>> Hello, courageous bestie. Today I am celebrating with you 15 years of sobriety. It is September 29th, 2024, my 15 year sober birthday. And so I thought for this episode we would dive deep into 15 years of addiction recovery or sobriety advice boiled down to 41 minutes. This is part one of what might be a three-part series because it's getting long up in here. And I wanted to give it to you in a more digestible way. Also, you may have listened to episode 14, which was all about combating mold, 29 ways to combat mold. And if so, then you heard that I found mold in my room. And I'm in the middle of a second mold remediation right now. So this episode that you're hearing right now is actually coming from the new studio and forgive me for banging around a little bit. You'll notice I made some noise in this. So this is hopefully the only time it'll happen. And next week we will be back to better listening quality. So please forgive me as I am remediating all the mold and vibing with you on my 15 year sobriety birthday. Okay, let's dive in. [MUSIC] >> Hello courageous bestie. I'm Kirsten Johnson and welcome to the sobriety bestie podcast where we adventure together through emotional sobriety, unapologetically expressing yourself and building a purpose driven business because the world needs your wisdom. Each step you take opens up infinite possibilities because your transformations, not just for you, it's a beacon of light for those you're called to serve. So get on comfy for Peach Montre. This is courage and take that next alliance step into creating the business and life of your dreams. I'll be your guide. [MUSIC] >> The way that I thought about this and making this for you is I went year by year through my sobriety and it was like, what are the two most important things that I specifically learned in this year? It doesn't mean that these things happen in this year. There is no rule, right? There's no rule to growing and thriving and sobriety and recovery and all of that. But this is just how the pieces, the lessons that unfolded for me in my journey. So the first thing I want to say is join a recovery community. Joining a recovery community is a great way to get and stay sober. Joining a like-minded community is always a great idea for any goal that you want to achieve. So whether that's something that's online, there's a lot of online recovery groups now or it's something that's in person, there's many different kind of recovery groups. Or any kind of community that you could join. It could even be some sort of community where you can be around other people. Maybe it's not specifically around recovery, although if it is, that's probably even better. But be in community of like-minded people. It's a great way to stay on track towards achieving goals, especially when the hard goal is like staying sober, which is possible, by the way. Number two, focus on the day. Like one day at a time, focus on the day, focus on the minute, focus on the hour, focus on the next period of time that you're in. This is really great way to get through anything that's extremely difficult, including early sobriety or the difficult patches of sobriety that are bound to happen. Life is an easy right, and it's especially when you're not doing without taking the edge off. So focus on the day. Really what this one was for me was focus on your feet. Where are your feet? So I call this one, where are your feet? Literally the first year of my sobriety, I would be looking down and somebody told me to do this, and I did it, and it was really helpful, right? Somebody else's idea. And they just said, Kirsten, bring your mind to your feet, where are your feet? So whenever I was up in my head and my head was doing any end, I was anxious, I was whatever it was, lots of emotions, lots of thoughts, changing so many things, a lot of us do the first year of sobriety, right? Wear your feet, wear your feet, wear your feet. Our feet are in the day, our feet are in the moment, our feet are in this here right now. So if I had anxiety, that was about the future. If I was worrying about the past, that's like depression, right? Or some sort of remorse or guilt or whatever. And so just wear your feet, wear your feet, keep it in the day. And anchoring the mindfulness, anchoring that presence into the day as an ongoing practice. But just really simple, where are your feet? Number three, you can overcome anxiety. I never knew this, I thought anxiety was forever, I thought I was always going to be super anxious, and I thought sobriety was going to be very hard without alcohol, because I was going to be super anxious, and alcohol was self-medication for my anxiety, and other things that felt difficult or felt like too much, right? So I didn't know that anxiety wasn't forever, I thought anxiety was forever, and it's not, I don't have anxiety disorders anymore, it's totally possible to overcome them. It is generally the way I look at it now, it's like a rewiring process, it's like a technical error, and our electrical system, our nervous system, and it can be rewired. Neuroplasticity is a thing, we'll get into that more a little bit later, but neuroplasticity is a thing, and we can rewire our brain. And so when we start to take the action towards the result that we want, like not having anxiety, we go more in that direction, right? So we believe it's possible that we take those actions, and I've seen countless sponsored students, clients, people overcome their anxiety, who thought it was going to be forever, and then realize that it's not. But the first step is understanding that change is possible, and then to moving in that direction of the change that you want to create, in this case, being anxiety-free. Or overcoming the anxiety