Common Beliefs Part I

[00:00:00] This is the first of two part series where we look at the common myths that keep us drinking, that keep us in the bottle. And of course, like always in this episode right here that you're listening to today, I will give you four questions to ask yourself to change any stressful thought or change any belief that you might be living.

[00:00:19] And I'll give you some other ways to reframe your thoughts so you can live who you want to be right now. Not later today, not tomorrow, but right now today. So let's go to the show.

[00:00:30] Welcome. Welcome. And today's episode, we're going to talk about the common beliefs around alcohol that keep us drinking. And it was so interesting when I was diving into creating this episode, I was pulling on information that I had created years ago for my clients in a program that I was teaching. And what I recognize is that my beliefs around alcohol have shifted.

[00:01:16] And going from somebody who drank for a couple of decades to who didn't drink for five years, who started drinking again a couple of years later. It was really interesting how I needed to update some of my beliefs around alcohol as well. And what was causing me to say yes in a situation that maybe I normally would have said no to.

[00:01:37] So I'll talk about that a little bit more in the episode. And as always, this is to provide you guys with empowering information to make the next right decision for you in whatever season of your life you're in without guilt. It's about choosing what works best for you moment to moment. It's not about this all or nothing approach.

[00:01:59] It's not about how this one belief is good or bad. It's about the awareness, about how our beliefs affect us, how our subconscious beliefs drive the show in many situations. But I'm gonna give you some tools and some questions to ask yourself to not only reframe your belief around alcohol, but how to reframe your belief around any stressor.

[00:02:21] So let's go ahead and get right into the show. Let's first just simply define what a belief is. A belief is an acceptance that a statement is true or that something exists. A belief is derived from experience, assessment, and interpretations, which we then apply to our own experiences. Beliefs like the sun always rises, or traffic slows down during rush hour.

[00:02:44] A belief is something we accept as true, unless we really look at it, hold it out in front of us with curiosity, a belief is something then that will just run the show. Some other beliefs are If I turn this knob, the door will open. Men only want one thing. All rich people are evil. The more I give, the more I prosper.

[00:03:05] And then there are some of these subconscious core beliefs that really limit us, such as I am unworthy. I am unlovable. I will never succeed. I always fail. And we'll talk more about some of those core level beliefs in another episode, because I think it's really important. But for today, I want to talk about common beliefs around alcohol that keep most people drinking.

[00:03:29] And another way to really look at this is what we believe to be true about alcohol based on our experiences and interpretations that keep us drinking. So if we can look at our experiences and the way that we interpret them, then we can really decide whether this belief is a true belief or not, and if we want to continue living it.

[00:03:48] And before we dive into the common belief for today, I would love to introduce you to the work of Byron Katie. And for those who do not know who Byron Katie is, she created the self inquiry called The Work, and she wrote a book called Loving What Is. And, and the purpose of self inquiry in Byron Katie's method is to free individuals from suffering caused by their own thoughts and beliefs.

[00:04:13] It encourages a profound level of self awareness and liberation from patterns of thinking that contribute to one's suffering and unhappiness. So the four questions that she invites us to ask when we are trying to identify and question any stressful thought are these. One is, is it true? Question two is, can you absolutely know it's true?

[00:04:38] Question three is, how do you react? What happens when you believe this thought? And question four is, who would you be without this thought? Which is such a great question. And the last step to this is something that's called the turnaround, where we try to experience the opposite of the thought that is being believed.

[00:04:58] And so we will practice these four questions when we're going through the different beliefs around alcohol that keep us drinking. But her name is Byron Katie and, she has this self inquiry called The Work. Let's get into the first belief. So the first belief we're going to look at is alcohol helps me destress and unwind.

[00:05:18] If you're in your car or wherever you are listening to this podcast, raise your hand if you agree with this. You wake up in the morning, your day takes off. You have all these responsibilities with work and family and who knows what else. And by the end of the day, your mind is racing and the only thing you believe that can help you relax is a glass of wine or three, the insta chill that you receive from drinking.

