Ep. #76 Manage Your Mind: How To Expedite Your ETA To Drinking Less

When it comes to changing your relationship with alcohol, your Emotions and Thoughts directly impact the rate (the ETA) at which you achieve success. 
The very specific Emotion and Thought is what’s going to drive the Action to eventually achieve the goal or result you want in life. 

In today’s episode you will learn:
*The exact process I teach my clients to maintain emotional and mental hygiene.
*How our emotions and thoughts become habitual, just like drinking, how to identify and interrupt them.
*Learn HOW to manage your mind, honor your emotions and create the formula to inspire *Action, to achieve any goal, including, changing the habit of drinking.
*Understand the thoughts getting you stuck are creating low vibrating emotions.
* How inaction is also an action and a choice.
*How to self coach yourself in any situation to get one step closer to no longer desiring alcohol.
*How to spot and interrupt habitual thought patterning that is keeping you stuck and drinking.
*Learn how to create your dreams on purpose instead of reacting to the circumstances of life.

I use the term ETA as a double meaning. It really represents your Emotions, Thoughts and Actions.  
That combination will also determine your Estimated time of arrival to your destination. Habitual ETA’s that have become your routine are often negative and fear based. Intentional ETA’s are what you MUST generate in order to achieve NEW goals and get to NEW places in your life. 
Example: After work (habitual thought pattern that you are unaware of)
Emotion: overwhelmed
Thought: Work is so stressful
Action: Drink
Result: Numb the emotion (leave the work stress until tomorrow)

Example: After work (new ETA generated on purpose)
Emotion: calm
Thought: I'm so glad I am home to relax
Action: go to bed early
Result: Feel refreshed ready to respond with grace to life

The other option is: Why is work so stressful? Why is that a problem? Is that true? Does drinking solve the REAL issues at work? 

AND... there is also simply FEELING the emotion without changing it at all. Putting your legs up the wall and breathing the day away.