disorders, or what might be considered an anxiety disorder, knowing that we're always going to have some low level of anxiety, or medium level of anxiety throughout our life. Anxiety is like a feeling, it's an experience, it's our nervous system warning us of a threat, but the hyperactive anxiety, or the overwhelming anxiety, we can't recover from that, and that's something that I was two years sober when I recovered from my overwhelming anxiety. Number four, courage changes everything. So this became a mantra for me in sobriety, especially the first two years of sobriety, was committing to courage. I was willing to be courageous for the sake of my dream, and the reason why I committed to courage is because I felt like I was afraid of nearly everything. It felt like I had fallen in a hole of fear, and I was afraid. I stopped doing the things that scared me, that was like the way that I lived before I got sober, is if it scared me, I stopped doing it. So freebie driving, I had a car accident on the freeway, and then a panic attack on that same freeway going seven miles per hour. So I decided freeways are scary, I almost died, let's not go there again, right? And so I just stopped driving, or I stopped to change majors in college to avoid public speaking. I was at a phobia public speaking. So what I did in sobriety was I flipped the script on that. I was okay, if I have a goal, and even if I have a phobia blocking me from that goal, or a big fear, or something, I'm still going to take those next steps, just that one step each day is there a step to take today, and you take that next step. And so all those steps build up, and as we're taking those steps, we're recreating our brains, those new actions give us new results, but also lead to a new brain. So as we move towards a thing that scares us, it becomes less scary because our brains literally, their plastic, they change. So it's really cool to intentionally and deliberately overcome your phobias if you have any or your fears, and it really opened up my entire world. I got over the freeway phobia, I got over the speaking phobia, and just it's a great mindset to have of choosing courage, committing to courage. And courage really is what we need in order to grow our life, because a lot of us, when we're drinking a lot, and especially if we drink our way into recovery or sobriety, our life gets smaller and smaller. Or maybe it was fear that was dominating us or anxiety that was dominating us, and we stop doing all of those things, that we unlock it, we open it up by willing to be courageous, and the trick really here is that courage and fear feel the same, essentially. And so anxiety, like courage can also feel like anxiety, right? It's an activated nervous system. So slowly being more comfortable with the discomfort inside of our body, that's the superpower. That is the sobriety superpower. It's just the life superpower is the friending discomfort, being okay, being uncomfortable, as far as you're doing it for the sake of moving forward in your life or forward in your dream or for staying sober. And so choosing courage, committing to courage, being willing to be courageous. Five, find joy in pain. There is joy in pain. And so this was a huge lesson for me when I was two years sober. I woke up one day, I was fine. And then the next day I woke up and I had repetitive stress injuries. I was literally unable to move my hand in order to close it to hold a fork. So I had difficulty feeding myself. I had difficulties wiping at anything that you do with your hand, to your mind. I had a challenge with I couldn't really use my right hand for quite a bit of time. And I was in a great deal of pain. So I couldn't work, couldn't go to work. I couldn't work out, which was yoga, right? And so I couldn't cook, I couldn't clean. And so there's all these things that I couldn't do. And I was also in so much physical pain. And so that's a great place, just like early sobriety, but in sobriety, these things are going to happen too. Like in life, these things are going to happen. We're going to feel like like everything is so difficult. Everything is too much. It's too overwhelming. And so what I did was I was like, okay, I got 99 problems. Where is my joy? That was like my vibe. I was like, okay, everything over here is too much. It's if I think about like the things that I'm being told by my doctor or what is looking or the fact that I don't know how I'm going to pay my bills or whatever it is, right? All of these things feel really big and they are. Is there joy? Where is the joy? Where is the joy? And what I noticed was is that when I started orienting myself like a north star around joy, my life shifted. I started opening up in new ways that I wasn't expecting. I started aligning myself to people and activities and things. Yeah, they really started opening up for me. And so I found that and learned that specifically then there is always joy in the pain. And it's about looking for it being deliberate with looking for it. Here's the thing that I did. This is like a practical way that you can do that. If that's something that you're dealing with right now, you're in a lot of overwhelm, everything feels like life feels like too much, right? And what I did was I kept a joy journal every night. So every night before I went to bed, I wrote down three things throughout the day. I might have been five. I don't remember exactly this business. Two years over. So this is 13 years ago. So I wrote down three, you know, three to five things of throughout the day when I was experiencing joy. And what this did for me, it meant that because I knew I was going to be writing my joy journal every night, I was more aware in my day of when I was actually experiencing