You are listening to the Drink Less Lifestyle Podcast with Dr. Sherry Price, episode number 47.

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 friends. Welcome back. How are you doing this week? We are gearing up for another vacation. It’s so fun. I am so excited to take vacations. And there’s talk around about this Delta variant and what will be come fall and will we be in lockdown? And I know some people are starting to already get fear around that. And also contemplate this feeling of oh no, can we go through this again and will I feel stuck? I’m hearing this come up a lot.

And so that’s what I wanted to talk to you about today is because not only hearing it in that circle but I notice this comes up a lot for women and particularly a lot for my clients. It’s this idea of that we’re feeling stuck. And I want us to consider this. Is that we create our own stuckness, it doesn’t just happen, it’s actually we create it. And no one is immune to this in my opinion, no one. I think the brain can naturally come up with all these thoughts that make us feel stuck.

So, I consider this to be another mental barrier that we’re always breaking down in my coaching program because here’s the thing. When you learn how to stop creating your own stuckness, your life opens up to so many more things than you thought were possible. So, I want you also to consider that stuckness could be a limitation that we put on ourselves like a glass ceiling or that something that’s just beyond a life that I can’t have. Or something beyond something that I cannot attain or get to.

And I’m going to walk you through one of the discussions I have had with a woman recently and how she created her own stuckness. And here’s the reason it is so important to consider this. It’s because when we feel stuck we stop taking action and we start looking at our lives through a lens that feels kind of cloudy, dirty, murky. And we just don’t feel good about it. And when you hear that, I feel stuck, that just doesn’t feel good in the body. So, I want to share with you three ways which I see this becoming a big issue and how we create that for ourselves.

So, the first way I see clients particularly, the clients that I work with, creating their own stuckness is with their thoughts. It’s just a belief that they have that they are stuck. Sounds so simple, doesn’t it? And truly it is that simple, it’s just a belief that we are stuck.

So, the reason I want to bring this up is the other day I was talking with a woman who was considering joining my Drink Less Lifestyle program. And we started talking about why it is she drinks and what is going on in her life and her drinking habit. And she kept coming back to telling me how much she’s stuck at her job. She talked about how much she hates it, it doesn’t light her on fire anymore. She feels drained by it. It’s depleting, it’s depressing. She’s sick of it. It’s been affected so much by COVID, all the changes, all the things that are going wrong.

And she kept saying over and over, “I just feel so stuck. I just feel so stuck at this job.” And even when I asked her a different question about her drinking it all came back to this feeling of being stuck at work. Things came up like, “There’s nothing I can do. It’s so stressful. It’s so depressing. It’s because I’m stuck at this job.” So, the whole conversation became focused on this so then we went there.

And I asked her, “Well, can you get a new job?” And immediately she answered, “Yes, absolutely. I actually have two people that reached out to me about some opportunities. And the one job, it sounds like I’d have to move.” And she really doesn’t want to move because she wants to stay where she’s currently at because she’s here for her boyfriend.

And then she goes on to tell me about the other job opportunity, to which I said to her at that time, “It doesn’t sound to me like you’re stuck. It sounds to me like you’re choosing to stay at your current job because of this relationship that you have.” And what’s funny is immediately she agreed. She says, “That’s exactly right.” And then she told me how bad her current job was and how she’s so stuck and how the job and the role has changed in the past year. And it’s not going to get better because they’re not implementing any changes for the future.

And how it all comes down to causing her to drink a bottle of wine just to manage the stress of it all when she gets home because she’s so stuck. And I’m laughing now but of course I wasn’t laughing on the phone. But do you see what she’s doing to herself? I think we can all see it. She’s creating this story that she is stuck at this job when she isn’t. There’s two other jobs that are potential. And this is without her even investigating and looking for a new employment.

And she even agreed that she’s choosing to stay at this job so she can live near the man she loves. She wants this relationship to foster. So, I pointed this out to here. I showed her how she’s creating this feeling of being stuck and how she’s thinking about it. And that her job is actually allowing her to foster this relationship that she wants in her life. And it’s so interesting from that point forward, she began telling me how this man was wonderful. She’s never been in a relationship where she’s been so respected and treated so well.

And she just started talking so wonderfully about this man that she was in a relationship with. So, what I want to point out by telling you that part of the story is showing you that how she was creating her own stuckness, and I think we all do this in our life. She was telling herself that she was stuck but the truth was she wasn’t. She had different options for different jobs and that was really without looking. So, this my friends is not being stuck, that is not what was actually happening in reality. That was the story she’s been telling herself.

And when she tells herself this story with her thoughts she will feel stuck. And when she feels stuck it’s clear that she’s patterned that feeling to drink. So, it’s that think, feel, act cycle at play. I think I’m stuck, it’s creating feelings of feeling stuck and therefore I drink for a relief. But the truth is she’s not stuck. It’s a mental barrier for her. She couldn’t see on her own that she wasn’t stuck and that she was actually choosing to be at that job for a different reason which leads me to a very important point which is point number two.

