.
It never has.
My energy is more writer, educator, golfer, deep thinker, overthinker, cat dad, occasionally grumpy 40-year-old man trying to figure life out in real time.
That is my lane.
Not what I think people want me to be.
Not what the internet says I should become.
Not what some marketing funnel tells me is the “next logical step.”
Just me.
And I think I lost touch with that a bit.
Not dramatically.
Not in a “Sean has joined a cult and now sells healing crystals from a campervan” sort of way.
But I drifted.
The Sobriety Blueprint has been great fun to create. I have learned loads. I geek out on the technical side more than I probably should. I’m proud of it. It is a proper tool for people who want structure.
But I also think I let the course world, the AI world, the launch world, and all the “build this, optimise that, improve this, tweak that” stuff take me a little too far away from the thing that got me here in the first place.
Writing.
Thinking.
Rumbling through life and turning it into something useful.
Books.
That is where my soul is.
At the same time, I was hoping golf would take off, so I could become Sean the Pro Golfer.
But the reality was that trying to run a business, write books, build courses, keep life moving, and compete properly at golf was not possible.
The only real possibility was becoming homeless and probably going back on crack again.
Luckily, foresight from hindsight allowed me to focus back on the books and courses.
So there I was.
Sean the Sober Author had become draining.
Sean the Golfer had become draining.
Two things that once gave me energy had started taking it away because I had wrapped too much identity around them.
That was when something clicked.
Sobriety is a tool to live your best life.
It is not your entire identity.
Golf is something I love.
It is not my entire identity.
Writing is something I love.
It is not my entire identity.
The moment we turn something into who we are, we risk losing the joy of actually doing it.
You can love something deeply and still destroy your relationship with it by making it your whole personality.
I know this because I’ve done it with sobriety and golf.
When my golf performance was directly linked to my happiness, I became miserable when I wasn’t playing well.
When my sober identity became too heavy, I started feeling trapped by the very thing that had set me free.
That is where the idea of being “a nobody” has really helped me.
And I don’t mean that in a sad, low self-worth, “poor me” kind of way.
I mean it in a freeing way.
I am nobody.
I am not locked into being one thing forever.
I am not trapped by what I posted three years ago.
I am not trapped by what people expect from me.
I am not trapped by a version of myself that helped me survive but no longer helps me grow.
When I see myself as nobody, I don’t have to perform an identity.
I can just listen.
What gives me energy?
What drains it?
What feels forced?
What feels honest?
What feels heavy?
What feels alive?
That is intuition.
And intuition is much easier to hear when your identity isn’t shouting over it.
Moving golf courses is part of that.
It removes 30 years of identity I have at my old golf club, along with all the pro-to-amateur stuff I went through.
I am not running away.
I am refocusing my energy into a new environment that supports the vision I have for my future.
That is conscious living.
Launching The Sobriety Blueprint has also helped close a loop for me.
Not close it as in “it’s over.”
Close it as in: the structured support is now there.
The thing I kept thinking I “should” build has been built.
Now it can sit there for people who want it, while I redirect my main creative energy back into writing, books, education, and exploring life in a way that feels more like me again.
And I can feel the difference already.
My energy is coming back.
The thought of writing those first few words on my A3 pad, the same way I have created every book so far, is turning me on.
There is something magical about not having a book, then writing a few words in a brainstorm, then turning those words into chapters, then slowly shaping it into something people can read, enjoy, and hopefully use.
Then suddenly, you have a book.
A real thing.
Something that can travel around the world and help someone you will probably never meet.
That still blows my mind.
I’ve got a few more self-help books in me before I try to go sci-fi.
Watching Star Trek with my Dad every day on BBC2 growing up has had a lasting effect on me, and if I can somehow mash that with Game of Thrones and trance music, then we may have a problem.
Or a bestseller.
The brainstorming has already started.
I’ve also done a few things lately to help cleanse old identities.
I went through my Instagram and deleted a lot of heavy sober identity posts.
At first, I felt guilty.
Which is insane.
Why would I feel guilty for deleting my own posts from my own Instagram?
But that’s how identity works.
It convinces you that letting go of an old version of yourself is somehow betrayal.
It isn’t.
It’s growth.
If something doesn’t fit your current life or vision for the future, you have full permission to delete it, change it, move on from it, or leave it behind.
Or even better, don’t use social media in the first place.
So you will also see my footer has been reorganised.
Books are probably why you are here, so the focus is back on books. Then the audiobook collection. Then The Sobriety Blueprint is there for people who want more structure and support in building a better life without alcohol.
That feels right.
That feels honest.
That feels like me again.
So my Jerry Springer final thought is this:
I am a nobody.
And I mean that in the best possible way.
I no longer want to be wrapped up too tightly in any identity.
I want to understand what gives me energy and what takes it away.
I want to float through life a little lighter, trusting my intuition to lead me towards the things that feed me in a wholesome way.
Not the things that make me look good.
Not the things that prove a point.
Not the things that fit an old version of me.
The things that feel true now.
Because identity can help us rebuild.
But eventually, we have to let it breathe.
Otherwise the thing that once saved us can become the thing that starts choking us.
So there you go.
Some really deep thoughts around identity and energy this week.
Can you relate to any of this, or have I completely baffled you?
If you’ve had your own identity or energy crisis, or one of those strange little realisations where you suddenly think:
“Hang on, I don’t think this is me anymore,”
please share it with me.
I find this stuff fascinating.
As always, if you want to share anything good, bad, sober, weird, or mildly concerning, let me know.
I will mostly be watching sport all weekend and going to the dump for our monthly cleanse of the house and all the stuff that Aprill seems to accumulate.
If you are in the UK, stay cool.
I can’t believe we’ve been looking into getting a £3,000 air-conditioning unit installed because all the cheap ones have been sold out for months now.
Much love,
Sean
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Related Ramble: The Dark Night of the Soul