joy. And whatever you put on your mind on grows, right? When you look for it, you're going to find it. So I'm looking for joy in a way, at least subconsciously. It's called like a rectangular activating system. It's a part of our brain. So because I know I got to be paying attention to joy, I'm paying attention to joy. And because I'm paying attention to joy and when I'm feeling and I'm feeling more of it, and I'm doing more of the things that are making me feel alive and joyful. So I'm actually cultivating more joy in my life anchored on my evening joy journal practice. So that's super cool. Six, choose your future. Choose your future, be deliberate, figure out exactly what it is that you want that understand like, where do you want your life to go? You know where you're at now, right? You maybe you're an early sobriety or you're at some sort of transformation or transition in your life, or you want something new, maybe you're not going through something, but you want to create something. So what is it that you want? Where are you going? What is your, how are you going to orient yourself as far as goals wise? So do you want to change your career? Is your career not feeling like aligned with who you are in sobriety? Do you want to change where you live? So I went through this very, I guess it was a long period. I don't know, I think maybe months to a year of where I just kept thinking all the time, what is my purpose? What career do I want to be? And what kind of work would I love? Where do I want to live? What kind of environment do I want to live in? And I just slowly started thinking about it when I meditate, that would be all my mind or throughout my day, I just be noticing things, things. And then I ended up getting a bunch of magazines together and I made a vision board. And so the vision board was my dream life, like what it looked like, where I was, what I was doing. I thought about when I was feeling the most joy, I was still in the joy vibe. And I noticed that when I was feeling the most joy was when I was working with women in sobriety. So I was sponsoring women in AA. And I thought this is when I feel the most joy when I'm helping these sober women. And so I thought, that's not a career, you can't make a career in a in that program. But what is similar? What other ways can I in a way, mentor women who are working through some of the stuff that I love to talk about, which is specifically fear and anxiety. And so I thought and thought, and then it came to me like I had an epiphany one day. And I was this is 2012, 2011, it's 2011. And I met this person and they were a life coach. And I was like, it like had this vibe inside me of this is it. So I was like, okay. And so I went and I went to life coaching school in 2012. And so I oriented my life around, I deliberately chose like a new career. And I also chose where I want to live, like a little bit after that I did move to a place that looked very much like my vision board, which ended up being Bully Indonesia. And I'm not saying that whatever you put on your board is going to come true. What I'm, and I'm not saying you need to change anything. What I'm saying is it's really nice, especially in a huge new beginning, like getting sober or a couple years into sobriety or really any point in life, to be really clear about what your life is currently like. And then think about what you want your life to be like. This is like basic life coaching stuff. So look at all areas of your life and what is going on? And is there something that you want to be different? And then how can you just get get really clear on those goals? And then what are those next steps? Can you move towards each one? Do something towards each one each week? So what do you want? And then start moving towards it by deliberately choosing, choosing what you want. To me, it's all about conscious creation, the life, like all of this whole life thing. But especially in sobriety, like when we're no longer being oppressed by alcohol, and we no longer have to drink, and we get to live sober, it's really cool to get to live sober in a way where we're consciously creating your life, and where we understand that the more that we think about something, the more we're actually changing the shape of our brain, and moving ourselves more in the direction of the thing that we're thinking about. So we could be more conscious and deliberate with our thoughts, so that we're not thinking about what we don't want and bring your life in that direction. Now, if your life is in a direction that you're not happy with right now, it's not your fault, you can start to think more about what you actually want by getting clear on what that might actually look like. Let yourself get to Lulu, right? Get delusional about the future that you want, and dream about it. Get clear on it, just write it down. What would it look like? And if you don't have an answer right away, that's fine. Like I said, it took me months, or even maybe a year to figure out what my career, the career change that I wanted to have was, and one of my career to be oriented around joy and around service. And so that ended up being coaching. And so that's how I ended up becoming an entrepreneur and starting my coaching business. Seven. Suffering is optional. Here's what I mean. So I went on, when I was in early sobriety, I was trying to get overcome by anxiety disorders, I started going to meditation retreats, and I think it was like my first vipassana or silent meditation retreat. They said that there's two arrows, the teacher, there's two arrows and Buddhism of pain. The first is the actual pain, the actual thing that happens to us. And the second is the story that we make up about the pain. And so the first pain