Stop Drinking and Start Living

Permission To Be Successful In Sobriety

• Mary Wagstaff

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We often wait for someone else to give us the green light to feel a certain way, to change, to be happy, to love something. In this process you may find your self defensive nd over expaplining, creating even more resitance to change. 

How can you be successful in sobriety without anyone else "getting It".
Find out on today's show.

Here are five key takeaways:

  1. Sustainable Sobriety as a Birthright: Sobriety is not a trait acquired in reaction to alcohol but a natural state of being. The perspective that sobriety is innate within, like a birthright, becomes a game-changer.
  2. Why we defer our permission: Seeking the approval of others by needing them to fully understand, is an effort to try to understand ourselves more deeply. 
  3. Permission to Feel: The theme of giving oneself permission to feel, wediscusses the impact of external validation and the need to understand and honor one's emotions without over-explaining or defending.
  4. Curating a Container for Self-Exploration: The importance of creating a container, a space for self-exploration, is highlighted. The Naturally Sober Woman Program and Ignite your Vision Retreat are presented as opportunities for an immersive experience.
  5. Moving from Defensiveness to Self-Authority: Recognizing and moving away from the need to defend oneself or seek external validation is crucial. The journey involves self-awareness, curiosity, and compassion, leading to self-authority and clarity.

This time of year can be full of joy, but it can also come with extra stress and temptations around alcohol. So, I thought, why not offer something to help bring in a bit more ease and peace?
I'd love to spend this time together with you. I miss you! 
Pre Registration is required. For more information and to register, Click Here

You have everything you need right now to find alcohol freedom with The Stop Drinking & Start Living Course. Join 100's of Women who have successfully eliminated alcohol from their lives using The Five Shifts Processes. Click here to learn more and join.

Speaker 1:

