Hello courageous bestie. We're going to dive right into 15 years of addiction recovery, of alcohol addiction recovery, of sobriety advice. So last week on September 29th, 2024, I turned 15 years sober. Alcohol was my jam and I have not had a drink since I went to rehab September 29th, 2009. So I wrote up a whole list of things that I thought might benefit you, hopefully will benefit you and definitely leave any questions. Let's make this a conversation. That would be so cool. 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, repeat your mantra. This is courage and take that next alliance step into creating the business and life of your dreams. I'll be your guide. This is the part two. If you didn't see part one, go to the previous episode. So part two, addiction recovery, 15 years of experience of things that I learned along the years. And so in the part one video, I went through basically the first five years of my sobriety and the major lessons that I learned, the major things that I experienced and went through that helped me stay sober. This is about staying sober. Even if we relapse, it's about getting right back on towards the sobriety train. If that's the train you want to be on, if that's the life you want to live, it's a sober life. It's not dwelling on our mistakes, righteous getting back on track with the goal that we have said in this case, sobriety. So let's dive right in. In part one, we discuss 10 different ways, 10 different nuggets of wisdom lessons learned. So we are starting today on number 11. Number 11 is trust your instincts. Trust your instincts. And so for me, this is specifically around a romantic relationship that I was in, maybe five, six years into my sobriety. And in this from the beginning of the relationship, I knew what it was. I knew what this person was. I caught the vibe. I think we always know in hindsight, when we look back at certain situations, like our instincts, our gut doesn't lie, right? There's information there. There's a lot of neurons. There's a lot of wisdom. There's a lot of sensory information that we're picking up from the environment, including whether or not we can trust people. And for me, it's been a journey about learning how to trust what's deep inside over what my mind wants to be true, or what the other person or what the circumstance might look like or be claiming to be is to trust what we feel inside. If it looks wrong, it is wrong, right? That was a huge one for me in early sobriety. If it feels wrong, it is wrong. It doesn't mean that we make other people wrong necessarily and that we need to tell the world that they're wrong. But if it feels wrong to us, it is wrong for us. And that's enough information that we need to know. Like we don't need to look through someone's phone. If we think something's going on, if it feels wrong, it is wrong. And getting into the vibe of trusting ourselves, trusting our instincts and our intuition, and discerning, right? Like how much of what we're feeling is like a fear or an anxiety, and how much of it is just we know what the F is up. And so yeah, in this relationship from the beginning, I kind of, I caught the vibe that individual, this man was, I guess the word would be like womanizer or like that he might get in a committed relationship, but he wouldn't actually stay committed. And so he had some, yeah, some tendencies towards wandering in other directions in the relationship. And so I felt this vibe the very beginning. And then we went out for a while. There was a lot of things during the relationship that were very difficult and evidence that pointed towards this, pointed towards that he was either with other women, obsessed with other women, hanging out with them all the time, maybe even dating them. And it was about a year into the relationship where I finally got to the point where I knew that what I was feeling was accurate and that this relationship felt very destabilizing for me because what my truth, my inner wisdom, my gut was telling me was very different than what my mind wanted to be true and what he was saying was true, right? So I was in the, I was out of alignment with my gut, my heart, and my heart was in love with him. That's how it felt. And my head wanted the relationship to work and wanted to believe him. And my gut was like, something is off girlfriend, something is not right, this is not adding up your feeling things that do not align with your heart and your brain. And so we do have information that comes through our intellect, we have information that comes through our heart, we have information that comes through our gut, at least that's how I see things. And so it's not really about the other person when I'm talking about this, what I'm talking, I'm getting the chills, what I'm talking about is living in alignment with ourselves, with our own truth, having that integrity. It's very hard to stay sober when we're out of integrity with ourselves, because that that feeling of discomfort is something that quite frankly, but when I was a drinker that I reached alcohol to cover to living out of alignment. So for me, sobriety and like long term sobriety and staying sober through everything, things over no matter what, is about living in alignment with our gut, our heart and our brain, getting them all three like on board. And so it ultimately doesn't even matter if the person is doing the thing that we're feeling. If we are feeling constantly that out of alignment, and we're constantly feeling like it's not adding up, that feeling in and of itself can create the entire cascade in our bodies of stress chemicals that can lead us more likely to pick up a drink or to be frustrated and miserable. And truth, the truth, the truth always has a way of coming to the surface at some point, right? And so about a year, a little more than a year into the relationship, I just knew, I just gave me the whole time, but I just really knew and I confronted him was very, I know what's up. And he admitted it and it was, yeah, it was devastating to face the truth, but I always knew the truth. And I feel like a lot of my students and clients are the same. Like, we know what's up, we know what it is, but we don't want to admit it to ourselves. We are usually what I see when we pick it all apart is that we're familiar with somebody who is not honest with us. We've been gas lit out of our own feelings and trusting ourselves, not to say that feelings are facts that we should trust all of our feelings, we should definitely learn how to be with them more in a more helpful way than drinking over them or smoking over them or doing something to change how we feel, be become more skilled with our emotions. But usually it comes down to this one thing which I feel is at the core of addiction, the way that I see addiction now, right, like 15 years into the journey, self betrayal. We betray ourselves. I betrayed myself in the beginning of that relationship pretending that what I felt wasn't real wasn't true. I was used to betraying myself like self self