is inevitable, right? Pain's inevitable. But the suffering, the story that we make up, the continued saga that we tell ourselves or the resistance of reality, that's all the suffering that is optional, that we can become more wise with how to work with our mind and our emotions and our, yeah, our being, but really our thoughts so that we don't dwell on what we don't want and make it worse, make our physical experience worse. Because as we're thinking things that we don't want, we're having a biochemical cascade of stress chemicals into our body. We're like literally having a whole chemistry through our body of that stressful thing that we don't want. That's shaping our brain, the structure of our brain over time, but it's also making us feel crappy in that moment. So we get to choose what thoughts that we dwell on, and we don't have to dwell on the thoughts that are making us feel uncomfortable. Now this is not to deny reality. There's sometimes there are feelings to be had and things to be moved through, and I will get to that in another point. But it's just that to know that a lot of our suffering is optional because it's how we think about it. That's how we're going to feel about it. And the feeling about it is the suffering. So finding that wisdom in there of if I was more open-minded right now, or if I didn't think about worst-case scenario, or what would it be like if I had put a deliberate new thought through, right? So if I start to invite my mind to like chew on new thoughts that are more helpful, then we can actually start to see over time that are suffering lessons. I mentioned how I woke up in physical pain runtime, and my hand wasn't working, right? So this is on two and a half years sober, I woke up with physical disabilities, repetitive stress injuries. And so this is when I went into that kind of 99 problems, where's my joy? And so this is when I was dealing with a lot of pain, physical pain. And so what I learned here is that we can transform our physical pain. And the way that I did this is that I went through, anytime I was feeling the pain physically in my arm, like it was literally my elbow, I've had surgery since then, elbow and wrist, I had curpal tunnel and tennis, tennis elbow, lateral epicondylitis. And whenever it would be like throbbing and painful, what I would notice is that my thoughts would be like, I don't like this, it's gonna be forever, this is uncomfortable, I can't work, why am I gonna go be back to yoga? So all these thoughts were painful, all these thoughts were creating suffering in my body, because I was feeling crappy every time I thought these thoughts. Now it's not that these thoughts weren't true, or that these thoughts, they just weren't helpful. They were not helping me actually feel better, they were making my physical experience of pain, actual pain in my body be worse, because the thoughts were adding stress, the thoughts are releasing adrenaline, cortisol, and all the other stress chemical friends, right? There's 30 stress chemicals dumped into my body when I'm thinking thoughts like that. Now the doctor did tell me, my doctor at the time told me to plan for life without the internet, that I would never be able to work more than an hour to on the internet a day, so plan for life without the internet. When I believed or held that thought in my mind, I had a lot of stress in my body, stress chemicals, that would make, that would literally make the pain more intense, that's how biology works. And so I decided, screw what he says, what if that's not true, what if I just don't believe any horrible thoughts about the future, what if I drop all my thoughts about this horrible future, even if the medical professionals are telling me that this is a reality, what if I just ignore all that, what if I ignore all that, and I just be present. And so I brought my mind into this physical sensations of in my elbow, literally where there was physical pain. And I just, as a practice, like as we meditate, right, sometimes we meditate, we focus on our breath. I was meditating and focusing on the physical sensations in my elbow of pain. And when I did this and became more skilled at this, now it took a week or two or three to become more skilled at this, because the first time my mind's resisting it, and I want to go into the saga and the drama, right, our minds like to run on these stories, our minds are centered around their, like their number one job is to keep us safe, they want to protect us. So and they also have a negativity bias. This is for our survival, it keeps us alive. This is good news. But when it comes to things like actual like emotional suffering or physical suffering from pain, what I learned was, and the invitation here is, so if I stay in the story of my pain, let's say my pain is like a nine or a 10, because this actually this time, it was like crying myself to sleep and I kind of pain. I'm like, shoot, like I don't drink anymore. How am I going to deal with this? So I had to find a way through. Thank God I ended up with these meditation centers because it completely transformed my experience of pain from that moment on still to this day. I've also taught a lot of my students of this in my courses, and they also have had great results. And it doesn't mean that the pain goes away. I'm not saying this will make your pain go away. What I'm saying is that if you're paying it like a nine or a 10 or a seven or six or whatever number it was, mine was like a nine or a 10. When I did this practice, when I stopped all the horrible thoughts about the future or the past or whatever, the story about my pain, I dropped the story about the pain. And I just went into the experience. My pain went from my suffering might went from a nine