Fill your cup with something new this year. Find true holiday cheer that will help you stay connected to what's really important in your life. Join me for this 3 part podcast training, to help you bring the magic and meaning back into the holiday's season without the consequences of alcohol.
I will help you overcome any obstacle the holiday's throw at you that make it feel impossible to say no to a drink. This year, let's throw a better party!
Let's do this!
-How to overcome "family drama" without checking out.
-Move past "it won't be the same."
-Put an end to holiday people pleasing and obligation.
-Avoid the common mistakes that make is harder to say no.
-Why the holidays are actually the easiest time NOT to drink.
-How to feel confident and empowered rather than "left out".
-Successfully manage stress and overwhelm.
Ep. #61 Chasing the Buzz of Nostalgia
Transform your relationship with alcohol by focusing on yourself. Discover how to fulfill your needs without alcohol's help. Understand your body's signals, leverage your emotions, and expand your desires for real, lasting pleasure.
Join "The Naturally Sober Woman" self-study course, where you'll learn everything I teach my clients in a compact, affordable, lifetime access package.
Transform your relationship with alcohol by focusing on yourself. Discover how to fulfill your needs without alcohol's help. Understand your body's signals, leverage your emotions, and expand your desires for real, lasting pleasure.
Join "The Naturally Sober Woman" self-study course, where you'll learn everything I teach my clients in a compact, affordable, lifetime access package.
Fill your cup with something new this year. Find true holiday cheer that will help you stay connected to what's really important in your life. Join me for this 3 part podcast training, to help you bring the magic and meaning back into the holiday's season without the consequences of alcohol.
I will help you overcome any obstacle the holiday's throw at you that make it feel impossible to say no to a drink. This year, let's throw a better party!
Let's do this!
-How to overcome "family drama" without checking out.
-Move past "it won't be the same."
-Put an end to holiday people pleasing and obligation.
-Avoid the common mistakes that make is harder to say no.
-Why the holidays are actually the easiest time NOT to drink.
-How to feel confident and empowered rather than "left out".
-Successfully manage stress and overwhelm.
Ep. #61 Chasing the Buzz of Nostalgia
Transform your relationship with alcohol by focusing on yourself. Discover how to fulfill your needs without alcohol's help. Understand your body's signals, leverage your emotions, and expand your desires for real, lasting pleasure.
Join "The Naturally Sober Woman" self-study course, where you'll learn everything I teach my clients in a compact, affordable, lifetime access package.
Transform your relationship with alcohol by focusing on yourself. Discover how to fulfill your needs without alcohol's help. Understand your body's signals, leverage your emotions, and expand your desires for real, lasting pleasure.
Join "The Naturally Sober Woman" self-study course, where you'll learn everything I teach my clients in a compact, affordable, lifetime access package.
Do you ever feel like you're outgrowing alcohol, that you are longing for a deeper connection to life? If alcohol is keeping you playing small and feels like the one area, you just can't figure out you are in the right place. Hi, my name is Mary Wagstaff. I'm a Holistic alcohol coach who ended a 20 year relationship to alcohol without labels, counting days or ever making excuses. Now I help powerful women just like you eliminate their desire to drink on their own terms. In this podcast, we will explore the revolutionary approach of my proven five shifts process that gets alcohol out of your way by breaking all of the rules, and the profound experience that it is to rediscover who you are on the other side of alcohol. I am so thrilled to be your guide. Welcome to your journey of awakening. Welcome back to the show my beautiful listeners, it's so good to be here, it feels like it's been forever after that massive action run of the 30 days. It feels like it's been a while since you've been here. So I hope you're doing well. Thank you so much for being here. And thank you, for everyone who wrote in reviews, I am thrilled and who is sharing the show, it's amazing. I really, really appreciate you, it really does mean so much to me. I mean, this podcast and my coaching business is like such an honor and such a gift and my life and to continue to support and really transform the narrative of what alcohol means to go beyond counting numbers. With my clients, like sometimes they're like, I didn't even know what I was in for, right? Like it's really just a journey. Awakening from alcohol is a journey of awakening to yourself. And that's why it's so good. That's why it works so much better than so many, you know, maybe the approaches that you've taken, which haven't worked, because that's probably why you're here. But you're trying your gear and you're not giving up, right, because you know, there's something better. And that's what I wanted to start the show on today. So too. So I wanted to kind of preface this, these next three episodes to really take seriously I have planned these episodes very intentionally to be more of a workshop style. And there will be inquiries and there will be a guided practice and a really important invitation at the third episode for the next three episodes starting today. And you know, it doesn't even matter if you aren't listening to this during the holiday season, it doesn't matter. Obviously, all of the the tools and the approach and the concepts are can apply to anything. But the holiday season is such an important time. Because it's has so much weight and it has like so much drama for people, not just about drinking, but so many other things and I want to help you really be successful. I want to help you start the new year off strong and not take the beliefs that you've been carrying around with you around alcohol about yourself into the new year, like I want you to generate the evidence of before you start new year. Okay? So my invitation to you is to watch this, like you would listen to this, like you would watch a workshop or you would attend a class. So take the time, sit in your office, create a little sanctuary for yourself, make a cup of tea, and get a notebook out and you know, be free of distraction and really just be prepared. Now if that's not possible for you, of course, don't miss out on it. But you will gain so much more from it if you jot down a few notes. Because