gaslighting, right? I was used to gaslighting myself. So when somebody came along that was going to gaslight me or pretend to be the, what is it, the wolf and sheeps clothing. So when someone comes along and there are people who are a little bit more predatory than other people, it's just the reality we can be naive for as long as we want, but we can pop out of that bubble and realize that some people just don't want the best for us. That's true facts. And let's not have those people near us, right? Let's try not to be one of those people. Let's try to live in integrity and yeah, especially if you want to maintain and maintain sobriety and stay sober. So my biggest learning from that relationship was that I betrayed myself the entire time. I did not trust my instincts the entire time. Yes, at first, I was pissed at him, of course. But then right away, like within the first like day or two or three or five, I realized, Oh my gosh, I have been betraying myself the entire time. I'm suffering because I'm living in self betrayal. I'm not trusting my instincts. My instincts are like, I know what this is. This is somebody who's going to be with other women. And I'm ignoring that because I like him. No, trust it. Like that's not actually what you want is some like in the case of this, if you what you wanted was a committed relationship, then that's the goal, right? And so if something is not matching that goal, then you move on. Love you. Peace out. I move in my own direction, right? This isn't what I wanted. So you keep going until you get what you wanted, right? You keep going towards that goal. And yeah, so my biggest learning there was to trust my instincts and to stop betraying myself. And I've had a lot, especially women, a lot of women students and clients over the years that I've been in business. It's the same thing. It's we knew what was up from the beginning and we wanted it to be different than what we felt inside. And so we betrayed ourselves and put those feelings down and shoved them down. But doing that in sobriety, I don't recommend doing that when we drink, but doing it in sobriety is very difficult. It's difficult to live with that self betrayal. So it's really a journey about not betraying ourselves. And I really think at the very basic level, I know addictions way more complicated than this and humans are way more complex than this. But the very basic level of addiction is like a betrayal. I don't like how I'm feeling. I want to feel differently than I am. I want to change what's going on inside my body. I do not want to accept this. I do not want to listen to this. I do not want to be with what is I do not want to be with reality inside my body. Let's get drunk. And so a lot of us it is a journey of trusting our instincts and knowing that that's safe to that we can't, that there are like a there's a mechanism inside of us, like our inner guidance system, or whatever you want to call it, literally neurons inside of our gut that are giving us information and that we can trust that information and move into a more trustworthy relationship with that information. And that if it feels wrong, it is wrong and trust your instinct. Number 12, set clear intentions. This story I have to share with you is so cool because it just reminds me, I love being reminded of like the magic in the universe or the way that our brains work. It's not really magic. It can feel magical and that always feels fun. But it's literally the way that our brains work where we, when we give our mind a goal, our brains are like goal mechanisms, right? So whether the goal is to suffer or whether the goal is like a very specific, I want this kind of career or whatever it is, our brains are going to start to find information that matches up with the goal that we've given it, whether it's a conscious goal or an unconscious goal, we're going that direction. But so I had a very specific goal, which was I wanted to sponsor another woman in AA. And if I could, then I would stay on the island, stay on Bali, right? I wanted another sponsor that was in person. And so I set that intention. I didn't know who it would be because it seemed like it was a very small community and everybody was all matched up already. But I wanted to have one more in person. And that would be like for my goal in like the next day. And I made that intention like really big. Like I made it very energetic. I feel like for me, when I make like intentions and set goals and I have a lot of emotion around them, that's what locks into my brain. I'll obviously find out what looks for you. But I was, I had a lot of emotion in this. I was like very really wanting it and really expressing that, whether it was to God, the universe, my higher self, my intuition, whatever my brain, my neurology, but I'm putting it out there that this is what I want. Here is the goal. Let's do this. And so then the next day, I'm in immigration office in in on Bali. And I'm on immigration. I'm going to renew. I'm renewing my visa. And I'm sitting there in this chair. And this is really big office. And it's like huge. And there's chairs all the way around the sides, all the way in the middle. Think of it like a whatever DMV or whatever, wherever you get your driver's license, like times it by 30, like it's huge here. The lots chairs, lots of waiting rooms, and it's really hot. There's no way you see because it's so big and it's a tropical island that gets really hot. So I'm sitting there in this hot plastic chair, waiting my turn to get and see the immigration officer to get my visa stamped, my passport stamped. And I start getting bit by mosquitoes. And it's one, two, three, four, five. And I'm just like, okay, obviously I'm in a hot, a little hot spot here for mosquitoes. I better move. So I get up and I walk all the way across to the other side. It takes a minute and a half, whatever to walk all the way across to the other side of the building. And I sit down. I didn't even look at anybody. I just sat in a chair just to be away from the mosquito. And the next thing I know with a person next to me is, hey, Kirsten. And I was like, oh, shoot, that's like my friend's husband. So I was like, oh, hey. And then all of a sudden my friend walks up and she's standing right there. And she just had a baby. So she's you. Here's my baby. And we're getting her passports to him too. So I'm talking her and she was just like, can you come? I'm doing a meeting at my house tomorrow because I just had a baby. Can you come to the meeting tomorrow? And I was busy with work the next day. But I thought my head like normally I would say no, because I actually have this job that I'm trying to do, have work I'm committed. But I could rearrange my schedule. So what do I do? I don't want to say no to her. She just had a baby. And I'm sitting here feeling uncomfortable. Like there's a peer pressure like a people pleaser in me. And I thought, you know what, I'll do it. I will go to your house tomorrow morning and like basically do a half day at work instead. Okay. So