till four or five or three or two. And I had students the same thing. They're like my constant all always seven has gone down to a three or like a two. So when you're in a lot of pain, any reduction is a huge win. So if you want to know more about this, I will post a video up here. I did a whole guided pain experience. I recorded this at that time, like in 2013, I think recorded this video. It's great. It'll just guide you through, give it a go, market, save it. The next time you are in physical pain, listen to this audio. It will help you. Eight, life, live it. So when I was four years sober, I moved to Bali. And I remember I was in Bali on vacation for five weeks. And when I decided that I was going to move there, and I emailed a couple people at home and I said, I'm moving to Bali. And some of my friends, some people were like, that's crazy. That's nuts. And that was generally people's opinion about me. Any major move I've made in life, people generally have said you're nuts. And then interestingly enough, like years later, those same people want to know, like, how did you do it? How did you have the courage to do that? So don't listen to anybody else's fear. Probably going to talk about that in another lesson later on here. But I remember my brother, his email back to me was life, live it. And I was like, I love that. And so I wanted to throw that in here too, as an invitation to like, it's, if you drink your way into sobriety, if you've been through all of stuff that probably was underneath the drinking in the first place, right? All of the childhood stuff, all of the maybe toxic feeling relationships, all of life's adversities and all of that. And you made your way into sobriety into recovery, right? You're not drinking anymore. There already is enough, like the 99 problems, where's my joy? That's similar to life live. It's like, life is this moment right now. We're never going to get this moment back. So this is the moment that you should be trying to find some joy in trying to live, trying to be not saying move to Bali. I'm not saying there's something major. But what I've noticed since starting my coaching business in 2012 is that so many of us have this idea, so many of my clients and students in my courses too, we have this idea that we're right around the corner from happy. So at some point in the future, after I get the promotion, after I have the money, after I have the relationship, after I have the body lose the weight, do this, do that, have the degree, have that next certification, whatever it is, we're right around the corner from happy. But the thing about the mind is it keeps putting a new thing to be around the corner. The spoiler alert, there's no freaking corner. There's no corner. We're never going to get there. Because there's always something else. So it's not about waiting until that thing to really live. It's about finding the life that's in today, putting more life in today, life live it. So life live it could be more of a daily mantra. Like, how can I live a little more today? What would that be like? Would I be courageous? Would I ask that person out? Would I splurge on this thing? Would I do this? Would I spend more time relaxing? Would I go for not walk in nature? Would I call that person and say sorry? Would I call that person and say that I appreciate them? What would it be like if it was life live it? It gives me the crazy chills. So life live it. Nine, the friend emotions. This was major for me throughout sobriety. But especially when I was five years sober, I went through a major dark night of soul, emotional bottom where a lot of my feelings came up. My childhood trauma was available and ready to be healed and was just coming out of me. There was a lot of grief. There was going through guilt, shame, like all of the things, anger, rage. And really when I look at sobriety, I felt like I was served up like one feeling at a time. And this is definitely not a rule. This is just my experience. It felt like sobriety was welcome to your effing feelings. So, you know, anxiety was the first feeling that I was trying to sort my way around. That took me like two and a half years really to master because I didn't know what I was doing. And I didn't know if you could. I just had to believe that maybe you could overcome anxiety because I couldn't live sober with all that anxiety. I think there has to be a way out. Same thing I did with a doctor when he was like, plan for life about the internet. I'm like, this has to be a lie. This has to be a lie. I can't believe this. So, we can totally choose it. We can choose not to believe things right about it. I believe like maybe anxiety forever's lie. It has to be a lie because I can't live like this. And yeah, there was all these different emotions at different phases of sobriety, but definitely at five years sober. And I know a lot of other people, again, there's no rules with any of this. A lot of people go through like a second dark night of the soul at five years sober, around five years sober, between four and six, like the first darkness all is getting sober and changing your life and everything that you go through in order to stay sober in the beginning. But then again at five, it's like our feelings come back at five. At five, we have our brains have regrown a lot. The way I look at alcohol addiction now, I look at it as a brain injury. Alcohol is a toxin that damages our brain in very specific ways. And one of the ways that alcohol damages our brain and injures our brain is by numbing out our feelings by damaging by injuring our interoception, our ability to feel what's happening inside of our body. So that starts to rebuild our brain rebuilds. Just the fact that we're not having poison in there on