You are listening to the Drink Less Lifestyle Podcast with Dr. Sherry Price, episode number 71.

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, how are all of you? Well, for me, I am sore and it feels amazing. I’ve been hitting it back to the gym and working out these past two weeks because I want to get into better shape and accomplish my health goals for 2022. I’ve done the work in Epic You along with the ladies, designing your year was the title of what we were working on in January. And in February you know it’s all about how to lose weight.

And so, I have taken my health goals, my weight loss goals and what I want to accomplish for my overall health for the whole year. And I have broken them down into smaller goals, planned it out in these 90 day intervals using the workbook that is in the Epic You program and really helping my brain to stay focused and committed. And I’ve found that this is the best way for me to do it. And I’m loving that I’m already seeing a little bit of results and by that means I’m sore.

It feels so good to have sore glutes, and sore thighs, and to really be focused and committed to this goal. Because I have to say I got a little lazy during COVID, not in the beginning but in the middle part. And so, I just want to reverse that and get back to it and feeling good about myself and my health, and taking care of myself.

And also, on the day this airs I will be in Florida to meet the lovely ladies coming to my retreat. I am so excited. If you’re one of the ladies coming, I look forward to spending our time together and really helping you make some breakthroughs in your life.

So, in this episode I want to talk about my word for the year. And if you’ve been following me for a little bit of time you know that I do a word of the year for the past several years. And I also want to talk about how this word came to be. So, a few episodes back you know I had a podcast episode talking about how to create closure and that’s a practice and a ritual that I do when I’m wrapping up a year.

So, when I was wrapping up the year 2021 I talked about how I walk through creating closure around the year because it’s not just putting it in a nice bow but it’s really to pull out the learnings that I have recognized over the past year. The truths of my life, how my life is changing, and evolving, and expanding, and contracting, and all of the beauty of that learning I love to capture. And this is something I do for my self-growth, my self-development and quite honestly to improve myself.

And I think it’s very important that we do this for ourselves. I think this is something we do when we are younger and we get a lot of questions asked by adults like, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Which is a terrible question, I mentioned that before. But just really saying, “Okay, who are you becoming? What’s your next version of you?” And we get to change that as life changes us, as we learn through our experiences, as we learn from things that we may think we want something.

But then when we go, or we get close to it, or we actually obtain it we might feel differently. We might say, “Wow, this was not something that I thought was that important to me.” And vice versa, if we are not obtaining something, why is that? What’s getting in our way? And how can we break down those obstacles and use that to fuel us to get to our goal and not keep us stuck in a rut?

One of the things I also find helpful in wrapping up a year and starting a new year is I create a yearly vision board. And on that vision board goes my word of the year and a few other standard pieces. So, I know if you’ve been following me for a while you may have known that my last word for last year was inspire. And I have to say that was such an apropos word looking back on the year because my word is about what I’m seeking to achieve and one I’m also open to receiving.

So, what I have noticed about last year is I was opening myself up to looking at ways I can be inspired as well as ways I can inspire others around me. And what I’ve learned about this last year was that I had some mentors that actually weren’t inspiring me anymore. And so, I have changed course. I have left their courses, left following them. And I looked for finding people, mentors, new leaders to places now I wanted to travel to or go to, or their philosophies now matched more in alignment with how I have changed my philosophies over the years.

So, I’m so excited that as I look back I realize some doors that I had closed because they were done serving me. And I realized what other doors I have opened, what other coaches now I follow or invest in myself in their programs. And just learning better ways to communicate what I’m trying to accomplish in the world for other women and inspire them. And utilize different tools that I’d been experimenting in my life.

And once I find something that works I share it with my community. I want people to know what’s working in my life and maybe they want to try it too to see if they get similar results. And so, the members in my programs are learning as I’m learning. So, as I’m putting together my vision board I have a few standard things that go on it. And I’m also taking inventory of my life and where I want it to go.

So, as I was thinking about, okay, here’s the place where I like to put the word of the year onto my vision board. And what word does it feel like I need to embrace? And what word feels like it resonates in my body? And so, as I’m designing the board, as I’m putting other pieces on my vision board I started feeling this nudge inside of me. And I don’t know if you guys get this internal wisdom I like to call it, this nudging like something is about to happen, something is about to change. It feels like a little bit of restless energy in my belly, this little ball of anxiety.

