Stop Drinking and Start Living

Unpacking Sober Curiosity

• Mary Wagstaff

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Your truest self is buried beneath layers shaped by alcohol.  I'll take you through my personal transformation and reveal how my five shifts process could be the key to unlocking your most authentic life. This isn't about abstaining for the sake of it; it's about questioning deeply held beliefs and reconstructing a life where alcohol loses its grip, allowing you to thrive in your natural sobriety. We're not just changing habits; we're changing mindsets and redefining what it means to truly live.

We look at the shape of a  life aligned with our spirit. Sober curiosity is how you bridge the gap to your aspirations and where you are now. 

Learn the 6 Simple Cheat Phrases To Calm The Urge To Drink And End The Internal Battle! Follow the link 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 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. 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.

Speaker 1:

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, I just wanted to say congratulations for being here for just another inquiry into your sober curiosity.

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Whether you are still drinking, whether you've been sober forever or you're wondering about a new way and you've stopped and started many times and you're curious about what it looks like on the other side, and what I'll say is a confused mind is on the brink of being a curious mind. Confusion is actually a really good thing. What it means, yeah, is you're not sold and bought like hook line and sinker right. So confusion means you're still. You're not sold on alcohol right Now. Confusion doesn't feel good because all of the solutions that you've tried to quit drinking or to manage your mind around alcohol have become problems, and the reason they've become problems is because they go against the nature of who we are. So one of the things that I really like to redefine I talk about how words are so important is the difference between normal and natural Natural. Sobriety is our natural state. So when we talk about drinking being normal, that might be a cultural thing, but it really isn't natural. So sobriety isn't you becoming something that you are not. Sobriety is actually a return to who you are, and that is such a great shift in perspective. Already I'm returning to who I am naturally, the way that I was born and created, right? What a beautiful invitation. And that's the start right. That's the start right, like that's the start of sober, sober curiosity and what I, what I wanted to talk about in this podcast is, you know, sober curiosity is not a fun little experiment. Sober curiosity is actually a way of quitting drinking and it's available to anyone, no matter what stage of your journey you are in, how much you drink, how long you've been drinking for, or how you identify or how much you don't drink, right. Sober curiosity, literally, is my five shifts process. The five shifts process is is exploring new ways to connect to yourself and your life In order to change anything and to learn something new. It's all about making space for something new to be true. So the fact that you are in this confused state, let it work for your advantage and shift your confusion to curiosity, to a new way of being, for something new to be true. And you start with the question what don't? I know that I don't know.

Speaker 1:

As adults, we get so stuck in our ways, and it's natural. It's the natural way of the human to survive by finding a sense of certainty, right. So when things become uncertain and they're unpredictable, we get nervous. We feel like our safety is a threat. Now, when you recognize that there's this response inside of your nervous system. That's when we have to take the step back and get curious and look at the facts or the data. What does that even mean? Is my body responding in a way that actually is in line with the threat, right? Does it measure up to the threat? Now, there might be a reaction based on trauma, based on something that's happened in the past. So in the moment, you're like, oh yeah, this is an absolute threat.

Speaker 1:

But when we take that step back and we step into the witness consciousness, which is the lens through which we use the five shifts for which I highlight all of this in my book that I'm writing, and it's going to be amazing, but you are here on the forefront of the experience, so reminding yourself that, wow, as I step into my sober curious journey, this is actually a method of quitting drinking, this is actually a system, and that is the number one secret to sustainable sobriety is not winging, it is having a system, and that's why the five shifts process it works so well and is so efficient and predictable because you actually have a method to evaluate, you actually have something to measure, you have something that's predictable and being able to know if I plan ahead of time, I'm going to get new results If I evaluate and investigate my thinking. I'm going to get new results If I explore what the sensations in my body mean, what needs that I have that aren't being met. I'm going to have more information to work with. Sober curiosity is the requirement and the willingness to believe something new, to ask yourself new questions, about alcohol, namely. Is it true, is it true, that that person feels bad because I'm not drinking? Curious, is it true that this thing is more fun when alcohol is involved? Is it true that I love the taste of wine? I just had this conversation with a client today.

Speaker 1:

One of the traps of traditional sobriety that's such an ingrained belief system system is if I have one, I'll want 10. And my invitation is to go beyond the one. Why even the one? And you have all these thoughts about why even the one? Because it's to be social, because I enjoy it, because of the taste, and that is what we get to uncover in our one-on-one time together. Is it true? Is it true you love the taste?

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If the wine didn't have alcohol at all, would everyone still be drinking it? And the answer is no, they wouldn't be. They would not have be drooling to go drink this grape juice, right? Because if that was the case, then you would just do that. So that's the invitation is to continue to go beyond what your brain is offering you from a place of curiosity and neutrality.

Speaker 1:

You have to question your beliefs, and not just your beliefs about alcohol, but your beliefs about what it means to not drink, what it means to be sober, what it means to even be on this journey, and kind of the old paradigm of quitting drinking that's, you know, pretty outdated and really based on the thought alcohol is normal. What if we base our journey to sobriety on sobriety is natural? What if that was the method of which, the basis, the foundation of the belief from which you took your journey? Game changer, the other thing that's really important in your sober, curious journey is assessing your values. Who are you as a woman right now, in this moment? Right, because you are a very different version of yourself than the person who when you first started drinking.

