Hungry for More Than Just Another Hit

What are you truly hungry for? That's the question that drives this deeply introspective exploration of how our brains become trapped in cycles of avoidance and momentary pleasure. 

Your brain doesn't distinguish between sources of dopamine—whether from sugar, alcohol, or avoiding difficult sales conversations. The glass of wine wasn't about the taste; it was about not feeling lonely. The second plate wasn't about hunger; it was about silencing shame. Avoiding asking for the sale wasn't about the client; it was about protecting yourself from rejection. When you name what you're truly avoiding, these cravings begin to lose their power.

Comfort feels safe, but functions like a barbed wire cage. It promises protection while imprisoning you in patterns that steal your future happiness. The late-night cupcake gives thirty seconds of pleasure but hours of regret. The "one more drink" becomes a cycle that robs you of clarity. The avoidance of asking for the sale feels temporarily safe, but it deprives you of results. These small choices you avoid today become your regrets tomorrow.

Breaking free requires recognizing that pain isn't punishment—it's a doorway to growth. The discomfort of withdrawals, whether from substances or the anxiety of asking for a sale, signals transformation. Structure becomes your lifeline, providing the framework for sustainable change. Whether through recovery meetings or following sales processes, freedom isn't found in chaos but built through consistent structure. 

Every morning presents a choice: numb or grow, drink or recover, hide or ask for the sale. If you can survive addiction, you can survive discomfort. If you can survive discomfort, you can win the sale. And if you can win the sale, you can build the life you've been starving for. When that craving comes, don't feed the fear—feed your freedom.

Ready to break free from your dopamine traps? Subscribe, leave a review, and join us every Friday as we continue exploring the path to a successful life built on courage, structure, and self-trust.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to the Successful Life Podcast
• 3:14 The Dopamine Trap Explained
• 5:21 Comfort Is Like a Cage
• 9:17 Breaking Free from Fear
• 13:15 The Power of Structure
• 16:35 Feeding Courage Instead of Fear
• 20:32 Making Daily Choices That Matter

Transcript

Corey Berrier: 1:00

Welcome to the Successful Life Podcast. I'm your host, Corey Berrier, and today we're going to talk about hungry for the. Yes, whether it's addiction, alcohol, sales, or fear. So as you listen right now, you may notice you've been reaching for something. Maybe it's food, maybe it's alcohol gets alcohol. Maybe it's the comfort of talking through a sales pitch. Instead of asking for the clothes, you tell yourself it's not a big deal. One more drink at dinner, one more snack at night, one more conversation that never leads to an ask.

Corey Berrier: 1:50

But the truth is, the small choices you avoid today become your regret tomorrow, and that's been my experience and thankfully I get to learn from those experiences and I hope, after you listen to this podcast, that maybe it'll make you think about how you've made small choices that have resulted in regret the next day. So the dopamine trap your brain doesn't care if it's sugar. It doesn't care if it's a shot of whiskey or a customer smiling and telling you politely they're going to move forward and they're going to call you back. Your brain just wants that hit of dopamine and you get it through all three of those things the burn of alcohol sliding down your throat I'm sure you can feel that the rush of sugar, lighting up your brain, the relief of somebody saying everything except are you ready to move forward? Right At the moment, you see that craving for what it is, you can stop feeding it. Once you recognize that your brain is saying I need this thing, you disassociate from that feeling and you can make a change.

Corey Berrier: 3:22

So we're addicted to avoidance. It's not about the substance, it's about what you don't want to feel. Here's a quick example that glass of wine wasn't about the taste, it was about not feeling lonely. The second plate of food wasn't about you being hungry, it was about silencing shame. Avoiding the ask wasn't about the client, it was about protecting yourself from rejection. And when you name what you're avoiding, it starts to lose its grip. So you know these are real, live situations and I've been through all of them and I'm sure if you're listening to this, you've been through all of them if you want to be honest with yourself.

Corey Berrier: 4:21

And comfort is like a cage, and that's really what we're talking about. It feels comfort really makes you feel like you're safe, but really you're not safe in comfort. It's like a barbed wire cage that you're in. It's very difficult to get out, and so maybe it's with alcohol, that nightly reward. I've worked all day. I need to, you know, I just need to take the edge off. But really what you're doing is you're numbing the stress of your day until it steals how you feel the next morning and then that cycle just keeps happening over and over and over.

