You are listening to the Drink Less Lifestyle podcast with Dr. Sherry Price, episode number 129.

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 smart, beautiful, successful friends. How are you today? I am fired up because I have a deep topic that I want to talk about with you today, something that came up over the weekend actually that I thought about and want to share some of my thoughts and experiences over something and we’re going to talk about that.

But first I want to tell you that I am also cooking up something fun and I hope it’ll kind of take its form in the next couple of days here and then I will be able to announce a wonderful way to connect with me, to connect with one another and this amazing opportunity that I have envisioning. And I’m just waiting to get some details finalized before I can announce it here on the podcast. So I’m very hopeful that it will all come together. I’ve been praying about it. I’ve been visualizing it. I’ve been journaling about it. And I am super excited that hopefully next week when you tune in I can announce this awesome opportunity.

So for today I want to talk about what it looks like when we worry about our drinking. And I see this happen so much that I really wanted to dedicate a whole podcast to this topic for so many reasons. First, I had an encounter with an acquaintance over the weekend and we were talking about something that was very troubling to her and very much worrisome to her which I’ll talk about as we get into the podcast. But notice for you, are you somebody who worries a lot? Are you someone who would be considered to be worried over many things?

And maybe you would even call yourself a chronic worrier. And I want to say that I notice that I’ve slumped into this a bit coming out of the pandemic. So I know during that first year of the pandemic, I was kind of sucked into the news. I was very concerned for the health. I was researching, should I get vaccinated, should I not, all of those things coming up. And I felt the first year I handled it pretty well.

And then we go into the second year and I don’t think any of us really expected it to last as long as it did, at least I wasn’t at least, I was thinking we would get through this. We would get these vaccines, things would be back to normal which quite didn’t happen that way. But there was a part of my brain that really wanted that to occur.

And so when it became more of a slog and now we’re coming out of it I’d say, we’re back into meeting with people. Most businesses are requiring their employees to go back, at least some days back to work for those companies that did a lot of remote work, obviously some jobs you can’t do remote. I fell into a pattern of worrying. And I remember doing a prior podcast on this and my views around it have somewhat shifted since going through this.

So I know going through the pandemic and now all the things that have come from that, the Black Lives Matter, the Asian hate, now the war with Ukraine and Russia. And you just keep opening the news of new shootings and just new things happening that are just awful. They are really tragic.

And I don’t mean to make light of any of that but I notice the more I read the news and the more I read these stories it causes fear and worry inside of me. Worry for what’s going to happen, worry for what’s next, what’s next to come. Is it safe to send even my daughter to school? I mean school shootings, just the things that go through our minds. And so I just want to recognize that it’s easy for us to choose worry. And it’s easy to be consumed by worry because the world has gone through a lot and it’s kind of upside down.

And things aren’t the way most of us would want them to be. We feel more divided. We feel more confused. And we’re seeing tragedy around us which of course doesn’t make us feel amazing. So I want to really dive into this emotion of worry because here’s what I know for myself and what I have seen in working with women over these past two to three years is that worry takes a lot of effort.

We may think it doesn’t and that it’s normal to worry and I just want to say what are the consequences that come about when you chronically worry, when you worry and continue to worry and that’s all that’s kind of seeping into your mind? And so what does that worrying have you do? What comes of it, when you worry what comes of it? And here’s what comes of it for most people.

We wait. We stall. We wring our hands. We pick up bad habits. We ruminate. We talk about it. We discuss it. We mentally churn on it which leads to kind of a mental anguish going on which can lead to mental health decay, an erosion of happiness, an erosion of fun and joy in our life because we’re full of worry. So I just want to point out that when we fill ourselves with worry, when we’re consumed by worry we really accomplish nothing of value.

