The Transformational Layer - The Day I Realized I'd Been Running at 43% Capacity for 20 Years

When Your Baseline Feels Like a Superpower

When heated, onions transform completely—becoming sweet, translucent, taking on entirely new properties. Not just a better version of raw onion. Something fundamentally different.

I quit drinking in March 2023. Thought I was just "getting healthier." Turns out, I'd been systematically underperforming my own life for two decades.

The Brutal Math of Wasted Fridays

Here's the equation I didn't want to see: Friday night drinks, Saturday continuation, Sunday "just one glass with dinner." Monday cloudiness. Tuesday adjustment period—like your brain is recovering from a workout it never signed up for. Wednesday—FINALLY optimal. Thursday, feeling powerful. Friday... and here comes the vice again.

Rinse and repeat for 12-20 years.

That's 3 optimal days out of 7. Three. For twenty years, I was running at 43% capacity and calling it "having fun" and "loosening up" and when I was younger, "getting facked up"

Let's not even get started on my hookah years, 10-12 years ago. Different vice, same waste.

The kicker? I'd still work out, get things done, and show up to meetings. But you could FEEL it. The naps. The mood ups and downs. The brain fog. Your body is trying to recover from poison you voluntarily consumed while you drift through the week, getting "just enough" done.

The Cultural Equation

You don't realize how embedded alcohol is in the human experience until you try to remove it.

"Hey, let's get a drink." "Let's catch up over dinner and a bottle of wine." "Come over, I'll break out my best whiskey." Even run clubs and CrossFit events end with "let's meet up at happy hour"—because nothing says peak performance like working out really hard to drink beer after.

Or the "healthy" version: clear tequila, soda water, a splash of lime. "I'm being healthy!"

Sure you are.

Every restaurant is built around a massive bar. People come to visit and bring a bottle of something. My own father still tries to pour me his special strawberry wine (never liked it, even when I drank). Family makes you feel weird about NOT drinking. Funny how that works.

The Superpower That Wasn't

I quit on March 12, 2023—the last day of a buddy's bachelor party in Orlando. Had my final vodka soda water because I'm "healthy," and that was it. My wife was pregnant at the time, obviously not drinking. I wanted to match her commitment.

After three weeks, something shifted. I thought I'd unlocked a superpower.

Wake up Saturday morning—optimal. Sunday—optimal. Monday—still optimal. Tuesday—wait, I'm ALWAYS ready now?

Then it hit me: This isn't a superpower. This is my BASELINE. This is what I'm actually capable of when I'm not poisoning myself 4 days a week.

Samuel Johnson said it: "The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken."

I'd KNOWN the consequences—the bank account damage, the mood swings, the cognitive fog—but the habit had me until it didn't.

The Huberman Holy Shit Moment

Then I listened to Andrew Huberman's podcast on alcohol. He laid out the science: alcohol increases stress levels over time, impairs sleep, increases cancer risk (especially in women), destroys gut microbiome, causes inflammation, damages brain structure and function—even at "low-to-moderate" consumption.

We intuitively know this. But hearing the mechanism explained? That's the "holy shit" moment. After a certain age, hangovers are brutal, food choices get terrible, and recovery takes twice as long.

I get it when I see normal working Americans with their routine: 9-5 job, kids in school, gym membership, favorite restaurants, a brunch spot, Costco runs, Disney weekends, Cruise vacations, and drinks to have a good time. That's the life. It works for them.

It's just not where I want to be. Not the routine or life I'm creating.

The Transformation Unlocked

Now with my son at 2 years old—haven't had a drink since before his conception—I can't imagine being buzzed around him. Taking naps while he needs us. Being anything less than OPTIMAL as a parent.

I wake up at 6 am to pour my heart into this newsletter. To unpeel these layers and dig deep into emotions, I would have procrastinated on for YEARS in my drinking days. This creative outlet, this emotional excavation—none of it happens in the fog.