[00:05:40] So let's go ahead before we forget about the four questions, let's circle back around to that right now and ask ourselves question number one, is it true that alcohol helps me destress? Yeah, it does. It does help me release the stress and to relax at the end of the day. So, question two is, can you absolutely know it's true?

[00:05:59] And when you ask this question, is it always true? It's the way I like to look at it. Is it true a hundred percent of the time? And anytime that we're talking about alcohol, I like to look at it in a snapshot of a 24 hour period, not just this isolated incident of having one glass of wine. It's how that glass of wine affects a 24 hour period.

[00:06:20] So can you absolutely know it's true that a glass of wine helps you relax? And then number three is how do you react? What happens when you believe the thought, when you believe the thought that alcohol helps you? Relax and destress at the end of the day. What does that do for you? Well, it keeps you in the cycle of drinking to relax at night, more than likely.

[00:06:41] And then question four is who would you be without the thought? So if you did not believe that alcohol helped you relax at the end of the day, who would you be? Would you be a person who looked at other ways to relax and destress other than drinking? Would you be somebody who is more self-resourced and who understood their mood and how to control it better?

[00:07:02] And then the next step is the turnaround. With the turnaround, we look at the experience and look at the opposite of the thought. If you believe that alcohol helps you destress and relax, we turn that around and we say alcohol doesn't help me destress and relax. We really allow that to sit with us and just to see if that helps with just the thought alone decrease the stress producing thought that I need to drink because it helps to relax and destress.

[00:07:28] So what is a stressor anyway? So a stressor is something that is a threat to our coping mechanism and our resource. Based on this definition, doesn't it sound like alcohol can be a threat to our coping mechanism and resources? After a few drinks, our internal resource of things like courage, determination, decisiveness, optimism, confidence, decision making, can be dulled and muted.

[00:07:55] Right? When we drink. It also can be more dulled and muted the next day, after we drink, with maybe a little sprinkle of anxiety on top. But if alcohol did such an amazing job of eliminating stress, wouldn't it be gone the next day? Really, remember, we're looking at can this absolutely be true that alcohol helps us destress?

[00:08:17] Or can we look at this more like alcohol just stockpiles stress? Cause that to do list that you had the day before is still going to be there the next day. But instead, you're not going to have that internal rich resource of optimism and confidence and decision making that you may have if you don't drink the night before.

[00:08:37] So I ran around in this fight or flight position for a long time, guys. I am right there with you. I was stockpiling stress like nobody's business. I had a full time job. I was part time parenting as I called it. I was commuting. I was nursing a kid and I had a toddler. And my stress just built and built and built until really, literally it broke.

[00:08:59] Like I broke. And if you don't learn how to manage stress in a healthy way, which I wasn't able to do, I didn't learn how to manage stress in a healthy way until I was 40. If we don't learn that though, it manifests in our body as disease. It manifests in our body as physical sensations. So take a second right now.

[00:09:19] I'd love to invite you to check and notice where you have this heightened amount of stress and where it manifests in your body and mind and make a list. Is it in your chest where you feel like you have some pain in your chest or that you have some flutter in your chest or maybe it's in your stomach?

[00:09:36] Maybe it's as acid reflux, or maybe it's in your lower back and it manifests as pain. Of course, it's important to check this out and make sure it's not another issue that could be causing you to have this pain. But if it's something that has been checked out and the doctor says, you're good, then maybe it's disease.

[00:09:56] Maybe it's a stress that's manifesting in your body at this certain way. The next common belief that we're going to look at around what keeps us drinking is this one. I'm not strong enough. I don't have willpower. I can't tell myself no. Every time I say no to myself, I just end up drinking. I've tried to quit a thousand times and I can't, I failed.

[00:10:17] I've tried to moderate and I always fail. I just can't. Now, if this one sounds familiar, now you can have more than one that sounds familiar, by the way. If this one sounds familiar, go ahead and raise your hand. I'm sure most of us know Glennon Doyle Melton by now, and she has the famous saying, we can do hard things.

