SUMMARY KEYWORDS

drinking, building, self esteem, society, family, alcoholism, self medicate, self-sabotage, validation, emotional stability, locus of control, exhausting, coping mechanism, happy, step back, important, want, story, tell ourselves, excuses, enough, later, deconstruct, thoughts, process, blocks, obstacles, guilt, allow, deserve, self doubts, inner critic, mean girl, imposter syndrome, history, mistakes, people pleasing, evaluating yourself, external standards, protect yourself, dysfunctional, relationship, prioritizing, needs, tapping into, honoring, resolve, negative feelings, deflect, experiences, skills, prayer, meditation, journaling, self care, developing, support, community, share, check in, call, feelings, vent, listen, safe space, shame, empathy for self, strong, worthy, deserving, good things, honest, emotions, solutions, recovery, time, heal, wounds, past, pain, resentment, core issue, triggered, resonates, baggages, sort out, let go, responsibility, understand, compassion, transition, alcohol free, lifestyle, make peace, move forward, quit drinking, confront, decisions, action, laws of neuroscience, reshaping, subconscious mind, vision board, images, quotes, motivational, reticulating activation, law of attraction, energy, atoms, writing, gratitude, survived, vulnerable, social, routine, redefine, religion, practice, focus, abundance, forgiveness, boundaries, saying yes to yourself, need, tolerate, limits, treat you better, secure, fabulous, friend, superpower, magic sauce, RAIN meditation, saving, nurture, relationship, self pity, reassurance, The Five Minute Journal®, inspirational quote, intention, positive affirmation, celebrate, wins, moment, break, bonus, mantras, financial security, worried, fear, reframing, optimism, curiosity, openness, evolution, outcome, mindset, ease and flow, investing in, accountability, reinventing, implement, class, do the work, universe, parenting styles, unfolding, vibe, tribe, values, contingency plan, resistance, trauma bonding, growing, dream, instinct, reinforcements, Metabolic Balance Coach 

SPEAKERS: Casey McGuire Davidson + Arlina Allen

00:02

Welcome to the Hello Someday Podcast, the podcast for busy women who are ready to drink less and live more. I’m Casey McGuire Davidson, ex-red wine girl turned life coach helping women create lives they love without alcohol. But it wasn’t that long ago that I was anxious, overwhelmed, and drinking a bottle of wine and night to unwind. I thought that wine was the glue, holding my life together, helping me cope with my kids, my stressful job and my busy life. I didn’t realize that my love affair with drinking was making me more anxious and less able to manage my responsibilities.

In this podcast, my goal is to teach you the tried and true secrets of creating and living a life you don’t want to escape from.

Each week, I’ll bring you tools, lessons and conversations to help you drink less and live more. I’ll teach you how to navigate our drinking obsessed culture without a bus, how to sit with your emotions, when you’re lonely or angry, frustrated or overwhelmed, how to self soothe without a drink, and how to turn the decision to stop drinking from your worst case scenario to the best decision of your life.

I am so glad you’re here. Now let’s get started.

Arlina, I am so happy to have you on and excited to talk about self esteem, how important it is and how we sometimes need to rebuild it after we quit drinking to get back to becoming the person we’re meant to be. So tell us a little bit about yourself and the work you do.

 

1:44  

Well, first of all, I am so excited that you were having me on your podcast. You have done such a great job so far with all your interviews and everything is so good. So kudos to you. So Yeah, I am a podcaster myself, I’m a teacher, I am a Coach. And yeah, my focus is on building self esteem or really rebuilding self esteem because I feel like as little kids we start off with good self esteem but society and family and life in general has a way of deconstructing, right? And then some of us have what they refer to as an alcohol use disorder, or alcoholism. I know people, it’s kind of like a dirty word. But at the end of the day, it’s the same thing, right? It’s a tool that we use to self medicate or distract from, you know, our current moment, which is usually a moment that is filled with underlying feelings of like, not being good enough. So my life’s work really is to help women find a way to have such good self esteem that they are operate are operating from like an internal self validation framework, as opposed to needing external validation because that even when that external validation is a taskmaster is like you can never be good enough and the tide changes frequently. So it’s hard to maintain any kind of emotional stability when you’re, you know, locus of control is outside yourself. So,

 

3:28  

Yeah, I mean, I think this team, I think that’s so important, right? And we always, you know, as girls, as soon as we like you said, we used to have self esteem and then somewhere along the way, we were sort of taught that what other people think of us is almost more important than how we feel. So you’re taught that unless you please your teachers and your parents and your boss and everyone else, that you’re doing something wrong. And it’s, it’s exhausting. It’s an exhausting way to live and the way we live is by drinking when we get overwhelmed or upset or anxious or insecure. So I completely agree with you that once you sort of put down that coping mechanism, you have to figure out how to be okay, living in your own skin. And that’s a really hard thing to do. But it’s also, I mean, the most important work we can do in our lifetimes.

 

4:23  

Absolutely. I mean, so what you’re really talking about is, you know, asking the right questions, like, if we start asking the right questions, you know, what is the one thing that’s going to make me happy? Or, you know, it’s, it’s all about what we think of ourselves, you know, it’s regaining that control back and in our society as women, man, we just cannot win, right? You’re too fat. You’re too thin. You’re too opinionated. You don’t have a voice. The other thing is you need to have a voice and you have a voice. It’s like, wow, what? You’re such a bitch. Yeah. We just can’t win. So we need to take a step back and…and just… Wait a minute, what’s really important to me? You know, is it what I think of me? And what is it that I really want? You know, I think most of us don’t allow, we don’t allow ourselves to want what we really want, because it’s affected by what other people think of us or our responsibilities to others. So, yeah, it’s important to in this part of the class, the reinventing class that I teach is, you know, what is it that you really want? 

Yeah, let’s, let’s start there. And then we can talk about the other things, like, what’s keeping you from getting what you really want? Because usually it’s when I ask people, it’s like, Well, why don’t you have what you want? What comes next is the story that we tell ourselves, it’s typically around excuses. It’s typically around, I don’t have enough time or I’ll do it later. Or, you know, I have to. There’s something I need first or I need help from somebody or so we put on these obstacles in front of our own way. So it’s really important to sort of deconstruct our thought process as to what really is what really are the blocks. And I would propose for your listeners to consider that guilt is one of the obstacles to gaining what we want. We typically allow into our lives what we feel we deserve, right? And everybody has sort of like this thermostat, we don’t get too high, we don’t get too low. And when we get too high, we have these self doubts that come in, right? It’s the whole inner critic mean girl imposter syndrome. It’s like, you know, it’s we’re the only ones who know where all the bodies are buried. Right? We know, we have the complete history of all our mistakes since the beginning of time. And, you know, there’s a million reasons why women have so much guilt. I think, being a mom gives you inherent guilt, just not being able to live up to society’s standards gives you lots of guilt. So I would propose the guilt is something that definitely needs to be dealt with head on.

 

7:11  

So that you can get what you want, you can let yourself have what you want.

