Stop Drinking and Start Living

The Path To Self-Acceptance

• Mary Wagstaff

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Self-acceptance is crucial  if you've ever questioned your relationship with alcohol. This episode is a heartfelt invitation to peel back the layers of self-doubt and limiting beliefs, revealing the bright essence of who you truly are. 

Learn how to rekindle  trust in your instincts, and together, we'll confront the stories we've constructed about our worth, our habits, and our need for external validation. 

In a world brimming with comparison, learn to embrace your unique narrative and uncover the joy of expressing your deepest, most authentic thoughts.

Dance and music serve as our companions in the journey of reconnecting to self. 

We'll explore the synergy of sobriety and self-acceptance, finding refuge in the safety of our own skin. 

I'll share techniques like breathwork and visualization to anchor your journey in gratitude for the vessel that carries you through life. 

From the grounding energy of the root chakra to the gentle embrace of mindfulness, witness the power of presence in transforming everyday experiences into profound moments of clarity and belonging.

I want to celebrate the clarity that sobriety brings to our lives.  These insights offer the next step to recognizing your fundamental human rights, to feeling rooted in your existence, and to expressing thanks for the many facets of your being. 

Whether you're yearning to break free from old patterns or seeking spiritual alignment for a more fulfilling life, this episode holds space for your personal evolution. 

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! 
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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. 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.

Speaker 1:

I am so thrilled to be your guide. Welcome to your journey of awakening. Welcome back to the show. My beautiful listeners, you're here, I'm here, we're here together, and in this moment I want you to know you belong. You have the right to be here. I created this space for you to come and connect to yourself and to know that you are also connected to a community of women who support you. I really believe that and if you haven't yet, come over to join us in the Facebook group, the Sacred Online Sanctuary I know it's a little bit of an oxymoron, but we are over there and I'm really wanting to build up a conversation, so the link is here in the show notes. I'd absolutely love to have you and meet you and connect, and the more conversations we can get going then, the more I can offer and tailor some content and live content over there also to your needs. So today we're going to talk about self-acceptance.

Speaker 1:

Self-acceptance is huge and it's everything, and I think it's something that most people, and women especially, really struggle with. And you know it's like marketing is a thing right. Marketing is always about telling you that you need something outside of yourself. So in sales and marketing, if you ever watch, do remember the show Mad Men and how they brilliantly right. We use psychology, is used in marketing, and it's used to invoke a sense of an emotion, either fear of missing out, or desire and excitement and longing of oh my gosh, if I have this thing, my life will be better. Oh my gosh, I can't be the only one without it. Right, like there's some sense of scarcity or fear in marketing, or oh, like, yeah, they really hit the nail on the head with that problem that I have and the only solution is to find something outside of myself. And so self-acceptance is really about self-trust, and the problem that you know is created when we don't have self-acceptance, when we don't accept ourselves the way that we are, is we're really under some sort of belief that it's not the way it's supposed to. We're really under some sort of belief that it's not the way it's supposed to be.

Speaker 1:

Now, how does alcohol play a role into this? Well, it plays a role into this in so many areas, because the biggest piece is that, aside from the urges to drink is, in many cases, we're denying ourselves our organic and natural emotion that would naturally arise from just whatever thoughts that we have, whether or not those thoughts are true or useful. So when we're altering the state of our natural self, the way we would naturally show up, we don't give ourselves a chance to transition naturally, to have a new response, right, like we're not robots. We can be I mean shit, even a robot can be reprogrammed, right. So it's like we can respond to life even if you've responded the same way to the same thing a million times. It is still possible to learn and have a different response to something and to be less reactive or to change. But when we alter our natural emotion, the emotion that arises kind of based on our belief systems, based on the thought that we have. When we interrupt that with alcohol, we are not accepting that and then we never get a chance to change it. So if you want to change your life and the way that you show up and the way that you view things in your perspective, you need to know first what the habitual response is right and then, because you can't examine the habitual response if you don't, if you're always overriding it with a drink and then you just ignore it.

Speaker 1:

So this is the point of self-acceptance. And also then there's, like all of the narratives about everyone else is doing it I'll be missing out, so on and so forth, which you know, as we have these conversations and we say these things out loud, like it's like when everybody else is doing it. You know, it seems this is the power of coaching too, that's so powerful, or even self coaching. When you say something out loud or write it down on paper, it really loses its power, because once it was you, it was a way and energy in which you were identifying with. That felt very real, very much an embodied experience. And then you write it down or say it out loud. Now it's outside of you, right? It's out into the world, it's separate from who you are. So you have an opportunity to accept it, because now it's like not of you, and so you see it in a new way.

