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When life gets hard, does what we think we believe hold us up, or does it crumble under the weight of doubt? I'm your host, Dr. Lee Warren- I'm a brain surgeon, author, and a person who's seen some stuff and wondered where God is in all this mess. This is The Spiritual Brain Surgery podcast, where we'll take a hard look at what we believe, why we believe it, and the neuroscience behind how our minds and our brains can smash together with faith to help us become healthier, feel better, and be happier so we can find the hope to withstand anything life throws at us. You've got questions, and we're going to do the hard work to find the answers, but you can't change your life until you change your mind, and it's gonna take some spiritual-brain surgery to get it done. So let's get after it.
Hey, my friend, Dr. Lee Warren, so grateful to be back with you for another
episode of the Spiritual Brain Surgery Podcast.
Please make sure you're subscribed to the show wherever you listen to podcasts
and do us a favor and leave a rating or review wherever you listen to podcasts.
It really helps other people find out about the show and get that social proof
that they might need to pull the trigger on listening to this episode.
Today, I'm excited and honored to be bringing back to you my two friends,
Mead Shirley and Christy Osborne for part two of their incredible look at how
the Ten Commandments of Self-Brain surgery can help you re-examine your relationship
with alcohol or any other type of surrogate or numbing behavior that you might
be using that's keeping you stuck,
limiting your life, or helping you not move forward in whatever it is that's holding you back.
So let's get after it. Again, if you didn't hear the first episode with Mead
and Christy a couple of weeks ago, please go back and listen to that,
probably before you even listen to this one, because it'll really help you.
And I'll put the links in the show notes.
Make sure you check out their links and their podcast, but Jesus drank wine. Lisa and I love it.
So my friend, here's Christy and Mead with part two of how the 10 commandments
can help you. Let's get after it.
Hello, friends. Welcome back
to Dr. Lee's podcast. This is Christy Osborne and Mead Holland Shirley.
This is our second episode that we're giving to you. If you have missed the
first episode, go back and listen to that.
This is our part two, we are breaking down Dr.
Lee's 10 commandments of self brain surgery, and we're giving them the spin
of how we use them in our own practice as freedom from alcohol coaches.
And so in this episode, we're going to give you the second half of the commandments.
So again, if you haven't listened to the first half, go back.
And we're really excited to keep going, right, babe? This is so much fun.
This is so much fun. And that first episode will really set a stage for what
we're about to do here when we walk through six or 10 object release commandments.
So hit pause and go listen to that and then come back and join us.
We'll get started with commandment number six, like we did for that last episode.
We'll share the commandment and then we'll talk about how we use it.
And then we'll give you a little tiny Tina for action. Something you'll hear
a lot of information, but information is only information.
Transformation comes from doing something with the information that you get.
And so we love to get these little tiny Tina's at the end of each commandment as well.
So, yeah. And if you don't remember what a tiny Tina is, because I love we always say like tiny tuna.
And then we think that everyone already knows what they are,
but it's a tiny new action.
So it's just, as Mead said, something small that you can take away from each
of these steps, especially if you're a gal that's struggling in the over-drinking
cycle. So yeah, let's do it.
Commandment number six, I must love tomorrow more than I hate what I feel right now.
We do this all the time. This is another one where I'm like,
it's got me one of my favorites. Yeah, me too.
It's so big when you're stuck in the over-drinking cycle.
It's so, so true. I was thinking about this one and just,
gosh, I didn't even, not only did I not pay attention to like tomorrow,
Griffey, I had no regard for her like whatsoever because I did not know how
to sit in any sort of discomfort, right?
Or boredom or anything like that. Small talk, whatever it was.
And so it was this easy, easy, easy button, right? It was the thing that just
helped me get through whatever it was.
And it was with no, absolutely like no regard whatsoever for tomorrow.
Yeah. And so much of my life was just, I always described like that.
I was in that autopilot way of living where it was, I was so stuck in the hustle
and the busy and the go and the do and trying to perform and please and achieve
and everything I was doing.