 

7:15  

Well, there’s so much in what you just said. And there’s so much to unpack there. I mean, I don’t think that any woman listening to this would not be nodding their head at the different concepts that we’ve kind of touched on, right talking about. People pleasing and evaluating yourself from external standards are what other people think. Then talking about trying to live up to those impossible standards, your inner critic voice feeling like an imposter, trying to protect yourself, and then guilt. How do we unpack that and how does it actually relate back to self esteem? Because a lot of times people say, Yes, I’m people pleasing or Yes, I’m prioritizing other needs over my own. But it’s not a direct link to, you know, self esteem or a dysfunctional relationship with yourself or not tapping into and honoring what you need. Like, how do you get from one place to the other?

 

8:19  

Well, let’s let’s start with, you know, what compels us to over drink, let’s say.

 

8:25  

Great, great, great place to start. Yeah.

 

8:29  

Yeah, because it’s so funny. I recently commented, you know, I tried to offer support, and I have a women’s group online, a Facebook group, and I participate in some other ones too. And the common thing I hear is like, like yesterday, it was like, I’m so mad at alcohol, like someone had a resentment towards alcohol and I, you know, but if we take a step back, you know, alcohol use disorder is just a symptom of a deeper problem, right? It’s just a symptom. That’s all it is. And we and we… You’re compelled to self medicate because we don’t know how to manage or resolve our negative feelings, right? That’s where that’s where the party starts, right? That’s what is at the root causes. We don’t, you’re gonna go through life, right? We walk through life and it’s a jungle out there and they’re monkeys throwing shade at you. It’s like, yeah, you need a way to sort of process and deflect all the negative experiences and feelings really is what it is. So most of us don’t have those good coping skills and so we reach for unhealthy ones because those are obvious and those are in our face all the time. Like the mommy drinking wine drinking culture is huge. It’s like, this will solve your problem and let’s laugh about how challenging our kids are. And that’s I think Rachel Hollis or somebody was, did a little video and she was like, hiding in the bathroom drinking from her kids. And wow, that really broke my heart. Because it’s an inability to manage stress and so what I typically recommend is healthy coping skills. Right? 

 

So I do a morning routine of prayer meditation and journaling and, and part of my self care is developing a support community that I can reach out to, to do like a check in call where the check in call is like, you know, I have maybe four or five women I can reach out to and just check in and the check in call consists of, Hey, I just thought I’d check in on you how you’re doing…How are you doing? How is your day going? And then you shoot. Then I will share a little bit about what’s going on in my life. And so then, you know, that’s it. We’re, we’re current, right? I’m current with that person, and then I do it three or four more times during that week and I’m current with a bunch of people that way. When, when problems arise, like when the shit hits the fan. I have five people like, If one person is not available, I go to the next one. If that person isn’t available, I go to the next one. Because I need to be able to process my feelings without having to spend a lot of time in the backstory. You know, a lot of times people are not accustomed to. And I know I wasn’t accustomed to calling somebody and just being like, Hey, I just need to vent for five minutes. Or I’m gonna vent at you for about five minutes. And then I need you to either provide me a solution or agree with me. Give me a “poor baby”. Yeah, I tell my friends what I need from them so that they know how to respond appropriately. Sometimes I just need to vent and I don’t need you to fix my feelings. Yeah, sometimes I just need someone to hold a safe space for me so I can be sad for a minute and just validate my feelings, right? But the whole process of, like, a morning routine with a prayer meditation and journaling, that’s a way for me to resolve my negative feelings. So that I’m not kidding… carrying them around with me. And that relates to self esteem. Because if I’m not carrying around all this guilt and shame, you know, if I have empathy for myself, then my self esteem is strong. And from that place, I can feel worthy and deserving of allowing good things into my life. And that’s really the whole point of all this right, is to be able to allow good things into my life.

 

12:24  

I love when you also said about meeting people who you can call when you need them, who know the backstory. And that jumped out at me because for a lot of the women I work with, who I coach, many of them tell me that I’m the first person that they’ve been honest with, about not just drinking but all the thoughts and emotions and worrying and trying to moderate and all the things going on in their lives and how they feel when they wake up in the morning. And they don’t even share that with their husband, with our partner, with their best girlfriends because they don’t want them to be watching them and judge them and you know, they kind of want, you know, I should be able to deal with this on my own, I should get my shit together. Right. And so that’s what I think so many of us are missing is having someone to call when you’re frustrated about your kids, your husband, the phone company, whatever it is, but someone who knows the backstory on how drinking is calls to you how it’s unhealthy how it makes you feel in the morning. So that… that’s the shorthand, right you need because this, this sort of trigger is the phone company. The backstory you need to know is that drinking is not a great solution for you. So we need to like, get you feeling better, get you feeling strong. And it’s all tied in with self esteem, right? Because it’s all like all we’re trying to do is make feelings go away when we’re drinking or let other feelings take over. And you know, a lot of that interaction Voice is ourselves beating ourselves down to help ourselves feel small, so that we don’t get criticized. Like, it’s just, it’s a chicken and egg, that there’s almost, you know, the only way to stop is to stop and to dig in and say, the stories I’m telling myself, they aren’t true and they aren’t serving me.

 

14:20  

Yeah, I mean, yeah, and you said a lot there and Well, I mean, it’s a mess, right? What a mess. You’re a mess that we’re left with. I mean, here we are. It’s like wow, this is a huge mess. You know, it’s like how do we go through life like I’m telling you the phone company I had an experience with I think was dish or something. And I was so frustrated. Can I.. I can curse of our 

 

Oh yeah, person. 

 

Oh my god, I have this bitch on the phone that would not listen to me and kept cutting me off. And I was like, I’m gonna fucking kill you. Where do you live? But it’s like, here’s the funny thing. It’s like when you get into recovery, you start doing all this self examination. Like why am I so angry? Why am I so frustrated? Why am I so exhausted? It’s like, and I needed a process to sort through all my stuff. I needed to identify. You know, I had to here’s, you know what, you know what it really is, what it boils down to Casey is, the time does not heal all wounds, the pain waits. Yes. So, here we are carrying around all this pain and resentment from our past. And we’re like this boil, ready to explode and somebody we just brush up against somebody and we explode. Right? So that lady on the phone that I experienced, you know, she was just brushing up against an already inflamed and painful self and emotion. Right. And I just exploded on her, you know, because I had not dealt with the core issue, right, it’s like I had so much baggage that just bumping into somebody just caused it to explode this way. People this, this term of being triggered. 

 

Mm hmm is such a, like, that wasn’t a thing. 10 years ago, people didn’t talk about being triggered. But it resonates for everybody because we’re all carrying around so much baggage that we do get triggered all the time. How about we unpack the baggage? Yes. How about we look into the past and resolve it? We can…we can sort out what’s ours. We can sort out what is ours and what is not ours. Because when you let go, what’s not your responsibility? You can bear the weight of what is right. 

 

Yeah, it’s so important to do and it’s important to have somebody who understands what it’s like to overcome the drinking problem because that person is going to have a level of empathy and understanding that somebody who has never struggled with that issue is going to understand, right? Like we need empathy and compassion and love and support. As we transition from a drinking lifestyle to an alcohol free lifestyle. We need to, we need to have friends who get it.

