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Welcome to a Sober Girl's Guide podcast, a lifestyle podcast based on sobriety and recovery. I'm your host and sober girl Jessica Jaboe. Inspired by my own sobriety and wellness journey, I want to spread the wealth of knowledge, tune in each week for uncensored conversations about mental health, self-development, wellness and spirituality and how they influence each guest's unique recovery journey. My goal is to educate and inspire and to let you know you are not alone on your recovery journey. Thanks so much for tuning in to a Sober Girl's Guide podcast, let's go. Hello, hello and welcome to episode 269 of a Sober Girl's Guide podcast, 269 episodes. Can you believe that? We've had some really incredible guests, some fantastic conversations and I want to thank you for following along every Friday, for showing up, for listening, for implementing these actions and these tools and allowing me to be a part of your booze-free journey. On today's episode, let's keep the party going. It is summertime and I want you to have the best Sober Girl summer. Sober Girl Summer 2024, we are coming for you. Now, I don't know about you, but summertime has always been a sticky situation. I don't know if it's the weather, the longer days, but summertime can be really tough to change your relationship with alcohol and that's why I want to give you my favorite tips and tricks to not only survive summer, but to actually thrive and enjoy it. Now I know summer can be tough, but hear me out. This could be the day you stop doing that self-destructive thing you do. Now, before you try and talk yourself out of a Sober Girl Summer, we are not skimping on the fun factor. In fact, with these tips and tricks, you're going to have the most fulfilling summer. You've probably had it a long time. If you've read the vlog at asobergirlsguide.com, you will see that I've done some practical activities to do over the summer season. This episode is to go a little bit deeper in that. So it's not just to keep you occupied, which can be very helpful, but it's to go a step further and a step deeper in your practice of building self-awareness and who you are right now and who you want to become. Because let's be honest, we're all doers and we could all distract our lives away. But at the end of the day, I want you to build more self-awareness and intention with your time, with your energy, and especially in this summer season, I want you to get the most out of your Sober Girl Summer 2024. Before we jump into my Sober Girl Summer tips, I want to talk about alignment and I want to talk about our intentions for Sober Girl Summer 2024. What do you want your Sober Girl Summer to look like? How do you want it to feel? Use these prompts. Grab a pen and paper right now. Pause this right here. Grab a pen and paper and I want you to answer how do you want your Sober Girl Summer 2024 to feel? Do you want it to feel fun, easy, relaxing, warm, delicious, juicy? How do you want your summer 2024 to look and feel? Do you want to have plans? Do you want to go certain places? Do you want to see certain people? This is the time to set your intentions and how to align with those intentions. Again, how do you want your Sober Girl Summer to feel? How do you want it to look? How do you want to remember your Sober Girl Summer 2024? When you describe it in the future 10, 20 years from now to maybe your niece, your nephew, your grandchildren, your friends, your family, how do you want to look back on your Sober Girl Summer and how do you want to describe it? All right. Now that we've set our intentions, you're going to see that your intentions are going to help structure how you implement these tips and tricks along the way. All right. Tip number one. Now, this is probably the most important tip of this whole episode, to be honest. And not a lot of people are talking about it, but this needs to be done, especially during summer because summer is typically more social. People are out and about and the weather is nicer, people are getting together, people have their vacations. Summer is just a social season. So this tip is to conserve your energy. Be mindful of who you were around, places that you choose to go. There is no reason you need to stop by old hangouts or hang out with people that you feel compelled to drink around. Otherwise known as a trigger, there's no need to risk it. Listen, girl, life is hard enough. I don't need you out here proving yourself to yourself or to anyone. Summer is for you. You are here to conserve your energy and pick your company accordingly. There's absolutely no need to be a hero and put more stress on yourself. Now I'm not saying to never go back to these places or people, it's just not necessary right now, conserve your time and energy and if you feel this is a test you're not willing to take, opt out. That is self-care. Now how can you tell if someone is a trigger or an energy sucker? The telltale sign is right after you're done hanging out with them or being in their presence, you can't help but feel exhausted. You feel absolutely emotionally hung over after being around them. It is a strain on you to be around them from caring the conversation to being a soundboard. They just have a negative perspective on everything and they feel like they're sucking the air out of the room and the conversation. Everyone has their shit. We are all going through it. But if your goal is to have a fun, light, airy, beautiful, juicy, warm, delicious, sober girl summer, I'm sorry but you're not going to have that if you surround yourself by people who are negative and just want to tear and rip everything apart, it's not going to happen. Or it's going to be really, really hard. It's going to be like pushing a cement boulder up a hill made of sand, not enjoyable. Who you spend your time and energy around is going to affect you. It does. We are just affected by energy because we are energy ourselves. So my first very important tip is to check your energy, conserve your energy. Your time is precious. Who are you