you're gonna have something to actually work on each week throughout. So that is the invitation to you from me. And I wanted to start today's episode and I will probably continue to start the episodes like this with a client when I had a beautiful client who I am not actively working with anymore send an amazing testimonial in and I had asked him questions that too as an offering to share with you all about her experience and she is celebrating her very first year of complete be completely being alcohol free. And I wanted to read you her testimonial so take this all in and just be inspired. My problem with alcohol was that I felt like there would be a gigantic hole in my life without it when it came to socializing. Sex dating music shows Some distressing and other things I knew and alcohol free life was the only path forward but I had no idea how to make it happen. I was in the very early stages of sobriety when I signed up for coaching. The solution was to foster an intentional shift in perspective, gather evidence to the contrary, and develop a gentle curiosity towards my new found sober human experience. To counter Tao. I repeatedly told myself that my life could be whole and full without alcohol, even when I didn't 100% believe it yet. I put myself in social situations and watch myself survive each one without drinking. Moving through the inevitable awkwardness of the first several months, I allowed my curiosity to come through. This situation is new for me, How does this feel in my body in this moment? How am I relating to my environment? Honestly, seeking support was an integral part to the implementation. I had you me marry. As a wonderful coach, a psychotherapist and extensive Quizlet library and a journal to process everything that came up for me. I have been sober for a year now. Yay. So awesome. I never thought that it would be possible. But here I am. I've also learned to challenge my own thoughts and reorient my thinking to thoughts that best serve my present self. This is so important my to serve my present self, right, we're not serving your past self anymore. I struggle with it at times, but I'm deliberately choosing to live a happier life versus expecting happiness to just happen to me. I'm going to read that again. I am deliberately choosing to live a happier life versus expecting happiness to just happen to me. I wanted to stop drinking years before I did, but the culture around sobriety did not resonate with me at all, AAA seemed to rely on submitting to a higher power, acknowledging weakness, feeling one drink away from ruin, being wary of the power of alcohol, etc. The truth is, is that up until the point that I got sober, I had already felt powerless my entire life, the key seemed to be recognizing my own inner strength and intuition that I had denied for so long. Once I recognize that I, myself am a powerful being that not even alcohol can control, sobriety got easier. When this particular client came to me, she was very insecure about being out without alcohol, very insecure about what had happened when she was drinking, like reliving the past again and again and again. And it was debilitating, like creating these holes scenarios of what like, almost like afraid of our shadow, right, afraid of the shadow. And that's all it was, right. And that's what the hypothetical thoughts are all about, like, we're just afraid of our own shadow, like no one else is still thinking about what did or didn't happen when you went out. And then we started to explore this. And she was just so amazing at being open and just being brave being so in the present moment, like really using the skills of, of mindfulness to check in with her body. And one of the things I really remember about her is talking about giving herself permission to transition, like knowing that when we go from one environment to the next, our nervous system is going to transition we have new thoughts. It's a it's a new environment where we have like a new role. And so what you will usually do is just rush for a drink. Because of that, you know, that familiarity. But if you give yourself time to open and settle in naturally, you'll see that it doesn't really take that long. And that was something that we worked on deeply. And she made such huge progress in such a short amount of time and I am just so thrilled. So I hope that's inspiring and on with our show now. So celebrate the holidays alcohol free this three part workshop series. Today we're going to talk about why the holidays are the absolute best, and then later the easiest time to not drink. So one of the biggest thoughts Yes, it is true, is it won't be the same, right? And everyone just thinks it's going to be easier after the holidays right? I'm gonna wait to start afterwards. But the whole reason that I'm doing this series is because this is actually prime time real estate for you to get So much evidence under your belt, with the support of nature with the support of society with the support of family and friends, not in the way that you're thinking about it, and I'm going to explain all of it. But this is the best time to not drink. So, so much of what you're thinking is, it won't be the same, it's stressful. How could I celebrate without alcohol. And these are creating feelings of uncertainty, the fear of missing out and emptiness and avoid, right, so so much of what keeps you stuck with alcohol is the uncertainty of how you're going to feel without it right? Because you go into these situations, and everything has been associated with the vibration of alcohol with that vibration in your body. Now, when you continue to drink, there's some uncertainty, but that's not what your body remembers clearly, it your body is certain you are in control in that moment, it is familiar, even as debilitating. And as as problem producing as alcohol has become, there is a certainty in the vibration. And that is what your body has remembered, your body doesn't remember the blacking out in the puking as much, or you know, the embarrassing things, or the hangovers or the shame or the deprivation, that's something you have to actively bring into your awareness. So this thought that it won't be the same, right? This is triggering that feeling of this like fear of missing out, right. And so what you do is that you drink or you sit in nostalgia, and you compound the emotion reflecting on, you know, these good times and these good memories. This uncertainty is the main feeling that has you stuck and not moving forward. So you can count on this feeling. And what we do in this situation is we want to really understand what won't be the same, so that you can create certainty where there is none. And