We tell ourselves lies and we believe them. And this is how we create our own stuckness. We lie to ourselves. Our brain lies to us. This happens all the time to humans. Our brains tell us lies. And by the way, this happens so frequently. We just don’t catch it. So, in this case the woman truly believed that she was stuck. She had no other options for another job. So, she had on blinders and couldn’t even consider that there are opportunities out there right in her email box as data to process by the brain. She just discounted that information.

She discounted potential ways out of her situation just because she believed she was so stuck. So, we can’t even see other paths or other opportunities that are available to us if our mind is shut down. And why this is problematic is because first of all it’s not the truth. And second of all, it puts blinders on us that we actually start believing the untruths as facts. And this happens all the time. I hear it as I’m stuck, which is never the case.

And I often hear other statements that sound like truths that are not such as when I start drinking, I can’t stop. Now, maybe you haven’t practiced that in a long time but it’s not an absolute truth. Of course, you can stop. You can always make the choice to stop. And I hear so many other thoughts that come up from my clients or other women that I’m working with and it sounds like these thoughts are just the facts. But I want to tell you, they’re just thoughts. They are not actually facts.

I hear things like, “I’m too old to break this habit.” “It’s going to take too much time or too much work to break this habit.” Or, “I’m just a person that needs a drink to fall asleep.” Or, “It’s my anxiety and I can’t seem to control my anxiety any other way.” These are just thoughts that you’re having, they’re not actually facts. They are not truths. It’s your interpretation of your life at this point in time.

And the reason you have this thought is because you’ve thought this thought so many times over that it’s become your belief system and it feels like a fact. But in actuality it isn’t a fact, it just feels like one. It’s like when think something over, and over, and over, and over again you just stop even questioning it.

You just believe it as true just like with this woman I was speaking to on the phone. She wasn’t actually stuck. I mean she made it clear she wasn’t even looking for a new job. And yet she knew about two potential opportunities that should things get really bad, she can move, which means she wasn’t stuck in the first place. And I get it, feeling stuck feels quite powerless, doesn’t it? It feels like you don’t have any options. It feels like there’s no available options so this is the best it’s going to be. And of course, that feels miserable. Nobody wants to feel stuck.

So, when I told her that she was choosing this job on purpose, because it meant she got to live near this man she loved and being in a loving relationship, guess what happened next? All of a sudden she stopped talking and arguing about how stuck she was. And she transitioned into talking about how wonderful this relationship was and how wonderful this man was.

And when there was a pause I asked her, “So what is this job providing you?” And she started smiling and beaming as she began talking. She told me more about this amazing relationship she was in. And how this job allowed her to have this amazing relationship. She started looking at this job differently. And she kept talking and she actually started to become thankful for her job. And by the end of the call, she was crying and thanking me over and over because we’ve shattered that belief that she was stuck.

That is the power of coaching my friends, in one coaching session you can completely change any mental obstacle that comes up, which when you change your thinking it changes your perspective on your life. And it changes how you experience your life and how you feel about your life. Now, notice I didn’t tell her to love her job. I didn’t tell her to be thankful for her job because that’s not the most powerful way to get transformation. It’s because we’ve shattered that belief system that she was stuck, because she really wasn’t stuck.

And so, she began talking about what action she wanted to take now in her life and now what she was going to pursue because she no longer felt stuck. It’s because she stopped believing that lie from her brain that she was stuck. So, here is the truth my friends, we are never stuck. Unless we are trapped in a box, or locked up in a cage, or in a hostage situation we are never stuck. We just aren’t. So why would you tell yourself that?

Why would you allow your brain to convince you of this nonsense? Because no one teaches us these tools on how to be in charge of your thoughts and of your brain. Because the truth is the brain throws out lies all the time. But that’s not really the problem. The real problem is when we start believing every thought we have and we believe those thoughts that get in the way of us taking the actions we want be taking, that’s what causes us to be stuck.

Because our minds are the most powerful thing we have. They’re the most powerful thing we have control over. Our thoughts can either thwart our action or propel our action. We’re either moving backwards or forwards, or staying stuck, which brings me to point number three is that we create our own stuckness when we don’t even question our own thoughts. If we just believe every thought our brain has, we don’t question them so we assume that they are all true. We assume that they are all facts.

And the crazy thing is when you actually look at your thoughts you’ll find that the majority of them are just that, they’re just thoughts. They are not actually facts. Most of our thoughts are opinions, or a viewpoint, or maybe a way we are interpreting the world but that doesn’t make them a universal truth or a fact. Remember facts are things everyone would agree on. And even then a lot of us agree on a lot of things but they aren’t even all facts that we agree on.

We may have laws in place, or a certain group think, or a way people decided to act and to be in the world to protect the humans, to live long and prosper. Think about it with this example, think about the speed limit being 65 miles per hour. The reason we set speed limits is to protect the people. And if we break the speed limit you get a ticket but only if you get caught. So that’s the law. The law says if you break this law and get caught you will have and suffer this consequence.

The law does not say to the individual, you can’t drive more than 65 miles per hour, because that’s not the truth. The fact is you can drive as fast as you want or as fast as your car will go. But if you drive over 65 miles per hour you’ll get a ticket if you get caught. The fact is you can drive faster. And here is the thing, you may choose to break the law but if you do there are consequences. So, the fact is you can drive as fast as you want or as fast as your car will go. You would just have to suffer the consequences should you get caught.