Reach out with any questions for the show! Mary@marywagstaffcoach.com

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Transcript

1:37

Welcome, welcome. My name is Mary Wagstaff. I am a holistic alcohol coach who ended a 20 year relationship to alcohol without labels, counting days or ever making excuses. Now I help women just like you from around the world do the same with my one on one private coaching program. In this podcast, we will explore my revolutionary approach to getting alcohol out of your way that breaks all the rules, life enhancing tools that make not drinking exciting and joyful and profound and sacred journey that it is to rediscover who you are on the other side of alcohol. The show is not a substitution for rehabilitation, medical treatment or advice. So please talk to a medical professional if your alcohol consumption is at risk to your mental or physical health. Now on with the show. Welcome to the show my beautiful listeners. It's Mary Wagstaff. If you're here, we are officially in year two of the podcast, stop drinking and start living. So thank you so much. And it was so much fun to celebrate my personal achievements, as well as your personal achievement too, I, I really feel like when you show up to be present with this show, or really any information that you're taking in, you are expanding your awareness of what's possible. So we're taking in new thoughts, new ways of being in the world. And that is one of the first steps of changing your relationship to alcohol is really growing your awareness, we kind of get tunnel vision in life when we go through the same thoughts, emotions actions, day after day, that unless we have a new perspective, or start to inquire about what's possible, we can't imagine into a new way of living. So it's really about that expanded awareness. So rather than looking just through a tunnel, you can get that bird's eye view of seeing the entire landscape in a way that you've never really quite seen things before. And if you think about a bird's eye view, you are experiencing the landscape. But from that witness perspective, so rather than having your blinders on, and not being able to see outside of the periphery, and really being in that those thought loops and thoughts spirals, especially when it comes to alcohol, it's really this 24 hour, emotional roller coaster ride, that is really something that you need to kind of just just throw yourself off of sometimes to interrupt the process. But what I teach my clients is having that witness perspective where you're experiencing the landscape, but from an outside perspective, so you're not really attached to the circumstances where there's that liminal space, that time in between your life of drinking being the thing and then entering into potentially an alcohol free deprivation, free life of alcohol. But there is this time in between where we have to really take a step back, open our eyes, shift our perspective. And that's what you're doing here, you're gaining more awareness, you're, you're deciding what it is, that's going to really work for you. So awareness is the first step. But awareness without action doesn't get you the result that you want in your life. So if you're brand new to the show, welcome. It's so awesome to have you here. If you've been here, but you haven't listened to the beginning episodes of the show, I would highly recommend going back and listening to at least the first five, which is where I explore the five essential shifts to finding freedom from alcohol, you can also go on to my website and sign up on any of the links for the freebies on there, which there's one that is a an emotional processing meditation will also get you to the master class live and actual video of it. And that was recently re recorded this year. It came out really well. I have my clients watch it. And it's really the framework and the foundation for the one on one coaching that I do. So if you are interested in moving forward in that way, really taking this process to the next level. And it's not the commitment of living an alcohol free life, which is what keeps so many people stuck. They're like oh my god, I can't even in this in this perspective that you have with this awareness that you have and this kind of tunnel vision of alcohol. It's like No way, like, That just sounds terrible. I can't even imagine that even if you've taken breaks before saying I'll you know, saying I'm alcohol free. Well, that's why this process is so beautiful because this is really a process of not quitting on yourself about taking the next step and creating that awareness, learning new tools, education, and then growth, applying them to see what works for you, where you're stuck, where you experience, you know, more self sabotage, as far as kind of getting in your own way of knowing that you have these thoughts that are habitually keeping you in a low vibrational cycle, but not shifting them. Right. So this is the process, the beautiful process of coaching is this intimate relationship, or from this really neutral place of compassion and exploration and excitement? and wonder, you can see Wow, What don't I know and what's possible for me, so instead, we don't you know, when you get coached, it's like you don't put up a defense to righteousness or not willing to change not willing to see beyond the ways that you've been doing things, but an openness and an expansiveness. And knowing and understanding the the five shifts perspective that I've created is really the framework of having that bird's eye view of getting that greater awareness from that neutral perspective, because it does take some time to be in this liminal space where you don't want to be judging the experience, you really just want to see everything as neutral with curiosity, with compassion for yourself and your emotions that are changing. And so today on the show, we're going to be talking about one of the fundamental tools that I use with my clients, so that not only can we evaluate where they're at with their own habitual thought patterning, but where they want to go, and our follow up episode is going to be that about how to say no to a drink and love it by planning and deciding ahead of time. So these episodes will kind of be back to back with one another. And I'll mention that in the next episode, too, to make sure that you come and listen to this one. So one of the fundamental reasons that we are all in so much turmoil in life is because we think that there is something wrong, it is the thought alone, that we need to be healed, that there is this other thing, waiting to be experienced, that we're kind of constantly in waiting for an anxiety for that. Once that happens, then we can relax. And if you've been listening to the show for a while, you know that there's no magic time to