Do you ever feel like you're out growing 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. Okay, before we get into our episode because I have another recording of that I just went in to go upload my new episode for this week and I realized that I had put the same episode last week about Sustainable Sobriety, part 2. Clearly I need an assistant, so I'm sorry about that. I apologize, but I wanted to let you know that there is a brand new episode up from last week. That is number one secret to Sustainable Sobriety, part 2. It's a little bit longer and that's how I knew because it was the exact same time. So please go back and listen to that show because it really is the follow-up to tell you what to do instead. So it's super important. You're going to want that information, but enjoy today's show. I just wanted to let you know that that was there. Thank you so much. Have a beautiful week. Welcome back to the show. My beautiful listeners, it's so wonderful to be here for another episode of the show and if you're new, welcome, and I always like to just make sure that you know you are in the right place. You are here. Your frequency has aligned with me and with all of our other beautiful members of this. Stop drinking, start living community. And really what I've been saying lately and there is going to be a little plot twist coming eventually to the show is that you are a naturally sober woman. Sobriety isn't a character trait. Sobriety isn't something that you become in light of alcohol. Sobriety is the way that you are born. You are born sober. So being naturally sober is something that is innate within you and it is the remembering of who you are at this phase in your life and reconnecting to the naturally sober woman that you already are. And I think that perspective I don't think I know that that perspective is such a game changer of sobriety is my birthright. Sobriety is how I came into this world. Sober is how we're meant to be. It's how we are naturally connected to our emotions. We wouldn't have emotions if we weren't supposed to feel them, and I've just been so inspired by the 40-day Alcohol Transformation Challenge which I did keep open and you can jump in at any time. The replays are available. So once you sign up you will have access to that portal and then you also can join for the last two live calls, which will be in real time. They will be on January 20th and 27th at 8 AM Pacific time and on our final call on January 27th at 8 AM. We are going to be having a very special giveaway, but you have to be there live for the giveaway and there will also be a very special guest to kind of have a celebratory moment at the very end and everyone is showing up so strong. The community aspect of sharing and relating has been really, really powerful, just kind of beyond alcohol too. Right Like there's. It's a little bit of the both and of the. How am I? What am I celebrating about? You know, not the about not drinking, but what am I learning about myself in light of that? That's applying to other areas in my life. So it's so powerful, and something that showed up on last week's call that I want to invite you into and that I think will be really important for our conversation today is someone had said you know, I knew I wanted to quit, but I just wasn't. You know, I wanted to make this change with alcohol, but it just never felt like the right time. And this was kind of something I was imparting on you over the last couple of episodes about you know, the number one secret to sustainable sobriety. And what she said was using the life intention, which is the tool that we're using, which is a values assessment. So I call it creating your life intention and you make decisions from that place. They it's also just like, like natural sobriety does live inside of you and it might be unfamiliar and you might not even remember it, but the journey of remembering and connecting to yourself does become familiar, does become a homecoming. And you know she was saying I just never felt like it was the right time, which is what so many people think. And you know, the right time is just a decision that you get to make, but often we don't know. We don't feel like it's the right time because we are. We don't know what the next step is right. So, like I had talked about in the next, the last couple of episodes of to have a system to know what you're moving towards and how to look at your emotions, how to understand what they mean, how to evaluate your journey of when you're drinking and you're not drinking, and understanding your cyclical nature and all of these parts of you that you have been dissociating from, rather than just focusing on just not drinking. It's like there's never really a right time for that. But if I have the next step and then the next one after that, and then the next one after that, and I can come back and evaluate and see what wasn't working and then try it again different next time, now I can stay inspired. Now I have something to work towards and work with, and so she had been alcohol free since the beginning of the new year, which was about two weeks, and it was coming very easy to her. She was using her life intention, and you know there's always gonna be bumps in the road and she can use her life intention to meet those bumps too. Meet the bumps that come up if you do have a drink. Meet the bumps that come up when you are in your waning phase of your own cyclical nature right, because we all naturally have cycles and rhythms. And really, the episode today that I wanted to share with you is how do we give ourselves permission to feel and this is something that's really been coming up for me lately. As many of you know, my family and I, we are on a journey. We are living full time on the road. It's been about a month and there are a lot of things that I wasn't expecting. There were a lot of things that I think we were kind of naive about, or I mean, it's just a lack of experience, right, and kind of wishful thinking, but we also we also have a really good sense of humor, and I think that that's really required. But emotions that aren't necessarily desired, right, and creating another kind of set of things, circumstances to deal with in and of themselves, in addition to making a lot of decisions about what we're doing on the day to day are showing up, just really based on what my basic needs are and what my nervous system is used to and how I'm used to regulating myself and how I'm used to working and moving through my space. And then you know the energy of other people in a small space and then their emotions and their personalities. So there's really a lot to navigate, not to mention the other unseen things of. I'm visiting my friend, nura Rochelle, who has been on the show and you'll be on the show again soon and she's an astrologer and so she has. You know, she was like. You know, not only are we in the shadow of Mercury retrograde, but there is this other conjunction, you know, like Pluto entering into Aquarius or some conjunction that I, you know, is kind of over my head. But you know there are these other factors at play. Like Mercury retrograde was happening during the