[00:10:33] And I agree with that statement. And I want you to think about this and consider this for a second. I want you to think about all the amazing challenges and events that you have conquered in your life, woman. That you have overcome and the magnificent things that you have achieved. I want you to think of the women that you know and all of their amazing accomplishments.

[00:10:55] These are business professionals. These are business owners, CEOs, managers, doctors, lawyers. These are mothers who care for their littles. These are daughters who care for their elderly. These are sisters that care for their nieces and nephews, and sisters who may have special needs siblings, people who have lived and survived trauma and have chronic pain.

[00:11:17] We have done and can do really hard things in our life. So what makes us think changing our relationship with alcohol is any different that we can't, for some reason, tackle this hurdle. And let me just go ahead and say, and I want you to hear this very clearly. It is not your fault, but it becomes your responsibility to change.

[00:11:34] Alcohol in and of itself is an addictive substance, right? We know that. And the more that we drink, the more that we want to drink, it's habitual and ritualistic. We usually drink around the same time for the same reason during the same events. Because of the same emotion and behavior and we can't just willpower our way into changing our relationship with drinking and willpower and struggle and friction isn't the goal anyway.

[00:11:59] It's not to live this life 100 percent alcohol free, it's to live a life that we don't want to numb, and if that involves not drinking, then that's just the byproduct of it. Willpower is created within our conscious mind, our thinking mind, but our actions actually are driven from our subconscious mind.

[00:12:15] 90 percent of our actions are from our subconscious or unconscious mind, as they call it. And our subconscious mind is continually being fed lies from marketing about how alcohol helps us have more fun and relax and connect and be sexy. And marketing companies don't even need to spend millions anymore.

[00:12:32] They have social media that feeds us this stuff too. We are so bombarded with that alcohol is an amazing thing that makes us feel more energetic and alive and able to parent more effortlessly. So it's not our fault that we have this internal conflict. We don't even recognize like how much our subconscious has been fed over the years from when we were littles about alcohol, about drinking and this internal conflict exists.

[00:13:00] So just own it. Own that you have this internal conflict that's different than your conscious belief. Your conscious level is saying, I don't want to drink today, but your subconscious says the world looks better through these rose colored glasses. With these beer goggles on, if you will. Your subconscious is saying, I have been fed this for so long, it is imprinted on my soul.

[00:13:23] And so, of course, this diatribe that's going on, these two opposites that are going on inside of us, and this is why it's so important to become that conscious consumer. And we're conscious consumers in other areas of our life, typically, I mean, a lot of us look at not eating GMO foods or eating more vegetables in our life or only eating organic or grass fed beef.

[00:13:43] I mean, we consciously consume in a lot of areas, but when it comes to alcohol, we just kind of put the blinders on, but it's so beautiful within even the last several years of me doing this work in the last six years. Is that now it's a known fact. I feel like that alcohol, that people know that alcohol is a toxin and it makes us feel like crap.

[00:14:02] And as always, we're not here to, judge or sin for everyone else, right? We're not here to say like, just because I drink less or I'm not drinking at all or alcohol is a toxin and it's bad for you, that we look bad on people who do it. Okay. Because we do stuff that's not healthy for us all the time.

[00:14:19] So we just need to like check ourselves and recognize that we don't throw stones at glass houses, right? What we do is we are all just doing the best that we can. One moment after the other, after the other, after the other. It is not about getting a 100%. You're the only person who is grading yourself.

[00:14:37] Nobody is grading you. And when we strive for 100 percent success, then typically we can crash and burn at the very end because it's not a sustainable reality. It's not sustainable. And then we think that something's horribly wrong with us when we eat the cookie, when we finally get off that three month cleanse and we're back to where we were before. It's about making that conscious decision one moment after the next after the next. But again, it's not our fault, but it becomes our responsibility. It's not our fault because it is the way that alcohol has been built up in our society and our subconscious belief that alcohol is helping us in some way.

[00:15:17] All of our friends are doing it. All of our friends are telling us that this is the way that we live to. This is the way that we parent. This is the way that we connect with our partner. And so we can feel like this total weirdo if we're going to break our drinking habit or try not to drink as much or not drink at all.