a regular basis, a daily or however often you drink, our brains start to rebuild natural. The natural state of our body is healing. Recovery is a natural state, our bodies heal on their own. Like when you have a cut on your arm, you don't have to think about it. There's going to be the little, the white blood cells or whatever, they're going to come to the surface, they're going to start to mend it and sew it and there's going to be a scab and then it's going to heal and then maybe it's a scar, right? And so healing happens on our own when we're not in harm's way, healing starts to happen. If we're in harm's way, then we're in the fight flight response, we're not in the right part of our nervous system for healing to happen automatically, right? You don't want to rest and digest when there's a tiger chasing you, you want to fight in flight or freeze. So when we're out of the stress response, we're out of all that anxiety and we're in the healing zone, and we've been a couple of years into our sobriety even, our body is more available and able and we can feel more to process those feelings and to process those old things. I remember this phase from recovery, which was God can't give you more than you could handle and that really stuck with me, not that I believe that's necessarily true or that's how I see the world or that I choose to believe that, but I felt like a lot of my like the heavy lifting, it's really hard to get sober, right? And the way you do that one day at a time, one minute at a time, you just don't drink one minute at a time, you just don't, no matter what, here's my drink, you just don't pick up a drink, don't even pick up, don't even pick up alcohol, then it won't go in your mouth. It's not like other people are necessarily pouring it in her face, right? Like we pour it in her face, don't even touch alcohol, not that's easy. But then it's like we build up our skills and our strengths over the years and over the time and our brains actually change. We have a very different brain at five years sober than we do when we're like day one, the first 30 days sober, the new brain that's able to better deal with life is more able and available now that it can feel more to process those feelings. There's some sort of, I don't think it's like magic or mystery in it all, like I don't think of it as like a mystical thing, but we could, because it's fun to think about it that way. But it's just when it's time, that's the stage of the journey. I've seen it with so many people, especially people who have higher a scores, the adverse childhood experience scores. I'll pop that video up here if you want to see that and learn more about that, it's about childhood trauma. So if you've had a lot more childhood trauma, then you would, you might have this five year sober-ish, it could happen later, it could happen multiple times in sobriety, I don't know, there's no rules. I've just seen this as like a, it's a pattern that I've recognized that a lot of us go through this then. And the way through is that I found is by befriending our feelings. So again, it's like the same thing that I was telling you about when I was two and a half years sober that I learned with physical pain. Now I was five years sober doing that with emotions. So I was bringing my, I was dropping the stories of what triggered the emotions of what happened in my childhood or what didn't happen or whatever. And we all have childhood stuff, we've all had child, we've all been traumatized in some ways, big tea, little tea, whatever trauma. And so dropping the story of it, dropping the story of what they did or didn't do or whatever, and going into the experience, where is the experience true in my body? Noticing the actual sensations that are present in my body that we would call emotions, guilt, grief, shame, grief was a huge one. So at five years sober, there was a lot of grief. It's like the denial had been ripped off. And now it's time for my body to do its healing. And I am just shedding the grief. And so what I really learned was marrying my consciousness, my attention, just dropping it down and noticing where I felt it is the grief in my heart, usually grief is in my heart. And maybe it's like a lump in my throat. If it's going to be anger, there might be or anxiety, there might be something in my belly and my stomach, I might feel something right in my viscera, my organs. And so where do you notice the sensations? So when I do that, when I drop my attention out of my thoughts and into my physical sensations, now I'm no longer in that story perpetuating the drop of the stress chemicals in my body to make it worse. I'm not doing that anymore. I stopped the biochemical drop into my system. And now I'm with what's already arisen. And when I do that, when I bring my mind into the moment into the experience, not only does it make the experience not get more intense, because I'm no longer thinking about it, I'm feeling about it. But I can also like move into another way, which is a little more advanced than I thought I was going to say here. But I can start to cultivate like an appreciation for what I'm feeling like I can enjoy in it. Like I found a lot of joy in grief. Grief is so rich. It's like this tsunami comes over and it's completely taking over. It's like comes out of nowhere. And it's just so intense, like a storm. And so if I just go into it, it's wow, this is so intense. And there's some sort of like being kind of in the storm of grief there. I don't know. I found joy in it. I know it might sound weird if you don't know what I'm talking about, but just having a new experience with all of our emotions where we no longer need to drink over them, to reject them, to abandon ourselves, to betray ourselves, and