You are listening to the Drink Less Lifestyle Podcast with Dr. Sherry Price, episode number 84.

Welcome to Drink Less Lifestyle, a podcast for successful women who want to change their relationship with alcohol. If you want to drink less, feel healthier and start loving life again you’re in the right place. Please remember that the information in this podcast does not constitute medical advice. Now, here’s your host, Dr. Sherry Price.

Well, hello my friends. Guess what? Today when this podcast goes live it is my birthday. How fun is that? I love celebrating my birthday. I love it that I’m still here, I get to celebrate with all my friends and my family. And it’s just delightful to have a birthday. So that is what is going on in my world.

And so, for today’s episode I wanted to talk about being resilient. And I want to talk about it because I feel being resilient is a necessary skill to get the life that you want. So, resilience to me is a skill that enables you to move through hardship or through a setback and to come out the other side and thrive. Okay, so I think the last part of that statement is the biggest part. So, it’s not that you just get through something and come out more broken, or more confused, or feel that life is just meh, or blah, or it’ll never be good again.

That’s not what it means to be resilient in my opinion. So, I’d like to think of it as it’s not just Humpty Dumpty falls off the wall and all his pieces are put back together again. To me what being resilient is, is when Humpty Dumpty falls off the wall and you put all the pieces back and he’s even better. He’s thriving. So yes, you can pick yourself up after a setback and keep going. But I think you’re new and improved on the other side. And here is what I mean by that.

When you are resilient whatever you experience, whatever that hardship is that you walked through, whether you wanted to or not or it’s just the circumstances that occurred in your life. It’s that you incorporated the lessons learned from that event to make you either wiser, stronger, more compassionate, smarter or more equipped in some capacity than before that incident or before you went off track. And so now you have more knowledge, more experience to draw from to be able to handle something in the future.

And I really love that phrase, ‘to be more equipped’. They may not be skills we want. They may not be hardships that we wanted to walk through but because we’ve walked through them. We now have another skillset or additional skillsets because of everything we learned by having that experience, by having that tragedy, by having that hardship, by going through something that was very difficult for us.

Now, some people hit hardship and it takes them off track and it takes them off track forever. So, they don’t develop the skill of being resilient. They don’t develop the skill of okay, that got me off track, how can I get back on track to the life that I want, to the goals that I want, to achieve what I want, why I am here on this planet. So, when you’re resilient you don’t let excuses or a series of hard knocks keep you down or holding you back from getting that life that you really want or those accomplishments you want to achieve.

So, resilience is the topic that we are talking a lot about inside Epic You this month. Because what we know about everyone’s life, everyone that has life or had had life, or is about to have life, about to be born or about to be created. We know that they’re going to experience hardship. There are going to be difficult times. There is going to be different flavors of hardship for people, whether it’s pandemics, or poor grades, or poor financial status, or a poor marriage, or a marriage that has gone awry, or loss, or grief, or hardship of some sort.

It could be just a math teacher or an art teacher that didn’t believe in us or said things that we still carry around today. We don’t need to judge the hardship. We know that humans are going to experience some form of setback, some form of getting off the path of their goals, something they didn’t expect along the way. This is part of what happens when you live life. So yes, we can try to avoid hardships, absolutely. I advocate for that a 100%. But it’s not like we’re going to get through life hardship free.

There’s going to be difficult things that arise that we are going to face. And how do you face those? Are you resilient? Do you let them come by and just knock you off track and just deaden your goals? Or do you say, “No, this is just one setback and you get up and start going again?”

And I love using the visual of a toddler learning to walk. When a toddler falls down they don’t think, oh my gosh, I’m never going to get this walking thing down and just never try. That’s never the mindset of a toddler. They don’t have a developed mindset to think that luckily. They just keep trying. They’re like, “I want to walk and I’m going to keep trying. I’m going to keep trying this walking thing until it actually sticks, until I actually get good at it. Until I get so good at it I can run.”