    

If you’re listening to this episode and have been trying to take a break from drinking, but keep starting and stopping and starting again, I want to invite you to take a look at my on demand coaching course, The Sobriety Starter Kit. The Sobriety Starter Kit is an online self study, sober coaching course that will help you quit drinking and build a life you love without alcohol without white knuckling it or hating the process. The course includes the exact step-by-step coaching framework I work through with my private coaching clients, but at a much more affordable price than one-on-one coaching. And The Sobriety Starter Kit is ready, waiting and available to support you anytime you need it, when it fits into your schedule.  You don’t need to work your life around group meetings or classes at a specific day or time. This course is not a 30 day challenge, or a one day at a time approach. Instead, it’s a step-by-step formula for changing your relationship with alcohol. The course will help you turn the decision to stop drinking from your worst case scenario to the best decision of your life. You will sleep better and have more energy, you’ll look better and feel better, you’ll have more patience and less anxiety. And with my approach you won’t feel deprived or isolated in the process. So if you’re interested in learning more about all the details, please go to www.sobrietystarterkit.com. You can start at any time and I would love to see you in the course.

 

I love that and I love the work you’re doing because it’s so true, right? The issue that everyone has to deal with, you know, everyone has something different. That’s the sort of presenting problem or what’s underneath them drinking. But self esteem is a huge one. And, you know, whatever the issue is underneath, why you drank, why you want to numb out, why you’re leaning on it as your main coping mechanism is the work you need to do. And that’s the good work. That’s the work that you actually get to do when you stop drinking so you can finally resolve it and make peace with it and move forward feeling good, but I feel like so for many of us and why I love working with women who quit drinking is Yeah, you ever drank it’s not the biggest deal in the world. You’re not a horrible person. You know, been there, done that. 

 

Like yeah, of course we all do that. Anyway, let’s talk about how you’re moving forward. You know, as opposed to working with someone who doesn’t have that history drinking, who, for some godforsaken reason could be horrified that you over drank and woke up with a hangover every day. 

 

I’m like, Yeah. I did that. So many women do that, you don’t even know.

 

20:19  

Yeah, and here’s the funny thing. Is that not I don’t mean funny, but here’s the peculiar thing is that there’s judgment around the drinking disorder. Yeah, right. There isn’t as much judgment around overspending because that can be hidden, right? Like nobody knows how much debt you have, or I have or how much debt the neighbor has, right? But that can be super destructive. But nobody can see that. Overeating can be a big problem for a lot of people. And, you know, my trainer always says what you eat in private, shows up in public. So I guess to some extent, you can’t really hide that either. But there is a lot of shame around… around alcohol, people feel like it’s a moral issue. But sometimes, you know, we cross the line and we lose the ability to choose. But we can lose that ability to choose around, you know, spending money and eating and things like that. But none of that is the point. It’s not how we act out. It’s what’s causing us to act out. That is the question. And for me, everything always boils down to how we feel about ourselves. Right? 

 

And that’s why I don’t care. You know, that’s why it’s like every year over the last 26 years that I’ve been in, like the recovery space, everything comes back down to how I how do I feel? How do I really feel about myself? You know, Who am I in the world? What labels have I adopted and what beliefs Do I have about myself? What if I decided that that’s true about me? Right, and the funny thing about beliefs as they are not necessarily rooted in facts. And facts are so much easier to believe, than just an idea that was implanted into your subconscious from childhood. Right? As adults, we have the opportunity to, you know, take a look at ourselves. And that is really like the ironic blessing of anything like alcohol use disorder, drug addiction, food addiction, trauma, it’s an opportunity to do some self examination because, you know, like I said, the pain weighs and it gets worse and worse and worse until you deal with it. And so we’re either going to suffer the pains of our, I refer to it as like an obsession or a distraction, right, we either suffer the pains of that, pay the price of that, or we pay the price of healthy coping skills, which is to confront your feelings. The reason why we do it with support is because it’s hard. It’s hard to face those feelings alone, we actually need each other. You know, we don’t do this, we don’t heal in isolation and in darkness. Right. 

 

And it’s not about the problem. It’s about the solution. You know, I don’t care what the problem is, the solution is the same. 

 

So tell us about the process you take women through and the work you do, because I think it’s so interesting.

 

23:27  

Yeah, so the idea is that we only allow into our lives, what we feel we deserve. And if we change the way we believe, about what we feel we deserve, right, that believing in the feeling is so important, because if we can change that, and if and when we do decide to change those things, the outcome is different. Because the questions about ourselves change. Let me just unpack that a little bit. So every, like, when you’re confronted with a situation you make decisions based on the information that you have, right, based on what you feel like you’re capable of what the potential of the future might be, and we make decisions with limited information. So when we are presented with new information, we can make different decisions. And then from that place, take a different action. And then and then I really believe in the laws of cause and effect, when you take a different action, you get a different effect, right? But a lot of us don’t even know where to start, right. 

 

But it all starts with identifying and releasing some of those negative beliefs. So what I do is I first start with, you know, let’s start with the end in mind. I like to start with what is the shiny, the bright, shiny price. And the bright shiny prize is what do you really want, right? And then I have girls do these writing exercises, where they write out their perfect day, from beginning to end. And what that does, we’re working with the laws of like, neuroscience and reshaping our subconscious mind. And so we started thinking about what does your perfect day look like? Who are you with? Where are you? Where do you wake up? Like, what does the bed look like, that you wake up and then every single like, what does it smell like? What does it feel like? We try to get all five senses involved. And you get an idea of what your perfect day looks like. And I’m talking about no limitations. You know, what size are you, what size pants are you wearing? And it’s like, what does that man look like? How much money is in the bank? You know? Are you at the beach? Are you in the mountains? Are you at the lake? Just play wildly in your imagination and that becomes the carrot. And spoiler alert, there’s no stick.

 

25:50  

Because life itself is enough of a stick. I feel what do they do when they put that out? Like I’m a huge vision board person. So you would be oh my god dish effect. I’ve got like 20 vision boards up – my poor husband. But I swear to God, they helped me get sober and and forward in my life and change the words I say to myself. So I can imagine if your dream is to live in Paris, or visit Paris and ride a moped, or you know, whatever it is, and run a marathon like images of that in quotes of how you feel and would be so motivational just to keep your goal front and center.

 

26:28  

So here’s the funny little trick. And this is how I can prove the subconscious mind actually works. When you go shopping for a car. Suddenly he sees that car everywhere. It’s because your mind is focused on that, right? You know that it’s possible, you know that you’re going to go get a car, and suddenly you see that car everywhere. And that’s what Tony Robbins calls that reticulating activation, I don’t know if that’s even a thing. But it is so interesting that it’s like what you think about you, brings about that’s kind of like, the bottom line of like the law of attraction, right? What you think about, it’s really what you think about. And what you feel about because we are at our very core made up of energy, right? All the way down to our atoms. Atoms are, you know, molecules made up of atoms. And atoms are held together by positive protons and negative neutrons as positive and negative energy at our very core. That’s what we’re made up of. 

 

And so it’s interesting how you think of that. 

 

And then you have a feeling, and that feeling carries energy with it. And another way you can validate that that’s true is, I know we’ve all walked into a room and you know, that expression, you could cut the tension with a knife. Mm hmm. Right? Like that’s the thing or you go to a concert and the energy is just electric, right? You can feel it. You know, we are at our very essence, like magnets are drawing to us or repelling from us at the level of thought and feeling. So this whole idea of the process that we go through is that we are Starting to get an idea of what it is that we really want. And then we begin to see ourselves living that situation.