Because I would say waiting around for things to change, waiting around for all of this to stop happening, just waiting doesn’t really put us in an empowering position. It makes us in a disempowered state and then we ruminate on it and that mental anguish. And then we stew. And for a lot of people they want to escape that worry because it doesn’t feel good in the body. So then we do things like bad habits, overdrink or overeat or eat foods that we don’t really feel good once they’re in our body, highly processed foods, sugar, and a bunch of things that make us gain weight.

I know weight gain has gone up for a lot of people during COVID because we were waiting. We were told not to go out. The gyms closed. Our normal way of doing things and our normal activities of daily living shifted and that was a shock to our bodies. So we lived through a pandemic that kind of made us wait and worry. But what I want to ask, are you still there? Are you still waiting and worrying? Because you feel stuck when you’re in that waiting and worrying space. And it may feel productive but it’s not.

It’s not getting you closer to your goals and it’s actually taking you further away because when you’re waiting you’re essentially not doing anything. And so more worrying, just notice that it won’t change things. More worrying won’t improve how you feel or it won’t improve the actions you take in your life. And so I really want you to see this. Do you see this? Because worrying causes us to wait around for things to change. And so we’re waiting for the outside world to tell us when we can go and do things again and that’s a very disempowered state.

And so when we worry, causes us to be anxious, causes us to be restless, causes us to feel that things aren’t right. And so for some people when they get that anxiousness, when they get that worry of oh my gosh, what’s happening with my job, what’s going to happen with my kids, what’s going to happen next, we can turn to alcohol for relief. And so just notice if worrying is driving up your drinking. You’re worried you’re not going to be able to take the weight off that you put on from COVID, whatever it is.

Whatever it is that you’re worrying about, just notice if worrying is what’s fueling your drinking. And also I want you to recognize, if worrying is at all productive for you, do you do any actions that are considered productive when you worry? What actions are you taking when you worry? This is the best way to know what feelings fuel you and what feelings disempower you. And from my perspective I’ve seen worry as a disempowering feeling for most people.

When we are full of worry, oftentimes you’re not learning new ways of being, you’re not learning new ways of thinking. So you can’t actually overcome the worry. What happens is, is worry begets more worry. We start worrying about this and oh my gosh, we go down this. And then we go down a rabbit hole worrying about something else and the next thing and the next thing. So then you become now what I call addicted to worry. Yes, we can become addicted to certain feelings.

And so some people feel like they need to be worrying about something because that’s who they are. That’s what they do. That’s all they’ve known. They went from worrying if their kid was going to come out okay to worrying if their kid was going to launch okay. And now the kid has launched, then they’re still worried about the kid. And now they change their worry to their parents that are aging. And so we just keep worrying.

And I’ve worked with some of these women where they just want to keep worrying about things thinking that that is leading to a productive way of being in life. And I want to say it’s not. It’s robbing you of a better experience you could be having of this life. So whether you’re worried about your kids or your job or your drinking or the amount of stress you have. Notice if worry is a feeling that keeps coming up for you. And then I’d really like to know, where is all this worrying getting you? Is it improving your life? Do you feel better when you worry?

I would say most people would answer no. Actually it works the opposite way. They feel worse when they worry. And then you experience life less fully because you’re kind of contracted rather than being in that expanded expansive state where you’re learning and growing and trying new things. All of that becomes blocked when we worry too much. So I know we worry because we really want to be ‘cognitive’ or on top of things to prevent an outcome that we’re worried about.

But notice a lot of times our worries never come to fruition, the outcome never comes that we are worried about. So as you can see I’m making a case against chronic worrying. I’m not saying worry won’t come up and I’m not saying it’s not an emotion we’re not going to allow in the body, I’m not saying that at all. I’m just saying, when it comes up, what do you do with it? Do you fuel it or do you try to abolish it and quell it? So if we can’t get rid of worry because that’s not the goal here.

We can never abolish any emotion entirely, so it will come up but it’s how do you handle it once it comes up? So if you’re worried about your drinking, what do you do about it? Do you sit and stew about it and another month goes by, and another month goes by and then a year goes by and two years goes by and then a decade goes by? Do you just sit and wait? Do you just sit and ruminate and think and wish, I wish I didn’t have this problem, I wish it would just go away? You become a dreamer rather than a doer.