stop drinking, there's no magic time, to shift your perspective, and to start to choose new thoughts and new emotions that inspire you into a new action because your interpretation of the world is subjective. It is not a fact. Everyone's interpretation of the world is subjective, and their own. That's why relationships can be challenging because we're looking and interpreting the same facts or circumstance of the world. But because we have our own brains, and our own set of experiences leading up into that point of responding to an issue, we will come at it with a completely different response reaction and solution, or you know, some people don't respond or react, they just hide, right. But you need to have this information. First, you need to understand that although your habitual thought patterning is happening, you know, in voluntarily because it does become habitual, just like driving your car to work, and then back to home. But it is still a choice, right? So for you to take the scenic route to work, you would have to intentionally decide to do that were taking the normal route over the freeway to work is going to be completely automatic, although you're still choosing to do it. So this is the process of taking a step back and seeing Wow, what are the the habitual kind of involuntary ways that my brain is thinking the emotional It's producing the thoughts and then the action or inaction. And just simply seeing now observing that honoring the emotion, and then deciding intentionally, what you how you want to feel what you want to think, and then how that is going to create momentum or movement in your life. So this is a universal principle, it's taught by other coaches, other thought leaders, other philosophers, we know that the emotions and the thoughts that are happening in our body are dependent on one another. And they This is how a panic attack happens is you have a thought, or maybe you do have just a involuntary reaction to even a fight or flight situation, that creates and triggers a thought that creates an emotion which is a sensation in the body. So think of enter emotion, energy in motion is literally just vibrations in the body, but we're terrified of them. Right. So and then that that thought, emotion loop and feeling and sensation loop keeps going around and around and around until you're in a full blown panic attack. There could have been a trigger of an old thought that came up that kind of threw you into that. But in actuality, nothing is actually threatening you, you know, there's not someone physically trying to hurt you in that moment, or, you know, a crash or anything, but it's the thought something that in the outer world could have triggered that to then start to generate the emotion. So what I call this, and this is just like a cutesy way to remember it is the ETA. So your emotions and thoughts directly impact the rate at which you achieve success. So if you know a eta is your estimated time of arrival also. But in the end, what I'm teaching my clients, it's representative really have emotions, thoughts and actions. But when you pause, it's like, Okay, this seems really hard. So my eta, to getting that result that I want to honoring my schedule to getting this assignment done to dismantling my relationship with alcohol is going to take a lot longer to get there, if your emotions and thoughts and actions are generated based on evidence that you've gained from the past, right. So based on your habitual way of thinking, when we want to achieve new things in life, new goals, new results, dismantle old habits, we have to generate new evidence so that we can perpetuate a new eta, and that's going to expedite our results to actually achieving it. Now, this isn't something that's really taught to us so much. In school, I mean, we are taught some somewhat about positive thinking a little bit about mindset. But the power of the mind, because so much that we learn, especially, you know, kind of in grade school through high school, is really just memorization regurgitation, and then becoming product driven consumers, right, we produce, we get money, and then we consume and we buy. And that's kind of the way that our culture, and our society has been established in a capitalistic society. But we are free thinkers. And so when you know this model, you can really step outside of that old story, that old paradigm of I have to work this much to generate this much money so I can buy these things and then be happy. Well, you can drop that whole story because happiness is literally available to you right now. This is all about emotional and mental hygiene. Just like we take a bath and manage our physical bodies with healthy nutrition, movement, fresh air, we also need to do the same process for our emotions, and our mind. And in our culture. Our standard for mental health is actually pretty low. That if you are not on medication, then you're doing just fine. But people are self medicating with alcohol, other drugs, food, shopping, all sorts of non productive habits that have become a crutch instead of a tool. Now, these things in and of themselves are not inherently bad, they are neutral. But when they have become a way for you to process or not process, your life and your emotions, they have now become a crutch that is causing you more pain and suffering than the thing would have itself. Because now it has become part of your everyday life and something that now your brain thinks it needs to survive. But alcohol is not necessary for survival, the daily drinking that you're experiencing, if you just take a step back and ask yourself, why. And see if you can come up with a really good answer of why you are not allowing yourself to experience normal everyday life on your own, then you might have a really quick shift in perspective that, yeah, I'm going to work, I'm coming home, I have children, all of these things that I have chosen for my life, and there are extenuating circumstances and adversity that people face. But this process also works for that so that when adversity hits our lives, and trauma hits, our lives are not giving more of our power away, by allowing our mind to dictate the emotions and then the inaction that we're taking to move forward in our lives, so that we can achieve the results that we want, because once something happens, and it's done, the only way that we can change the past is by choosing a new and different future based on possibility, rather than probability and evidence of what we know to be true. We know we live in a universe of infinite possibility. And this is the process this eta process to start to help you generate new emotions and thoughts that might just be believable. But the first step in identifying where your habitual thought patterning might be going towards the negative in generating