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So you have to catch up and really pull out the celebration and the evidence of everything that you move through in life, everything that you've accomplished, all of the things that you've through in life, everything that you've accomplished, all of the things that you've done without alcohol. That is the evidence that of course you can have fun without alcohol, of course you can handle that. Stress no. And your uniqueness and the way that being autonomous and being and taking personal responsibility for your life has not only created the results that you want, have wanted, but has been an example to other people and really, really honoring the truth of who you are now and the gift that you have of your innate wisdom, the wisdom that is the knowing right, knowing that goes beyond learned behavior, that goes beyond logic, and that's also the lens of my holistic alcohol coaching program is to really tap into the feminine essence and with curiosity we get to be less, you know, really serious.

Speaker 1:

We get to embrace our emotions from a place of exploration of who am I? Wow, this flow of the mystical waters, the dreamer of the woman who lives every season over the course of a month, we live a whole year, years worth of time through the phases of who we are, through the phases of who we are and really that part of sobriety of who am I, unaltered as a whole and holy woman, innately unto myself. What do these seasons mean about me? How like? Let me see my mind, let me see what they feel like in my body, from a place of pleasure, of eroticism that goes beyond sexuality, that goes to your most innocent and innate and truest self. This is the journey of sober curiosity, through the five shifts, through reclaiming your wholeness as a sovereign woman. This is the invitation of becoming a naturally sober woman that I offer you, and if it sounds intriguing and interesting, it's because it is. It is the journey of a lifetime where we really do get to go beyond alcohol, and alcohol is the doorway that helps you open up to really the depth that this one precious life has to offer you. And the question is like how deep do you want to go right? And it can also be as simple and as subtle as how do I want to do everything that I'm doing right now with more grace, with more ease, with more flow, with more freedom? You don't have to change anything about the circumstances in your life to feel more at ease and peaceful and live a more fulfilled life. If you didn't listen to the episode with Jacqueline, who talks about creating an environment for her humanity, she really exemplifies this process of sober curiosity. So I would highly recommend going back to listen to Jacqueline's episode, which is just a few before this one.

Speaker 1:

No one just randomly becomes sober, curious, sober. Curiosity isn't about waking up one day and thinking what would life be like without alcohol? No, trust me, you've been thinking about this for a while. If anyone has drank with any sort of duration in their life. I truly believe that most people have thought, man, I should tone it down. Right, whether they ignore that, whether they move forward with it, and it's easy to just know that the answer is always yes, because when the answer is always yes to alcohol, one does not experience resistance. Remember that that's a game changer too, right? You don't necessarily experience resistance because you're not interested in change. You just have decided to live with the effects of alcohol.

Speaker 1:

And often, if you're, you know, we build a tolerance to alcohol, so we don't even know necessarily how good life can be. What we're missing out on, you know, maybe you're not trying to learn something new, maybe you're not becoming a newer version of yourself, but you know the journey of the woman going through her different phases of menstruation, perimenopause, menopause and after there is a whole body connection happening. Right, there's something happening, not just in your ovaries and with your hormones, but it's neurological as well, so the whole being is growing into a new version. So of course, this question comes up to you when your brain is growing and being challenged into a new expression. It only makes sense that it is a natural part of your evolution as a human.

Speaker 1:

To go beyond Sober curiosity is a process of making alcohol unimportant, and for anyone that has had a long-term relationship with alcohol, they have also had a long-term relationship with trying to get it out of their way. I would love for you to dive deeper with me into this journey. If you follow the link in the show notes here, you can jump on a discovery call where we will connect. I'd love to hear more about where you are and where you want to go and give you an insight into the number one secret that my clients and number one tool that my clients use to create sustainable results, so that you can also go beyond sober curiosity. But the truth is is like if sobriety is our natural state and you're a curious person, then I guess you're in the state of sober curiosity forever and the depth of my experience on the other side of alcohol.

Speaker 1:

Although it's not a decision I have to make, I have no desire to drink, so on and so forth. It just goes beyond. It's unending, because I'm also a very curious person and I want to see what my life is like in different environments and in new shapes. Like I was thinking about this in yoga this morning, the weird shapes that we do in yoga, and I was thinking about all the shapes that you take in one day, like the physical shapes, the mental shapes, the emotional shapes, right and looking at that from a lens of wonder and awe rather than, like you know, being stressed out about it, it's like wow, look at this, the multifaceted experience that I get to have as a human, and that really is the depth of the support that you get when we work one-on-one together. Have an amazing week. I'm so glad you're here and I'll talk to you soon.

Speaker 2:

The bridge between where you are and where you want to go with alcohol is spiritual alignment. That is what makes my private coaching program so unique and effective. It meets the needs of all parts of you through a feminine lens, so that sobriety can become a sustainable part of your life, while alcohol becomes unimportant. Take your commitment to self to the next level by scheduling a private discovery call with me. Follow the link in the show notes to pick the best time that works for you and I will take care of the rest. I can't wait to connect with you in real life. Thank you.