I knew my body was trying to communicate something to me and with me but I wasn’t quite sure what it was. But I knew it was going to resonate and pop to the surface. So, I couldn’t really put my finger on it when I felt that nudge. I’m like, “I wonder what this is about.” I feel it coming. But as I said I couldn’t really put my finger on it. So, if you listened to that episode on creating closure you know that I was thinking of, what is holding me back? What are some of the things that I’ve learned this year?

And I shared with you that one of the feelings that I was totally done with was this I’m not good enough feeling, or I’m not enough feeling, whether it’s I’m not good enough, not smart enough, not pretty enough, not whatever enough. I mentioned that I was ready to let that go. And I have to say, that was one of the breakthroughs I had at a retreat that I had and went to last year. And when I started looking back on that I noticed my nudge started to grow in my belly even more. And then in a few days it sprouted, my word of the year just came to me.

And when it came to me it was like I felt it in my bones. And when you feel it in your bones you just know it’s it, you don’t even question it. Do you have times like this where this happens in your life where you’re like, you just make a decision and you feel it’s the right decision? Even though you have no evidence to show you that it is the right decision, you just feel this is the way I should go, or this is the next thing I need to do, or this is how I’m going to solve this problem.

And I love when our inner voice and that inner knowing comes about. And so, I have to say, that’s exactly what I felt with this word. And the word a little bit surprised me but not totally surprised me. I thought actually a different word would have surfaced. But once my brain heard that word it was like, interesting. And as time went by I knew exactly why that was the perfect word. I know why my inner knowing was telling me that this word was my word for the upcoming year. Alright, so are you ready for it? The word of the year for me in 2022 is powerful.

Now, when this word first came up I have to say part of me was like, “But you’re an introvert, you don’t act always so powerful.” Powerful, I had some preconceived notions of what that is. This extrovert, this person that takes over the room, they’re in charge all the time. And the way my brain saw it this time was not with those preconceived notions like I called them. I see it radically different for me for this year.

And so, one of the ways it felt different is because what I have experienced earlier, what I just alluded to was when I went to this retreat and had this really big breakthrough of this small trauma that I have experienced in my life. That I was just really ready to move on but I didn’t know how. And when my coach helped me through that and I saw it differently and I experienced it differently, I mentioned before that that felt like a huge shift and a huge breakthrough for me. And I started to really feel differently.

And I will tell you, when I felt differently, you know how I would describe that feeling? That I stepped into my power. I felt better about myself. I felt better about my life and I felt more in charge of my life, not that I have to be this extrovert and gigantic personality. That’s not the level of powerfulness. It was this inner powerfulness that came. And then two, is that I started to make shifts and take different action in my life. And I was already a bit on that trajectory starting last year but I’m starting to feel how it’s going to be showing up even bigger for this year.

So, I mentioned that I dropped some things that weren’t working for me, dropped out of programs that weren’t working for me, stopped following people that yes, I agreed about what they were thinking and their philosophy. But now that I have learned new tools I’m taking my life in a bit different of a direction. And so, finding those people that support that thinking, support that way of life. So now I’m more aligned in a different direction, a direction that feels better and more powerful for me.

And also, third, what feels so powerful to me is the things that I have been kind of putting on the backburner, have kind of resurfaced now where they feel on the front burner and it’s time to take care of them. And one being getting back into my health in a very committed deliberate way because I saw how some of my excuses were holding me back from taking full responsibility and showing up in the powerful way that I wanted to. And powerful to me means that you are making decisions in a way that aligns with what your values are.

So yes, I came back to this place where I felt it in my bones that it’s now time to show up more powerfully for myself this year. I want to do this for me. And here’s the side benefit, when you show up more powerfully for you, you also show up more powerfully for others. And I have to tell you how this feels even more aligned thinking about that.

So, there are things going on personally in my life, in my home life where if I show up more powerfully I give others around me the permission to show up more powerfully for themselves. It’s kind of like showing by doing, or actions always speak louder than our words.

