Using gratitude to bypass an urge

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, I am so thrilled you're here. Here we are another week and time is moving. I wanted to give you a little life update because sometimes I share things with you and just so you know what's going on with me. So if you've been following for a while, you know we moved out of our mountain home and I don't know how much I've told you all about this. I can't remember from one podcast to the next, but we are on the move again. We purchased a camper that we are remodeling. We are in the process of remodeling and I wanted to share this with you because we had first been staying in an apartment in Portland where, when Matthew was finishing up a job that he had to do there, and then we moved over to not too far, to Matthew's childhood home, which is about just out a suburb of outside of Portland and where his stepmother currently lives she's out of town on an adventure, and so we went over there to start remodeling the camper. And something that I realized about myself through self-awareness and through not buffering with alcohol, is that transitions require awareness. Transitions require intentional presence so that you can meet your own needs because things are changing around you right Our bodies and the human experience we habituate very easily. Now we have the capacity to experience all emotions, right. It's like I heard this in a class that I was taking this week where a woman had shared. You know, it's not just about regulating your nervous system so that we're not feeling resistant, so that we're not feeling stressed or that we're not feeling anxiety. We're working with the nervous system and an opportunity in an intentional way and this is all the work we do here on the show and in the program to expand our capacity to be able to be in transition, to be able to deal with the ups and downs of life and stressors and, when the unexpected happens, right that we don't lose our shit and just turn to numbing out and avoiding our life, right. Like on another thing that I'll say, I have so many little quips from this week that really were just awesome. I was taking doing a Kundalini class this morning and the teacher, kia Miller, who I've often referenced here, said just decide that the resistance is not a problem. Like, if you want to work with resistance, do a Kundalini class. We had to do this one Kriya where you hold your arms up over your head and you chant this one mantra over and over again. And she said she goes, we're going to do Sat Kriya for 10 minutes. And I literally said I love 10 minutes. And then I committed, I just decided it wasn't a problem. So what if you just decide that resistance isn't a problem? And so that's what I did for myself. We were in this new environment and there's kind of stuff all over the place and then remodeling itself is chaos, right. You really have to settle into it and I really had to shift my focus from the end, like the end result supported me, but I really wanted to be. The satisfaction is going to come from the presence, right. The satisfaction is going to come from being fully engaged in what I'm doing, because it doesn't really matter what you're doing, and that was the coaching that I gave to myself. I was like what else could I be doing? And in any moment, in any experience, in any moment, I can decide what's satisfying. Like it's just an experience that I get to have in this life, and there's not really one experience that is more impactful than another. It's what I get to decide or even more enjoyable than another. So I was kind of in the place of rushing and wanting it done and wanting to just be like in our new, this new home that we're building for ourselves. And what I realized is right here, right now, I have the ability to enjoy myself. I have a roof over my head, I have heat, we have running water, we have a space and the luxury of being able to even remodel this camper. That was honestly perfectly fine. It was just terribly ugly on the inside, and so that is what I wanted to talk to you about today, because we are if you're listening to this, live. We are coming in to the season of magic, the season of gratitude, the season of giving and receiving and the darker days where we want to fill with the light from the inside. We want to create the environment. We want to create light in our environment. Right, that warm, that cozy, and I would definitely recommend going back for the last. This is probably the fourth holiday episode I've done. I can't even remember, but every year I've done an episode around supporting yourself around the holidays, and there's definitely a lot of good stuff in there. Now, before we get into this idea of buffering with gratitude, I want to plug the stop drinking and start living course, the portal of empowerment. It is live. Enrollment is available to you now. This is a wrap around holistic course that meets you, not just alcohol, meets you mind, body, heart and soul so that you can become the center of change and learn to do what you think alcohol has been doing for you on your own. But the best part about it is that it literally applies to every other area of your life. So when we talk here. I mean, the last couple episodes have