[00:15:32] And if I quit, what will I tell people? Will they think I have a problem? Do I have a problem? If I quit drinking, do I have a drinking problem? Each of us has our own map of the world. And that goes back to the interpretation. Each of us has this interpretation of the world and how the world is. And up until now, most of our maps are created second hand or maybe even first hand experience from AA meetings or Al Anon meetings that we are powerless over alcohol.

[00:15:59] And if we try to quit and can't, then we are an alcoholic. The label of alcoholic or how alcohol is betrayed in society can keep us actually stuck in the bottle because we don't want to say that we have a problem. Because we don't want to be like Nicolas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas. So we're afraid to tell others because we don't want to be labeled.

[00:16:18] And even if you don't believe that you have a deep seated problem with alcohol, that you have a alcohol overuse disorder, these thoughts can still invade your mind and your mind can be worried about that perception. And the perception others will have of you. I know that that's what I had, but really guys, this is the best time in society to question your drinking, to play around with how you want alcohol to be in your life, to quit, to quit short term, long term, to just drink less things like Sober October, Dry January, Dry July, I was actually talking to a friend recently.

[00:16:54] And she and her husband haven't, I think it's almost nine or 10 months where they haven't been drinking. They're like, why did you quit drinking? And they were like, oh, we quit drinking for Sober October. And they're like, yeah, but it's June. So this is like a perfect time, a perfect excuse because no one can disagree when you're like it just makes me feel better to not drink, everyone will nod their head and say, yeah, I can totally get that.

[00:17:15] And we just really have to update our beliefs and ask ourselves, is this really helping us get to our health goals, our productivity goals, our energy goals, our connection goals that we have with people or meeting with our higher self? Is it really awakening and allowing me to tap into my intuition? So this is a perfect time to question alcohol and how it's actually serving you and showing up in your life.

[00:17:40] And as always, we do this without judgment because this is our own journey in our own season of life. And it can change like it changed for me, and it may change again later on. Who knows? We keep it open without guilt and without shame. And again, this is why I love when something becomes so obvious in our lives that aren't working, right?

[00:18:01] Like alcohol became so obvious in my life back in the day that it wasn't working for me. It allowed me the opportunity to question everything in my life. It was the one ripple that once I removed and I was able to figure that piece out, everything else in my life improved. So I strongly encourage you guys to look at that one ripple.

[00:18:19] And if you need help with that, really discovering what that could be. Reach out to me. We can schedule a 90 minute session together to really dive deep into that. And I have to say that your friends will see how strong you are when you change your relationship with alcohol. And so this is the thing again, right?

[00:18:37] Your friends already see how strong you are. You don't have to prove to it and show them with changing your relationship with alcohol, they know it, that's why they're friends with you. But it really becomes apparent when it's something different that they don't know you for. Because they'll start slowly asking you questions, or they might slowly start changing their own relationship with alcohol.

[00:18:57] And it was all because you were strong enough just to do something a little bit different and other people will come out of the woodwork and ask what you're doing and why you're doing it and how you're doing it. And so don't look at it as this way of they're thinking that you might have this really massive secret problem.

[00:19:13] Like look at it as something really cool. Like you're a role model and people are just getting super curious about it. And again, it's about reframing the way that you actually maybe perceive yourself, but I totally get it. It's a completely an evolutionary need for us to be accepted by our tribe, by our people, by our community.

[00:19:31] And we don't want to be the outcast, but that's an old thing. It's not going to happen. You're not going to be an outcast. And even if you are in that one group of people, you can find other people that get you, that understand you, that want to do things differently in this decade of their life. The second third of our lives, I guess, in the ages of like 40 and 60.

[00:19:53] So find those people, find the people that build you up and get over the fear and get out of your own way. So you can actually become that person that you're really meant to be love. And as always, I am here for you. If you need me live in love, big.

[00:20:09] And next week's episode, we're going to complete this two part series about looking at common beliefs that keep us drinking. So stay tuned for that next week. And as always live and love big.