I can't say I was doing a ton of things with intention. I was just kind of surviving in a sense.
And so I was definitely not thinking about, well, if I choose to,
you know, open the bottle of wine tonight, then what will my tomorrow look like?
I mean, maybe I had some sense of, I'm not going to feel so great.
And definitely, I know that we used to plan around, like if we had a girls night
out or a weekend event, like I did kind of think about how I could compensate
the next day, like the next day easier, because I knew that I wasn't going to feel great.
But that's different than thinking about, and Dr.
Lee always said this, I am not willing to pay the tomorrow tax.
The tomorrow tax. So if I choose to do this tonight, what does my tomorrow look like?
And I love when I have a client that I can walk through taking a 24-hour period of time.
And you look at 24 hours and it's like how much of your 24 hours is related
to the complexness of wine that you have that night. And I'm not talking just
about tomorrow. I'm also talking about leading up to that.
That's where I have seen the most kind of breakthrough for clients.
And it was really true for myself too.
When I broke down how much time I was thinking about alcohol on the front end,
and then how much time I was recovering from, even if I didn't overdo it,
it was the toll that alcohol took on me the very next day.
Even if I wasn't hungover, it was the shame and the blame and the,
you know, like all the headspace thing with it.
So yeah, I had that in the book too, the time spent drinking tactics.
So if you gals love what me just said, because it's so, so helpful,
there is a that tactic is in the book.
And I was just thinking that this whole idea of like everything is temporary
and the uncomfortability is like temporary or anything is hard is temporary.
Just like didn't sink in right until I've done this work on alcohol,
because even if you feel like you want to get through something that's hard
and you're going to sacrifice part of tomorrow in order to do that,
that thing that you're sitting in that you want to like fast forward through
or numb out or whatever it is, is temporary.
And I know that that is something that's so easy to just say.
But I think one of the things that we keep getting to see in our community,
especially because we have this like ongoing message board situation,
right, is the live as it happens, people that will come in,
say that they have a craving for alcohol, for example, and then they come back
20, 30 minutes later to the chat and they've overcome that craving because it was temporary.
Right. And then they're not paying that tomorrow tax. And so everything is temporary.
All the hard stuff is temporary. You don't have to numb it out and you definitely
don't have to sacrifice anything about tomorrow to get through anything because,
and the other thing too, right?
It's that God's with us in all of it, in all of it.
So if you're experiencing something hard and discomfort, and we talk about this
so much on our podcast, is just go to God with it. Just go sit with him.
You always talk about going and sitting in the garden with him. I love that so much.
And you don't have to sacrifice your tomorrow, right?
You just go, I'm so glad we don't have to do that anymore.
I know. And it's also like interesting to note, I think that we live in a world
that makes it really easy to not
have to be uncomfortable with all of our immediate gratification things.
And of course, wine falls into that category as one of those easy buttons as
like, oh, I'm like, we're not, I mean, you can just have something show up on
your door, whatever you need.
You just have it show up in your doorstep. We're not used to being uncomfortable.
And probably like the greatest superpower that I never would have known that
would have come from finding freedom from alcohol is my ability to sit in the
sock as we've talked about in the community. Someone coined that in the community, sit in the sock.
It's my ability to be comfortable in the discomfort of gross.
Yeah. It might be hard to go to an event and where maybe I have social anxiety, so to speak.
It's going to be a little bit hard to make small talk and I'm going to be a little bit nervous.
But if I can be comfortable with that discomfort, I know the next time it's
going to be a little bit easier.
And I'm talking about this from the lens of, you know, going without alcohol.
We talk about you're going to an event for the first time without alcohol.
There's going to be a little bit of discomfort with that maybe a
lot of discomfort but that discomfort is going to lead
to growth and resilience and an ability to then
the next time do differently and so I'm kind of really focusing on the long
game versus what do I think I need right now or like a habitual response to
grab that makes everything more bearable for 20 minutes yeah and the price that
you pay I mean it comes down to like a simple cost benefit analysis truly Yeah.
When you break it down, what is the cause and what is the benefit?