Corey Berrier: 5:02

Or if you're, you know, if food is your thing that late night binge, that, uh, late night snack that you don't really need because you're not really hungry what does that give you? You wake up the next day and you feel fat and you feel bad about yourself and you go dang it. I did it again. I shouldn't have eaten that cupcake. And if you really think about it, that cupcake gave you a minute worth of pleasure while you were eating it. Or, if you're like me, probably a half a minute, like 30 seconds, because I just engulf it Because it's so good, right, and it's that really quick hit of dopamine, that sugar rush that we're looking for, but it doesn't make you feel good after the fact. You can admit, I can admit, it's just not worth it. And you know, are you looking to the future Like, would your future self be proud of you for drinking that extra drink or having that extra cupcake? I don't think so If you're in sales, having long drawn-out conversations that feel safe and protected and like you're building a friendship, but it robs you of the results that you're looking for.

Corey Berrier: 6:25

You got to recognize when you fall building a friendship, but it robs you of the results that you're looking for. You got to recognize when you fall into that trap. You've got to build relationships with people, there's no question about that. But you're also there to do a job and those two things can coexist at the same time. But if you're just in the friend-making zone, you're going to stay in the friend zone. If you're in HVAC sales or plumbing sales or electrical sales, the end result is you got to sell the product in service because you can't do the job until that happens. And also you're there to help that customer and if you don't sell them what you're there to sell them, you can't help the customer and that's, in my opinion, doing that customer a disservice.

Corey Berrier: 7:16

So just picture yourself breaking through that cycle, breaking free from that cycle tonight, not next week, not someday, but tonight. And you know a lot of people take pain as the path. But you've been running from pain. But pain isn't really punishment, pain is the doorway. The painful truth of hangovers forces you to see what's broken in your life. The pain of hearing no is the tuition you pay to earn more yeses Lean into that discomfort now, because on the other side of pain is the version of you. You've always been chasing you, the lies that we tell ourselves. Tomorrow, later, when I'm ready, how many times have you whispered those words in your own brain? Alcohol will tell you I can stop anytime. It's just another beer or another drink or another glass of wine. Food will tell you I'll just start the diet on Monday. Customers, you'll tell yourself the sales lie of. They'll call me back when they're ready. You could choose to stop lying to yourself about these things now, because that's what they are, to yourself about these things now, because that's what they are, and you want to really detox from this fear that is holding you back.

Corey Berrier: 9:12

You know withdrawals are not just attached to alcohol. You know you feel it every time. You avoid asking for that sale and you may think well, they called us out here. Of course they know they should move forward. No, people are human beings and when you don't put yourself in their shoes, maybe it's the first time they've ever called you to their house. Maybe it's the first time they've ever had to get their air conditioner fixed. They don't know the right questions to ask, so you got to be very informative and you got to put yourself in the shoes of that customer and you can figure these things out really early on in the conversation by asking the right questions and so you know. I remember right when I stopped drinking my body trembled because the alcohol was gone. It was awful. It's just like when you are getting ready to close a sale and maybe it's the biggest sale you've ever had and your heart's racing when you're about to do the close.

Corey Berrier: 10:30

Both are discomfort, areas of discomfort, and that discomfort you can cleanse yourself really from that discomfort. Imagine, in that tension, just asking boldly and realizing you survived it. I'm not telling you every time you're going to get a yes, because you're certainly not. That would be a false narrative for me to tell you every time you're going to get a yes. But you're going to build the muscle of asking by doing it over and over and over and, believe it or not, the yeses don't really help you to build that muscle. If you get a yes every single time you go out, you're just going to think it's easy. I mean, look back in 2021 when everybody and their brother was changing out their systems because they were at home. It was like shooting fish in a barrel and a lot of people got lazy and they forgot how to ask for the sale because they became order takers. And that's a tough situation right now because it's not an order taker situation.

Corey Berrier: 11:44

You've got to go in and build a relationship and you've got to ask for the sale and when you do that enough times, eventually you're going to assume the sale. And when you assume the sale, they're likely going to buy because your confidence is up. You're genuinely grateful to be there and you can develop this muscle through structure. I mean the power of structure is unbelievable. I mean the power of structure is undeniable. Like, if you have a sales process that you follow, just follow the sales process, because probably somebody smarter than you figured that sales process out. You know, freedom is not found in chaos. Whether you believe that or not, it's built in structure. Structure is key and it gives you a framework to go by. You just have to follow it and listen. Don't reinvent the wheel. If you've got a good structure and a good framework, just follow it, because the people that are above you or that you work for or wherever they got this from maybe it's a Nexstar situation, like they've done this tens of thousands of times with thousands of companies it probably works.

Corey Berrier: 13:04

So when you're, you know, in recovery, you know the way you get structure is you go to meetings, you do step work, you work with your sponsees, you work with sponsors. That's the framework of living a balanced life in recovery. You might be thinking well, corey, that's a lot of stuff to do. Yeah, you spent hours drinking every night, so spend an hour at a meeting each day. It's really not that big of a deal and it costs you a dollar. It actually doesn't cost you anything, but most people put a dollar in the basket.