Or you can use another example, so many other examples from our life. Maybe you get an F on a biology test. And you don’t say to yourself, “Oh my gosh, I’m never going to make it through college, I got an F. I might as well just stop going to class. I might as well withdraw. I’m not going to make it.” No, a resilient person would be like, “Yes, I got an F, okay, where are my mistakes? I see, I didn’t know the Krebs cycle. I didn’t realize all the processes and intricacies of the Krebs cycle and that I would be tested upon it. And I go back and I learn it.”

And I learn it and guess what? It makes me wiser. It makes smarter. It makes me have more capability to take the test again. So let me ask you. When you overdrink do you go back and look at why it happened? Do you learn from your mistakes? Most people don’t. And I think this is tragic because if you don’t learn from your mistakes what are you going to do? Keep repeating them. And this is what I hear over and over. And I see it in my Stop the Overdrinking Habit Facebook page. It’s like this just keeps happening and I don’t know why.

And so, this is a huge skill that I teach people is that you have to get the learning. You have to understand why it happened so it doesn’t happen in the future, so you can learn skills so it doesn’t happen in the future. And this is what I coach people through and walk people through with the tools in my programs. So, you have to understand what happened, where you went wrong, what went off track, what didn’t go well in that certain environment that you were in. So, we can say, “That was it. That’s what got me off track and that’s what I need to do differently next time.”

Because here’s what happens, people are triggered by different things in different environments. We all know this. Have you ever seen an airplane be delayed? There are some people in the airport that are really triggered by a delayed plane. And some people are thankful that the mechanics are on the plane fixing the mechanical error, while other people are losing their stuff. Different things trigger people differently.

So, do you ever think, I can control my drinking sometimes but not others? Why is that? There is a reason you can’t control it in certain situations. And wouldn’t you wan to know that? Wouldn’t you want to know why? Wouldn’t you want to know what trigger is different here than other places? But here’s what happens for most people is they have no idea why it happens with certain people or it just happens at book club. Or maybe it’s not when they’re out socially but always at home, or vice versa, or they just do it on weekends, or it’s just when family or certain friends come over.

And if you have no idea why, of course you’ll keep repeating the behavior and not make any progress. That’s just commonsense. So, this is how I help people. What’s really going on inside of you? Really tune in. What is so triggering about that environment or those people? What can you learn that causes you to act this way around alcohol? Because if you’re going to allow alcohol into your life, if you’re going to dance with alcohol you should be the one leading the dance and not the other way around.

Think about a professional dancer, somebody on Dancing with the Stars or somebody who can do nice fancy ballroom dancing. What does a professional dancer need? A good dance partner knows the next step to take, how to move to a certain beat, when to twist their partner, when to speed up, when to slow down, and how to stop dancing. It’s the grand ending. Dancers take charge of their body. They know how to move it. They look at their surroundings and they see where the music is, or the DJ, or the band, and they make sure they don’t knock into the band or the DJ.

They look at the space on the floor so they know how big their steps should be, and how much steps they have to take. And how do they know all this? They pay attention. They practice. And guess what? When they’re practicing, they knock into somebody, or they took too big of a step, or they turned their partner too quick or were too forceful that they knocked their partner over. It’s through practice and paying attention that they learned along the way what works and what doesn’t work for them.

And this is what I offer you if you dance with alcohol. You want to know about your surroundings and how you’re affected by those surroundings, and how you make decisions. And how you choose differently in certain surroundings, or around certain people, or around certain friends, or around certain family members. Can you navigate that dance floor well? Can you navigate the dance floor of your life well?

Do you know how to set the pace, slow down and even stop drinking? Most people don’t. They just mindlessly drink. They’re not thinking about it. They’re not paying attention. They just let it happen. No skills, no awareness and they just keep practicing drinking. And drinking begets more drinking. And they get really good at keep drinking but they don’t get good at any other part of it, stopping, recognizing, noticing triggers, any of it. They’re clueless.