But so often, I think when we're stuck in that drinking cycle,
we're just not intentionally breaking it down and paying attention to what that looks like.
We're not thinking about tomorrow. Maybe I wasn't for sure.
Yeah, that's so good. So what's our, Tina? Tina?
Bettina or commandment number six is play the Tate forward tactic.
This will not be, you'll probably guess what we're doing with this.
If we're thinking about loving tomorrow more than what we feel right now,
we're thinking about planning the Tate forward.
When I go home tonight or when I, Sunday, Sunday after church,
I'm going to go out to brunch and I'm going to have those two glasses of wine.
I'm going to play that Tate forward. What is the rest of my day going to look
like? What is the rest of my night going to look like?
What is tomorrow going to look like? and how do I want it to look?
Do I want it to look like those things?
So you get to play the tape forward if you choose to drink. What will that look
like? And also what could it look like if I'm not drinking?
So I find, Chrissy, do you find this with your clients? Some can play the tape
forward from the sense of like, this is what it will look like if I drink,
but others like kind of play the board and they're more motivated by what it
will look like if I don't drink.
Do you find a difference in like client preferences with that?
Yeah, 100%. And I think it's harder to see the what it will look like if I don't
drink, if you don't have that data because you haven't done it.
And be open to the fact that you might just feel amazing.
And I would just love to give some examples of our own tapes too and what they look like.
When I was playing the tape forward in the beginning, when I was really me deep
in cravings, my tape looked like I would promise myself I would have one drink,
then I would probably finish the bottle.
Then I would wake up at 3 a.m. feeling absolutely horrible. I would fall back
asleep right before the alarm woke me up to take the kids to school.
I'd missed that workout class that I'd already paid for. And I would feel so
awful, promise myself that I wouldn't drink.
And then it would obviously all start over at 5 or 6 p.m. Right.
And that is what the tape looked like if I chose to have the drinks,
if I chose not to have the drinks.
And again, like I just said, it's this was after gathering data.
I learned this is that I slept really well. I had more patience with my kids
the next morning. I was able to get all my work done and it wasn't so stressful, right? So
Yeah. At the end of the day, it's about, it's about being intentional and choosing
our response and breaking.
I mean, I think to me, like what rings loud and clear is like,
it's disrupting that habitual response that we're so in the habit of doing and
being intentional about what do we, we get to choose how we spend our evenings,
how we spend our next days, what our minds are going to be filled with.
And I know for me, one of the worst places to be was when I was stuck in the,
you know, I wake up the next day and like, crap, like Britney Spears song,
played in my head. I did it again.
That's, let me just tell you what really makes a hangover worse and breathe.
I did it again is playing on top of your pounding headache at 3am and your cotton mouth.
Oh my gosh, that's so great. We never have to do that ever again.
We never have to do that again. I never have to hear that song either.
But yeah, I still like that song. Also, if you love this like chat about playing
the tape forward, there is a whole chapter of craving tactics.
It's chapter 13 in Love, Life, Sober, a 40-day alcohol fast.
So if you love this one, there's so much more of this.
Yes. Okay. Number seven, we are on a roll. I must stop making an operation out of everything.
I just had the thought that Todd would like to say to me, former me,
he might like to say to me, you don't have to make an operation out of everything.
Are we giving them ideas?
Why are we giving them ideas? And that's sort of like when my teenage daughter
is like, mom, it's not that deep.
Like that's what this kind of reminds me of, which is kind of cool because it
does wake me up to stop making an operation out of everything.
Yeah. Like also at the end of the day, it's about the alcohol.
It's not about the alcohol. It's, you don't have to make it so complicated. Yeah. Yeah.
So when we're talking about not making an operation out of everything,
I, there's two things that come to mind.
The first one is hello moderating your
alcohol yes taking an operation out
of this thing that is not supposed to be hard but you are going head to head
with an addictive substance and you're trying to outsmart it and that it's just
like probably not possible for a lot of us right like this is why in the book
i call the people that can moderate their alcohol moderation unicorns and i also think of.