And I noticed this in my own life after years of trying to get over drinking and trying the same things over and over and thinking that was progress but yet I’d still slip back into the same pattern of drinking, into a bottle of chardonnay a night. I’d still slip back, I’m like, “Wait, these things are giving me short term success but don’t see how I’m changing over the long term.” And what I want is sustainable change.

What I want is a new relationship with alcohol, one where I didn’t have to give it up completely, one where I was in control and I felt I had freedom of choice each and every glass that I poured or that I contemplated pouring. That’s what I wanted. And when I saw what I was doing wasn’t getting me closer to my goal of where I wanted to be, I started saying, “Wow, I think I’m going about this the wrong way.” Because I’ve tried taking a sober October or a dry January again and again and it wasn’t lasting. It wasn’t changing the deep-seated habit.

So I started to worry about my drinking again and worry even more. I thought about it and I ruminated on it. And then I drank because I didn’t want to be thinking about my drinking and I didn’t want to be faced with this problem. I wanted to forget about it because nobody likes to think about their problems over and over again, it doesn’t feel good.

But then I said, “Wait, if I’m worrying about my drinking and I’m not doing anything about it, wait a second, can I learn that when I worry maybe I need to interpret that differently and it means now I take action steps to abolish the habit.” So I get back in the driver’s seat of my drinking. I’m back to making a choice of if I drink or if I don’t. And I’m back to desiring it less which is where I wanted to be. So notice how you’re using your worry if you are worrying about your drinking or anything else.

Are you learning how to get back your freedom to choose if and when you drink and how much you drink? Are you making headway? Are you making progress on solving the deeper issues that lead to the drinking? Because we know that drinking is not the major problem. There is an underlying problem driving the drinking. And are you getting close to that root cause and are you solving for that? Are you looking at ways to totally abolish that? Because I tell you, that is truly possible.

Don’t become a worrier for worry sake just to increase more worry in your life and then to ruminate on it. And have it cause you mental anguish that it starts to deplete you mentally. And you suffer mentally. Your mental health state suffers which directly impacts your emotional state. I’d rather you use worry for you to say, “Hey, my body, my brain is telling me there’s a problem and how can I go about fixing it?” How can I go about solving it? What is the action plan I need to make so that I can damper down this worry?

So if you hate your job, are you looking to make your job better or are you looking for a new one? If you hate your drinking are you enrolling in programs and applying lessons to your life that are going to change why you feel you need the drink? And if you’re mad because you gained weight or you want to lose some weight, are you learning skills and implementing tools to do that, that makes it sustainable for your lifestyle?

Not that you’re going to eat chicken and broccoli for the next three/four months and then I’ll go back to my normal ways of eating because that’s yo-yoing. And we know that that doesn’t work. So are you making changes that are sustainable for the lifetime, for the long term? So if you’re taking action, focusing your attention on the right things, building a new skill set, changing your belief system around something, working on your power moves and all these ways where you can learn to solve the problem rather than continuing to worry about it. And what would that feel like in your life? You’d feel amazing.

Now, once you solve one problem another problem may come up but don’t just transfer the worry just for the sake of continuing to worry. If there is truly another problem and you want to take care of it, take care of it. But don’t fall in the habit of loving to worry or feeling that if you’re not worrying there’s something wrong with you. There are people like this. And I want to help you out of that chronic worry state because you’re only diminishing the life and the freedom you get to experience here on this planet.

And I want to tell you that life offers you so much more freedom, so much more joy. And worry can feel like shackles and weighing you down. This life has so much to offer you. And the reason I come on this podcast is to show you that you don’t have to worry about your drinking anymore. I am now at a place in my life where I don’t worry about my drinking anymore. I spent lots of time, lots of money, resources on learning the tools I needed to learn so that drinking was no longer an issue in my life.