 

So once you have the perfect day exercise, then the daily writing exercise is about being in gratitude. It’s a gratitude list. And then it’s a writing exercise. I do it to this day, daily. Yeah, I still write as if my goal has already happened. 

 

Mm hmm. Right. 

 

Like right now, I’m writing a book. And so I in my daily journaling exercise, it’s like I have the big perfect day, like what would the perfect day look like, but I also have like a daily, like, I have a goal in mind. And so I write about my daily goal, and it’s as if it’s already happened, like I am so happy and grateful now that I was able to tell my mom I was on the New York Times bestseller list. I am so happy now that I have the financial freedom to live anywhere in the world and be of service to women. You know, across the globe, you know what I mean? So it’s like I’m doing the writing. Because I’m feeling it, I am using my imagination. Einstein said, our most important, our most powerful tool is our imagination. And that’s what the vision board is. It’s like, you use your imagination to create a visual representation of what you want to attract. And as you focus on that, that’s how we manifest things. I mean, we’re taking action behind our ideas, it’s not like we’re just fantasizing and not taking, you know, sitting on a couch eating bon bons, that’s not happening. But it’s about once you see, like what your future self can do, then suddenly the steps between here and there become visible. You can start thinking Oh, like, if I took this action, if I took that action, you can kind of see the goal, and you can start walking towards that direction. So the whole beginning part of the process is to get an idea of what you really want, and then start feeling it as if it’s already happened. Right. So that’s like the Gaining phase of it. 

 

Yeah. And then the second phase is to address the resistance that comes up. Everybody has natural resistance to these ideas. It’s like we can get all fired up and motivated, you can go to a, you know, you can go to a pep rally, Tony Robbins that I get, you get all motivated. But what happens is, life starts to happen. It’s like you move through life. And, you know, we take in these, I mean, we are bombarded with millions of messages about how we’re not good enough all the time. Yeah.

 

30:32  

Even if you do all the work, you know, and get all excited. You’re going to move through life and then you’re going to attract some guilt. It just gets at that’s just how it is. And then you yourself, right, you’re, you’re sort of wired to try to keep yourself small, which means keeping yourself safe and not changing. So you can even throw up that internal resistance, right? You get so excited and then you’re like oh, but you If I achieve my huge dream, maybe I won’t spend as much time with my family. So I’m not going to do that yet, or people will think I’m kind of getting too big for myself.

 

31:09  

Too big for your britches. Yeah, they won’t wait. Yeah. They won’t like me. Yeah. And that’s, you know, and the thing is, we need community. We are social creatures, and we need each other, especially as women, I mean, that’s how women survived – it’s that we bond together in society, we help each other out, like when you have a little baby that I mean, that was the most vulnerable I’d ever been in my entire life. 

 

Right. And so we need each other as women. 

 

Yeah, so that’s part of that thermostat, right? Don’t… Don’t get too high. Don’t get too low. It’s like you don’t get to our survival. You don’t get too high of a survival. And so when you’re trying to go to that next level, it’s like how do you deal with your own internal resistance and most of it revolves around not being worthy or deserving of it. So how do I help women go through that?

 

So the second part of the phase is once you kind of get the idea of what it is that you want, then we have to deal with the natural resistance. And that’s why the morning self care routine is so important. It’s a, it’s a practice of, you know, shedding the guilt and shame, right? It’s self care, right? It’s like you care for yourself. And, you know,

 

32:24  

I was.. I was raised with religion, but I rejected it at, you know, in my early, probably late teens, early 20s. But the idea of a higher power has never really left me. And so in my recovery process, I was introduced to this idea that I could redefine what that meant. I could reject the ideas that didn’t really ever make sense to me. 

 

Right. I grew up in a Christian religion and, and there was this, I missed the probably the most fundamentally important part of the Christian world. Which was, the whole idea of Jesus was to come to the, to forgive? Right to forgive. And it’s like, oh, that’s, that’s absolving me of my guilt that I should be able to, right? And it’s like every religion and practice has a way of absolving you of guilt because that’s the human condition, right? I missed that. I got stuck on being perfect, like trying to live up to some impossible standard. And then there was this idea that my mom would burn in hell if she didn’t believe exactly the way, you know, in my mind. She didn’t believe that way. And I was like, Well, God must love my mom at least as much as I do. Right? They keep telling me how puny my brain is, and like, small human couldn’t possibly fathom the vastness. But he was gonna send mom to hell, that never made any sense to me. 

 

So when I got into recovery, they’re like, yeah, you can scrap that. You don’t have to buy into that. And so what made sense to me was that God was love and is… is as part of their universal laws and so that I’m a science girl so that I could buy into. Yeah, right. So that’s what I use to guide me. And I use the internal compass like I do a gut check, like your intuition. It’s like, you can almost tell what somebody else is thinking, you can feel it, actually. Right. You can be in the presence of somebody who’s smiling at you, but you can feel it that they either don’t get you or they don’t like you, you know what I mean? Like, they don’t accept you for some reason. So we’re very intuitive. And so you know, I think this whole process is about trusting your gut that that morning ritual of me turning my life over to like a higher power. That’s an important part because it kind of opens me up and it allows me like I might have an idea in my mind of what I think I want, but there might be something bigger and better for me. So in my mind, Do you do that with the women in your self esteem reinvent class as well? Like, what does that look like for them? Since everyone’s a little different? Yeah, so everybody gets to define their own concept of a higher power. 

 

But really, I talk in very loose terms about the morning ritual, like the morning self care practice. It doesn’t matter what specifically it looks. Like, what matters is that it fills you up. 

 

Yeah. Right. It allows you to release any guilt and shame. It sets an intention for the day, right? a focus on gratitude. Can’t you cannot go wrong with a focus on gratitude, right? Because what you focus on expands right, what you think about you bring about, if you’re grateful for the abundance that you already have, then more abundance will be attracted to you. It’s just how it works. Right? Those are the laws of the universe. 

 

So anyway, the first part is to get clear about what you want. And then the second part is how to deal with that resistance, which is the morning self care practice. And then in class we actually do what I take the women through what I call the self forgiveness process, really emotional.

 

36:14  

It’s really an emotional experience, because by the time we get to the forgiveness process, these women have all shared with each other, they’ve shared with me, and it’s become this really intimate, safe environment. And I asked them to write down things like, what are you guilty about, you can list your crimes, go ahead, your thought crimes, your past guilt, whatever it is, and everyone’s very quick to everybody knows right off the top of their head. They spend 10 minutes writing about what it is that they feel guilty about, right? And then we do sort of a group confession. Everybody, like, gets to unburden themselves of what they feel guilty about. And then when their hearts are like, wide open. We do take them through a guided meditation where I asked them to envision their little girl on the inside. 

 

Mm hmm. This is gonna make me cry because it’s always such an intense experience. But when you think about your little girl, I have a picture of my little girl sitting on my desk, and about four or five years old. That little girl is still inside. She still needs you. She needs your protection. She’s innocent. Right? And so I have them envision their little girl and we talk to her. And we tell her that you know what, we’re all grown up now. And we’re going to take care of you. You are not guilty. You are carrying around burdens that were never yours. 