I'm ALWAYS READY now. Ready for Web3. Ready for AI implementation. Ready for crypto legislation. Ready to apply my creativity. Ready to seize our moment when the market finally catches up to where we've been building since 2017.

Seven optimal days. Every single week. For the rest of my life (that's the plan).

The only thing I miss? A cold beer by the pool or beach on a hot day. That's it. And honestly, as long as you have a glass in your hand with sparkling water, nobody asks questions anyway.

The Real Resistance

The resistance wasn't FOMO or social awkwardness. It was facing my own responsibilities. Growing the fuck up. Taking the steps and ambition I have NOW—what I should have had THEN.

The hardest part? Forgiving myself for all the time spent in alcohol-related setbacks. The humiliation in some stories sponsored by drinking. The years of running at 43% when 100% was always available.

But I'm done looking back. Looking forward to an abundant, sober, fully optimal life ahead.

This Week's Peel

Transformation isn't incremental improvement. It's becoming fundamentally different while keeping your core essence intact.

The onion doesn't become a "better raw onion" when you cook it. It becomes something entirely new—sweet, translucent, powerful in ways the raw version never could be.

What transformation are you resisting because the habit chains are too light to feel but too heavy to break?

This week, notice: What's your brutal math? How many optimal days are you actually getting per week, and what's costing you the other ones? And what would become possible if you ran at 100% capacity instead of whatever fraction you've normalized?

Being Coached Layers: The Investment of Optimal Capacity

Dr. Goodman says he once coached an air crash investigator who lost her retirement savings to habit. He delivered the stark truth: "You drank your retirement." His solution was a forced pivot: The money she used for liquor and partying must now become her forced savings. Every new deposit is an affirmation of the new self. This applies a core business fundamental: you must stop licking your wounds and learn by doing, realizing that the lesson is always the same—it's just applied differently based on your current values.

His final advice is to execute your responsibilities—like running at 100% capacity—as if your life depends on it, because it does. There is no room for corner cutting. When you choose the easy path, you are the only person who bleeds. Make every optimal day an investment in the abundant, fully realized future you have unlocked.

Bookshelf Peeled: The Neutral Zone of Transformation

The shift from 43% capacity to a 100% baseline is explained well by William Bridges' Transitions. He separates Change (quitting the habit) from Transition (the internal journey).

Your experience moves through his three stages:

1. Ending: Acknowledging and letting go of the old pattern (the "Brutal Math of Wasted Optimal Days" and the "Superpower That Wasn't"). This is the hardest part—the forgiveness for past capacity.
2. The Neutral Zone (The Onion Intersection): The raw, unformed period right after the break. The onion is peeled, but not yet cooked. This "superpower" feeling is just your new, optimal baseline.
3. The New Beginning: The fully transformed self, aligning 100% capacity with your highest purpose.

The Lesson: Embrace the initial discomfort of the Neutral Zone. That period where you just felt "optimal" was your raw self resetting. Do not rush to fill that space with a new vice; instead, consciously define the new systems and habits that support your 100% capacity.

Note: This post contains an affiliate link

Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes
By William Bridges (Author), Susan Bridges (Author)

Learn more

Design Rebel: Optimal at the Bar 🍸

Quitting alcohol to feel optimal only made sense to talk about it from a bar setting. Leonardo.ai shot out some random, weird video outputs, but I made the best of the unexpected visuals. The voiceover was generated by ElevenLabs, and the script was written by me and polished for structure with Gemini. Final video production was completed using Wondershare Filmora.

Weekly Inspired Insights I liked or found useful this week:

Watch at your own risk. I saved the clip where he talks about Inebriation: Top-Down Inhibition, Impulsivity & Memory Formation.

P.S. If this resonates with you, share it with someone. I'm dedicated to helping fellow explorers—or anyone who found this page—uncover their authentic self with humor and insight. We're all in this together, finding the courage to truly live from our core essence (or as close as we can get!).

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