new year, the holiday season, and I think for a lot of people they were like they had said, you know, kind of this first new moon of the first new, first new moon of the new year is really when I'm gonna kind of start, because you're really, and I think that that could be a really beautiful intention for so many people, because the holidays take up so much space and time that you do need that decompression time. You do need that integration time afterwards and there's kind of some you know, a little bit of like down emotions, because things are upbeat, you are celebrating, you are with family, you are traveling, you have more time maybe with family and time off, and then things go back to their normal routine. So sometimes there's this like kind of natural dip in emotions. So I think giving yourself that time and that transition is so, so, so important. And how you know that you're waiting for permission to feel, waiting for permission to be successful. And this could show up as like looking for external validation, but a lot of times we don't even see it, we don't even really know we're doing it. And what I mean by waiting for permission is not beating yourself up about feeling a certain way, not trying to force yourself to feel a different way, and really just accepting the emotions that are showing up for you. So when we're waiting for permission to be successful, like I spoke to a woman last night, it was like, yeah, my business has grown so much but I was just really wanting to explode and expand in this big way, kind of waiting for someone with like a bigger audience to find me and to put me in front of their audience instead of, you know, making a difference Me in front of their audience, instead of you know, making my own stage. And so in this way she's like waiting for permission to be successful. And in this and I'll just give you an example of this in my life currently is this being on the road, living on the road full time, and the work that I do and my job right now, the way it currently looks, and with Emmett doing online school, is not working for me personally. There are some ways that it's not really the space itself, it's just being able to really focus and have like a space of focused concentration so I can get my stuff done, enjoy my work because I love it so much, and be done with it and then go have fun, right, and it's just not working out like that, and so I'm being patient, we're figuring out, we're gonna decide what to do, but I was really resisting that. I was really wanting Matthew to be able to kind of embody that and really understand that and tell me how much he got it, and of course, it didn't make sense, right, and instead of doing that, these are some ways that you'll know that you're not giving yourself permission to be and to meet your own needs, permission to feel. And when it comes to alcohol, a lot of times we want someone to recognize it, or we have these rules of we make excuses, we have to like over explain ourselves of I'm not, it wasn't that I was like an alcoholic or I wasn't drinking too much, but it just wasn't working for me or whatever that need is to over explain. So these are really the two things that show up defensiveness and the need to over explain yourself. So, defending your, defending your desire to drink less, regardless right, because the impact of alcohol is creating a result you don't like. Right. For some people, this is one drink. One woman on the call this weekend was sharing how, even towards the end of her, not drinking even one drink was really like poisoning her, like she could feel it. It was not working with her body at all. Right, like she was having really strong physical symptoms and an impact from one drink on a physical level. Right, and she wasn't. Also, she was like trying to use it to buffer for her emotions. So the need to try to even explain that to someone and to kind of defend yourself is always the sign that you're waiting for permission from someone else to take action, to do what you want to do. I also see this a lot in around alcohol, in relationships, right, where we wait and we think it's going to be easier if our partner also jumps on board right Now. In some ways, the reason that that's true is because it changes our thoughts, right. It doesn't mean you're not going to necessarily have cravings. You still have your own brain and body to work through. But what happens when someone gives you permission? Is it changes your thoughts from I have a problem to I'm not alone, right? Or some version of that, and this is the human condition. This need for external validation and mirroring is something that we do look for. But what happens when we don't find it right? And a lot of this challenge this 40 day alcohol transformation challenge and using your life intention is all about authority. It's all about self-agency, deciding and leading from your values. So you have to show up to lead from your values before anyone else is going to meet you from the place of your values, right? So if you have a value of personal responsibility and self-agency. But you're over-explaining yourself all the time and in the end, giving your piece away right. So if you're already having the negative effects of alcohol and you're wanting to change and you're waiting for something out in the ether to be that signal that yeah, I get it, you should quit, this isn't good for you. Or there's a friend that validates you by talking about their habit of alcohol and then you feel not alone. Or your spouse decides they want to change, right. So we're always looking for this external validation. But what we do in the process of defending ourselves and over-explaining ourselves is we compound the emotion, that emotion that's showing up. For me, there was this resistance of feeling really kind of disappointed. There was a lot of emotion that was kind of disappointed. I was frustrated. I was feeling just uncomfortable in my body, like a little claustrophobic, and I was putting a lot of pressure on myself to not feel that way, like that. There was something wrong about the way I was feeling, because I wasn't seeing it mirrored, because Matthew wasn't showing up in the same way. I was looking for him to, and I didn't know this at the time. I didn't know this until I became aware of it, right. So I was looking to him to either feel the same way or in some way tell me that how I was feeling was exactly, was very natural and I should totally be feeling this way, right. In an effort to do so, there was a lot of confrontation. There was actually a lot of arguing and me over-explaining and feeling so exacerbated and feeling like no one understands me. I'm in this alum and I might have even shared this on the show last week where I got to a point where, after doing a little bit of self-coaching and using the tools of the five shifts process that I outline in the program which I am rebranding and renaming in case you're on there as the naturally sober woman, because the naturally sober woman is really the energy that I want you to go into the program so using the tools of my naturally sober self, who is sovereign, who is has full self agency, who