So their big alcohol is now like becoming aware of all of us, right?
And so the sober curious space and all of this stuff. And so they're even trying
to get on this board of if you moderate your alcohol, then it's not going to be as bad for you.
And Diageo, which is one of the big alcohol conglomerates, did this advertisement
not too long ago where they showed
this girl walking through the bar and having a drink and then having,
oh, have a glass of water next and then have another drink and then eat something
and then have a non-alcoholic drink.
And I just watched this advert and I was like, this is ridiculous because it's
totally not taking into account that that first drink makes you want more drinks
because that's what alcohol does.
And we don't need to go on a whole tangent about how addictive it is.
But moderating is making an operation out of everything.
Yes. Right. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Because also, what is your definition of moderation
and how to know that you're successfully doing it?
When I was trying to quote unquote moderate, when I was taking the breaks,
the 30 day fast, the things that I did for cleanses and whatnot,
I was thinking about alcohol more during those times as I was trying to moderate it,
which does create this whole, I mean, just, yeah, a whole operation out of it
where it is way more complicated and way noisier and just worse,
just more miserable when you have all of that going on.
So the idea of moderation, I think, is just, I mean, obviously we have episodes
devoted just to that topic alone and we could go on and on.
But yeah, it's a good one. Yeah. And then I think that in not making an operation out of everything,
if you are new to the alcohol free journey or trying to find freedom from alcohol
is making an operation out of everything by future tripping, right?
You're just making it really, really complicated. If you're constantly thinking
about that 40th birthday or that vacation or that spring break or that Christmas
or that whatever, if you're constantly thinking of I'm not going to be able to handle this,
not drinking because of this thing that's days, weeks, months, years in advance.
Like you are making this, my friend, hear us when we say this,
you're making it so much harder on yourself and you don't need to do that.
So I just have this verse here, Matthew 6, 34, which says, do not worry about
tomorrow for tomorrow will worry about itself. This is Jesus speaking.
Each day has enough trouble of its own. And that's what I think we're not doing,
right? When we're, we're future tripping.
So that's another thing. And this is, yeah, I mean, we talk all about this on
the podcast in the community, but you don't need to make this finding freedom
from alcohol harder on yourself.
It can be this journey of grace and self-compassion and not of so much stress, right?
Yeah. Yeah. I knew what life looked like with alcohol.
I didn't know. I mean, I was a social drinker, so to speak, for 20 plus years.
I didn't really know what vacation or girl dates out for dinners or I didn't
know what those things were without alcohol because they were just always part
of those occasions, some more tied to in different years than others.
But we don't have making grand declarations about what I'm going to be doing
at this thing and how am I going to solve that or whatever.
What if it's possible that taking a break from alcohol actually does give me
some of the benefits, the things that I'm looking for?
What would life be like without alcohol?
You don't have to go if I'm going to be. And this is where we see that crap
all the time from a traditional maybe recovery lens when it comes to talking about alcohol.
If I'm not drinking, then I'm successful. And if I'm drinking, I'm not successful.
Instead, we like exploring your relationship to alcohol and looking at what
could be possible without it with that curiosity lens, like collecting that
data first, and then go from there and see.
And that was kind of the tiny tuna that we had as part of this is commit to
a 40-day fast through Chrissy's book, Love Life Sober.
Join us in the community. We're running fast in there all the time,
And we're coaching through that.
And what if life without alcohol could be enjoyable or all of that peace and
that joy that you're craving, what if it's possible?
But you don't know if you already go into it with this like,
it's gonna be this or I'm worried about that or it's gotta be forever,
whatever those thoughts are.
Yeah, love that. Number eight, I must not perpetuate or start temporal generational
thought or behavioral issues.
Issues in my life or family might completely have been saying.
Sounds like that's an ish you, not an ish me. Sorry.
Please don't teach that to my people because I will hear it nonstop.
But hey, can you pick up your shoes that are like right in the middle of the
floor? And then we like, ah, that's an issue, not an ish me.