been about what? How are you seeing the world and how is that impacting your desire to drink? Right, because when you change how you see the world and when you change how you see yourself, then what you're left with is a chemical addiction, right, which which you can move through. But when you get to reframe and have a new perspective and a new mindset shift about your entire life, you are building that inner fire, that inner passion, because you're seeing life in a new way and the course builds all of that for you, right, it is what is going to keep driving you. It is at an extremely low introductory rate. I did this for the holiday season. I did this so that you could get ahead of the new year, because taking your last sip isn't the first step. You get to start this program and start to shift the conversation you're having with yourself and start to be curious during this most potent time where you're going to be, in a lot of ways, out of your normal environment, even if you're not engaging in holiday celebrations. There's going to be some something different about the day to day circumstances, right, and those are the perfect opportunities to get curious about the story that you've been creating and deciding for yourself what's the story that you want to write for the future. You get to do that, and the best part about enrolling now in the program is that it is a one-time flat fee rate where it is for the life of the program, and so any additional bonuses when we do updates and my plan for the program is to be having a live monthly gathering you will have access to all of that, and when those additions happen, the price will more than likely change. So I wanted to make this available to everyone. Right now. It is available to you at $249. And you can sign up right now it's on demand and participate in a beautiful commencement ceremony private commencement ceremony me and you in there together and it sets the tone for the mindset shift that you need to have. So it is full of mindfulness and mindset practices and it's really taking the podcast and applying it and studying it in a new way by mining your own genius, right. So there are these companion journaling sheets in there that are going to help. There are posing questions to help you go deeper, to actually see what your brain says and have to think new thoughts on purpose. So you're really stretching your brain, which also, in turn, helps, is stretching your capacity to experience resistance, and you get to decide right now that it's just not a problem, that resistance isn't a problem. And you get to decide right now how do I want to show up for myself to solve this? I made a little post. I was reading some of my old thoughts from a program I had did. It was like 50 thoughts that were, you know, useful thinking, and it was. I was like, oh, some of these are really good, I should share them, but I just put this on an Instagram post. Postponement makes things harder for longer, right, and what you do with alcohol is you postpone the inevitable. You not only postpone the need to eventually have to look at alcohol, unless you just decide you've resigned yourself. You've resigned yourself to a life of the effects of alcohol, which I know isn't true for you, because you wouldn't be here listening to this If there wasn't a pull for you to want to go deeper in your life. So you can just set that on the table and take it off of your brain, right? But the other things that you're postponing are all of the things that you are avoiding, right? The just the feeling, sensations in your body, having conversations, being present with people and being your authentic self in a fun, celebratory way, right? And so one of the ways that you can do that is to stop postponing, but is to buffer with gratitude. And in the coaching world we talk about buffering a lot, and buffering is really just lessening or moderating the impact of something. So alcohol is something that you use to buffer a situation right, it's to buffer your whatever emotion you're having or to lessen a feeling of awkwardness, even in a celebratory environment. So when people stop drinking, they often find another way to buffer. Right, they use sugar, they use food, they use TV. But what happens when we do that is we're not shifting the mindset around alcohol, we're not investigating our beliefs about the other things that are around us, in building, like a heat and a practice to start to transmute the, the old energy, right, because what we want to do is create a transformation, and you cannot create a transformation from like being stagnant and trying to create change with your old belief system. You can't do it. You have to move past in through that belief system and to create a new one, right, you have to transform it into something brand new. However, we can use thinking and emotions to our benefit because we have this amazing human brain and we have this ability to create emotions on demand. If we want to, using our human brain, we can use a buffer that actually benefits us right, so that it could lessen or moderate the impact of something. And one of the ways that we do this in the stop drinking and start living portal of empowerment is through the emotion of compassion. So we seek to