 

Yeah, right. 

 

If you had known better, you would have done better. Right and you were perfectly exactly as you are. And we go through this like guided meditation and it’s just like the tears flow because it feels so cleansing. It is such a relief to feel forgiven. Right. And so we forgive ourselves, you know, for all the, for holding ourselves to this impossibly high standard, right? We’re doing the best we can. We don’t give ourselves any credit for what we try to do. But we certainly crucify ourselves for our imagined shortcomings, right? Because we were never meant to do more than what we could actually do. Yeah. Or be someone that we’re not. We’re never meant to be somebody that you’re not. You were meant to be you. Right. So then we go through this self forgiveness process, and then, you know, and then we do a lot of community building together. It’s like, what I was talking about building a community and having several people that you’re currently with. And then we wrap up the whole class with a boundary setting exercise. You know, I have a friend who is a therapist and she comes in and she gives us a lecture on boundaries, because how are you going to protect your energy moving forward? It’s like, okay, you know you have this foundation, right? And then you go off into the world. And it’s important that you know, that’s why your community is so important, right? Because that supports you, as you move forward as you’re trying to raise that thermostat and take your life to the next level. Right. 

 

So that’s why community is so important. So, but the boundaries are really important because you have to protect your energy and you have to sort of reshape existing relationships. It’s not like you stopped drinking, and then all of a sudden, your life is perfect. It’s like you have to retrain. We teach people how to treat us. And so when you quit drinking, you have to retrain people on how you want to be treated. And half the time we don’t even know just as a side note, you know, that’s a learning process. Yeah.

 

39:52  

But I mean, boundary setting is so important, and I think that it’s one of the one of the hardest things for a lot of women to do because we’re so it’s it’s tied up with wanting other people to like you and to think you’re worthy and think you’re helpful is to say yes and be a people pleaser and put their needs ahead of your own. And yet, what that means is you’re not taking care of yourself. And it’s really hard to say no. 

 

I’m glad you do that, because there are so many practices that you go through, you know, it’s a muscle, you need to work. And what you’re doing is you’re saying yes to yourself, whether that be your time, your energy, your happiness, your peace of mind. It is one of the best. And the most important thing I’ve learned since quitting drinking is, is setting boundaries.

 

40:44  

It’s huge. It’s so important. And so, and we think it’s initially I think, we think about setting boundaries in terms of asking people to change almost, you know, expressing what we need and what we are not willing to tolerate anymore. But oftentimes, it’s setting a boundary with yourself as to what we need to know what our own limits are. Like, my tendency is to forgive or to overdo or to extend myself too far. But when I do that, I incur resentments. And it’s my own fault. Right? Because if I over give, then that’s when I’ve crossed my own boundary. So it’s a boundary I set for me. It’s not necessarily that people can ask for what they need. Right? I understand that. But it’s up to me. It’s my boundary to say how much I can give without incurring a resentment.

 

41:45  

Yeah. And I love what you said because I believe it’s to be so true that you teach people how to treat you. And when you are more secure in what you need. They will honor that and treat you better. As well, I mean, it’s crazy how it, how it, it manifests itself. And you can do that for other people too, right? You know, you should always treat others the way you want to be treated. And we don’t always do that.

 

42:13  

We don’t always ask people what they really need. No, you know, like a friend who comes to you with a problem. What do you do? Do you just go right into problem solving mode? Or do you ask them what they need first? Like, are you just venting? Do you want feedback? Do you just want me to do you need a hug? I mean, it’s like, what is it that you need for me? Nobody ever asked me that until I got into recovery. And then I was like, Oh, my God, I have a choice.

 

42:39  

It’s like, I’m laughing. Because I’m friends with so many coaches now. And I will go to them with something, you know, we’re just chatting and they were like, Okay, do you want me to do the coaching thing? Or do you want me just to tell you what I think? They’ll be like,

 

42:52  

yeah, just tell me what you think. Because a coach you think is like, so how does that mean? Not I mean, don’t get me wrong, coaches. I am a coach. It’s fabulous.

 

43:00  

But it it’s, it’s driven by you and what you need as opposed to most of life is, here’s what you should do, because here’s what I would do.

 

43:12  

Right? Well, here’s the thing is we go to particular people because we know what their go to is. Yes, yes. Like I have a friend that I know that when I call her she’s gonna get right into the solution. I have another friend that will, she’s like, super granola and mother earthy, and I know she’ll hold safe space for me and let me cry. Like, not everybody can do that. Like that’s her superpower. 

 

And go to my friend, I can go to my friend Elizabeth and be like, I’m really sad. She’d be like, oh, let’s explore that for a minute. Why are you sad? Whereas, you know, she asked me the questions and she helps me because my tendency is I recognize a problem. I want to go right into the solution. She’ll be like, wait a minute, what about acceptance? How about we’ll.. How about we allow that feeling a little bit of space so they can resolve instead of the spiritual bypassing, which is what I want to do. I want a spiritual bypass to give me a spiritual solution. You want me to write a gratitude list? You want me to make 10 calls? You want, maybe a service? Let me do something. Don’t ask me to feel a fucking thing. It was that way of doing your classes.

 

You help women feel what’s happening?

 

44:28  

Yeah, let’s feel our feelings. I teach something called the rain meditation that I got from Tara Brach. Yeah, and RAIN stands for recognize, allow, investigate and nurture. Right. And it’s this magic sauce. This is what helps you to resolve negative feelings as opposed to stopping them or drinking them or eating them or shopping them. You know what I mean? Another unit, another big one is self righteous anger, right? This slight, bitchy character assassination stuff that we do sometimes as, as people, you know, I know plenty of men who do it to something that we do we know it’s under the guise of gosh, you know that she really needs, you know what she really needs or she needs to do some step work or she really needs a coach or a therapist or she really, you know, this is what she really needs to do. You know, it’s like this condescending I’m better I know that I have the answers. Right? Comes total complete lack of humility, or an awareness of…

 

45:34  

So what happens with, like, at the end of the class at the end of the process, because I do believe rebuilding self esteem and, and is so helpful in terms of allowing yourself to have a better life, you’d let more wonderful things into it. But what sort of shifts or changes have you seen with women?

 

45:57  

It’s interesting, so like, when someone comes to me with a relationship, a toxic relationship or a bad relationship of any kind, it could be with a parent or a family member. It’s typically like a man. I never address. I never addressed the man stuff because what I know is that if we work on her self esteem and her self esteem gets better, that relationship will naturally fall away in its own time. Like, I don’t need it. I don’t need to be like, Oh, you need to get out of that relationship. I never have to say that. It’s like she comes to her own conclusions. Like, you know what, I deserve better? Yes. Isn’t this just like she outgrows him. 

 

She, like, we outgrow it like even in friendships, man, I’ve been. I’ve been in when you know I’ve had like women that have been like my ride or die and the relationship turns toxic for whatever reason, like the dynamic changes where like, I feel like it’s my responsibility to save someone that was my default as a child. I have an older sister who was mentally ill – Suicide. Depression and, and so I recreate that dynamic in my adult life with my women friends. But I go into this like, say savior mode, and I try to control them and nurture them until they, you know, but that relationship gets toxic, but when my self esteem is not wrapped up in somebody else, somebody else’s behavior, right? If I’m just focused on me, then when somebody like that comes into my world, and I start feeling like I’m losing myself, I recognize the signs and I stop faster. Like I don’t get sucked in like I used to. And so now my relationships are healthier. I have been in a relationship with my husband for 25 years. And we have a process of, I own my stuff, and he owns his stuff, right? So we have this process of you know, that we’ve developed over the years to address that kind of thing. But anyway, it all comes back to my self esteem.If I’m focused on my self esteem, then I don’t get sucked into these toxic relationships.