I said, yes, I'll come to your house. And so I go to her house the very next day. And I'm sitting there. And there's like a big flower bouquet in the middle of the table. And on the other side of the flower bouquet was a woman who I could not see from where I was sitting. And all of a sudden, when she started sharing, and there was like five or six of us there, she started sharing. It just something in me just was like all this energy. And I just was like, whoa, so I move my head around the flowers and I'm looking at her. And she's she had like maybe four, three or four drinks before she came to that meeting. She was trying to get sober. She was new to sobriety or not quite in sobriety yet, not quite sober yet. And she was struggling. And I just related to everything she was saying. And then I shared right after her. And then we'd be lying to each other after that meeting at the ladies house who had just had the baby. And and then I she ended up being my sponsor. She had already had somebody else that she was working with that she somebody else said, Hey, I'll sponsor you. But then we just had such a good fit. She said, I actually want to work with you. And I was like, I really want to work with you too. So it ended up being a really great match. That was what was that? 2016. So that was eight and a half years ago. I actually officiated her wedding. Many years later, I actually we've become really good friends over that time after working together. She's still sober. It's just really cool that basically I'm getting the craziest chills. I put the intention out into the world that I wanted to sponsor on the island. There wasn't one available in the pool of people that were actually there getting sober. All of a sudden, then I go the next day to the immigration mosquitoes come, I change sheets, invited to this person's house and boom, there she is. We cannot think about how it's all going to work out. We can't coordinate this stuff from the start. I couldn't think maybe I'll go meet somebody at immigration who's going to bring me a sponsor. Right? No, we set the intention. If we can set it with emotion, that's even better than our brain starts figuring it out. Right now, I don't think that my brain courted the mosquitoes. Maybe there is some sort of mysticism and why I changed seats and why I moved exactly to sit next to her husband who I didn't even notice I was sitting next to him when I did. Right? But the point is that we set intentions and we set them very clear and very deliberately, even if the thing that we think that we want or the thing that we do actually want feels impossible or seems impossible, we can't figure it out. So we don't have to figure it out. We don't have to know the how. We just have to be clear on the what what do we want? So set your intentions. Side note, do you have any stories that are similar to this where you set an intention or you wanted something or you told your higher self, the universe, God, whatever that you really wanted something to come true and it came true in a mystical magical feeling kind of way, including mosquitoes or something random AF. Like the story I just explained, those are my favorite stories in the world. I love hearing all the proof that this stuff works. I love it in my own life and I love it in your life too. All right, 13 focus on expanding. What is wrong is always available and so is what's right. So we get a whatever we put our mind, we're going to be getting more of that. Remember, our minds are really powerful. And so if we want to focus on constricting, what we don't want, the resentment, the fear, what's messed up about whatever is going on, who wrong does, how wrong things are, self pity, that's that should be a mood, a moment, but then focus on expanding. When I wasn't a breakup, I remember I found out that the guy had been dating for like over a year had been cheating on me a lot of the relationship. And so I knew I was going to break up with him, but I didn't feel ready in that moment. Or maybe I didn't feel strong enough. Like I'm not proud of that, but I just didn't feel ready to leave the relationship yet for whatever reason. I just couldn't do it yet. And so and if you're there right now, I totally get it. There is no it's it. We get to decide when the timing is right for us, even if truths come to light that we're not okay with. And so I ended up staying in the relationship like two more months while already knowing inside that it was over for me. But I just didn't have, I don't know, like, I guess the courage or even like the comfort to leave yet. And so what I did instead, as I focus on expanding, I stopped thinking about the relationship, I stopped thinking about what he did and who he did it with or whatever. And I started thinking only about what my goals were and what I wanted to create. I wanted to be in a mastermind. I was in Bali at the time, right? I wanted to be in a mastermind. I wanted to grow my business. I wanted to focus on my work. I wanted to help people. I wanted to have more clients that I can serve. I really wanted to help people transform their life and transform their anxiety. And so that's what I focused on. I just focused on what I wanted to create. And as I'm focusing on my expansion and what I want to create, all of a sudden this woman comes into my life that I didn't know before. And she was also an entrepreneur. She was on Bali, and she was looking to create a mastermind just for fun with people with other entrepreneurs. The next thing I know, like two, three days later, we all take a boat from Bali to the neighboring island and we go do a retreat there. We rented a big villa on the ocean. And I'm not saying that this is normal or that this is how everything's going to work out. This is just specifically what happened here. I chose to focus on expansion and my life started to expand. So we walk into this villa. We are there. We are all helping each other with our businesses. And then because I was focusing only on my growth and my expansion, my life started to expand. I was like, okay, so I know I'm going to leave this relationship at some point. I'm not going to think about that right now. I'm going to think about my growth and build myself up so that I am better prepared to make bigger moves in my life. So I built up my business. I built up my network. I built up feeling good about myself again. I built up my nervous system, feeling like more calm and centered and stable. I built up my clients. I built everything up. And then when from a built up place, I was super secure and not emotional when I was very clear. It's time to leave the relationship. And so the point really is here, no matter what it ends up looking, if we can focus on expanding, what would be a more empowering thought? What would be a more empowering perspective? Oh, where's the joy in this? How can I open this up? How can I create something more in my life right now? What would my dream life look like? What would my dream scenario look like here? Do I want to go meet more