You know when they pay attention to their drinking? When they no longer can remember, can’t walk, break out in fights, pass out, or the next day when I don’t feel so good. I wonder why I did that. Why do I keep doing that? And then their brain moves on, that’s it. They never answer the questions. They don’t even know. And this is an unskilled drinker. No skill, just drink. And then this type of person thinks alcohol is the problem.

Now, if you want to learn to drink with control, guess what? You need to learn skills to be able to drink with control, to be able to navigate certain situations that are difficult or challenging for you. That’s it. Now, they may not be challenging for somebody else but they’re challenging for you. And instead of whining about why they’re challenging for you, why don’t we just spend energy on fixing it, by learning skills? And I teach you these skills. These are the skills you learn in my programs.

And one of the skills that we are talking about in Epic You is this skill of resilience because when you are resilient you get the life you want. And when you fall down you won’t make it mean you’re failing. You will say, “There’s just something else I need to learn here that I don’t know yet.” But falling down and not learning will not lead to change. It’s falling down, learning what skill you need, that leads to change. And when you fall down and you don’t learn and you don’t change, guess what that leads to? Total frustration.

Why does this keep happening? I don’t know why I keep doing this. Why do I keep drinking? Why doesn’t avoiding the alcohol work? I gave it up for Lent, didn’t have it for 40 days and I’m back on the bottle. Because abstaining is not the same thing as learning. And when you’re resilient you learn from your setbacks and they make you smarter and stronger in the future so you don’t have those same setbacks.

Maybe you have a different setback because it’s a different trigger or a different environment. And no problem, we just need to learn the skill you need in that new environment or with those people. And this is so relevant because I was just talking with somebody this morning, a member in Drink Less Lifestyle about her setback. She didn’t even plan on drinking and then she did. And while she didn’t feel bad about the first drink she had with friends. And she didn’t feel bad about the second drink. She came home and kept drinking.

And she kept drinking even after all the family members in her house went to bed. And that’s the drinking she wanted to end. So, while I was coaching, she had no idea why she did this. She was completely clueless. And this is how we get. We just blame the alcohol. We just think it’s the alcohol’s fault. She didn’t even see her own trigger until I pointed it out. And then she’s like, “Oh, yes, of course that’s it.” And then we talked about the skill to solve it.

Now, I point this out because we often can’t see our own triggers. We don’t know what they are. We are conditioned to think alcohol is the problem. And so, we become blind and we can’t see what is truly causing us to drink. We need somebody to point it out for us so we work on the right thing. We work on the right issue. Alcohol is not the issue. Alcohol is the band-aid on the wound. We need to heal the wound. What’s causing the wound to form, to grow, to still be there? It’s not the band-aid. Is it a virus? Is it a bacteria? Do we cut ourselves on something sharp along the way?

We need to know what caused the wound. And when people think they can do this work for themselves and there’s programs out there that teach you how to self-coach, I have to tell you, it’s not the quickest way to get results because you can’t see some of the things when you’re in it. You have blinders on. And this is what I see so many people try to do. They think it’s all the alcohol’s problem, when really it’s something going on with us that’s the problem, that we want skills to fix.

And I have to tell you, it’s really hard to identify that. It’s really hard to identify what the real issue is. Because if you’re not focused on the right issue it’s really hard to solve the problem. An image that comes into my mind is you’re operating a car. The first time you’re operating a car, you know the gas pedal, you know if you step on that the car goes fast and it goes forward. So, you step on the gas and you’re cruising right along and you’re excited, and you’re driving this car. But it never occurred to you that there’s going to be a stop sign coming.

And you see the stop sign in the distance and you’re like, yes, I need to stop the car. And you for some reason have no idea how to stop the car so you start pushing on the radio buttons and you start turning the radio buttons thinking oh my gosh, these buttons. These buttons are here for a reason, I’m going to push on them. And there’s stuff behind the steering wheel, I’m just going to flick these things. What do these things do? This is going to help stop the car.