the way you create certainty is that you have to learn how to think on purpose, using the ETA process. To understand and create certainty in your body, you have to be practicing embodiment by really fully being with yourself. To be certain, you have to become familiar with a new way. But you can also generate certainty from the past based on what your brain has overwritten because of the strong pathways of alcohol. And I will leave this in the show notes. And I won't forget, I did this really awesome episode, like couple years ago around this time about nostalgia, and I would definitely listen to that as well because nostalgia is a real big wrench and are moving forward. Nostalgia has us living in the past in a past vibration. That isn't real, right. However, there are parts of the holiday season that that kind of come through, right. And that's that's part of part of the magic right? Now why we love nostalgia is because it creates a whole sensory embodied experience. And this is why this is the best and the easiest time to not drink. Because if you can rewire your brain and your body in a time that is potent and ripe with a sensory experience with all of your senses, all of your emotions write in a new way when we use the ETA process to shift the perspective. You are going to expedite your results but you have to do it on purpose. If you sit thinking about it won't be the same. This is just one example of what you're you know and you can write down what is the first thought that comes to my mind when I think about not drinking during this holiday season. And understanding that there is this opportunity to, to not only create certainty on purpose, but start to dismantle the uncertainty that you feel when you think about not drinking, right. So whatever thought you have, is going to create some emotion that is rooted in uncertainty, fear, you know, avoid lack scarcity, some emotion like different on this, not away from a neutral perspective. So that's where we start, we start from neutrality, right? What do we know, the holidays happen once a year, we know that. So start by pulling out some neutral facts, some neutral facts that don't create an emotion that leans towards the negative. So we want to lean more towards the positive. So you have to learn to reveal these thoughts in an objective and an honest way. And this is the power that of coaching, this is the power of really working your mindset and cultivating that witness consciousness of the observer. So you have to be honest, you have to be honest about are you looking at the external? Or to blame for why it won't work? Or are you looking at the internal and blaming yourself that you can't work right, that there's something wrong with you that you're not strong enough, it's like that, that testimonial I read, right like that, that will never be you. Or you have to understand where all of your thoughts are creating your reality. To be in control, and I'm going to use this from the testimonial to be in control of creating your happiness, rather than waiting for happiness to happen for you, you have to learn. And this is another tool that I teach to create from wholeness. And this creates certainty. When you can create emotions on purpose you can create from wholeness, using the sacred pause method and the other tools of emotional intimacy that we work on. Creating from wholeness allows you to create certainty without any circumstance changing. It's amazing. Using the ETA process allows you to create certainty in your mind, without any of the circumstances changing. This is how we grow our awareness. This is how we intentionally cultivate new perspectives. And what happens when you create certainty before the circumstance is even present, is that you get to create new memories based on reality, and not a diluted version of nostalgia that has an inverted truth. That's not That's not actually real. So we reroute the triggers of the holidays to new thoughts. So I'm going to leave you with this today. What I really, really want you to do for your homework for next week, is to reveal to yourself all of these thoughts, and then to reveal to yourself all of the neutral to positive facts about the holidays. Now you'll know and it's okay if like you have your own subjective interpretation of it. But if it's more towards the negative or if it involves someone else, there's it's a judgment, right. So what involves you your actions, your behavior, your attitude, and just create 10 thoughts you think about not drinking in the holidays that come up to you that come up automatically, and then lists 10 thoughts that you hadn't been focusing on because our brain goes to the negative bias. Neutral thoughts neutral to positive. So this is why this is the best time of the year to quit because it is ripe with all of the things that help you rewire your brain and create A more a stronger conditioned behavior response. Okay, that is why alcohol is so powerful because we utilize it so much of the time when there are other things going on. And that leads me to why it's also the easiest, which is going to be our little cliffhanger for next week to tap into the meaning of the season. Okay, so you have your work cut out for you, I love you. You're amazing. And I just wanted you to take a moment before we end today to close your eyes. And to just think about the possibility of simply choosing a new way. Let's just see how this goes. Let's just see how this goes. What if I could blow my own mind about what I thought was possible? What what would happen? How would that impact everything. If you want a head start on this and you want to guarantee and create the inevitable results of this actually working like Shana like that testimonial. jump on a call with me and I will help you go through this process to guarantee your results to get alcohol out of your way. So you can start creating the next phase of your life from a whole new perspective where alcohol becomes a moot point. I love you. You're amazing, and I can't wait to see you next week share this episode. Hi, it's Mary Wagstaff. I want to personally invite you to spend one hour with me one on one. Because you deserve to know what's holding you back is your time. Alcohol has had its fair share. We're going to talk about possibilities about how to align your thoughts and actions with your dreams and what matters most to you about why alcohol is no longer suited for the life you want to live. How you can get on the fast track to freedom from alcohol and stay there without deprivation. Follow the link in the show notes or on my website Mary Wagstaff coach.com To schedule your complimentary call and get a new perspective on an old habit