people? Do I want to be more like personal like self expression? Do I want to grow my business? Whatever it is that we want to do, focus on what we want our goals are, expand, because our mind will go there. I could have just as equally focused on the relationship and what didn't work out and get spend my all my time being judgmental of him or judgmental of myself for the failures that were in that relationship. But that relationship wasn't a failure. It was a great teacher for me. I learned a lot about myself and I learned a lot about raising up my standards and trusting my intuition. There were so many lessons in that relationship of what I don't want in my life and what I didn't want in my life that I grew and evolved out of. So even when I focus on the expansive perspective of how I expanded in my relationship or specifically right outside of my relationship, that was super helpful. I went through a major and radical heart transformation as a result of that relationship though I mind it for all the lessons that were there. I actually made amends to that man who cheated on me right or who was unfaithful like probably throughout the entire relationship with multiple people including having a baby with somebody else six months into a relationship like it was stressful. It was a hot mess. Okay. Oh my god. Did I just say that? Yeah, that was stressful. That was a hard time. But I even made amends to him because I felt like I could have handled even some of the breakup better. I could have handled some of the parts in it better. I could have there are ways that I could have been treating him better. It wasn't it's never all somebody else's fault. So I went to him like six months after our breakup or maybe yeah, a year. I don't remember it was sometime after our relationship. I went up back up to that boyfriend and I did amends with him and I just said, look, I'm sorry that there were a lot of parts of our relationship where I was rejecting you and I don't want you to feel rejected. And even when I broke up with you, it's a little ego to say it that way. But even like when I left, I'm really sorry. I hope you didn't feel rejected. I didn't mean for you to feel rejected. Like, I was having my own things going on with me, which was really betraying myself. It's not his fault. I betrayed myself. And so trying to find the way to be expansive through everything, it doesn't mean that we stay in situations where we're feeling abused. I'm not saying to stay in places where we're actually being victimized, but we can choose an expansive perspective on anything in our life. How did this relationship expand me? Even though there was a lot of heart break throughout it? How do how can I be expansive right now? What do I want to expand in? Which area of my life would I like to expand in? It's really up to us in our choice. And in the beginning of sobriety, a lot of it is actually recovery. We are recovering from maybe some of the stuff that happened right before we got sober, which led us into sobriety or literally recovering from the effects of alcohol on our body and our brain. Or we're recovering from having relationships with people like the drinkers and trying to recover our lives in some very real ways. But at a certain point, then we're not recovering anymore. We're not like really recovering from alcohol. We're building our lives. And so it flips to expansion. So where do I want my life to expand? I wanted to expand in my health and my finances and my relationships. So expanding our life. Focus on the expansion. Number 14, the universe supports us getting support from the universe. And so again, whether it is probably practically the practical side of myself is just how your brain works. We have something called our "recticular activating system" when we set our mind on a goal. They're goal strivers, right? So whether the goal is unconscious and it's like a negative thing like suffering or whether the goal is conscious. And this is my dream. My dream specifically was I wanted to drive across America and I wanted to speak at college campuses about a topic that felt near and dear to my heart, right? So I wanted to do a road trip and I wanted to marry that with my longtime dream of doing van life. I always wanted to do van life, like since I was like 20 or something. When I did van life, I wanted to see national parks. I also want to speak at these college campuses about sexual assault, addiction, and anxiety. So let's put them all together and let's do a van life road trip where I stop at college campuses and do the speaking. That was the big goal. It felt really big. I didn't know where it was going to go. How is it going to do it? How is it going to write this talk? How is it even going to feel comfortable enough to give this talk? Those are really like difficult topics to talk about, right? Anxiety, addiction, and sexual assault. And so I had a lot of fears, a lot of unknowns, and you'll notice this comes out throughout this video where the what's wrong, what's scary, the contractive view is always available. And we got to go over and bring our minds to what we want to create. We are creators. We are powerful creators, and so conscious creation is where it's at. Boom, period, done. So we don't want to be the unconscious creators of our life anymore. We want to be the deliberate and conscious creators. So I'm like, this is what I want. It feels impossible. If I had a vision board of it, like on my phone that I saw every day, so every day I'm seeing multiple times this vision of this dream of this road trip and speaking and this whole thing. And so I didn't know how I was going to do it. And so at first I looked online and I was looking at vans. I test drove a van. It was a huge big white van. Made this crazy beefing noise as I backed it up and I was just driving it. I'm like, this is so huge. There's no way I could do this. It's so big. It's just not what I wanted. I thought I wanted to do van life, but this van is just massive and it's just too much for me. And so what I ended up doing is I ended up giving an SUV and I was decided I was going to convert the SUV. So it was a big car, but it wasn't, it felt more stable and more, yeah, it just, I just knew when I saw the car that this is the car. I just had that feeling inside. This is it. So I didn't know what I was going to do. And I was talking to this person and that I just met and she was getting sober and she was wanting to talk a little bit about sobriety. And as soon as I started talking to her about addiction and sobriety, she wasn't interested. She like wanted help getting sober, but she didn't want to hear about it the same time. It was like this interesting dynamic. While I was talking to her, I got a phone call and I said, oh, I'll call them back later. It's a van that I'm going to look at tonight. So I met her the night that I was going to look at the van and then she's like, why are you getting a van? And I'm like, let's talk about sobriety. She's like, what about the van? I'm like, what