And so, in this season of our household my daughter is experiencing a lot more anxiety than she normally does. So, there are ways that she is showing up more anxiety provoked and it’s really making me utilize different tools for her. I understand it better because there are things she’s really anxious about going on in her life right now. We are having to pick out a middle school for her by the end of the month for next year. And so, we’re talking about what that looks like. And how the class size will increase and how the responsibility will increase for her.

And how the workload and homework load will increase for her, and how her extracurricular activities are going to change once we hit middle school. And then she’s changing some of the extracurricular activities that she wants to be doing right now and shying away from some because of anxiety and not moving towards them even though she loves to do them. So, I love sharing with her how I’m tapping into my inner wisdom which is leading me to a more powerful place and the ways she can do that for her.

Because here’s the thing, ladies, life is always going to present us challenges. We are always going to have to make decisions. There are going to be many times in our life where things don’t feel good, we’re going to feel uncertain, or anxious, or restless and we’re going to have to power through. So, it’s very helpful to analyze when I can step into my power and what helps me get there.

So, I’m asking my daughter which ways that she feels she thrives, where does she really embrace and enjoy learning? How does she like to learn going forward? What are the traits of her classroom, her environment, her teacher that works for her? Because as we’re debating, shall we stay in public school? Shall we go to private school? Shall we transition? She even asked about homeschooling. We want to make the right decision based on the best way that her brain works. And walking her through that thinking on how to make the best informed decision.

So, pulling in examples of how I’m showing up differently in my life, showing up more powerfully in my life. And she’s able to see that and recognize that because I’m actually living it, not just talking about it, but actually doing it. It’s now shaping her mind to see, I get to show up that way as well. And you know what ladies? When I see it from that perspective I have to tell you that this entire world needs more empowered women. Yes. And when I think about that, can I just tell you, it’s like the heavens open and the angels start singing.

And I just have to yell out, “Yes, this is exactly my mission in life is to empower women.” So, this word ‘powerful’ just became even more powerful in my life and so much more powerful that I’ve even changed my homepage on my website. Because I help women empower themselves over alcohol, empower themselves in their lives. That’s what Drink Less Lifestyle is about, that’s what Epic You is about. It’s about empowering yourself to get the life you want because when you feel powerful you don’t back away from your life, you go towards it.

And this is what I help women do. As I’ve worked with hundreds of women in the past I re-see how I’ve helped them save their marriage, save money, create budgets, lose weight, stop drinking, stop overdrinking, be in control of their drinking, get raises, get promotions, ask for raises. Find new jobs, leave a job, cure burnout of their current job, transition to retirement, transition to becoming an empty nester, start living the life that they want. Powerful women, it’s all about just making decisions that align with your goals, with your values, with where you want to go in life.

Now, it’s great to think this way but you also need tools to tap into this power. And these are the tools that I share with the members inside my programs because it helps them make progress and get to their results. And ladies, it is so fun to see other women on fire for their lives, making headway towards their goals. And I have seen people get unstuck, they get out of the rut of this COVID funk that so many of us are feeling and complaining about.

So let me ask you, how does it feel to you when you say, “I am powerful?” When you feel powerful, how do you show up? What happens to your energy when you feel powerful? For me it’s like nothing can stop me. It’s the energy that I want to move forward. I want to move towards my goals, not away from them. I also feel powerful when I’ve overcome a hurdle that was blocking me from getting towards my goals or from where I wanted to go.

Feeling powerful makes it seem like that mountain to climb to get to the goal feels like now just a few tasks and a few little molehills just to go over, or speedbumps. When I’m feeling powerful it’s like I know the next step to take on this path, on this journey to get to where I want to go. When I feel powerful I feel good. I feel like I’m on track. I feel like I’m getting towards the destination and I’m also loving the journey.

When you feel powerful it’s like you have this superpower. It’s like I’ve just discovered something. This is the next direction I need to take. Or this is the next task I need to do. Or I just made this phone call and boom, something just happened and it got done. It’s like you have energy now that fuels you in a positive way.