And the blinkers are going on and the radio’s blaring. And you’re like, oh my gosh, here comes the stop sign, how do I stop the car? And then I’m sitting next to you and I say, “Press the pedal to the left of the gas pedal, it’s called the brake.” And you go, “Oh, that’s the issue.” And you step on the brake and it’s like, oh my gosh, I never saw that. I never knew that. It really is like that. And you stop the car.

And how many times have I been in a coaching session with a client that says, “Oh, I get it now.” It’s delightful because when you know what the root problem is and how to solve it, you’re naturally going to want to take the steps to solve it. Nobody wants more wounds on their skin. Nobody wants more problems in their life. And when you show someone how to get out of the problems, it’s delightful.

It’s funny because this reminds me of a member who just finished up the program. And I love what she said on our last call. She said, “Sherry, I can’t believe you were right and I couldn’t see it. It’s really not about the alcohol. I didn’t believe you. I used to hear you say this so much on your podcast so many times and I’m like, “I think she’s got it wrong.”” She’s like, “I just didn’t get it, it just didn’t make sense to me.” She goes, “I kind of got it logically but I kind of didn’t and I didn’t really understand it until I worked with you.”

And she was so happy because she’s like, “I’m freed, it’s really not about the alcohol. Once I solved these things going on for me I just don’t want it.” And maybe she has a drink a week, maybe. She just doesn’t want it. Her life is so much better because we worked on the root cause of what was driving her to drink.

It’s like you can read the manual of how to operate a bike, yeah. Yeah, here is the pedals, yeah, here is the brake, here is how you balance your weight, you sit on the seat, you put your feet on the pedals, you push forward, you hold onto the handlebars and you go straight. And then you go try it and then you’re like, “Wait a second, I just fell off this bike.” It makes sense to you logically but until you know how to apply it to your life it doesn’t make a huge heck of a difference.

And so, knowing the information is just a small step of the process, it’s really applying it and helping you apply it to your life, and how it applies to your life. And all is I want to say is that if you have this deep rooted habit that you’ve tried for years to diminish or abolish, and you couldn’t do it on your own, it’s just a classic sign that you’re missing something. That’s all it is. So, you need help, someone to come alongside you and say, “Hey, there is the brake.” Someone to show you what you’re missing so you can solve the issue. And so, you can love your life more.

And who doesn’t want a life that they can love more? Who doesn’t want to feel more healthy? Who doesn’t want to feel more vibrant, more energy and actually create the life of their dreams? Even when your life doesn’t suck, I’m not saying your life has to suck but it surely could get better for a lot of people. And so, when information can change you and transform you, that’s what you want.

One of the members commented inside of Drink Less Lifestyle just recently to me that she hasn’t really gone alcohol free for any length of time continuously in over 13 years. So, we looked at what she’s tried, what hasn’t worked. And we came up with a customized plan for her. And when she implemented those skills she went alcohol free for that day, and the next day, and the next day. And when we were talking she was laughing at just how easy it was, how much easier it was this time around because she actually had skills to carry out. It wasn’t just white knuckling through it.

And what was interesting is she lived with all this fear of how her life wouldn’t be as good without alcohol or it wouldn’t be as fun. And she wouldn’t be able to fall asleep at night. And so, she was worried she was going to stay up for days and days on end and all these stories that were keeping her trapped and hence not being successful. So, we came up with a plan that was customized for her specific issues. And she was delighted when it worked so well.

Now, she may have slipups along the way. She may have slipups to come but that’s okay because she’s learning the skill of resilience. And it’s what you do in other areas of your life. And this is a skill we do in other areas of our life. We didn’t get pregnant this time around, okay, we’ll try again. We got to work late one time. Okay, we set our clocks back or leave a bit earlier next time. We learn to be resilient if it’s important to us. If the goal is important to us enough we learn to become resilient.