choosing to spend your time and energy with? Tip number two, watch your words. Choose your words wisely when you are explaining why you are choosing not to drink. This is how I said you are choosing not to drink. When you say I can't, I shouldn't, I'm not allowed. You're coming from a place of lack and to be honest, it just sounds painful. It is not empowering at all. This is a choice and it's your choice. So of course, when you're coming from a place of lack and it sounds really painful and like you are reprimanding yourself, your friends are going to try to relieve your pain and suffering by, you guessed it, offering you a drink or getting you a drink. Put it this way, if your friend said they really want to go to lunch with you, but you don't have the money, what would you instinctively do? Well, of course, you'd offer to pay for them because you don't want them to go without. You want to try and end their suffering. Try these sentences instead of I can't, I shouldn't, I'm not allowed. Try this instead. I'm way cooler when I don't drink. I don't need or want a drink. I have fun without it. I have too much great stuff going on in my life and I want to focus and not miss out on any of it. Or I'm doing the 30 days to gain booze free challenge. I'm good. I have my non-alcoholic beverage or simply, no thank you. I'm good. Keep it simple, short and sweet. Now this brings me up on another topic because summer is a social season. Who do we tell our entire story and our relationship with alcohol to and who do we don't? This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. It's 2024. We are all stressed out. The worst thing we can do is keep all this stress bottled up. Our bodies and minds turn into a pressure cooker and that is not good for anyone. In my seven years of sobriety, I learned that I need to let it out. It only hurts me and the people around me if I don't let my guard down and have a safe space so I can unpack my worries. Therapy is a safe space that I can get things off my chest and to figure out how to work through whatever is weighing me down. I always feel so much lighter. Instead of blowing up at people or situations that do not deserve it, therapy has helped me build my self-awareness, mindfulness and slow down and help me process what I'm actually feeling in the situation. 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Unless you're really having a conversation that's engaged, meaning both people are sharing equally going back and forth with their experiences about alcohol. Then I feel you've built that camaraderie, you've built that relationship that you can go into depth and talk more about your personal story and your relationship with alcohol. Other than that, I would like to keep it simple, keep it light, get in and out and move on. All right. Tip number three, you probably guessed it, but alcohol-free drinks. All free drinks seriously make my sober girl world go round. This is the fun part. Now, listen, you can't take something away and not replace it with something else. That is not how our brain works. We will feel forever in the place of lack if we don't find a healthy substitute. We are so lucky to have some amazing, creative and absolutely delicious alcohol-free options. From kombucha to mixed mocktails, aromatic herbs to interesting, flavored, sparkling waters. There's always something new and exciting to try. In order to feel fully satisfied and fulfilled, we must replace our vices and habits with something healthier for us. We'll start to feel restricted or come from a place of lack when we completely omit the habit. Just like vegan, sugar-free and any other diets, the use of alternatives is what keeps us feeling included and satisfied. That is why alternatives are so effective. Now, to fall into the non-alcoholic category, a beverage must contain 0.5% or less alcohol. About that, your body cannot compound enough alcohol in your system, making it physically impossible to become inebriated by non-alcoholic substances. In fact, you will most likely get very, very sick and in some cases, even pass away from water poisoning before you feel intoxicated. But that being said, always check your intentions before partaking in non-alcoholic beverage of any kind. Remember, we love you and we want to take care of you. You are our first priority. But if you feel like these may be a gateway or trigger, let's be mindful and put it down. Maybe we're not ready yet. To be honest, sometimes a mini diet coke just hits the spot. Moving right along to tip number four, experiences. I always love the question, what do you do if you don't drink? The answer is literally anything and everything. In reality, we have so much more freedom when you don't drink. People trust you to be around their kids and pets. You can drive cars, boats, planes, you name it. We all know what happens in a bar. People drink, they get drunk. Boring. Add some spice to your life with experiences. Try getting out nature, taking up a new sport like tennis or golf. Yes, the golf carts are the best part about golf. I don't understand people who golf without the cart. Cycling, dancing, a long drive or a road trip to a new city or town. Or my personal favorite, berry picking. Oh, I just love running through the fields, the warm breeze, touching my skin. It is quintessential summertime. The possibilities here are endless and this is your summer. This is your sober girl 2024 summer to put down some experiences. To put some in the vault so you can look back on years to come. Now remember at the very beginning of this episode when I told you to set your intentions and describe how you want your summer to feel? This is a perfect example. If you want your summer to be filled with friends, family, loved ones, your experiences are going to change and reflect and open up to accommodate and align with that intention. If you want to have a solo summer or a summer of single, maybe you're more reflective. Maybe you're spending more time with yourself, getting to know yourself, build yourself awareness, reading books, being solo on the