understand why we feel the way we do from that firsthand experience and we learn the process of reparenting ourselves and in saying and when, shifting the conversation in our brain from I can't do this, this is too hard, you're never gonna do it. Why do you keep doing the same thing that you say you're not gonna do? And the shame and the judgment to yeah, of course you want to drink. It makes sense. Alcohol is addictive, but guess what? I'm here with you and I'm not going anywhere. And that's how we use the tool of compassion and understanding from the perspective of the compassionate witness. But this is an opportunity to look outward. So a lot of the work that we do in the client portal of empowerment is, instead of looking for external validation. We look for internal validation. But another way to get beyond your daily complaints is to get out of your own way. So when I committed this morning to this 10 minute Kriya that like I don't sometimes I, if it says sat Kriya in the description, I will not do that, that class, because I want to commit to the whole class and I like I was telling Matthew, sat Kriya is like my nemesis. But I went in, I went full in and what I decided was that there was an act of devotion. This was beyond me. This is my commitment to this life. This was commitment to the, to the beloved, this was the commitment to the divine right and my ability to just show up full, like full on, I'm here for it, bring it on right, and like. I'm not always on, but then I do when it doesn't feel good anymore, when my complaining and my um, you know, wanting things to be different and wanting the future to be here, now it doesn't, it feels like shit. Well, like now I have the opportunity to take personal responsibility for that and when I do, it feels way better. But you know, that is the journey of this life, is the forgetting and the remembering, forgetting that we have this beautiful ability to be the author of our own lives, that life can happen as us. Right, and this is the power that you have. So a lot of times when we can shift the perspective from like our own problems right, which rate in the world? You know, there are so many ways that we can offer gratitude for our lives. But when we look outward and we take the focus off of our problems and we focus, like, on support and helping someone else with their problems, now our problems don't seem so big. Right, and some of the work that I'm doing with my clients right now is that process. It's like how can we even shift the holiday season to like not be about you at all? Like what if it just wasn't about you? What if it was about you offering your presence? Right, and this isn't about like I'm always there and I do all the things. This isn't about being a martyr. It's the opposite of that, right, it's like I'm just going to be here, fully present for everyone. I don't have to take responsibility for everything. So it's like show up and decide how you want to do this. Can you do this from a place of love and understanding for what you want this season to mean to you, or do you want to do it from a place of a victim and a martyr? Right, like, decide that right now and just start to notice your thinking. And one of the things I went I was so blessed to go see Lauren Hill this weekend. I was invited to go to the concert she's doing a 25 year anniversary of her amazing album, the Miseducation of Lauren Hill, and she's such a powerhouse icon and there was this amazing DJ that opened up for her and she was like we have the privilege right now to be here and enjoy ourselves. So, get up and leave all your troubles, leave all your worries on this floor tonight. Right, because who are you not to be happy? Right, who like I say that to myself a lot who am I to not be happy? Who am I to not enjoy the privilege that I have right here, right now? Right, and there are so many people that don't even have control over their lives because other people are taking brutal action and force on them. Right, and I do think, having that perspective, like we can hold the both and like I can feel like shit and that's okay and know that there's people that are losing innocent people losing their lives. But I can also stop myself and remind myself I have the privilege of being safe, of being healthy, of choosing like my problems become so much smaller and I can step into gratitude and happiness for what I have, because, as long as our basic, my philosophy is, as long as my basic needs are being met, everything else is a bonus. Everything else is a bonus. So do I want to continue to complain about the roof that I have over my head and my mother-in-law that's letting me stay at her house for free? No, not really. I want to get my ass to work so that I can finish remodeling this camper. That's going to be so awesome. We got so much work done. We pulled some serious late nights. It was fun, though. So buffering with gratitude. What do you have that you would already want? Make a list of that and, for the next 40 days, commit to when, every time that you are thinking about your problems, I want you to write down a reason that it's not a problem and counteract that with the thought of gratitude, because gratitude is available to us in every single moment. And it's