lower vibration emotions that are not inspiring you into action, is to feel your emotions. So you have to notice that you are having an emotion that is unwanted, you have to first simply notice that is going to be the first process and interrupting. So you can start to gain this wider perspective of where your eta is going. So for example, when it comes to drinking, it's a little bit twofold. So there's the the first the emotion that you are going to notice, let's say it's five o'clock, and you feel a little overwhelmed. You had a long day at work, you're physically and mentally tired, you came home to a house that is full of dishes, and the kids are wanting to play, not picking up after themselves making more of a mess, you tell yourself you have to cook dinner. And so your habitual reaction has been overwhelmed. And to cure that overwhelm, and to just shut down all the emotions and all the thoughts you have a drink. And so that's been your action. So what you're going to do is when you notice this emotion of overwhelm, you're going to stop. And you're going to ask yourself, what are my thoughts that are generating this overwhelm? Or what is one thought? Maybe it's I just want to sit down. It could be just as simple as that. But you're telling yourself I have to cook dinner, I have to clean the house, I have to pick up I have to do this, I have to do that. So you've generated this list this to do list. Now unsolicited by anyone but yourself, I might add of all of these things that you need to do. And your response to that might be but if I don't do it, no one else will. And my response to that is so what? Because there's always options, right? That's also giving your power away. So if the one simple thought is I just want to sit down and take a breather. Alcohol is not required in that right? That is completely available to you in that moment. So you can see See that your thought is generating the emotion of overwhelm. And then your action is to drink. So if you notice that emotion first, you notice what your thought is, and that your action is to drink. So what your option is now is to ask yourself, what emotion do I want to generate, to create the action of taking a break of just relaxing, right? So I'm sitting down what what motion would generate sitting down. For me, that emotion would be deep catharsis, or calm. And something that you might think to generate that emotion and this will be different for everyone is, I'm finally home. So you can see how that thought, as opposed to even just the subtle difference of, I just want to sit down generates a different emotion, right? Like one you are in control over, it's in a place of love, I'm finally home, my house, I'm going to sit down, rather than I just want to sit down is going to generate another thought and another emotion that's going to get you further and further away from the action that you want. And then the drinking is what interrupts all of it. That's the first step of starting to generate positive vibrational thinking and emotions, based on your circumstances that might interrupt the need to drink to begin with. So that's a really good place to start is what are your thoughts about your circumstances that are creating negative emotions that make you want to drink. And then there's the second part, which is the habit itself. And you're going to have all sorts of excuses and all sorts of objections that are going to also generate unwanted or negative emotions that are not going to inspire you to say no to a drink, for example, it won't be as much fun when you say it won't be as much fun, the emotion that that creates is a feeling of deprivation. Now, if you want to feel deprivation free, and like you're able to have a good time, so say you want to feel happy and excited about going say to any event, the thought that you could think that would create and generate the emotion of happiness and excitement is I haven't seen these people in a really long time, and I can't wait to catch up. I'm here to celebrate my mom's birthday in her life. Alcohol is not required in that. So we always stick alcohol in as though it's this necessity and this requirement for these events. But if we look at what is the intention of really the thing and the action that you're doing, and you take it back to your thoughts about it, you realize that alcohol is not necessary. That's not even the point of why you're there. And if it is the point of why you're there, then you should probably also re examine your eta of why that's the only reason maybe you would be going to a celebration, right? If it's not to be in the experience of music and laughter and companionship and generating friendship and a friendliness to life. This is an emotion I've actually been working with a lot is friendliness, not just to people, but to circumstances and life in general. So if you could take anything away from this show today, I would love for you to start looking at the eth of your life, just saying what emotion Am I feeling right now? And not judging yourself for that emotion? And what is the thought that's generating that? And then see if you can come into if I was to feel friendly towards this circumstance right now, what is the thought I would need to think, for example, I live in a microclimate literally inside of three houses. Three houses on my street is a microclimate. You go five houses down the road and there's no snow and there is like four feet of snow at my house right now. So to have a friendly attitude towards this because this was something that I didn't really know when I moved here, and I love it here. And it's beautiful. And it's amazing. How can I, what is the thought that will generate a friendly emotion towards this snow that's here. And the thought that I think because I really do honor the cycles and natures of life is just that everything has a season. And there is so much to be taken advantage of in this quiet solitude. And that has really helped me because when it is warm, and when it is nice outside, I don't want to sit in front of my computer as much as I want to be outside. But I am starting a 30 day challenge tomorrow for my book. And I if you listened to last week's episode, that is one of my goals for this year. So maybe even by my birthday on April 25, I will have a first draft of my book completed. So that was kind of my inspiration behind it. And the other thing that I'll give you another example of an ETA for writing my book, my unintentional eta and my habitual eta was, I don't know where to start, I don't have the time discouraged was the emotion. And those were my thoughts. I don't know where to start, I don't have the time. And so I was taking in action, the action, the A was the inaction. So the emotion that I wanted to generate was inspiration. So the thought was that