It's said to a sister. Anyway, I must not perpetuate or start horrible generational
thought or behavioral issues in my life or family. Let's yeah.
Let's talk about that one. Yeah. So, I mean, every time I hear Dr.
Lee talk about this, I just think about my own family, obviously,
as we probably all do, right, when we hear him talk about this.
And I talk about this in the book that my mom ended up starting drinking much
later in life when I was already an adult, and it just completely changed her behavior.
And that was a result of a lot of her own generational trauma and things.
But I specifically remember having that thought on March 9th,
2020, when I the day that I decided not to drink anymore was that I didn't want
to pass this down to my kids.
And I didn't want this to be their story about me.
And I didn't I wanted to break the cycle and I didn't want this to keep going and going.
And the traditional recovery methodologies, a lot of them will tell you that
if you are struggling with alcohol, it is very much linked to genetics, right?
Like how often do we hear, oh, my grandfather was an alcoholic or my dad was an alcoholic.
That's why I'm struggling with this thing. And the beauty of the way that God
has wired our brains is that it's only one small part of the story.
So, of course, like we want to say right now, like if this is something that
you're struggling with, if you're struggling with alcohol, let's take a look
at this together so you don't have to pass it down.
And the beauty and the hope in that is, is that if you feel like you are saddled
with something from your family past, and this is the whole point of why we're
talking about this, right?
You can change your thinking to change your drinking.
Or as Dr. Lee says, you can change your mind to change your behavior and your
life and all of this. So yes, don't start anything, right?
Don't start anything because I mean, why would, why, why, right?
Why would we want to do that? But also if you feel like you're carrying it,
like there's so much hope for you.
Yeah. I think it's really cool. This is one of those surprise gifts of doing
this work that we always say, like we get to do is we can break those intergenerational
patterns of behavior that do.
I used to tell myself one of the stories that kept me stuck before was that
I come from a long line of anxious people. And so therefore I am an anxious person and I'm feeling,
speaking that over myself and telling that as truth to myself about who I am,
yes, it ends up becoming my reality.
I lived as a very anxious person. And it's so easy. I can look back to my mom, to my grandma.
I can look back and I can see where that was just kind of like handed down to
me. And what's crazy is finding freedom from alcohol.
I mean, I had the ability to change that.
Obviously, the Lord did the transforming of me on the inside of my heart and
all of that for this to be true.
But I am not an anxious person anymore.
But hallelujah, praise the Lord, right? I mean, it's crazy.
I wish like this, this is where sometimes I'm like, I wish and I don't wish
at the same time that there were like, I had a video or like video of myself from before.
If y'all could have known, like we always say, like in our community,
they see us as how we are right now.
But if you had known me seven years ago, you would have been like,
wow, she is a tight wound, Chihuahua-esque, like type A, and I don't think that fits anymore.
And that is because doing this work, paying attention, renewing our minds,
thinking about our thinking, changing our thinking, changing our mind,
change our life, and you're not thinking to change our drinking.
We have that ability to break these patterns, not just around, am I an alcoholic?
And so therefore, I have a long history of this in my family.
And so therefore, I must be, and now this is my like purse. It doesn't have
to, it doesn't have to be that way.
So freeing. So, so freeing. What's our tiny Tina for this one?
So for Tina, for our tiny new action for this one, what are the I am statements
that you are making about yourself that you're speaking over yourself as true? And are they true?
Is that who you are? So when I said, I am anxious, I come from a long line of alcoholics.
So maybe I am an alcoholic.
This is another thing when I was breaking up alcohol, like I'm the like of the
attorney. I'm the fun, easy, light one. I'm the hostess.
Yeah, I'm the hostess. I'm the entertainer. I am all these things.
Friends out, none of those things were true. But as long as I was believing
those, they absolutely directed my life, created my outcomes for my life,
but also influenced future generations, i.e. my children and their experience of me.
So I would just say get really curious about what are those I am statements
and then ask if they're true.
And what is true? Like what I am statements would you speak over yourself now?
And there's also, again, a list of this in the book of what God calls us, right?
God calls and says that we are, which is so, so helpful.