 

48:08  

And tell me what self esteem looks like for you like are there thoughts you repeat in your life? Is it a way you have of dealing with self sabotage thoughts as they come up? Like how does that manifest?

 

48:23  

Oh my god, I totally had an attack of like, self pity today.

 

48:29  

I tend to overdo it and somebody told me that they weren’t going to be participating in a meeting any longer. And I don’t know what happened. I just got triggered. It reminded me of something. I don’t know what it was, but I was totally triggered. I was totally triggered. I had a feeling and it took me over. So what I did was I let myself have it. The dog for a walk, I let myself have a little cry. I called my friend and I told her the truth. I feel like a loser today. And I don’t even know why it’s like I know it has nothing to do with me. It’s like someone’s schedule changed. But in my mind, it felt like your meeting wasn’t good enough. And I’m gonna go do this other meeting instead. That’s what it felt like. It was like an inappropriate response to the situation. I’m like, What is going on? And so I just allow the feeling to come up. 

 

I did the whole RAIN process and I recognized I was triggered. I had some awareness, I allowed my feeling alive, and myself to be sad. I called my friend who lets me be sad. Who doesn’t try to fix me. I told her, I said, Listen, I’m going to tell you something. Don’t try to fix me. I just need to be sad for a minute. And so we, she, helped me to walk through my thought process because at the end of it, it was like, Oh my god, I’m such a loser. Like that’s the thought that came to mind. Yeah, and I don’t really believe that. I mean, there’s no evidence To support that to be true, right? But I just let the feeling come up. I had it, you know, the investigation part and then the nurturing. It’s like, well, what is it that I need? And it’s like, well, I needed a hug. I needed some reassurance. I needed a rest, I needed a snack, I needed to just take a break, because I’ve been really pushing hard lately to achieve goals and, and I’m in transition myself and doing projects and things and I just live in pushing too hard. That was a boundary that I crossed for myself. Yeah, so I just recorded. I just recognized that but I did my whole process. You know, I reached out to a support group and I utilized my support group and, you know, the hungry, angry, lonely, tired thing. So I had to stop and take care of myself.

 

50:45  

Well, I love that you told that story about going through that process today because I think you know, in the spirit of not not being so hard on ourselves. Women are like, I shouldn’t feel this way I shouldn’t ever Think that I’m a loser if I’m going to have self esteem, because then I’m sabotaging myself, like we blame ourselves and beat ourselves down for having emotions that are beating ourselves down and the example that you just shared, as a coach, as a teacher, as someone who’s been doing this work for years that we all go through, we all have moments we get triggered, we have those cycles and and what you do is you build this toolkit, so that when it happens, you have the tools, the mindsets, the processes, the abilities, to go down that road and pull yourself back out. And that’s, that’s a muscle that we work every day. It’s not that you’re going to have self esteem, be fixed and never feel like a loser again. What you do is when you have those feelings which are human, you have the tools to feel your feelings, experience them, do the rain technique, have the people who are going to pull you out, realize what you need and come out stronger.

 

52:01  

Yeah, yeah, I mean, listen, don’t think I wasn’t walking around my neighbor going oh my god, I’m supposed to go on a pie and Casey’s podcast on this. Someone called me a thought leader the other day, which I thought was hilarious. Like, I don’t know who you think I am, but I’m just, you know, in all humility. It’s like, I’m still human. I’m just like everyone else. I’ve been doing this for a very long time, but I cycled pretty quickly. Like I cycled very quickly through that, like it didn’t take down my whole day. Yeah. In the past, like, I would have wanted to crawl in bed, turn on Netflix, get a thin ice cream and just, you know, hide out for a day, you know, so I didn’t need to do that today, which felt like a wind to me like that’s gonna go on my win list. Like at the end of the day, I have a wind list at the end of the day before I go to bed and write down at least five things. Oh, you do?

 

52:58  

Yeah. So at the end of the day, you write down a few things that are winds. And so I use something called The Five Minute Journal®. And The Five Minute Journal® has like, a little inspirational quote, and then it’s like list 3 things that you’re grateful for. And it’s like 3 things that would make the day Great. So that means like you’re setting the intention for the day. And then your positive affirmation and an affirmation is something that we work on in class, actually, because one of the I kind of skipped over this part, but one of the things we do in class is we identify negative beliefs and then we reframe it into an affirmation, because your subconscious mind will tell anything that you… it will believe anything that you tell it repeatedly. 

 

Yes, where the beliefs come from, right is what we tell ourselves repeatedly. And these are typically messages that we get in childhood and we repeat them for 50 years. So part of the class is that we identify the negative belief and then we turn it into an affirmation and that’s something that you work with. So this The Five Minute Journal® has a space for an affirmation. So I write it down there. And then in the evening, it has a little space for at the end of the day. So at the end of the day it is like, write down 3 amazing things that happened. And then one thing that you would have done differently, right, and the three things that made today amazing. I am using that as three things that I did really well that day. Yeah, I saw I celebrated my wins in the evening. And then the one thing I could have done differently doesn’t feel right at the moment. Like I’m, I’m like, What is my bonus thing that I feel awesome about? So because I have enough of like, Oh, I should have done this or I should have done that. It’s like, you know, I’m just gonna give that a break. And that’s like, what’s my one big bonus thing that I did right that day?

 

54:49  

Yeah. And when I love what you said because this is something I truly believe and I work on is that your subconscious will believe anything that you save repeatedly and changing those negative beliefs and reframing them. Because that is, you know, that is why I love vision boards or mantras are things because you take something that you’ve been saying to yourself over and over, and you reframe it into something that you want to internalize and suddenly that automatic knee jerk thought is one that is going to be positive and constructive versus negative and draining. And it happens much more quickly than you think it will. So can you give me an example or two of how you either yourself or work with clients to reframe some of those negative beliefs into something that’s more positive and constructive and affirmation?

 

55:48  

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, my affirmation as always, I am worthy and deserving of God’s will for me, and I have defined God as in a way that is supportive. have me. So I’m allowing myself to receive. One of the things that I struggle with is not feeling good enough and like, oh, if I do all these things, like I’m a doer, like I’m achievement oriented, and that’s never going to change. So instead of feeling like I need to do 1000 things so that I can feel like, I’ve won the day, an idea that was presented to me recently was that you know what, God doesn’t have a to-do list for me. I can be happy now. 

 

Yeah, I was so afraid. I’m a total overachiever. But it exhausts me. I exhaust myself, right. Like I’m, I really feel like, Oh, I want to do this idea. Like I’m over 50, right. I’m 51. So the idea that like, I want my life to have meant something, I want something good to come with my life. So there’s like, this pressure, like, I need to do something before I die. But really, it’s like, I already, I can be happy now. It’s like I have a parent child relationship with my higher power and I look at my kids and I, I think to myself, do they need to earn my love? Absolutely not, you know, it makes me happy when they laugh. 