betray how we feel and to cover it all up and mask it and to literally injure the part of our brain that's capable of feeling, but instead to embrace it, to live comfortably in our skin with that ability to feel what's happening in our body or interoception and be okay, no matter what, that's the sober superpower is to be okay, no matter how uncomfortable you're physically feeling, and maybe even find some conscious choice in it. Can I be in conscious choice, no matter what feeling is slamming me? Can I get back to conscious choice so that I don't have to emotionally react? Now, let's be clear, I have not mastered this. I'm on the journey with you. It's a practice, right? I didn't master yoga, I still go like three, four times a week. This is a practice, the more that we do it, the easier it becomes, the more wired it becomes, but it's a conscious practice to not get swept away in the emotions and not get swept away in the stories our mind tells us and instead anchor into, I call like mindful embodiment, but throughout my courses, I teach this in a lot of different ways. It's one of my favorite things to teach, just how to be not peace centered and maybe even find some joy in whatever emotion is happening, and to really the goal of it all is to come back to conscious. Victor Frankel said there's a space between the stimulus and the response, and in that space, sometimes there is no space, right? Let's be honest. Sometimes something happens, we get triggered, and we react, and there is no space, okay? Ben there, we've all been there, we've all been there recently, I'm sure, we're not all, none of us are aligned, right? So it's going to happen, but it can happen less, less intensely and less frequently with more practice, especially if we're in the vibe of knowing that we're practiced at, we set our mind on, I'm, I want to pause, I want to like in recovery, they called it like restraint of pen and tongue, so when I get triggered, I pause, I try as hard as I can to pause as a practice, but so Victor Frankel said there's a space between the stimulus and the response, and in that space is where all of our freedom and our power lies. This is like the entire, this is the seed of everything that I do in my business, this is the seed of this podcast, this is the seed of my courses, this is the seed of everyone I've ever coached, the book I wrote, everything, in my TED talk, this is the seed, can we actually come into freedom and into that choice, right? Freedom and power, that's where it lies, literally, that is like my whole thing that drives me, I think it's probably what drives you to freedom and power, and by power and empowerment, being empowered in the moment to deliberately and consciously steer our life, and we get that when we have that ability to pause. I'm just realizing that I am talking a lot today, so I'm actually going to break this sobriety 15 year sobriety podcast up down into different chunks, so that we're not going too long here, and we can keep this like maybe half an hour or something. So I just want to finish for today, by the way, comment below, let me know, message me, which one so far is vibing with you, which one do you resonate with, did I leave something out, I want to hear from you in the comments, I want to hear from you, let me know how it's going and what you like. We'll end today on number 10, this is also for my fifth year sober when I was going through all that emotional stuff, but specifically, I wanted to give a shout out for guilt. So this is noticing guilt, notice guilt, when you notice guilt, you can free yourself from people pleasing. Almost all of my clients and students have been hardcore people pleasers. I've been there too. That was my thing. The way out is to transform your relationship with guilt. So the way that and the way that you transform guilt is you have to notice it. Literally, that's all you have to do to create that space, that pause where your freedom and your empowerment lie. So when you feel guilty, when somebody is guilt tripping you or you feel guilty on your own, whether it's inside or outside, whatever, just notice it, like, where is it? That's your question. Where is the guilt? So when you drop your eyes into close your eyes and drop your attention into your body and you've noticed where the physical sensations are in your body, literally the emotion, where is that energy and motion? Is it in your abdomen? Is it in your throat? Where is the guilt? Look for it. I'm serious, totally look for it. This might sound weird, but I'm talking about freedom here. This is all about freedom, right? This is the stuff that like really can help us get free. So if you want to get free from people pleasing, it's about looking for guilt. Where is it? Because when you are looking for guilt in your body, and this is like caps, everything we've been saying today, when you're looking for guilt in your body, what you're no longer going to be ruled by, whoever is in front of you wanting you to do something or guilt tripping you, you actually have that space now where you actually can consciously choose, you're more likely to be able to consciously choose what you do. So you feel that it grounds you, you're centered, you're noticing it, and then once you notice where the guilt is, then your next step is what do you want to do? We always come back to what's the next step leadership? How do you want to lead your life now? So now that I've grounded on my emotion, I realize guilt's here, then it's lead. How do you want to lead your life? What's your conscious and deliberate step forward? Do you want to agree with what this person is saying who's guilt tripping you? Do you not agree with what they're saying? What do you want to actually choose