So just yesterday I was coaching a client who was struggling. She wasn’t feeling in her power. She was struggling with burnout from her job. She’s in the healthcare field and things have just been heavy for her for months now. And it’s now just taking its toll on her. She told me all the things that were going on with work and how it’s just causing her to feel sluggish, worn out and just tired. And she says, “I think this burnout is just getting worse. I don’t know how many more months or weeks I can take of this. I don’t look forward to my work anymore.”

So, I do what I always do and we get to the root cause. So, we looked at how her workload has changed. What are her hours? What is her caseload like? Are her patients any different? And what is different about them? And as we analyzed all that, her hours are the same. Her caseload is nearly the same. And the procedures and what’s required of her is actually still very similar to pre COVID.

There were a few things that were different. But when we piecemealed out those few things that were different in this COVID state she acknowledged that that’s not really troubling her. That’s not really bothering her. So, we explored what else could be going on. And we got to that there are some personal issues going on and she was not seeing those as those were really dampening her fuel for going to work. Those were actually the cause of her burnout, not her job.

We looked at her attitude when she arrived at work and it was dismal. It was because of what was going on in her personal life. It had nothing to do with her work. And that’s what a lot of us tend to do. We tend to blame things because we feel like it might be this but when we actually look at the facts we find out a different story. So instead of trying to work on the job, which was not the root cause of her burnout, we actually worked on the root cause which was the things going on with her personal life.

And so, we parceled out exactly what is going on, what she doesn’t like, what she wants to change. And then we made a path, we created a way to get out of feeling this burnout and cure the burnout. So, if the goal is to cure the burnout we made a path to get there. And so, I checked in with her at the end of the call and I said, “How are you feeling?” And do you know what she said? “I feel so powerful. I feel so differently now. I feel that I see it differently because I didn’t know where I was stuck and you helped me see how to get unstuck.”

And so that’s my word, ‘powerful’ and then she used the word ‘powerful’. And I was like, “Yes, this is so awesome.” Empowering women to see how they can take control of their lives to get what they want. That’s what I love about my coaching style, the causal coaching, getting to the root cause of the problem. Because when you get to the root cause then you can say, “This is the exact thing that needs to change.” And then we put a process in place to get the change.

Because here’s the thing, our brain will want to go down that rabbit hole, and that rabbit hole and say it’s burnout from work when it’s not. Our brain will create more problems and it’ll blame things which aren’t part of the problem. And I have to say, ladies, doesn’t life present us with so many rabbit holes that you can go down? I mean it’s endless, the distractions, the amount of rabbit holes, the amount of things we can occupy with our brain and feel like we are just spinning out or orbiting the Earth and we’re not really tackling the real problem.

And I just love how when you show up powerfully in your own life it puts you back into the driver’s seat. You get to see how if I just take these few actions I will get the results that I want. And I have outlined in great detail of the powerful things I will do this year, the things that I’m committing to doing because I want the results that they will be creating. I have outlined this for my heath. I have outlined this in my relationships. I have outlined this in my business and my mission in life, and in my family life, and in my goals for my money. I’m doing my part of what I can control and that’s powerful.

So, there are few tools that I share with the ladies in my program and one is keeping your power worksheet. If you are in my programs you know about this worksheet. Power as defined in the worksheet is progress on what’s essential and requisite. That’s my definition of power, progress on what’s essential and requisite. Requisite means what’s required to get to your goal. Many of us work on things that actually aren’t on the path to our goal. We think they should be on the path but they’re actually not.

And I love doing this worksheet because it can really outline what’s necessary and what’s unnecessary to get to your goal and a timeline which you can follow and put into place and start practicing and start taking action. Another tool that I love to help ladies within my programs is empowering questions, asking yourself empowering questions so you get back into the driver’s seat and you get to make decisions that align with your values.

Because what I find, what scrolls along in our head and what just comes along in our head are disempowering questions, questions that take us off track from where we want to go. And just think about what is the opposite of being powerful? It’s being disempowered. When you’re disempowered you’re weak, you’re feeble, you’re easily broken, you’re fragile, you’re helpless and you could feel defeated.

So, notice when I’m talking about powerful, I’m not talking about introverted versus extroverted or needing to have a lot of control over the outside world, or be in a powerful position within a company, or using power in a negative way. I’m talking about the energy you embody. And that energy can be disempowered especially if you’re asking yourself the wrong types of questions.