And you specifically become more resilient when you really want the results. You don’t stay stuck in self-loathing, or self-pity, or wallowing that we talked about last week. We take action because the results are important to us. We take actions that get traction. We look at the strategies that are going to get it done. And here’s the thing that I have learned since I’ve started podcasting and since I started coaching is that this mindset stuff works for some people but other people it doesn’t, they need other tools, other skills.

And as I’ve been going through different coaching programs and improving my skills as a coach I’m able to pass that on to the clients that I work with to be better able to serve them so they can get the results that they want. And this is what we do when we care. We want to uplevel our skills. I want to always uplevel my skill as a coach and I’m always going to be working on it. And my clients see it, and they feel it, and they notice it, and it leads to transformation in their lives because humans love to grow and become better versions of themselves.

And this was why Epic You was created. So inside Epic You we’re talking about resilience. And I have to point out this one sentence that I bolded inside the workbook because I think this is everything. Resilience is a required skill for living a fulfilling life. Do you agree with me? Do you believe that’s true, that resilience is a required skill for living a fulfilling life? Because how many times do we get knocked down? How many times do we get rejected? How many times is there a no when you wanted a yes?

I’ll tell you one example from my life that highlights this so well. My first date with my husband is one of the best examples. After our first date, now, I won’t discuss the particulars of it, but he was polite, and courageous, and brave enough to send me an email saying that it was nice to meet me and we obviously had no connection and good luck dating. That was his take on our first date. And I thought to myself when I read that email, interesting. He’s really wrong. You know why? Because it didn’t ring true when I read the email that said obviously we had no connection. I didn’t feel that.

My body felt a connection and I wanted to explore that further. Not only is he hot, but he was intriguing to me. I loved the way his mind worked. And what he said was very interesting to me on our first date. Plus, I was enchanted by this pure gentleman that he was, at least compared to my other dates. So, I let him know. I sent an email back and I said, “I didn’t feel that way. And while I appreciate the take you had on the night, I was looking forward to a second date.”

Guess what happened? I think you know how the story ends. We had a second date. That no became a yes, that F on my first biology test in pharmacy school, I wound up getting an A minus in that course. And guess what? My drinking problem became a story that’s a gift to so many women out there. Why? Because I choose to be resilient. I don’t want to sell out on my goals, my dreams and my life. I don’t want to just wish living it powerfully. I am living it powerfully.

I see how these setbacks are just a chance and an opportunity for me to level up, me to learn something, me to learn the Krebs cycle, me to learn something to be successful. To level up how I’m showing up on tests, to level up my studying skills, to level up my dating skills, to level up wherever I needed to level up so I can get the goals that I want. And that’s why I believe that’s such an important statement. Resilience is a required skill for living a fulfilling life, a life you want, not a life you settle for. And when you’re resilient you really have to learn not to take things so personally.

And you discover what makes you tick so you can get up and go moving again, so you can lose the weight, you can stop overdrinking, you can get the love in your marriage that you want. Because only you can achieve your goals, no one else can do it for you. And what’s so fun is when you’re resilient, you now have an extra skillset in your toolbelt that helps you get what you want.

And I’m teaching my three step process inside of Epic You. Our first call is tomorrow. There’s nothing more fun and more valuable than creating a fulfilling meaningful life, a life that you really love living. And I think it’s so fun to uplevel yourself. I’m always doing it in my own life. I’m always doing it with my own mind because I never want to stop believing in myself and what I can achieve. And I want that for me, I want to model that for my daughter and I want to model that for other women.

It’s kind of that cliché that you can take lemons in your life and make them into lemonade or something even better. And the skill that makes that happen is resilience because it’s about getting back up and thriving. And this is what life is all about. Alright ladies, I love being here with you, have a great week and I’ll see you next time.

Thanks for listening to the Drink Less Lifestyle. If you’re ready to change your relationship with alcohol, check out my free guide, How to Effectively Break the Overdrinking Habit at sherryprice.com/startnow. That’s sherryprice.com/startnow. I’ll see you next week.