so that guilt is not driving you? Because when we don't have a practice around guilt, what can happen to a lot of us and lock us into people pleasing maybe even for our entire lives, we're so afraid of our own guilt. I liken it, especially us who, people who end up getting sober, it's we have a feelings phobia, we're afraid of our feelings, so we don't want to feel the guilt. I like literally there was a, I remember the first time I felt my guilt, I was five years, yeah, I was five years sober, I was in Thailand, I was out of Aposna, I was doing all these I said meditation retreats the first many years of my sobriety, because I had so many feelings, I wanted to figure it all out, I wanted to figure out how to feel comfortable my skin and deal with all the emotions. And so when I was first with guilt, I went, I brought my attention, I noticed where it was, and then it's always coming back to conscious choice. So now that I'm in the seat of conscious choice, what's that next step? Do I want to do this thing? Do I want to do this thing? So you're not pleasing anyone, you're not people pleasing, you're taking a moment to decide what you want to do, you're not a victim of anybody else, you're not a victim of being a people pleaser, you're not a victim, you're not always going to be a people pleaser, because that's how you were raised, or that was how you were in another relationship or something like that, you get to choose how you want to be going forward, you can choose to master this, you can choose to ground in your guilt and then decide what you want to do. And we don't have to do it perfectly, there might be times that we still have our guilt control us. But the way that I really think about this, it's imagine that your car of your life, the car that's driving your life, if you have guilt sit in the front seat, do you really want guilt to be driving around the car of your life and making your decisions for you? Because then you'll be going places you don't want to go with people you don't want to be with doing things you don't want to do whatever you'll be saying yes when you mean no when you mean yes whatever. So we don't want guilt to drive our life guilt is allowed all of the emotions are allowed in the bus of our life in the car of our life, right? But in the backseat. So we want to be with our conscious choice deliberately choosing as much as possible, choosing which direction we go in our life, which direct who's driving the car. So guilt's allowed when guilt comes up and wants to drive your life, like people please, you just notice where guilt is, excuse guilt to the backseat and then choose your conscious choice about how you're going to move forward in that next step just in that moment. So moment by moment you could have these conscious choices in your life, they're going to add up especially if you've been ruled by anxiety, if you've been ruled by fear, guilt, shame, or the aversion of them are wanting to drink over the feelings like a lot of us happen and like I was, now we're getting more into conscious choice and that's when we can shape shift our entire life. And the more that we do that, really the easier it becomes because we're literally changing our brain, we're releasing new chemicals in our brain, right? New biochemical experience that becomes a more of a pattern that chemistry we get used to that chemistry. So once we're used to the new chemistry of these call as being like a conscious chooser, that gets easier because it actually changes the structure of our brain as well. So it becomes easier to stay on the new path. It's hard to change paths in our brain like we think about neural pathways. It's hard to course correct, to make the new path and then to blaze that new trail in our brain. I call this brain blazing right when we're creating new trails in our brain. It's definitely it takes effort to do that to create the new one, but eventually that one becomes well-trodden. That's like a well-blazed path in our brain, right? And so it becomes easier to move along that. Now some of these trails need maintenance. Remember our brain is really good at keeping us safe and looking out for danger and it's out for our survival. So we have that negative bias. So we do want to do some work, some mindset work, right? Or recovery work or whatever to maintain that mindset that we're going into or that way of life or that that view that we want to be in. But it's always just harder at first when we're making that change and then it's easier. So I'm going to leave it there today. I want to hear from you in the comments. Let me know what you're vibing with. Let's celebrate how. Here's what we can do in the comments because it's my sobriety birthday and I'm 15 years sober today. Let's see how many days that is. So I want to know how sober, if you're sober, how sober are you? It's a weird question because it's either a yes or no, right? How long have you been sober? So 15 years is 180 months and 5,480 days, 131,000 hours and 503 hours. So that is a little stats. It's interesting. I don't know if you can see that. So yeah, drop your drop how long you've been sober in the comments and if you've been watching this far, that's really cool. Let's celebrate everybody who's sober in the comments. Make sure you chime in on other people's comments celebrating them with their sobriety milestones in the comments and let's make this fun. So thank you so much for joining me today on the 15 years. That's insane. I didn't use to go 15 days without drinking 15 years sobriety podcast. Ah, I'm really grateful for you and I'm everybody that's been a part of my sobriety and recovery journey and I just wish you so much peace and so much freedom and I will see you in the next episode. Bye!