about sobriety? The van, sobriety. And so like, all right, let's just talk about what she wants to talk about, which is the van. And so I was like, yeah, I want to convert a van and drive across the country and do this talk. And I, it's been a dream life lifetime dream of mine to do van life. And she's, oh, that's, that's really interesting. I did that before I did van life. I converted vehicles before I've done that. It's been fun adventure. I was like, okay, cool. Anyway, sobriety. And then I saw her a week later, right after I bought the SUV, I tried, I test drove the van later that night, the night I met her and I didn't like it. And I drove other cars and I was like, I got the SUV. So then I see her again a week later about, and she's easy to get the van. No, I got an SUV. It's, it's right there. And she's, oh, when she comes out and looks at it and she's, what is it that you wanted to talk about? And I just said, look, I just, ooh, it hits me. I just feel really cold to help people connect the dots between early trauma, specifically childhood sexual abuse with mental health declining, like anxiety and depression and other sort of issues, and then alcohol addiction. So sexual trauma, anxiety and alcohol addiction, I feel really called to help people. Maybe they could wake up sooner to first of all, not being sexually assaulted or learn that because they've been sexually assaulted, they might be more likely to have anxiety and other mental health issues and also be more likely and more prone to alcohol addiction. And maybe we can stop it sooner or help them suffer less. So this whole big message was probably crying when I was talking to her about it because I was so uncomfortable to even talk about any of that at the time. And if you've been following me for a while, you know that that talk ended up being a TED talk that I did, which I'll link here. And yeah, so I ended up being a TED talk called The Secret That Almost Killed Me. But at this time, I'm just have the dream of doing the talk, meet this woman. She's looking at the SUV, we're talking about it, and she just looks at me and she's, I'm going to convert it for you. I was like, what do you mean? She's, I'm going to convert your van for you. And I'm doing it for free because I want to be up, I want to support your talk going out into the world. I care about that message too. And I want to do what I can to help you give that message. So I'm going to convert your van. It was an SUV. But just you supply the materials, I'll go, I'll buy the materials that you reimburse me for the materials used, and I'll build it out for you. We'll build like a kitchen, a this or that or a galley, I think she called it. I didn't even know what the word she was saying. I just floored. And at first, I didn't want to, but then what I realized was, and it was so beautiful that the way that this planned out, her biggest dream at that time was to get sober. My biggest dream at that time was to share that this message across America. We were both scared AF of those dreams. She was scared to live without alcohol. And I was scared to talk about that stuff. She wanted to support me in talking about that stuff and had skills in building out vans or SUVs. And I was skilled in a way, right, with sobriety. I had, I don't know, maybe seven, eight years sober at that point. So I knew a lot about sobriety and had not to drink. And I knew a lot of all my clients were basically sober people dealing with anxiety. So I knew exactly she was exactly my clientele anyways. So what ended up happening is I would go to her house. The van was in the driveway. She's building out the van using power tools, which is her comfort zone. And then she'd turn off the saw. She's like sawing wood and stuff. She'd like turn it off and look at me. Pull the goggles up. Ask me questions about sobriety. Ask me questions about recovery. Ask me questions. So it was like exactly her comfort level. She got exactly what she wanted, which was to be drip fed on demand answers to her very specific questions while she was working with power tools. It was the coolest thing. So at first, I thought she was doing me the biggest favor. And she was, but I started to see that maybe just maybe God, the universe, our higher selves were in cahoots with each other. And she was also getting exactly what she had been praying for, which was to learn about sobriety and recovery on her own terms. So we were doing it literally while she was holding power tools. And yeah, it was really beautiful. She built out the van. And, and then I took off and I think that if I hadn't met her, a cud makes me a little emotional. I don't know if I would have had the courage to set out on that adventure. Like it might have been too much. And so I just felt like I set this intention to do this road trip and this talk across America and the universe just supports you. She set out an intention to get sober and the universe supported her and by me and she was the my answered prayer. We were each other's answered prayers. We can never know how it's going to turn out. We just have to set that clear intention. We just have to, yeah, it's so cool. I can go on and on forever about examples of this in my life. I'm more interested personally in examples in your life of the miraculous things happening. You setting an intention, you wanting something and then it's like the universe delivers like right away or sometime soon and these things just pop up. And it's about because our brains are really like their receivers, right? So we can send out messages and we can receive messages. That's how I think about it. So we're sending out thoughts. Thoughts are electrical impulses. So we're sending and receiving messages. And so when I'm in the thought of self-pity, resentment, fear, anxiety, I'm in a lower level vibe. And so I'm on that plane. Think of it like a radio station. So I'm on 99.3 FM or whatever, right? So I'm just making up a station. And so that's the resentment station. That's the self-pity station. Now, if I want to be receiving information on a higher vibe station, on a higher plane, enjoy expansiveness, creativity, love, gratitude, then I gotta tune my brain by the thoughts that I'm thinking and the feelings that I'm feeling into a higher station. So if I want to go from 99, whatever I said, it was 0.4 to 107.3, then I had just think the thoughts. So my thoughts were, I want to do this talk. I want to help people. I want to speak at college campuses. If I can help younger people, college students, predominantly people on college campuses are younger, right? So if I can help younger people suffer less than I did, if I could be the person who I needed when I was younger by giving this message, even though it scares me, and I can do it in a little van life way, I would love that. That's my intention. That's the station I'm tuning into is I want to be of service while I'm also living my dreams. And so I'm tuning into that station. And then that's where the person who could help me on that next step