And I’ll tell you what, it took some time, it took some money, it took some resources but I’m so glad I did it. I have no regrets on spending any of that time or valuable resources to get to where I am today. I’m glad I read the books. I’m glad I listened to the podcasts. I’m glad I did the coaching programs. I’m glad I learned so much. I have done so much research on my own. I’m glad I bought the textbooks. I’m glad I learned about habits and how to break them. And I’m so proud I now have the confidence and control in my life that I once dreamed about.

And now that I’ve done so much of that research I am now an expert. I’m an expert and a guide to help others get here who want to get here, who want to have that freedom and control back in their life. And this is to me true freedom because I don’t have to abstain. I don’t have to say I’m sober forever, to me that didn’t feel true freedom for me. I can have one drink and stop and it feels amazing. And I have to tell you one of the best parts of doing this work is I used to love the buzz. I used to love being inebriated and now I no longer need the buzz.

I would drink quickly just to get that buzz going, just to lower my inhibitions, just to make me feel like a bit more fun, just to think I was connecting with others when I had that buzz going. But now I can see that was all a figment of my imagination. I didn’t need the buzz. I wasn’t connecting with others. I wasn’t even listening to others when I was buzzed. It was all about me and what I had to say. And I needed a buzz to watch a movie and go out with friends and do all the things. And now I don’t need any of that.

And now being on this side I could see how the buzz was actually disconnecting me from the people I hung out with, disconnecting me from my own self because I didn’t even have the memories that I wanted. I didn’t have the recall on the movie. I didn’t have the recall on the conversations the next day because we know alcohol affects the memory and learning center. And so I was totally disconnected from the things happening around me but yet I thought I was connected.

My life is so much better without the buzz or the high from alcohol. And I have less worry in my life. So on the flipside of less worry I have more joy. I have more pure happiness, not chemical induced happiness from the drug of alcohol but true pure happiness for who I am, for the people I get to hang out with, for all the blessings in my life. It’s truly a joy, a joy that I wasn’t able to tap into when I was chronically drinking and chronically worrying about my drinking.

Now, I also want to be completely transparent with you, breaking free from a long standing habit of chronic drinking and worrying about my drinking wasn’t easy, it isn’t but it’s totally possible. And just like any habit a habit of worrying can be broken and as a result you feel much more at peace, less anxious and less overwhelmed. So when I’m talking about worrying I’m talking about the unproductive thinking about a possible threat or danger. Unproductive thinking, just think about that, unproductive thinking.

If I’m going to use my brain on this Earth I want to use it in a productive manner that is useful to me and to my life and to the people in my life. So when I hear that worry is an unproductive way of thinking I don’t want to deal with worry that much. I want to minimize it as much as I possibly can. And so I’ve set up systems in my life that when I fall into worry or when I get into worry or when I say I’m on the worry wagon, I want to come off the wagon. I don’t want to be on the worry wagon. I know where that wagon leads and it’s just downright depressing.

And it doesn’t make me feel good about living the day, living the life that I want to live. It doesn’t lead to any form of epic-ness in my life. So when I’m on that worry wagon I want to get off. So I want to share with you three ways that I get off the worry wagon because I don’t want to spend time in an unproductive way of being and disempowering myself with my brain.

So one tip that I do, the first tip that I do is I ask myself what am I thinking and believing that has me so worried? I really check-in with myself. So let me say that again because if you’re taking notes I really want you to write down this question. What am I thinking and believing that has me so worried? It’s such a great question. It really cuts through what is going on for you because when you answer that question you can now see exactly what you are worried about and it gives you direction on what to do next.

And so really answer that question, what am I thinking and believing that has me so worried? Is it your reputation that if somebody finds out how much you drink or what else ever you’re doing, is that what you’re worried about? I have clients that are so worried that they’re so buttoned up because they want to look so good on the outside and they want a perfect reputation. They want to show up a certain way to almost perfectionism, that when they come home they just want to unwind.

