Episode 235 Minisode: The Solution To Every Problem Is To Own It
00:00
Hello everyone. So I do a daily podcast called Coffee with Colleen inside my emotional sobriety coaching program. These are short, sweet mini-sodes that either give you an inside look at something I’m going through in my own life or a simple, easy strategy that you can implement or both. You may hear me reference other content that only my clients have access to. So if you’re interested in learning more about my program,
00:29
get in the show notes and schedule a discovery call with me or my team. My name is Colleen and I’m a mindful drinking coach helping high achieving professional women permanently reduce their alcohol consumption by 80%. Join me each week for evidence-based holistic strategies to regulate your nervous system, balance your dopamine and activate the growth mindset that makes you so powerful in other areas of your life.
00:58
so you can stop worrying about losing control and trust yourself again. Get happy, not sober. It’s not about the alcohol.
01:14
just got off an emergency coaching call with one of you who needed a quick mindset shift support in a moment where there was a fork in the road and she knew it, but she didn’t know how where the turnoff is, if you will, out of her own mind. And quick backstory. She’s staying in her childhood home. She has a sister and a brother.
01:42
and she has a history of over drinking and sister gets very concerned and there’s conflict with the brother and who’s getting the house after mom passes away and all of these family dynamics boiled over last night and then the response was that even though she only had one glass of wine at dinner, she went to the bar.
02:10
at home and had one shot of I think tequila and her sister saw her. And this morning she’s waiting for the sister to come and have a conversation with her and she doesn’t know what she’s gonna say or how she’s gonna respond because it really doesn’t matter what she says, the sister’s gonna think what she always thinks and she just feels trapped and she wanted support.
02:39
What do I do? How do I respond? What can I say? What do I need to do to reclaim my power? She identifies this nuclear family dynamic as the source of her emotional pain, her mental health issues. Like this is ground zero for her. And I explained, this is your moment. This is the moment you decide, am I turning right and going down the old path?
03:10
that maybe some different words would change the fact that I’m on that path, like a different words or a different attitude would somehow change that. Or do I turn left and go in a completely different direction? And I coached her that it is the left turn. This is the time to make the left turn. You cannot solve a problem with the mindset that is creating the problem, the mindset that sees the problem, the mindset that sees
03:39
how much you drank last night or what the sister saw with the shot of tequila. It is the mindset that sees any of that as the problem that is the problem. You can’t rewrite your story within the story. The story isn’t real. You have to take full responsibility for the story you’re telling yourself and not make your story dependent
04:08
on other people’s opinions or approval, or everybody signs off on your version of reality. This is where you have to stand in your power. This is where you have to rescue yourself. In this moment, the feelings she was having, confusion, guilt, frustration, anger, all of that is coming from her own mind. It is her own mind that is bullying and harassing and judging and shaming. And yeah.
04:36
Maybe in this situation, she’s absolutely right. Her sister is also judging and shaming and bullying and operating under some pretense of concern about her drinking problem. But other people’s stories, other people’s versions of either their reality or your reality do not cause they are not the source of your emotional distress. No one can write your story, but you. I told her
05:06
what has to change in this moment is how she responds to herself. She has to be on her own team. And our definition of self needs to shift from our persona with our strengths and our weaknesses and our histories and our goals and the personality that we have had or want to have or project into the world, our sense of self image. That is not yourself. Yourself
05:36
is your body. Your body is the feeler of your thoughts and you, you are not your thoughts. You’re the thinker of your thoughts. Your brain’s just a tool. It’s a story maker and you can hear the story, but you have the power to change the story. It is the story of who you are that must change. And in this moment, all time is now. It is the present moment.
06:06
And you have to learn how to shift into the present moment and decide where you want to go, what kind of story you want to write, how you want to feel, and what words your body needs to hear from your brain. What do you need to speak in this moment to cause the emotional state that will allow you to operate at your highest level? I told her she needed to shift into mama bear mode.
06:35
to protect her own body and to stop allowing the brain to whisper shitty things in her ear all day long about what other people think and what she needs to do to change what other people think and simply take her power back. It is not her job to manage other people’s minds. It is her job, our job to manage our own minds. You have the power.
07:02
to feel however you want in any given moment. And you have a tool called a brain that you can either take control of and choose the thoughts that allow you to feel and think and operate in a way that causes your own happiness. Or you can sit in your misery and concern and anxiety and shame and wait for someone else or the circumstance to change.