cliche, but it works right. Positive thinking works, and I'm not talking about, like toxic positive, being toxically positive. I'm talking about reminding yourself of the truth of your reality, right? And I don't buffer my heart emotions, but sometimes it's okay, because a lot of times I'm just complaining, right? A lot of times we're just complaining and we're focusing. When I was talking about Andrea Gibson, in that poem that she wrote, it's like am I focusing on who's not loving me or who I'm loving, right? Like, where's our attention? And when we can bring our attention to gratitude, we can override even the resistance of you know, I decided that this holiday season I'm not going to drink. I'm going to show up. This is, you know, you, I'm going to show up fully present, fully engaged and with full with my heart, full of gratitude, and see how that overrides the FOMO of you know, having a fuzzy head, right? Because in reality, like that's all it really is is you just get like a little fuzzy, and so what about the gratitude of being able to be fully present and be accepted for who? You are Right, and you know that's not the truth in every situation. But we also decide who we spend our time with For the most part, like I was just listening to this podcast series called Witch, where people were persecuted and burned, and you know, men and women, a lot of this took place initially in Scotland, the witch trials. Like, people weren't even claiming themselves to be witches, nor were they witches, and you know, the majority of them were women. But, like, I can call myself a witch and not be burned and I can call myself a priestess and we can, you know, declare a lot of alternative identities and be safe. Now, that is not 100%, but we do have the privilege of doing that right when not everywhere they're, they do not everywhere. Not every person has the opportunity. So, thinking about where you are accepted for who you are and how you show up, and that you have the choice of who you want to spend your time with, so buffering with gratitude this holiday season I am all about, and if it doesn't work, then change your circumstance. Like, if you have to show up and you feel like you truly can't be yourself around people because they are mean or rude or they don't get it or they say nasty things like don't go. If you're listening to this, you, I don't think I have any listeners that are under the age of 18. You have a choice and I don't. You know it doesn't matter what the consequences are, what someone's going to be mad at you for not going to their party. So what? Take care of yourself, take personal responsibility and be grateful that you have a choice, that you have the freedom and the privilege to make decisions in alignment for your future self Right and buffering with gratitude is going to create sensations inside of you that are going to feel inspiring and motivating and they're going to start creating the heat and the that, that passion inside of you to keep going. So practice also, when you notice yourself in the victim mentality or in the martyr mentality, take a step back. Notice what those thoughts feel like in your body the thought, the, the sensation in your body. Separate from the thought and then have a go to um gratitude statement that you fully believe. Right, like I have fresh drinking water cut right out of the tap unlimited, it's unlimited. Look seriously, that's crazy. I get to drink all of it all day long and I get to bathe in clean drinking water and flush my toilet with it, which is really crazy. Remind yourself of that and think and notice the shift that happens in your body. Okay, it's going to be an amazing week for you. Follow the link in the show notes to go and check out what is available in the portal of empowerment. Go ahead and do that right now. You is going to be the biggest gift in the greatest gift you will ever give yourself. It is such a powerful, powerful way to start to shift your perspective and it can become a ritual. It can become a sacred sanctuary for you to go to when you need refuge, when you need solace, when you need a shift in perspective. That is how I created it. I created it as a ritual, as a temple, as a portal for you to transform and to be and really step into the version of yourself that is just waiting to come online. I am so grateful for your presence and I couldn't do it without you. Thank you so much for being here and have a wonderful week. I'll talk to you soon. What I want you to know more than anything is that you don't have a drinking problem, that your relationship to alcohol is all about your thinking. It is true that you can drink less and desire alcohol less, and then, in turn, make new choices by becoming aware of your thoughts and shifting your perspective. I have discovered the five myths of quitting drinking. The same thing that keeps us stuck, that we keep doing again and again and again, and then the five shifts in your thinking that you will need to finally get the relief that you've been waiting for and that you deserve on your own. This process is available to you right now in a free on-demand training, and all you need to do is click the link in this description of this podcast episode or on my website, marywagstaffcoachcom.