totally honors and understands her emotions, and so this is the process that is outlined in the five shifts. But when we're trying to over explain ourselves to someone, especially about alcohol, or even trying to figure it out in our head how we can like kind of fit into this label am I an alcoholic? How does it look? What does it need to look like to other people? We first have to know what it means to us. So, when you're over explaining a lot of times or defending or looking for external validation, I think what's really really important to need to know is A you have got to become aware that it's happening right. You have got to become aware that in some way, you are rejecting your emotional state. That has that needs to tell you something, whether you're confused, whether you're heartbroken by the impact of alcohol, and instead of meeting that need, you're trying to change that feeling by looking for someone to give you permission to like essentially surrender, to accept it and to let go right, like it's okay. So we have to become aware that we have a feeling that we're essentially rejecting by looking for external validation. And then, when we're explaining ourselves, it's really important to kind of come back and ask yourself what is this about? Do I even understand what this is about? What am I really trying to get across here and why does it matter? Like, what do I want this other person to understand? Right, what did they need to understand? And then that's an opportunity for you to understand, for you to understand yourself and for you to give yourself permission to feel. This is so important for you to understand and I think, going when we really try to resist our emotions and change them by seeking external validation to kind of find that relief, we really don't understand how we feel. We really don't understand what we need. What we think we need is someone else to tell us something, someone else to validate our experience, but what we really need is to understand it and to give ourselves permission to feel exactly how you feel in that moment. Even if it's all a story, right. Even if your thoughts and emotions are being created by a story that's not really true. Like I kept having this thought it's not working. It's not working. It's not working and while reiterating that thought was just creating the emotions of disappointment, frustration, right. All of these things and what I really needed to understand about myself was I had some needs that weren't being met. I was really trying. My ability to focus and to get some clarity and to ground myself in just a transition and take and create some space instead of adding all these new decisions was really, really important. So you have to become aware. Then you need to understand what it is that you need. And then from that place and these are the first three shifts of the five shifts process, which is awareness, curiosity and compassion. And sometimes the curiosity and compassion can be used interchangeably, depending on you know the circumstance it's like you can't really offer yourself compassion until you're curious and really understand what you need and what's really going on. And so for me, I under I came to this understanding of like oh, this is what's going on. I need a safe, quiet space where I can work uninterrupted and not feel guilty about it. Like I was kind of feeling guilty that work was important to me in some way because, like it's not Matthew's work and he didn't really understand it and he, I had this story that he was feeling like I should just be able to kind of do the bare minimum, shelf the rest, and just like let it all be okay. And the work that I do is extremely intimate. I need a lot of quiet, I need a lot of privacy and it's you know, I need to be able to focus, because I do energy work essentially with my clients, right, we do emotional processing, we talk about really intense stuff. So I need my energy and my emotions to be grounded during that process, and so it's understanding that I didn't have the availability to do that, and then from that place I could bring in the compassion. What do I need to let essentially my inner child know? Right, and I need. What I needed to let my inner child know was no one else needs to understand you. I understand you, I understand you, I completely understand you. Right now, I know exactly what you need. So, if you find yourself in any situation because all situations can lead back to alcohol if you find yourself in any situation around alcohol, not giving yourself permission to feel and really resisting the thoughts that are coming up for you, your desire to change alcohol and what that feels for me, it was heartache. I had so much heartache and longing for something different. I don't know if I wasn't waiting for permission, but if I knew then what I know now, what I would do is I would really get clear about what it is that I need that is keeping me stuck right, like what it is that I need, and then I would be. It's not even that I would give myself the thing that I need, but I would tell myself the words to create relief. I hear you, I understand you and I think at the time, what I needed was I needed to be around other people that were doing something different. I didn't necessarily need to be around a community of sober people. I was ready to be in a place of expressing myself in a new way, because the relationships that I had at the time were all centered around drinking and partying, and I was a new mom and I was just really ready to put myself out there, to be seen for a different version of myself. And I did just that thing, which was I found and I've talked about it on the show I went on this beautiful retreat with this container that was already curated for me so that I could create the time and the space. I had this opportunity to go into a container that was already created and the space was gonna be held for me to start to explore some different and deeper layers of the self. And I didn't have to do anything else. I didn't have to cook for myself, I didn't have to clean for myself. I just had to show up with the willingness to be seen in a new way, to be seen by others that were also interested in being seen in a new way through their authentic expression, through vulnerability. And that is really the opportunity of the Naturally Sober Program, the Naturally Sober Woman Program, formerly Stop Drinking and Start Living Program. That is this curated container for you so that if you feel like you're not ready and it's not the right time, you just might not know the next step. So to take the next step is to have a system right, and it really is also my intention for why I have hosted Women's Circles for the last four years, because I know I just went to one last night and it was amazing. I know the need for women to connect in a more authentic way, but just not really knowing what that looks like and in creating ritual around it, which is also why Nura and I have created the Ignite your Vision Retreat in Mexico in April, which is all about remembering who you are right. It's about this opportunity to be in a self, this container and this curated container