beach. But do you see how your intention, how setting your intention at the very beginning of this episode dictates how you're going to use and implement these tips and tricks? Number five, commit to your choices. Like I said, not drinking alcohol is your choice right now. One that you should be proud of, remembering the reasons why you are choosing not to drink and to commit to them. Think about the freedom and the power you have in your life when you wake up without a hangover. Focus on what you are gaining from not drinking instead of what you are missing out on. The positives definitely outweigh the negatives, but this is a mindset that you need to keep practicing time and time again. This is a muscle that needs to be exercised. Now, I'm not asking you to commit to forever. If you're looking to dip your toe into the sober, sober curiosity pool, try it with the 30 days to gain booze free challenge. Every day I will be in your inbox. I will give you giving you prompts, quotes, actions to do every single day for 30 days. You also have two exercises to complete and right now I am giving you a free, yes, free month to sober girl social club where you can join our community with like-minded women and our coaches that are leading our support circles every weekday. Write down your whys and commit to your choices. Write down a list of reasons why you want to change your relationship with alcohol. Why you want to take a week, two weeks, 30 days away from alcohol. Step away to see a nice bird's eye view of what your life could look like and feel like without alcohol in the mix. How would that affect your relationships? How would that affect your personal life? How would that affect your work life? Alcohol is very entangled and it's a very emotional connection for us women. It's not just on and off switch. It is a couple of things. We use it as a reward system. We use it when we're stressed. We use it when we celebrate. We use it as coping mechanisms. Alcohol checks many boxes and they are emotional boxes. So in order to untangle this emotional component, we need to hit it with some emotion. Because we all know we could sit here and talk about the statistics and how alcohol is bad for us and how it doesn't do anything good for us, yada, yada, yada. This percentage, that percentage, till the cows come home. Unfortunately, all those statistics go in one ear and write out the other. This is an emotional connection. This is an emotional relationship that you have with alcohol and it needs to be treated accordingly. And that leads us to our sixth and final tip for the best sober girl summer community. First and foremost, I want to tell you that you are not a bad person for drinking. Alcohol is not bad. It's our relationship that we want to look at. Inherently, we are not bad people. Unfortunately, we just make silly decisions. We all have choices and sometimes we don't make the best choice. But at the end of the day, you are not a bad person. You are not a bad person for drinking. We just want to do something better for ourselves. We deserve better for our lives and we deserve better decisions and choices in our lives. Therefore, we're going to have a better outcome. I find that people who quit smoking and drinking or lose weight don't succeed because they're stronger than you or I. They aren't. They succeed because they create environments that help them meet their goals and avoid environments that don't. That is why community is so important. Yes, you can go it alone, but what is the point? It's so much funner and easier when you have like-minded women around you. Now, this could be a friend, family member, or even a therapist. If those resources aren't attractive to you or available to you, that is why I created the Sober Girl Social Club, where you can meet other sober and sober curious women from all around the world. We have support circles that are live on Zoom, led by our certified coaches, and we have a very robust and active group chat for members only. You also have self-paced worksheets to complete on your own time and just be around women who think and feel the same way about their relationship with alcohol is so freeing. You are not the alien in your group anymore or family anymore who wants to change their relationship with alcohol. You are with women who are on the same page and on the same track to change their relationship with alcohol once and for all. I tell you, the feeling of being around like-minded women, especially who feel the same way about their relationship with alcohol, there's like an unspoken rule or there's- there's just things you don't have to explain because they just get it. And even sometimes you can't articulate it or explain it yourself, but you will hear yourself and your experience in someone else's story and it'll jog that aha moment. It is so powerful and this is why community is so important because you are not alone. You are not the only person who is thinking and feeling this way. So follow these six steps to have the best sober girl summer of 2024. And if you need help, accountability to implement these tips and tricks, check out the 30 days to gain Booze Free Challenge. Head to assobergirlguide.com. The challenge starts as soon as you sign up. I will be in your inbox every day with journal prompts, messages, actions to take on that day with two worksheets to complete every day and you will have access to the sober girl social club for a month, month free access to a sober girl social club, where you will get the support circles, the access to the certified coaches, and our amazing community. All this for just $30 for the month, that's $1 a day to keep the Booze away. Head to assobergirlsguide.com now. As always, thank you so much. Please make sure to rate, subscribe, leave your feedback about the podcast and follow me on Instagram and Facebook at assobergirlsguide. I love to have you slip into my DMs and let me know how your Booze Free journey is going. Always there to encourage you along the way. Thank you so much for listening and have a great day. Bye. [BLANK_AUDIO]