Speaker 1:

So there's this belief that it's not supposed to be the way that it is. And in life you know, if something is and it already happened and existed, how do we know it wasn't supposed to be that way? We don't know it happened. It is One of the ways of the journey of awakening and surrender is acceptance. This is not about accepting and this is not about accepting. I can't tell you mostly everyone that comes to me has this story that alcohol just doesn't work for me. Sure, does everyone's body metabolize alcohol differently? Absolutely. But we never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever know what is happening in another person's body.

Speaker 1:

So, to ever compare yourself or in another person's mind or their heart or their soul to what the person next to you you think that they're having an experience with, there's the acceptance of like. This is the experience I have in my body and it's not serving me, it's not useful. Right Instead of like, but then, like, people will even use that against themselves. It's like I just know I can't have one and they can right Like of like, but then, like, people will even use that against themselves. It's like I just know I can't have one and they can right Like I have to accept that I just can't have one, but you're still comparing it to something else, right, and it's so not useful. And I've talked about this before like, let's go beyond. Like the one to let's make one unimportant, to let's make one unimportant. So this message of I should be different than I am. Okay, and it's very subtle.

Speaker 1:

That example is very, very subtle. Like, yes, one doesn't work for you. But 10 doesn't work for you, right? You could decide one worked for you. You could decide like there's. You could decide 10 works for you, right. But is it the result you want? 1 or 10 or 20, right, it doesn't even matter. This is about like and it's also about accepting yourself. You know the nature of alcohol, but that's different. This is about self-acceptance. So the solution here is like understanding. First of all, whose standards are you comparing yourself to? Even in that example, who you're comparing yourself to? An idea, a hypothetical idea? We have no clue.

Speaker 1:

Do you know how many times like I drank before I showed up somewhere and then drank after I went home and maybe I sipped on a drink at the bar? I will never forget. A good friend of mine said to me wow, and it wasn't even really intentional. But after I got to know him he was like wow, I really like, you know, kind of like. I thought you were this classy lady that just could really control her drinking. Then he got to know me and my drinking not to say I wasn't still classy, but probably not. But he knew that I was much bigger of a drinker than he had initially thought because I had like this. The first time we met. I had this one drink and I remember like, I very much remember like sipping on it. He had no clue, he had this whole thought and this whole story in my head of what kind of drinker I was. And he had no, he was very wrong, because we ended up partying a lot together and he actually wasn't as big of a drinker, which is funny.

Speaker 1:

So whose standards are you comparing yourself to?

Speaker 1:

Is it an idea? How do you know? You just don't even know. I mean, even the closest people lie to you. People lie to themselves, right, we lie to ourselves. How do we know? And the other? The bigger solution, the bigger problem here really is self-acceptance, is really about the right to belong, and that's why I started this episode saying you belong here. You have the right to belong here. And the truth is on this planet you're born. You have the right to belong. Everyone, every body, every way that you show up, has the right to be here, has the right to take up space and to be here In my environment. You have the right to be here. So this is really kind of like a root chakra issue, our root chakra being our centeredness, our groundedness, our connection to earth.

Speaker 1:

And what's required to shift from the way that you're comparing yourself is A first becoming aware of those thinkings, those thoughts and, rather than disproving them, is first coming into a mindfulness experience, coming into a present moment, having an embodied experience of being centered and grounded and connected to the earth. Engaging with your senses, your proprioception, as you're walking right, paying attention to your senses, how the felt sense felt, sensing, is your proprioception, noticing, like what does it feel like behind you, what does it feel like around you, inside of you. And this is a way you can start to practice self-acceptance by just noticing how you are in any given moment. And there's some thinking that you can do, there are some thoughts that can help you find a sense of relief, find a sense of groundedness, but it's going to be more in your embodied experience or the combination of them. And one thought that I really like, and I've used for myself a lot, is it's okay to not be okay or just it's okay, I deserve to be here, I deserve to belong. This is me right now, right here. Right now, this is me here, I am here, I am. I am right here, I am right here and I always have to take a deep breath and I'm right in the present moment. I have a body and you can scan your body. I have a body. So some other ways that you can connect in a more of an embodied way with your sense of self-acceptance and your sense of belonging is earthing, sitting on the ground, putting your bare feet or your bare hands on the ground has a lot of scientific evidence of shifting us from a. It's going to help regulate the nervous system and it's going to connect you with the nature of who you are as a human, organic being of the earth, versus the messaging and the energy that comes from culture. Culture is something that we create as a community, but it is also a fad. It's also a fad and I don't mean that none of it's true or real or valuable, but it changes as the need for the human changes, and I think the culture that we define in this present day isn't defined often by the community. We have to really look at what is the community really wanting and needing right now? Right, so, being connected with the earth is helping you connect in with a bigger picture of who you are.