for you to go in, to make space, to restore so that you can find clarity, because when we try to figure it out in our head and we try to do all the things, but then life is also just happening, naturally you can't solve a problem that is innate within you, Like you can't connect to yourself through your head, right, you have to connect to yourself through your body and the way to do that is to make space. And you have to make space in your body and just get quiet, right, so you can create the container for yourself to really start to understand what are these needs? Where in my life am I waiting for permission? Is it around alcohol? Is it around success in my business? Am I waiting for you know some? Am I waiting for Oprah to knock on my door right? Am I waiting for you know my husband to say that he's ready to finally quit drinking? Before I can be happy, before I decide to make a change in my life, right, whatever that is for you. And you can curate a container, and that's what ritual is all about. You can curate a container for yourself to go inward and really examine what need do I have that's not being met and what does that need need to hear? So, if you, the way that you can find out in your life where am I waiting for permission to be, where am I waiting for permission in any era, doesn't even have to be like to be successful, but it kind of comes down to that is looking at where do I feel the need to defend and explain myself often, and that's where you're waiting for permission, right, and even if you haven't done it out loud, but just like in your head, like even thinking about, like what am I gonna say if someone asks me about drinking? And you need to understand what you want them to understand, you need to fully embody that and then, once you fully embody it and let that part of you know what do they need to hear? Right, like this is your body. One of the thoughts that's come up a lot on the life intention challenge is I know who. I am right. So once you know what someone you're trying to get someone else to really understand, once you fully embody that and give yourself permission to feel it, and then honor that and find a little bit of relief on your own by saying I understand you, I get it, I feel you, I feel that in my body it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks and that is truly remembering who you are and that really is the power of being in any container that is guiding you and really created and self-directed or directed for you to connect to self right, so that you're not just being led like into doing things like it's all. It's all about the opportunity and that's really the program. The Naturally Sober Woman program was designed as a journey of self-exploration and then to take it deeper and in a really concentrated and intentional and immersive experience that you're really kind of leaving things to, you're going away from your day-to-day life and you're really putting all of you for 24 seven, for a week, into the container, into the retreat that we're hosting or any retreat that could be like that. That's what this is really for for you to have an expedited experience that takes you deep, to really uncover what that is, without any distractions, so that it's you've got to show up, but it's like a done for you experience that you get to show up, open, ready to receive, right, and that is something that we don't often give ourselves permission to do is to receive. So I think that this part of the work when it comes to alcohol and any other thing that you might be waiting for, permission for and there could be a reason why you're also drinking still is probably one of the most crucial components for really understanding that, because if we're always looking outside for someone to give us the green light to go right, we're always going to be waiting or we're going to be guided in a way that's not really for us from what we need, and I really believe that that is the difference of what I'm offering here on the podcast, what I offer my clients, and what I'm offering in the Naturally Sober Woman program and on the Ignite your Vision retreat is this opportunity for you to remember yourself, right, like it's not I give you some suggestions, but it's not me telling you like this is how you need, what you need to believe. This is me giving you an opportunity to really dive into what do I believe, what is important to me? Because without that self authority and that connection, the sustainable sobriety and continuing to grow into the version of yourself that you know you are and that you wanna be in the world and the fullest expression of who you already are, is gonna be a struggle, right, and we always are gonna have bumps in the road, like the story I'm sharing with you now. However, it's that space in between for getting and remembering that gets shorter so that I can. I see that I'm like kind of losing it a little bit and it doesn't feel good, right, and I'm like exacerbated and my nervous system is shot right, that's gonna happen. I'm in a brand new circumstance, like I can't know what it's gonna be like until I'm there and I can plan ahead of time and in some ways, I did do that. But there are always gonna be unknowns, right, and I had expectations that I didn't really realize I had, and that's okay, and so I uncovered them. And that time in between and then like being able to communicate that in a new way not from needing permission from Matthew, but from saying this is what I actually need, and like let's hear what you need and let's try to find a solution is the way that we can create sustainable results. So all of the information for everything that I've shared today is gonna be in the show notes of this episode. So please enjoy your week. I think this is a week for a lot of fun and joy and to stop at the vista and really really celebrate yourself for everything that you do, and you show up because you've already done enough. Girl, I believe that it's like you've done enough. Everything else is a bonus. Every other way that you wanna be successful in the world, and sobriety and connecting to your naturally sober self is gonna give you the opportunity to just be more joyful and have way more fun in your life, and I will talk to you next week. Bye, hey, my beautiful listener. So the number one secret to sustainable sobriety is not winging it. You need a system that will give you consistent and predictable results. So, even if you do have a drink, you are always moving towards making alcohol unimportant in your life, not stopping and starting. And that's where the stop drinking and start living program comes in. It's your opportunity to know what's working, what's not working and what you need to do differently so that you can get out of the moderation and deprivation trap. To become a lifetime member of the program, all you need to do is follow the link right here in the show notes or visit my website, marywagstaffcoachcom and, as a special thanks for being part of our show, enter the word podcast at checkout to receive an additional 10% off. I am so excited for you to explore the endless possibilities beyond alcohol. I will see you on the inside.