of my journey appeared. She's also doing the same thing in her life, right? So instead of being in her addiction and in her self-pity and resentment, which we all have these things, we all have that other radio station, right? There's many of them. She's tuning into a higher frequency, a higher radio station, and she's saying, could I get sober? I wonder if I can get sober? How can I get sober? How can I get sober in a way that works for me? How can I get sober without having to be subjected to information that I don't want to be a part of? I don't want to have to join a group. I don't want to have to do this. I don't want to have to do that. I want to get sober on my terms. That's probably what she was thinking, right? She literally got sober with power tools like in her driveway while sawing things and God, that was such a cool time. So yeah, so she's tuning into that frequency and we were a freaking match. It was the coolest thing. I just felt like when I feel like that, when I feel so humble, I love that feeling. That's one of my favorite feelings in the world to feel like I'm being used by the universe and that everything that I'm not alone and that I'm tuning in and when I tune in, other people are tuning into and we get connected and we can help each other out and we can be this whole connected thing. So I just love the way that feels. The universe supports when we set clear intentions. Number 15, 15 is good or bad? Question mark. I love this. This is when I was, like five years sober, I was at a Theravada Buddhism monastery in Chiang Mai, Thailand on top of the mountain there called Doi Suu Tepp. That was a mouthful. And I remember the monk there. He just always say, "Is it good? Is it bad? I don't know. Is it good? Is it bad? I don't know." And that's a famous story in Buddhism, I believe, where something happens and then someone says it's good. Someone says it's bad. Something else happens and it goes through this whole, like, "Is it good? Is it bad?" Like you think that your mistakes or what looks bad can turn out being good. Like for me specifically, I felt like September 29th, 2009, the day that I got sober was the worst day of my life. That's what it felt like that morning. It felt like my entire world was over, but I was and that yeah, I just felt totally effed and that it was the worst day of my life. But when I look back in hindsight, especially even like a month or two into sobriety, it wasn't that long until I realized that was the best day of my life. The worst can be the best, right? So in your own life, I'm sure you can think of a time where it felt like it was the worst time of your life, but because you went through what felt like the worst time, whether it was losing someone you love, getting sober, some sort of failure, right? That that actually was what opened you up to a different perspective or opened you up to meeting somebody new or to thinking in a new way which led to a new result or whatever, that it shifted things for you. So that's "Is it good? Is it bad? I don't know." And the story that I really wanted to go into on this one is so when I went on that road trip and I had that van life adventure and what ended up happening, my goal was that I was going to go and talk at college campuses across America. But what ended up happening is I got as far as San Diego from San Francisco, so I didn't get very far. I went to LA than San Francisco or San Diego and when I was going around college campuses there to talk to them about speaking about these topics of childhood sexual abuse, addiction and anxiety, it turned out that they they told me no at San Diego State University, but it turned out that they were having a TED talk and that when I Googled it the deadline was like two days later. So I applied for their TED talk and gave this whole application about why I really wanted to do it. I got the talk, they said yes, this was also like after I set out, this was in 2017, me too was happening. I think that was like October 2017. So it was November or December 2017 that I applied. So now the topic that I feel called to talk about is relevant in culture, very big, the me too movement. And so right before I did the TED talk, zero Fs, I hit my knees backstage around people and I hands in prayer and I just prayed and my prayer was like, God, it was so emotional too because I really believe this to my core at the time. And it's not that I don't believe it now, but it was so strong in me in that moment. I was just like, all right, God, it's showtime. You're up. You called me to do this. I'm here. I'm the who is going to be emotional. I'm here to do your work. I'm here to work for you. Like you, it's your showtime. You do what you want to do with me. Use me. Make it be as effective as it can to help your people. I am here to serve the other God's other kids. Please speak through me. I already wrote the talk and memorized it and practiced it a bunch of times, right? But it's your time. It's your time. Bring the magic. Do whatever you want to do to make this as powerful as it could be. Let's go. That was like my prayer. Then I got off my knees and looking around. I'm like, I just, I got to hit my knees and pray. That's what I do before I talk. And so then I walk out on stage and my biggest fear and maybe you relate to this, especially when it comes to public speaking, which is supposedly people, more people are afraid of public speaking than they are of death, right? And so that was me. I had a phobia public speaking, like forever, including that I changed majors and college legit to avoid public speaking. So my fear was always, or phobia, blanking out on stage. Is that yours too? Can you feel me? Is that a fear of yours blanking out on stage? That was always mine because it happened in the fourth grade that I blanked out on stage. And that's when I vowed I'd never speak again. When I got up in fourth grade class to give a talk and I completely blanked out and just sat down and this was ashamed. Like, I'll never do that again. That was humiliating. And so my biggest fear with the TED talk was that I would blank out on stage. And so I had in my pocket written on like a little three by five card, just like one word, like 10 words in like a list. And it was those were like words to remind me of that part of the talk. Again, I had memorized the talk. I had said the talk a bunch of times, like it was in my body, like I embodied the talk, I was ready to give it and I have to think about it, just deliver it from kind of a visceral like embodied way, like my cells knew the talk, right? But I get on stage and something happened. And I said one line out of order. And then all of a sudden I lose my place. And I don't know how to like, now that I've, if there's 10 lines, right, there's more than 10 lines. But if there was 10 lines, it's like I want one, two, three, six. And then I realized I skipped a bunch of lines and said the wrong one. And then I was like, how do I get back to four? Because I need to say everything for the whole thing to