07:31
so that you can give yourself permission to feel better. Or you can conserve your own mental energy and give yourself permission to feel better right as you are, where you are right now, and meet the needs of your body. You can speak the words that your body wants to hear. You can choose where your body is in space and not put it around people who want to have conversations that would make your body feel bad. Because as the mama bear owner,
08:00
of your own nervous system, you’re not going to do that to yourself because the only self that exists in this present moment is your body. The story you’re telling yourself and that maybe other people agree with or don’t agree with that is not you. That’s the story in your head and you can’t rewrite the story from within the story. You go into your body and exist in the emotional state that causes a new story to emerge. And so I asked her,
08:30
How do you want to feel today? Like put all of this outside, all of this extraneous circumstances and worry and concern, put it all aside. How do you want to feel today? And she said, I want to feel happy. I want to feel at peace. And I said, OK, then what do you need to do to create that in your body? And it’s morning time. And what does she like to do? What do I like to do in the morning? I like to have my coffee and think about my day.
08:59
and make lists of what I wanna do and what I wanna accomplish. I like to sit on my deck and listen to the birds and talk to my dog and check in with the cat and just be outside for a little bit, breathing and being still and calm and setting myself up for another good day. And the only thing separating her from that same experience was her own brain giving her permission to do that.
09:28
because her brain was telling her there’s a problem and you need to fix it. You need to say the words or explain or show or prove or earn or validate. It’s all coming from the brain. No, you don’t. You don’t have to have any conversations with anybody that you don’t have. If you don’t like the question, you don’t have to answer the question.
09:55
All you have to do is be able to tolerate the look on someone else’s face or the comments that they’re going to make about you standing in your own power. And this is where, if you identify with yourself as the protector of your body and of your nervous system, as the creator of your own story, you have to have the resilience and the balls to opt out of other people’s story.
10:23
or even your own story. You have to just say, I’m not doing that anymore. It’s like you’re watching a shitty movie and you’re like, I’m gonna turn this off and go entertain myself in a way that feels good in my body. You get to choose where you place your attention and where you place your attention determines the state of your nervous system. It determines the quality of your thoughts. It determines the actions you take upon the world. And if you are focused on
10:52
where you want to be and need to be to cause happiness for yourself in the future, then other people’s stories are no longer your problem. You can’t afford to concern yourself with them. Everybody got to save themselves. And going into the story is not how you change the story. Getting out of the story and writing a new story is how you change the story. So it’s actually much simpler.
11:19
when you accept that you cannot think your way out of a negative emotional state, because it is your mindset that’s causing that emotional state. You have to feel your way into a more positive mindset. You have to choose your emotional outfit. You have to choose the questions that you want your brain to work on solving for you. And the question always is, how do I want to feel in this moment and what thoughts?
11:48
and actions would cause me to feel that way. What does my body need to hear? Where does my body need to be? What actions does my body need to take to cause my happiness today? And under no circumstances does going into the story of last night and who drank how much and how everybody feels about it, under no circumstances that going to create any happiness today.
12:16
And if the people around you wanna stay stuck in that story, you have to let them. You can only save yourself, but you can save yourself. And there’s nothing better than realizing your own power to choose where you place your attention and the power to choose to be okay, even when other people aren’t okay.
12:39
quite honestly to take full responsibility for your own creation of that story that you probably talked them into believing in the first place. Conflict cannot exist unless two people agree to share a reality and identify that there is a problem. It takes two people to fight, but only one person to walk away. Your power move is to stop making someone else’s reality your problem.
13:08
even if it used to be your reality, you get to choose every single day the reality that you live in and the reality that you engage with. Every reality is a projection of the emotions of the person who sees the reality. And trying to change your reality by causing other people’s reality to change is an exhausting way to live. So take your power back, choose power, choose peace, choose happiness.
13:37
Choose whatever emotional state you want and then start creating it and leave the rest of the bullshit behind.
13:46
All right, thanks for listening. And if you’re a high achieving, coachable woman who is ready to commit to manifesting your best life, and you’re going to need to reduce your alcohol consumption by about 80 % so that alcohol goes back to being a pleasure instead of a soul sucking problem, get in the show notes and click the link and schedule a discovery call with me or my team.