 

Yeah, I love it when my kids are happy and laughing and having a good time. And so, you know, I, instead of the taskmaster I used to, I had this therapist who helped me turn my inner critic into the cruise ship director.

 

57:28  

Hmm I love that.

 

57:29  

I love it. I was like yeah, cuz my internal you know, taskmaster was like you need to get it done. And then it was like you will you she had me do this internal dialogue was like, Well, do you really like that job? And she was like, Okay, well, let’s give you a fun job. How about you be the cruise director? You’re now in charge of all the fun things. What fun things can we do? And so when I start feeling like, over like, my, my to do list starts getting too long. I go, Oh, she must be exhausted. Let’s give her a different job. Yeah, fun things can we do? What’s the.. What wins can we celebrate? Yeah, and it’s just like, this may be weird. And maybe it might sound weird, like, I’m talking to myself, but we talk to ourselves anyway, we might do nice, too.

 

58:11  

And I know that. I.. I was, I mean, it was almost. It was almost an internal joke, but I I think a lot of women have racing minds and are trying to calculate a million outcomes. And, you know, everybody’s got their own thing that they’re worried about, for me, it was sort of financial security or, you know, being able to take care of myself. If nobody else was to take care of me, I mean, you know, we don’t need to go into this right. It’s a lot of random stuff. Yeah. But, um, but it to the point where my husband at one point, when I was leaving a job got like 12, 13 years ago, gave me something to put on my pinboard at work and it said, not to spoil the ending for you, but everything’s going to be okay because I was heading. So much angst in so much worry and was so like, just holding on so tight to everything out of fear. And so some of those reframing that really helped me is, you know, just the smallest things like I have, I had up next to my vanity and also in my garage just saying, that it said, good things are going to happen. And just from worrying about every outcome, to go, it just repeats in my mind, like good things. I mean, it just shifts you to optimism. It shifts you to curiosity. It shifts you to openness and believing that things are going to work out. I mean, it sounds so dumb. 

 

Another one was, I trust the evolution of my life. And that was one that to me meant I’m allowed to change everything the universe is unfolding as it should. And part of that evolution was me not drinking anymore. But saying that, I trust the evolution of my life. Good things are gonna happen. That to me helped me just think, Hold on, life gets better. You know your outcome is better than what you have now, like just so small, to the point where when I’m walking through life, my my mindset has shifted from, oh my god, what can go wrong, I can’t cope, I need to stay safe, I need to hustle, to good things are gonna happen. I trust the evolution of my life and my God, that’s so much more ease and flow to work through your life. It’s a huge change. But that’s the heart of the reframing that you’re talking about the affirmations and your subconscious believing anything that’s repeatedly placed in front of it.

 

1:00:42  

Yeah, there’s, there’s a couple of exercises I want to I want to add,

 

1:00:46  

yeah, I’d love that. This is… this is all stuff like, this is all stuff in the class and, and I’m happy to give it away because all this information is out there for free anyway, I do the class because we do the work in the class. So you know, it gets done. Right. It’s a paid class, it’s $197 and I would have used to do this class for free and people wouldn’t do the work. I started charging for it and suddenly everybody’s doing the work and everybody’s getting the results.

 

1:01:12  

Yeah. And it’s like, it’s part of investing in, you know, your time, your money and your energy and, and, you know, as part of that people pleasing, right? The overachieving the hustling, we prioritize everyone else above ourselves. And yet, doing a class like this, taking the time showing up. That’s when your whole life gets better, right? For you, for your kids.

 

1:01:37  

Yeah, and here’s the form, at least for the next couple classes, if you sign up for the class, you get to bring a friend. You get a scholarship, you get to scholarship the class to somebody else, because we don’t really have anything to do it with a friend, it would be a mate. It’s that extra layer of having accountability. I love that and so in the beginning, during the end, I introduced the class a little bit so people have some idea what we’re talking about. But of course, no, you know, earliness class, it’s called reinventing. It’s on self esteem. I will put everything in the show notes. And it’s, it’s, it’s a really lovely way to do some inner work with someone who knows what they’re doing with someone taking you through the exercises, and supporting you in the process so that you can actually implement it in your life.

 

1:02:28  

Yeah, there’s no homework. But I think the beauty of the classes is that you do the work in the class, it’s like you’re setting aside a time to do the work in the class, but I want you to, like I would, I don’t care if people pay me, I just want people to do it. But here’s two things. There’s two things. Two more things I want to add to the to-do list which is and when you were talking, in my mind, God never says no, God says yes, not yet, or I have something better for you.

 

1:02:57  

Oh, I love that. Good. I’m not terribly like, in the religion. So for me, it’s the universe. So the universe said yes. 

 

Yeah, the universe. Yeah. Or I have something better for you. 

 

Yeah. Oh my God! When I married, when I first got sober, I wanted to marry this guy and I’m so glad. I was like, please go remember this guy, let him love me. And God said, I had something better for you. And I met my husband shortly after that, and he and I fit together like hand in glove from day 1. Everything from like, and who knew, who knew parenting styles. The way we manage money is real politics, our families like everything have been such an easy fit from day 1. Right? But I was like, please go look, remember this other guy, and God was like, No, no, honey has something better for you. Thank god verse knew it. Now, I don’t even call it.

 

1:03:56  

I even have one in my office and I work with my clients on this called the universe jar. And I think they have something similar in a jar. Right? 

 

But for me, I have a quote on it. And it says, whether or not it’s clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. And of course, that is a very famous quote. But what I put in there is my worries, the thing that I can’t figure out the things that are weighing on me, the big questions that I’m worried about, and I just hand them over to let the universe let them unfold as they should. And then to quote another thing and I’m not an A person, but I did go and there’s so much good stuff in there. Just do the next right thing right handed over to the universe, just do the next right thing. And I love going through my universe jar because it’s a physical way of not holding on to things that you can’t control and then to go back six months later, a year later, even three weeks later to this thing that was keeping you up all night that you were so worried about and realize that, What you said which I wrote down? Yes, not yet. I have something better for you to realize that this thing that you wanted so bad, something better happened that you couldn’t even have imagined. I mean, I love that.

 

1:05:13  

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And my favorite Dr. Seuss quote is in the end, it’ll be okay. And if it’s not okay, it’s not the end. 

 

Oh my god, Okay, I’m gonna have to update my vision boards. 

That’s okay. People listening to this are gonna think I’m crazy, but who cares?

 

1:05:32  

Yeah, now they’re gonna relate to you. We all think this way. Your vibe attracts your tribe. So we’re all thinking this way. Okay, so here’s the last exercise I want to leave you with. I love it, which is the fear setting exercise. So Tim Ferriss, my second favorite podcaster to you. Tim Ferriss has this podcast that has like half a billion downloads now. Anyway, he’s an amazing person and he did a TED talk on, instead of doing a goal setting exercise, you do a fear setting exercise. And what it is, is that you get very clear about what your fears are. Right? You list them all out. And then you come up with a plan. If the worst thing, worst thing happens, what is the plan is going to mitigate that fear? So you get a plan in place. It’s like, well, oh my god, what if what if my husband dies? I don’t have his income anymore. It’s like, how am I going to support the kids? Okay, well, let’s say okay, well, but what if, okay, what would you do? 