A disempowering question can look like, how did I let myself get this bad? How did I let my drinking go off the rails this long? Why can’t I get a handle on this? How much worse do things have to get? Or how low does my life have to get before I’m willing to make change? These all zap you of your power. None of these questions bring you back to power. What they do is they promote feeling more weak, more feeble, more broken, more helpless and feeling more defeated.

Now, I don’t know about you but when I’m in that energy I don’t make good decisions, meaning I don’t make decisions that align always with my values. If I value health, I might make decisions to eat the potato chips, or get another glass of wine, or just say, “Screw it, why do I care?” But if you can easily implement some tools in your toolkit and develop the skill of saying, “Hey, that’s not being in my power, let me get back into my power and see what decision I would make.”

And when you’re in your power you are going to make choices and decisions aligned with your goals and your values. That’s what it means to live a powerful life. I recently saw a graphic that captures the energy of being powerful so well. So, consider when you are powerful and consistent, what happens? You get to your goals. You become the leader in your life. So, I want to say that again because I think that’s where all of us want to be is when you are powerful and consistent what happens? You get to your goals. You become the leader in your life.

Now, the second part of this graphic says, “What happens if you’re just kind and just say yes to everything?” Well, when you’re kind and just say yes to everything that appears in your life, you may or may not get results. And then what does that look like? It means you are a martyr in your life. You’re always doing for others but never getting to yourself. So, I want to repeat that part again.

So, when you are kind and saying yes to everybody and everything, you may or may not get results for yourself because you’re acting as a martyr in your life. You’re always doing things for others but not prioritizing what needs to get done for you.

The third part of this graphic says, “When you are acting powerless, defeated, passive, or frustrated, you don’t get good results.” And where does this lead? This leads you to become the victim of your life because you are blaming others and other things. So, I’ll say that part one more time. When you are powerless, defeated, acting passive or frustrated, you don’t get good results in your life and you become the victim of your life. You feel you don’t have power. Everything else around you is to blame for where you’re at and for your lack of results.

And I think that graphic captures it so well. And it really fuels my decision to want to be powerful because I want to make good decisions that align with my goals and my values, no doubt about it. This is what every woman wants. You want to be powerful over your drinking. You want to be powerful over your eating. You want to be powerful in the way you show up for yourself personally and professionally. You want to be powerful in your life.

One of the ladies in my Epic You program knows that I do a word of the year. And so, on one of our calls inside Epic You she had asked me, “Hey, what is your word of the year? I haven’t heard that podcast yet?” And so, when I mentioned that my word of the year was powerful, so many women on the call, their eyes lit up and they’re like, “That’s so good. I want that word.” And so many of the women have adopted this word of the year for them.

And I can’t tell you how much fun it is to be around other women who think like you, who are aligned like you and want to make great decisions in their life. And the energy in our group is so amazing, so fun to be around other powerful ladies. So, I’m committed to showing up in my power and creating powerful results in my life this year. And not from a place of lack or not enough-ness, but from a place of power and a place of feeling good about me.

And as I wrap up this episode for today, I also want to share with you anther part that goes on my vision board each year. So, I mentioned I pick a word of the year and one of the other standards that goes on my vision board is also a Bible verse for the year. And I make sure I hang this vision board in my office where I can see it every day. I’m actually staring at it right now because I want to see the goals and then the intentions that I have set for myself for this year.

And the Bible verse that I chose for this year comes from 2 Timothy, chapter 1, verse 7 of the NIV. And it reads: For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, it gives us power, love, and self-discipline. Oh my gosh, ladies, I have chills. I think that says it beautifully. When you are in your power you act with self-discipline. Self-discipline is nothing more than mastering yourself to get to your goals. I love this. Let’s do this, ladies, let’s live in our power because we are powerful.

And I’d love to hear how you are going to show up powerfully for you. Please let me know. You can send an email, let me know on Instagram or in my private Facebook page. And if you’ve liked this podcast, I ask that you kindly take a moment and leave me a review on iTunes. I’d love to hear from you and what you think of the show. Alright, ladies, go and act in your power 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.