And depending on what thoughts are going through your head on a specific day, you may choose to break the law. You may choose to go over the speed limit. You might have thoughts like I’m running late and I don’t want to be too much later for the appointment or whatever you’re thinking. But whatever thoughts you have will create the actions. And this is so important my friends, this is what I keep coming back to in each of my podcasts.

There is real value that we can create in our lives, huge value when you look at your thoughts and you question if you want to keep having them, if they keep serving you. Now, some of your thoughts are serving you great but some of your thoughts are not. They’re causing over-drinking, they’re causing relationship problems. They’re causing things to show up in your life that you don’t want.

Thought work changes your life. It’s not positive psychology but it’s about being intentional with your life. It’s saying this is who I am, this is how I want to show up. And how you think determines your actions, which determines your habits, which define your character. This is ancient world wisdom, my friends, and it holds true over the centuries. Notice from your thinking creates your actions, creates your habits and that defines who you are.

Now, I know I used to think all the time I need a drink to relax. That was a huge one for me. And I have talked about it in multiple previous podcasts, because it kept me tied to the drink. I thought it was the alcohol, people told me I just needed to avoid alcohol, just abstain from alcohol and it’ll change you. It didn’t. My thinking kept me tied to my drinking. And I didn’t want to be tied to the drink. I didn’t want the ball and chain for me anymore, no thank you. I wanted to make my decisions. I wanted to be in control. And I wanted to learn the skills to do that.

And now it’s not my default way of thinking for my brain anymore. I do not think I need a drink to relax. I have a whole podcast on that. Because I hear that come up for so many women, they think they need a drink to relax or they want a drink to relax. But that is going to keep you tied to the drink. Do you want that? Is that the result you want for your life? And if not then you need to change your thinking. But what do most of us do? Try to change our drinking. That’s great but I just don’t see it having long term lasting effects.

I don’t see that it becomes a new way of life, a new lifestyle for most people. When you work on the real problem you get real results. I used to have witching hours. I used to have a bunch of mental chatter right after work about drinking. I have none of that now. I don’t have witching hours. They don’t exist anymore. They have been eliminated from my life because I’ve worked on the skill of managing my mind. And that is essential to get the result.

The beautiful thing about this is it frees up your mind to think about other things that are way more useful in your life. I was so done with that mental chatter around alcohol. I wanted to change that mental station, that mental channel in my brain. It’s like I wanted to turn off the station that plays the old records about thinking about alcohol as this glorious, desirable, relaxing liquid that solves life’s problems, because it never did. It was a lie from my brain. It’s not a fact. It’s like believing x, y and z are the first letters of the alphabet. It’s completely ludicrous.

Or that Elvis Presley is still alive, it’s just not a fact. And you have to ask yourself, am I ready to change that station in my brain? Are you ready for a new channel to be playing? I mean let’s play some calm music up there instead, or even Pitbull, that’s an awesome channel on Spotify if you ask me. It’s one of my favorites.

But here’s another caveat that I want to share with all of you, notice there are few benefits to questioning your thoughts, some of those which you saw in the story above about the woman who felt stuck. First you get breakthroughs, and changes, and transformation so much quicker. She got transformation on one call. You don’t get that if you just believe your automatic thinking. The transformations don’t come quick. If you don’t question your thinking it’ll feel like a slog. You’ll wonder why you keep taking the same actions but you’re not getting any change.

Why do I keep counting alcohol free days? But I just still feel like I want alcohol. A second benefit that comes is you’ll start taking charge of your life because now you know how. Because here’s what a lot of us are told, just take a different action, just avoid alcohol, just don’t buy it, just take a different action. And that doesn’t always lead to the result. And third, you’ll start to feel better. Doing this work, you’ll learn how to be kind and how to be gentle to yourself. You’ll start to understand how to feel better in all areas of your life, not just when you’re contemplating drinking.

It’s so much bigger than just about the alcohol. And what I love is that you feel it in the moment, it’s like boom, an explosion of dynamite has gone off in your brain, it’s like – what? My clients even say, “There is a shift I felt right there in the coaching session. You just shifted my thinking.” And it figuratively blows your mind in the best way possible. You’ll see things differently. You’ll see alcohol differently. You’ll experience your life differently. And you won’t create stuckness. Don’t believe that you are stuck for a minute.

Alright, ladies, if you are loving what you are hearing in this podcast, and you’re like, “Yes, I want that for my life. I just don’t know how to apply it. I hear this, I take it in every week intellectually. But it’s just not working for me. There must be something I’m not doing.” Then I invite you to check out Drink Less Lifestyle. It’s where you learn these tools and how to apply them to your life. And you break down these mental barriers that keep you drinking. And you learn how to become more powerful, find freedom and love your life again.

So go to my website sherryprice.com to learn more. Again that’s sherryprice.com. And I’ll also link it in the show notes as well. Alright, thanks for your time today, ladies. And I will see you next week.

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.