make sense. Like, how do I get back to where I was? And this is why memorized talks are hard, right? I like this more like what we're doing right now. But we are doing right now, it's like free form. I have a few lists down. Literally, I piece paper, I wrote good or bad question mark, TED blank out. That's my note for this. So it's just me and you having this conversation where it's more casual. And it's just in the moment, nothing's memorized. I'm not gonna fail here and blank out with you. I might blank out, but it's not gonna be because I don't know my line. So yeah, so I blanked out completely didn't know what to do. And I just walked around the stage, like I was, I guess like a model posing for a shoot. There's like the red circle. Because I in my head, I was like, I don't know what the heck I'm gonna say. And I was like, if I just move my body, it'll look like deliberate, right? You feel me? So it'll look like that this is on purpose that I'm not talking, but I literally just don't know what to say. So I moved to the circles big. Let's say it's six feet by six feet or whatever, five feet by five feet. I walk to one side of the circle like all the way to the left, and then I just stand there and look. And then I walk to the other side and stand there and look, then I walk to the back and look around. And as this is happening, so as I'm like physically moving to make it look like, I don't know, I'm like, what Oh my God, this is my biggest fear. So this is the narrative, right? Oh my God, this is my biggest fear. You're totally living your biggest fear right now. Then I had another thought, Oh, but you don't feel any fear right now. You're literally in your biggest fear, and you don't feel any fear. You feel peaceful and calm. You just don't know what the frick to say. And then the next thought was, you have that no card in your pocket. She pulled the no card out. Obviously there, this Ted talk will end up on YouTube and they'll edit that out. They said you can bring out no cards and they'll edit it out. And I was like, I could bring the cards out. And then I move on the circle, the red circle a little bit more. And then my next thought is, I better start talking soon. This is so awkward. This has been like forever, right? And then I move again. And then in my head, I literally said, God, what's my line? Boom, then all the words just started coming out gives me the craziest chills. Look, I don't know what your faith is. This is just literally what I did that day. I told God before I got on the stage, my conception of a higher power, use me, use me, use me, make it as impactful as it can be for other people. And then what happened is I got on stage like the facts, right? The fact is I prayed, I set an intention. Got on stage, blanked out. It ended up being it was it felt like much more of an eternity. But I had a friend in the front row, the whole front row on the right was like, all my friends, it was like my sponsors, bonsies, brother, sister, mom, other people, other sober friends, it was like 20 of them just lined up. And one of them was filming live. She was doing a Facebook live filming me like in the moment. So I went back and looked at her Facebook live later, and it was 22 seconds that I was completely blanked out. And so in that moment, on that red circle, not knowing what the frick to say, my pet was saying, this is bad, right? Good or bad question mark, bad, you're blanking out, you're in your fear, you're you're messing up, you're supposed to talk, and you don't even know what to say, you messed up a line, and you don't know how to get back from where you messed up, right? How do I go from six back to four and five to finish the whole thing? I felt like it was bad. I felt like it was a mistake. I felt like I messed up. And I felt, Oh, God, I practice this so much. Really, you have to blank out on stage. There were 500 people in there. And so I wasn't so worried. I guess even that they thought I was messing up. I just really, this message meant so much to me. And I really cared about giving the message. And I really cared about helping people through the message. And so I felt I had failed. I felt like it was bad. And I get off stage. Like when it ends, right? Then I finished, God, what's my line? The lines come. Get off stage. And I'm walking in that San Diego State University. It's a college campus. We're in a big auditorium. There's 500 people in there, right? So I get off stage, I go through the backstage area. Now I'm in a hallway where there's like rooms off that hallway, like classrooms and bathrooms. So I'm walking down that hallway. And I just given my talk and these two people that I don't know. This part gives me the craziest chills. If this doesn't make you feel some kind of way about maybe what's really going on here or the universe or just spirit God, whatever, however you think about it, walking down the hallway. And these two women run up to me that I don't know. Never seen before in my life, they are crying. And they just say, can I hug you? And I say, yes. And then they wrap their arms around. I love that they ask for consent, especially after the nature of my talk. That was so cool. So they wrap their arms around me. And they just they're crying. And I'm like hugging them too. And I'm getting emotional with them. I just bared my soul on the stage. So I'm feeling a little bit like the vulnerability hangover, right? There's my whole story there, people. There you go. And so they said they both said the time that you just didn't talk for a while was the most powerful part of your talk. Because when you were silent up there, it gave us time to process our feelings. Your talk was really heavy and it triggered a lot of memories in me. And so when you paused as if it was intentional, right? When you paused, that was the most powerful part of your talk. Thank you for giving us that moment to breathe. And I felt so freaking humbled. I had asked to be used. I had asked to be used in a way that was the most powerful for the people receiving the talk. And what I thought was bad was actually good, the best part. I don't need to judge myself. I set my intention and can let it go. I don't know how it's being received. It's not my job to manage how somebody else is receiving it. So I did my best. I set my intention to be used. And I was used in a way that was more powerful than I could have imagined. I did not imagine taking a 20 to Blakey on stage. Well, I feared it, but I did not imagine that I should spend 22 seconds silent so people can breathe. That was like the plan, if you will. That was the plan. That was how it happened. That's what happened. And that these people felt that it was the most powerful part. And I knew other people in the audience. And a lot, I got a lot of feedback about your pauses, especially the long one. Because I did pause at some other points for a second or two, like I was slowed down. If you watch the TED out, you'll see that. But the part where I actually blanked out, where I didn't legit didn't