Speaker 1:

Dancing, dancing with music is going to help you take different shapes in your body and help you get curious about different senses, sensations, as you move in new ways where you let the skin of your body meet the music. Right, the music is. There's rhythm, there's pulse and this is, we know, a universal language that helps people journey, that evokes emotion. Yes, there could be messaging through words, but there is just a natural pulse of the way that our body responds vibrationally. Right, we are vibrational beings of energy responds to different frequencies of music.

Speaker 1:

It's everything I'm learning right now in my embodied leadership program as a DJ is how do I take someone on a transformational journey through their body in a way that first they can come in and feel safe and grounded, and then they move into their creativity and maybe a little bit more power, and then they can dissolve some of that energy and then they have a new. There's a new expression, there's a new vision, there's a new perspective and now they're connected to the whole right, like it's this whole hero's journey through the chakra systems. It's a really beautiful experience, but we have to start with the rootedness. We have to start with the groundedness, so connecting to nature, to know what's real. How do you connect? How do you feel safe? Really, establishing that for yourself is a great first of all, a great way to start the journey of real self-acceptance. Where do you feel safe in your body? What feels naturally at ease and can you tune into that? Does bringing your hand onto your heart and taking a deep breath and opening your eyes wide, does that create a sense of groundedness, using the imagery of a grounding cord entering the earth to root you in your body? Because it's the mind that creates the disconnect about the body, often the judgments about how we should look, how we should be, what we say, how we breathe, what we are doing, what we're not doing. So it's actually the mind and not actually the state of the body that's creating all of the rules, right? So first we have to come into a state of the parasympathetic nervous system being turned on so we can find some relief, we can find a natural catharsis to then explore and and you get to decide how you want to feel safe in your body.

Speaker 1:

A question that I want you to answer right now, without thinking what about your body? Are you grateful for what's your favorite thing? And it doesn't have to be like an aesthetic thing. I love thinking about my spine. My spine amazing, just amazing. The shapes that it spine, my spine, amazing, just amazing. The shapes that it takes. It's so cool.

Speaker 1:

How can you connect with that part of you that you think is you're just so grateful for, that helps you feed your children, um, caress your loved ones, make food, go gather your garden, maybe read, like what is the thing that you love to do? Sing, dance, bathe, kiss just that one thing. And can you come back to that and dive into the energy that is created when you think about that? One part of your body Could be an organ, it could be a piece of hair, and then using that as a jumping point to continue to build your bridge of self-acceptance. And so the results of this connection, connecting to self-acceptance through the present moment, through the body, is going to release some tension. Through the body is going to release some tension. And then what it does is it allows for some space for a new perspective, right, and it also shifts your attention to placing your attention on what is real right.

Speaker 1:

My intention is to feel safe and grounded and to accept I'm right here, right now. Now, what do I think about my wrinkles Now? What do I think about my wrinkles Now. What do I think about the number on the scale Now. What do I think about that thing that I said yesterday that no one else is thinking about anymore, like when I tripped and fell into the door at the yoga studio? Right, when you make space, you get access to higher states of thinking, different perspectives. Until you make space, we get stuck. We get stuck and the root chakra is either overly activated or under activated.

Speaker 1:

So this is my invitation to you this week we all could have a deeper sense of self-acceptance and you could start with what do you already really love and accept about yourself? And diving into that sense of belonging, that sense of groundedness, that sense of I am here and I have the right to belong. And if that feels really not good in your body, the connecting to the earth and then connecting to what is that thing about your body that you are so grateful for. I would love to hear about your journey with this, how this lands for you, and know that this is the type of work we do together in one-on-one coaching, where we really get to explore these needs, these basic rights of being human, that, when they go unmet, there is a disharmony in the body that keeps us stuck, keeps us stuck in our habitual thinking and our habitual patterns, and it's time to go beyond that and journey beyond that. I absolutely think you're amazing. I'm so grateful for you being here. Have an amazing week.

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.