 

You know, you have the fortune of foresight. Now, it’s like, well, I could get life insurance. You know, that’s and that, by the way, that was a real fear I had. I was like, Yeah, oh, my God, what am I going to do? What would I do and so if you know what I did, I bought some life insurance. And guess what, now I don’t worry about that anymore. That is not something that keeps me up at night. Right. So I identified my fear because security is probably my number one value. I listed all my values and you rate them one to 10. And that’s another thing that we do in the book. 

 

I love Values Exercise. 

 

Yeah, I know it’s a Coach, Coach thing, like the first thing they teach you in coaching school. 

 

Yeah. But it’s so powerful. 

 

Yes, it is. And because you need to be able to measure us, you need to have a benchmark so that, you know, like, how will we know if this class is successful at the end? It’s like, well, you need to be higher. It’s like, well, what is your value of security? Where are you on the security scale? I’m out of two. I’m terrified. I don’t feel like I have enough security. At the end of the class. It’s like, okay, security was your number one value. You were at a 2 before. Where do you feel like you’re at now? It’s like, Oh, I’m at a 9 because I have a contingency plan if the worst things happen, I’m solid. It’s like the things I was anxious about. I don’t even have to think about anymore because now I know I have a contingency plan. Right? So and that’s part of addressing the resistance, you know, fear, anxiety, depression. These are all guilt, shame. These are all things that are resistance between what’s keeping you from your dream. You know, your dream is there and it’s attainable, but we have like, they’re like clouds that cover the sky. You know, they’re these fears. And you know what, when the cloud-like sky is always blue, we just need to wait for the clouds to blow past. Yeah, sometimes.

 

Well, and I think a lot of people take those feelings, right. So you get all excited, you identify your goal, you get clear on what you want. And then the fears, the resistance, the limiting beliefs, the thoughts come in, that have been coming in for years to keep you stuck, whatever it is. And almost always those are internal blocks. You’re projecting them without internal external time, money, kids mortgage money, marriage, other people but they’re really internal blocks right? That you need to work through and the sign that you’re feeling that reason. Distance isn’t a sign that you should not move forward, it is a sign that you’re growing and changing and changing is uncomfortable. And, you know, just the idea of like, if you want something that you don’t currently have, you have to do something different than what you’ve always done. And that’s, that’s how you evolve in life. That’s how you get what you want. And, and self esteem is trusting yourself enough to say, Yes, I’m scared, but I deserve this. And I’m going to put in some time and some effort and energy to get it.

 

1:09:35  

Mm hmm. Absolutely. And surround yourself with enough support so that when you freak out, and you want to backpedal that the people around you, you’re going to be like, you know what, it’s okay. Yeah, okay, you deserve it. You know, all that. We need support. We really do.

 

1:09:52  

Yes, I mean, it’s the most important thing and being open and honest and vulnerable. And realize that people are gonna love you and support you. Because you’re not perfect. Not because you pretend you are.

 

1:10:08  

Right. They love you. Yeah. Because of it not in spite of it. Yeah, there is a thing called trauma bonding. It’s like when we share most, when we share our vulnerability, it speaks to the courage in somebody else. Like they recognize that it takes courage to do that. And that whole instinct, that visceral Oh my god, me too. Yeah, you know, that, that Bond’s us and by the way, that’s a self esteem building. Exercise is when you’re, when you do service surfaces are really big self esteem. And so when I tell my girls, like, you got to do these checking calls, you need to call at least four people a week and do these checking calls. The first thing they say like, I don’t want to bother anybody, and it’s like, Are you kidding me? When somebody calls you and says, I need your help? What do you say, I’m going to help you right? And then you get to feel good about yourself. So it’s a self and we train everyone to You know, we’re not all crazy. And on the same day, you know, yeah. 

 

Yeah. And so it’s a self esteem building exercise to be of service to others and then to ask for support because that’s how we get bonded and validated in a healthy way.

 

1:11:15  

What do you think is the biggest fear that stops most women from kind of doing this work or diving into this?

 

1:11:24  

I don’t know. I mean, I would have to say that it is probably along the lines of like, we don’t deserve it. We’re not good enough. And that’s why I feel like, No wonder it’s like the treasure that’s hidden in plain sight. Right? It’s like we will spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars on Botox, but God forbid you tell somebody to spend $200 on a class that will change their lives.

 

1:11:50  

It’s hilarious, I guess and I love me some Botox. You don’t see any wrinkles on my forehead. Guess why?

 

1:11:57  

I was laughing because I did. I don’t know for sure to admit this on my podcast, but what the hell I’ve shared all by drinking stories. 

 

So I got Botox at age 40. I’m 44. And my boss actually took me. We were old friends. For my 40th birthday, she was like, honey, you gotta take care of this. And I loved it, but it’s so expensive. 

 

So one of the pandemic things is.. I’m not doing Botox, and I’m not getting my haircut and colored or pedicures. I was like, I’m saving so much money. I was like, That’s amazing. But you’re right. And when I talk to people about coaching or about classes, I’m like, it’s like hiring a personal trainer or nutritionist, right? You want an outcome that you’ve been trying to achieve on your own and you haven’t yet been successful. So why wouldn’t you bring in reinforcements? Here’s the thing.

 

1:12:49  

This is what makes me crazy. This is what makes me absolutely crazy… is that people will spend money on the trainer, the nutritionist, the botox, doesn’t help the primary problem that you know, rehab. Rehab can be like $60,000 for a month and rehab, right you’re not going to spend a couple thousand dollars on somebody who’s going to help you. You know sort of quickly sort through like I can give, I’ve been sober for 26 years. I know a trick or two that’s gonna shortcut the talking process for you. Why would you want to take my class? Yes, I’m fine. Your dollars on Botox. It’s gonna last three months. Let me give you some tools that will completely change your life, so that you will feel worthy of being that… getting into those skinny jeans that you want to be in. You know, it’s like, it’s so.. 

 

Here’s the other thing. It’s funny because my husband is a Metabolic Balance Coach, and so he teaches people how to eat right and blah, blah, blah. Well, the people who self sabotage are the people who don’t have “self esteem”, right? They get close to their goal and then they sabotage and I’m like, please send those people my way, so that they can feel worthy of achieving that goal. Right, I don’t think the people who are overachievers, financially have disastrous relationships with food or with men. It’s because they don’t have the right self esteem. You know, when you when you change your self esteem, it changes the outcomes of your relationships, what you feel you deserve as far as what size you are, like how much money you have, the type of love that you attract, it changes everything it determines that is the one thing that affects your money, relationships and your health. is how you, what you believe you deserve.

 

1:14:48  

That’s why I’m so obsessed with it.

 

1:14:50  

I love that. I think that is the absolute perfect place to end this. 

 

I completely agree with you. I think self esteem is so important. Feeling like we are allowed and able and deserve things in our lives that we all do. So the work you’re doing is amazing. And I’m so excited for women who get to take part in it, it’s going to change their lives.

 

1:15:16  

Me too. Thank you so much, Casey.

 

1:15:18

Thank you. It’s been so fun.