know what to say. I just feel so humbled by that. I love that. And so I just want that to be a reminder of good, bad. I don't know. Like the monk and Thailand said, is it good? Is it bad? I don't know. We don't know. We don't need to know. We might not know. We might not even be the ones who should be judging whether or not it's good or bad. How would I know if my talk was good or bad? Is it going to move the audience? Is the audience moved? Are they healed? Are they helped? Are they do they just have another breath that they could take to feel less alone in the world? Whatever my intention is for the talk, right? I wanted them to be to break their silent suffering. And so whatever our intention is, we might not know the impact of a good or bad. Sometimes we go through a breakup and it ends up being a good thing because the lessons we learn and the next relationships even better. And we only got that next relationship because of the last one that seemed bad, but it was good. It was an unnecessary step onto what we wanted. Good, bad. I don't know. All right. This will be the last one for part two because we're getting long up here again. I do like to talk and tell a story or two, but I hope you're finding it useful. This one is six to be aware of dream killers, dream killers. So when I came back from Bali and was going to do that talk and was going to do the van life, speak of college campuses, wanted to talk about addiction, anxiety, sexual assault, I went to a hairdresser and I'd been to this hairdresser many times before. And I have a lot of empathy for somebody who's having a bad time or bad mood or in a bad season or whatever, even if it's a long season. But I also am going to have some boundaries around what I'm available to receive and what I want to be exposed to. And especially when I'm vulnerable or I'm insecure and I'm working on building my confidence or my courage. And so I was really scared to talk about those topics, sexual assault, addiction and anxiety. I knew that I was going to I never said on the internet before that I went to rehab or that I was on benzos or what that was like. And so I just felt like there was a lot that I was going to say that I hadn't really talked about before. And and I still had some healing to do around it so that I could be the woman who shared from a scar versus the woman who shared from like a wound that was still infected or something or unhealed. And so I was nervous. It felt really big. I felt really scared. I went and got my haircut or hair highlighted or whatever went to the hair salon. And as I'm telling her my dream, I want to drive around America. I want to go to college campuses. I want to talk about sexual assault. I want to talk about addiction and anxiety. I want to help people. I want people to suffer less because of what something here something from me. This is my calling. This is my heart. And she just started saying it's so dangerous to drive around America right now. You've no idea you've been in Bali for years. America is so dangerous. It's so dangerous here. There's crime. It's not safe to do a USA road trip anymore. You can't do a USA road trip and just on and on fear. This whole fear factory, right? And part of me was like, oh, dear God, shut the F up. And the other party was like, oh, man, she really believes that. She's stuck in her own fear. And she's seeing the world through a fear perspective. And that's going to limit her. And that's having empathy for her. I get that. I've had a lot of anxiety disorders. I had phobias. Like I've had very limiting perspectives that actually are not even true. My opinions were limiting me, right? These are opinions. She's having an opinion that's limiting her. And so I have a lot of empathy and compassion for somebody who has opinions that are limiting them. Quite frankly, I'm sure I have opinions right now that are limiting me. But you mean, we're on that up and up, right? We're looking at our opinions and we're evaluating them and we're breaking free from our limits, right? More and more each season each year, we're breaking through our limits. And so yeah, I just felt, okay, wow, dear, help me out here, because I'm already a little nervous about a lot nervous. I was like, petrified to do this. This dream felt a lot bigger than I could do. This dream did not feel fun, did not feel fun to go and talk about these topics. But it felt like a calling. And I was scared about driving around America on a road trip by myself. Like that also, I already felt like that felt dangerous. I was already thinking that and I was already working through my own fear. And so her fear in a way mirrored mine, but it also amplified, like hers was amplified. And I just felt, you know what, right now I'm vulnerable. Meaning, I am like that like in gardening, like when the little seed pops up and or in nature, when the seed pops up and it's just coming up and it's just, it's not very strong yet. The roots aren't very deep. It's just gaining its, you know, it's gaining its tree net, like it's a little acorn, just cracked. It's not yet the oak tree. And so before we become like with the big roots and the support and the strength, we are a little more vulnerable, right? Especially with new dreams, things like that. And so when we're in that vulnerable, like dream baby phase, dream killers, especially, it can be dangerous for us. They could sabotage us. They can, we could choose to sabotage ourselves because we let ourselves be, believe what the dream killers are saying. And so I was super vulnerable at that time and I recognized that and I just thought I'm never coming here again. Bless her. And I hope she gets to live her other dreams or gets to break through that and live that dream. But while I'm still so vulnerable, I can't be around people who are telling me not to do what I feel called to do and what I've been dreaming about doing. I have my own fears. I don't need yours and I don't want to be around yours while I'm so vulnerable. Not until I have deeper roots and like a straw, like a bigger tree. Would I actually be more comfortable to be around somebody who was such a dream killer? Because then I don't have a chance of being like really influenced by them because it's already who I am at that point once you're more developed. And yeah, just being careful to be around dream killers, to not be around dream killers when your dream is in its infancy. And that that's super, super important. All right, courageous bestie. I hope you enjoyed today's podcast and let me know what was your biggest takeaway or how you're going to move forward a little more in the direction of your dream as a result of something that you heard today. They say it is smart to learn from your own mistakes and it's wise to learn from others. Hopefully there's something that I can say that can save you some of the heartbreak that I went through. Let's all learn together. All right, and I just wish you so much peace and so much freedom. And I will see you in the next episode. Bye! bye! bye!