And the quickest way to unwind is to go to a drink because they felt like they’d been in this pressure cooker at their job. They had to monitor what they say, how they acted, how they held themselves, how they showed up. And yes some environments require that of us but deep down what are you worried about? And so this worrying may be causing you to go drink. So what are you believing that has you so worried? So this gets under the hood like I said, of worry. We want to get under the hood of that car and see what’s going on.

We want to get really inside and tap in to what you’re thinking because worry comes from how you are thinking. Remember, the definition of worry is unproductive thinking. And I love this question so much because it gets us to our beliefs and a belief is just a thought that you trust is true. Let me say that again. A belief is just a thought that you trust is true but is it really true? And this is where I go when I coach is I really want to look at and uncover where you developed this belief and why you think it’s true.

Because a lot of times we believe things that aren’t necessarily truth. And we all know that a belief system can hold you a prisoner and prevent you from making lasting change that you want. And our beliefs become who we are and what we do. So our beliefs are so important to uncover and to know. I was just working over this past weekend on eliminating some of the beliefs that I have that no longer serve me. I don’t want to hang on to them anymore. I want them to vanish. I want them to go poof and they did because I want to make space for new beliefs in my brain.

I want productive thinking because I know I am the creator of my life. I am the creator of my dreams and I’m not just going to be dreaming my dreams. I’m going to be going and taking action towards my dreams. So as an expert of eliminating beliefs and changing beliefs around alcohol this is where I really help my clients get lasting results. So as you’re doing this work tap into that first tip. It’s so powerful.

Alright, so tip number two, when I am on the worry wagon what do I do next? I ask myself what action can I take to make the worry go away? So if my thinking is the cause of my worry I want to know what actions I can take to diminish the worry or make it go away because after all I am the one creating the worry so I am the one who can take it away. And I love knowing that I am in control in how much I worry always. And that is such an empowering thought.

And I always want to empower myself so I am creating the life I want and the experience of life that I want and all the beauty in life which it offers. So it’s so tempting to wait and continue to do nothing and just to sit and worry. And I’ve been there, sit and stew and worry. Worry some more, wait for the right time, like the right time actually exists. And we tell ourselves there is a right time but is there really? And I know a lot of us will wait to feel differently before we take action and I don’t want to wait on taking action. I want to be an action taker.

I want to move the needle on that worry and taking action will do that. And here’s what I see, a lot of people waiting too long before they take action and they keep allowing the pain just to keep coming and the pain to keep coming and maybe the pain’s not that significant yet. So really, yeah, they’ll get around to doing it. Yeah, this five pounds is bothering me and now yeah, this 10 pounds is bothering me. And now, yeah, okay, now it’s at 15 pounds, it’s bothering me. They just wait for the pain to grow.

And when it comes to drinking a lot of people just wait and wait and wait until they hit the rock bottom moment. They wait for the DUI or the health scare or finally the kids or the spouse is telling them, “Mom, please stop with the drinking, you’re embarrassing us.” But why wait, why wait till the pain gets so significant? Why not be in action much before then? And we may just be not knowing what to do but reach out to somebody. If you can’t figure out an action plan for you, reach out to somebody who can help you, where you are struggling.

I was talking to a friend and her stepson is living in his car without a job and he’s drinking day and night. He’s basically homeless and it’s crushing her and her husband. She is so worried about him and that’s all she talked about is how worried she is about her stepson and how she’s begging him to go to rehab because alcohol is ruining his life. Now, he’s 25 years old and they can’t make him go and he doesn’t want to go to rehab. And she keeps insisting and her husband keeps insisting that he goes to rehab.

They keep enforcing, “You must go to rehab. You must clean this up. You must get over this alcohol problem.” And she kept talking about all the worry and how he’s wasting his life. And if he would just go to rehab. And they offered to pay for it. And if he would just go to rehab. And it was like she saw it as rehab or nothing. Those were the only two options this poor woman saw, rehab or bust. And I’m sitting there thinking this is ludicrous. And this is exactly what I talk about on my podcast. He doesn’t have a drinking problem.