Corey Berrier: 13:43

You know the person that said hey, I'm just going to wean myself off, I'm just going to wean this process, I'm going to quit drinking, I'm going to get sober. Guess where they ended up Back at the bar. Because they didn't have a daily routine, they didn't have a plan, they didn't have accountability, just like in sales, daily prospecting, scripted closes. Accountability is what builds that muscle and trust the structure more than you trust that fear. That boils up inside of you every time you go to ask for a sale, or that fear that bubbles up inside of you every time you go to ask for a sale, or that fear that bubbles up inside of you when you think about having a drink. The solution is follow the process.

Corey Berrier: 14:31

And so what you feed your mind is so vitally important, because feeding the mind is not feeding the fear. Every sip, every scroll, every bite is a choice to feed your fear or you're feeding your future. What would your future self say about you drinking 14 drinks tonight, or eating three cupcakes or honey buns, or whatever it is you eat, or not asking for that sale? You know alcohol is a poison. It numbs the brain. Food makes you foggy, it fogs up your body. It fogs up your brain, just like alcohol, social media, it distracts you from life, and in sales, that avoiding the clothes feeds your insecurity. So instead of feeding your insecurity, start feeding yourself courage.

Corey Berrier: 15:36

Courage is so vital and courage is not an ego thing. Courage is a vital part of the process of being the person you want to be, and on the other side of courage is success, and you know it also instills integrity, and integrity then creates confidence when you go to a home and you offer them your product or service and you know that that's the right solution for them. They can feel that. You know, confidence doesn't come from feeling ready. You can't, you can't, you can't just feel confident, you can't just imagine being confident. And being confident it comes with keeping the promises to yourself first. You should keep promises to other people as well, but to yourself first. And you'll do that next right thing If you tell yourself I'm going to go and you'll do that next right thing If you tell yourself I'm going to go, do this thing, go, do the thing.

Corey Berrier: 16:47

Don't over-promise and under-deliver. Always under-promise and over-deliver. You know, I'm sure you've told yourself I only have one drink, but you didn't, or you wouldn't binge on this food tonight. But you did. You said you'd ask for the sale and you got nervous and you avoided it again. Now imagine laying down tonight, knowing you've kept every promise to yourself. You're exhausted but you're proud and you feel a certain this has been my experience. I feel a level of confidence in myself when I keep those promises, when I get up and go to the gym, when I stay on my carnivore diet and I don't navigate off from it when I call the person back that called me and asked me how I was doing when I made the calls that I need to call to the people that I've promised that I was going to make a call. Doing those things move you forward. They're not big things, but every small thing that you do to keep those promises to yourself is a step in the right direction.

Corey Berrier: 18:00

And beyond, you know sobriety and sales fear. You know recovery isn't about quitting. You're not a quitter, you're becoming a new person. And getting courage in your sales job is not about asking once. It's about knowing what you're worth. Do you know what you're worth today? I haven't always known my worth, that's for sure. So you know, look, confidence isn't just asking, it's leading with certainty. Confidence isn't just asking, it's leading with certainty. And getting sober and living a sober life isn't just not drinking, it's clarity, it's peace, it's presence. You know, see yourself walking into a room tomorrow with your eyes clear, your voice steady and asking for that sale with confidence. You know, every morning you have a choice. Every day you have a daily choice. Every morning you choose to either numb or grow, drink or recover, hide or ask for the sale. And if you can survive addiction, you can survive discomfort. If you can survive discomfort, you can survive discomfort. If you can survive discomfort, you can win the sale. And if you can win the sale, you can build the life you've been starving for. So when that craving comes, don't feed the fear. Feed your freedom. Ask for the sale. Do the next right thing Go to a meeting if you're struggling, call somebody, build a network that you can depend on and listen.

Corey Berrier: 19:49

I'm really grateful that you listened to this podcast today. I hope that it helped you to think about some of the things in your life. My goal here is to jog your brain to think I can do this. I mean, if I can do this, you can do this. And I'm not the finished product. I'm not, you know, this holier-than-thou person by any stretch.

Corey Berrier: 20:11

I am a work in progress, but I work on it every single day because I want to get better every single day. And so are there days that actually there's not really a whole lot of days that I don't feel like going to the gym because I know what the results are going to give me. It's just a part of my routine. I do it every day Because that's a promise that was hard to keep to myself. When I first started going to the gym, it was a struggle. It'll be a struggle for you, but here's what I can tell you and guarantee you If you keep building that muscle in sales, in recovery, in your addiction to food, you'll be a more successful person, you'll be a happier person, you'll be a more confident person, you'll be able to learn to trust yourself. So, again today, do me a favor, leave a review, subscribe to the podcast, and I'm very grateful for you listening today and we'll see you next Friday.