I that I generated for that was I need to seek help. And I found a really highly rated process. It's called write your book in 30 days. And of course, it's a little gimmicky, but I do think it will generate and start to give me the little push of a daily inspiration and prompts. And it's actually had some really great results from some interviews that I listened to. So take this episode, and really trust and honor that you are responsible and in control of your emotions, your thoughts, to generate the actions that are going to get you what you want in your life. So it is taking you a long time to change your relationship with alcohol. If you've always been going back and forth. I am here to tell you that there is an actual practical application and tool that you can use. And it is called your brain to solve this problem. So if your eta, your estimated time of arrival seems non existent, and you're floundering, and you're going in circles, and you're on a rollercoaster ride, you're at a dead end, you have no idea even where to start, stop, start with identifying your emotion. And then ask yourself what is the thought that is creating this emotion for me? You can first start by examining how do you interpret the world? How do you interpret your life? Is it mostly in a vein of fear and negativity and isolation and lack? How can you flip that script? Not just to love and possibility, but really just start to see it as neutral. And that is the first shift in the five essential shifts? is really examining the story and stepping into that witness consciousness having that aerial view of Wow, yes, when I think this way, when I say these words, to myself, this vibration that they generate does not create inspiration for me to do something different. Right? It makes me want to check out It makes me feel out of control. It's not confident. And then what are your thoughts about what's possible with alcohol? Because I'm here to tell you your view of alcohol right now is very narrow. And there's a whole world on the outside on the other side waiting for you to be explored. It doesn't seem possible right now, but you have to start generating evidence. Is this necessary? I came to this party to celebrate my friend's life and to enjoy them and to mingle and to chat. Why is alcohol necessary here? Do I even want this right now? Maybe I want to put my legs up the wall and lay back and relax. Why is alcohol the first and obvious choice and the only reason is really is because it's between become a habit. And it's just what you do, right? You go to get from A to B, you take the same route every day. So that is why starting to become the witness, stepping into your emotions and your thoughts and your actions, and really understanding them, is going to give you so much power and inspiration to really generate and create the result that you want in your life. Because right now you feel powerless to alcohol, but is only because you haven't taken enough time to clean up your thoughts and honor your emotions, that they actually have a purpose that they're here to be felt, so that you can not choose to dissociate or numb or buffer with an external circumstance, which actually creates a deficit. Right. So when we use an external circumstance, per factor like alcohol, to shift our emotions, because it can't create more value for us, it actually creates a deficit. And then we're always playing catch up. And that's why you're on this emotional roller coaster. And it seems like it's unending, and it seems like you don't have control. But what you need to do is stop pause, gain some awareness, and start to really put in a little bit of work, we can't change unless we change the thoughts in the brain, you can't change unless you change the energy in the body, which is the emotion. So you have to take responsibility for the good and the bad, right? And you have to start seeing the circumstances of your life as neutral. Because they The snow is just the snow. It's just sitting there. Now does it create physical cold on my body? If I was to roll around in it, yes. But then I would have an interpretation of that, too. Is this cold, good or bad? Right? My interpretation a lot of the times is that it's uncomfortable, and it's very bad. But the more I think that the more I create negative vibrations, the more I am not accepting what is or loving what is I'm distracted from my life and trying to find ways to leave my house. And it ends up wasting a lot of time. But when I do the work, to generate new emotions, or to simply accept what is and to love what is and find a new thought, the ETA to the result and my life which I want, which is simply satisfaction, inner peace and love, I can find that in the blanket of snow, I can trust that that is here. And I am here for this reason, and that I am here tucked away in the mountains so that I can write my book, and I can get it out to you. And I can have more of an impact on the world. And I can create and expand on my the concepts of of my coaching and their relationships with alcohol. And the way I see it in this world that I see it is such a bigger thing than just drinking alone, that it really is how we're growing and evolving as humans. It's how we are accepting who we are as humans and liberating ourselves to the human experience, which has been taken from us by so many stories and societal constructs, but you have to stop to pause to see how you are living in that. Are you letting it control you or are you in control by interpreting and understanding your mind and your emotion. You are amazing. Your brain is amazing and how you feel is completely normal and completely natural and 100% you so please stop judging it. I'll write a little example of the ETA practice in the show notes. And I hope you have an amazing week. Stay tuned for next week, where you can find out more about how to say no to a drink and plan on purpose and ahead of time and the most amazing, wonderful week, wherever you are in the snow or in the sun. And that can be a really great place to start with something really neutral like the weather. Right? So you're beautiful. You're fabulous. Thanks for being here and here is to another year of the show. I am so grateful for your presence. Talk to you soon. Bye. Hey, if you are loving this podcast, you are definitely ready for The next step, I would love to invite you to learn my three shifts process to interrupt any craving and get you started on your journey to finding freedom from alcohol. All you need to do is click the link in the show notes or on my website Mary Wagstaff coach.com. To schedule a private call with me. You will leave the call with the tools for success and feeling competent and excited about entering into your new phase of life and it's completely free to you. I look forward to connecting