He’s drinking as a solution to something else going on that’s wrong in his life. So I asked her about it, “Why does he turn to alcohol?” Well, because he’s an alcoholic.” Everybody wants to use this term and this term is so meaningless. It drives me insane. No, you’re just a person who turns to alcohol for relief, that doesn’t tell us the true story. I said, “He’s in tremendous pain, where is his pain coming from? Because he’s turning to alcohol as a solution.” She said, “I don’t know. He just gets super mad and super angry and he just yells at us every time we try to talk to him.”

She goes, “It’s all the alcohol. If I could just get him off the alcohol.” And it’s so sad to me when I see this because I see how society has conditioned us all to think it’s just the alcohol, the alcohol is the primary problem. Do you see how this mom just keeps blaming the alcohol? She’s not going to the deeper source of the child’s pain. So when she calmed down I asked her, “What do you think his real problem is? What does he struggle with?” And she looked at me and she said, “Besides the drinking?” I said, “Yeah, besides the drinking, where has he struggled in his life?”

And she said, “I don’t know. I have to think about that. I’ve always thought it’s the alcohol. He’s always been with the alcohol.” “So yeah, but what made him turn to alcohol?” “We had issues with anger and so it was something, he would calm himself down from his anger episodes and then the alcohol started creating the anger episodes.” “So okay, where did the anger come from?” She’s like, “Oh gosh, he’s had that years ago.” I said, “Years ago?” “Yeah, going back seven years ago, we used to criticize him a lot because his grades were slipping and we know he had more aptitude.”

And so we started getting to the root of his problem. And she started to see that alcohol wasn’t his main problem, it was secondary, it was subsequent. If we treated his main problem, his anger and what was going on there for him, he wouldn’t need to turn to alcohol. So we talked and I said, “You’re really worried about this and I totally understand, if this was my kid I’d be so worried too.” It’s so heartbreaking to see your kids go astray when you know that they are meant for more.

It’s so heartbreaking when I see women go astray when I know that this alcohol is preventing them from living the life that they truly want to live. And we keep blaming the alcohol but it’s not the alcohol, please hear me. Now, I didn’t say this to her and I said, “What would lessen your worry? How could we make the worry go away?” And she just started crying, “I don’t know. I’ve been worried so long I don’t know how to let go of the worry. I don’t know what’s going to help me not worry.”

And yes when you’re in it sometimes you don’t know because you’ve been in it so long that that’s all you know. And so I said, “Let’s talk about this. Let’s strategize some ways to lessen your worry.” So I made her a list of the things that I thought can lessen her worry. And she looked at the list. And I said, “What do you think? Would this lessen you worry if we worked on any of these?” She said, “Oh my God, all of these would.” And I said, “Is there anything on this list that you notice that I’m talking about that’s related to the alcohol?”

She goes, “No, none of it’s related to the alcohol. I think I’ve been chasing the wrong problem.” I just want that to sit and land with you because I know I say alcohol isn’t the main problem. But we’re so brainwashed to think it’s the main problem. and we keep going after the alcohol and how could we minimize it in our life and how could we not buy it or not be around it or change our friends or change our buying strategy or change our habits, all those things. But hear me, it’s deeper than that. That’s why I do this work, so we can get on the same page about what the true problem is.

Alcohol is a subsequent problem, it’s the solution that we use to numb the real problem, to numb the anger, to numb whatever else is going on inside of us. And so what I want to offer you from this story, not just that alcohol isn’t the main problem but also worrying could be a waste of time because it puts you in this position where you’re not taking action or you’re just taking one action and it’s not working. Telling this person to go to rehab, who doesn’t want to go, he’s giving her the biggest blessing.

He’s saying, “That won’t work for me. I’m not ready for that. You can send me to rehab and spend $50,000, absolutely, and I won’t drink for 30 days but as soon as I get let out I’m hitting back the bottle.” So all that money, all that time would be wasted because he already knows I am not ready for that step, that will not work for me, that’s not what I want. He knows his inner wisdom and we have to trust our inner wisdom, ladies.

You know when something is off with you and you know when something won’t work for you, follow that because time is scarce, we don’t have a lot of it, it may feel like we do but we don’t and we don’t want to waste it doing things that we know deep down aren’t going to work. I’d rather you take action, learn from it, learn what the person wants, learn what you want, learn what’s going to work, learn what didn’t work. And I’d rather make failure and make fails along the way and learn from those rather than not taking any action at all because at least I learned something along the way.

I just didn’t sit there and pontificate my problems over and over and over again, wondering when they would just magically vanish. So again just to reiterate step number two, ask yourself what action can you take to make your worry go away?

Now step three or tip number three is that I develop a practice to worry less. So I encourage you to develop a practice where you worry less. Just imagine if you decided to simply reduce your worrying allocation by 50%, just imagine how much more you would discover about yourself, how many more skills you would learn to navigate this life and how you can improve your attitude and your mood and how you would shift your beliefs. Amazing. The time is passing whether you worry or you don’t worry. But when the time is passing, are you enjoying it or are you not?

And if you’re sitting in worry all the time, trust me I know you’re not enjoying this life to its fullest. So I say develop a practice to worry less because worry will come up no doubt. Read the news, worry starts bubbling up for me. But do you have a protocol for when it does? Do you have a practice for when you’re on that worry wagon? Are you just being a bystander in your life and you’re like, “Well, worry, you moved into my body, I guess you’ll just stay here and I guess I’ll just have to wait it out till you decide to leave my body.”

And for some people worry has entered their body for years. I mean start charging it rent for crying out loud. But I don’t want to live that way. I don’t want to welcome in worry and say, “You can stay here as long as you like free of charge, rent free, it’s all good, I’m fine with that.” No, I’m not fine with that because I want to worry less so I can enjoy and live more and be more abundant and be more joyful and be more giving. I’m not a giving person when I’m consumed with worry.

And I’ll give you more reasons why not to worry. Do you know when you worry it activates all your stress hormones? It activates cortisol, it activates adrenalin, it leads to high blood pressure, it leads to cardiovascular disease, it leads to anger management issues and it leads to so many other diseases. Because the body is not at ease, it’s in dis-ease, which means not at ease when you worry. Oftentimes when people worry they overdrink, they overeat, they want more carbs, they want more sugar, they stop exercising because they’re consumed with worry.

And all of that leads to more inflammation in your body, again, promoting this disease driven body vessel. So you’re more apt to develop disease, not only that, it suppresses your immune system so you’re more likely to contract diseases. I love how Mark Hyman says it, he has my tagline, I envy this tagline. In his podcast he talks about the biggest pharmacy we have, lives in our head and that’s our minds. When we can learn to control our minds we can learn to control our physiology and our biology. It’s the most powerful pharmacy we have.

And as a pharmacist I’m like, “That is so good, so good, I love that.” So I ask you, do you want to worry less? Is worrying preventing you from living this life with full abundance and joy and love and peace and freedom? And if so, what protocol or what practices do you want to follow to worry less? Especially for those of you who are chronic worriers you just keep worrying about one thing to the next thing to the next thing.

And I don’t want to set up my body and my brain for more disease, quite the opposite, I want to empower myself with tools so I prevent disease, so I live a longer healthier life. And so I follow my protocol to worry less. It works and it helps me feel better. So for you, use these principles and tweak them as you need so you can live your most epic life. After all my friend, you are the creator of your life.

Alright my friends, that’s what I have for you today. Thank you for joining me and I’ll see you next week, love to you all.

Thanks for listening to Drink Less Lifestyle. If you’re ready to change your relationship with drinking now, check out the free guide, How to Effectively Break the Over-drinking Habit at sherryprice.com/startnow. See you next week.