I think there's like a whole conversation that we don't have to dive into right
now, but we have talked about on the podcast before is if you,
if your identity as a drinker feels really, really heavy for you,
or it's something that you can't break free from because it has all of those
I am statements attached, like you said, like I am the hostess,
I am the party girl, da-da-da-da-da.
Like there are parts of that that might need to be grieved and let go of, and that's okay.
And so ultimately start looking at who God says you are, right?
Yeah. Yeah. So good. Can't get any better than that. Yeah.
Love that. Okay. For number nine, I must believe that I'm getting better at what I'm doing. I know.
Yeah. This is, I mean, gosh, like we say that about everything, but this is so good.
This is why when Dr. Lee was like, do you guys want to host a guest episode? I was like, yes.
And I want to do the 10 commandments, but I want to like do our own freestyle
on it because it's so good.
This one, gosh, there's so much to say about I must believe that I'm getting
better at what I'm doing.
The first thing I want to say is that if you have been struggling with alcohol
in a traditional recovery method and you don't feel like you're getting better
at it, look at some of the things that might be holding you back.
One of these things that we talk about, one of our most popular podcast recordings
was you don't have to count days.
If counting days feels like it means you're not making progress because you're
always going back to day one, don't go back to day one, right?
You don't have to do that. There's a link in the book to a personal celebration tracker.
We talk about celebration all the time. And so if the way that you're doing
your own alcohol journey isn't working for you and you don't feel like you're
getting better, take a look at some of these things. You don't have to go back to day one.
You don't even necessarily have to count days.
And there are such beautiful examples in our community of women that are getting better at this.
And this conversation actually came up twice with two separate gals where they
were like, I just, I feel like I have to make it to a hundred days where I just,
I feel like I have to make it to a year.
And we're, we become so familiar with these women and their stories. And I was just like,
babe, like you are so much further along. You've gotten so much better at this,
not because of your day count, but because you just told me about that huge
mindset shift that you had and that you're viewing alcohol a different way and
you're desiring it less and you don't want it when you're stressed out.
Like that is massive, massive, massive progress.
It's not necessarily about how many days that you have alcohol free.
Okay. And then just one more thing. And I love to always use the example of
maybe you call it a people mover. I call it a flatulator, but it's the thing
at the airport where it moves you from one side of the airport to the other. It's a flat escalator.
And that is what your freedom. We call it a moving sidewalk.
Okay. Well, I call it a flatelator. And when you are in your freedom journey,
once you step onto that people mover, whatever you want to call it,
you're always moving forward.
You're always moving forward if you're trying, even if you're having growth
points, we call them growth points, which is like having a drink on a day that
you said you weren't going to, because let's mine that for data and figure out why.
That's progress because you're learning, right? And so you're always moving
forward. Sometimes you're taking steps.
Sometimes you're standing still on that later, but you're always moving forward.
If you're doing the mind work, the mindset work that we talk about while you're on this journey.
Okay, sorry. I'm excited about that one.
Yeah, the courage that it takes to start this journey, I'm going to explore
my relationship to alcohol.
I'm going to start this and you step onto that moving sidewall.
You are going to have moments where you're running that moving side walk.
You're going to be walking it or you're going to have moments where you're sitting
down and feeling like, oh my gosh, I'm still stuck.
How many times we hear that? I'm still stuck. Last night. Yeah.
And no, you've started this journey and you are learning.
But when you are narrowly focused
on a day count or getting to a hundred days, like when your success.
100% relies on whether you're drinking or not drinking, then we fall and we rise to that.
Whereas we like to focus people on all of the tiny little shifts that you're making.
All of the tiny little areas where you're making progress, where you're growing,
where you're learning, what you're discovering, what God is revealing to you,
how you're growing more connected to the Lord.
You're creating space for him in a new way. All of those little tiny anything,
they add up to that massive change over time.
But it's really hard to see that when we're just like paper focused on I'm either
drinking or I'm not drinking.
And so when we talk about like Colin's kindergarten teacher,
I will never forget this. She used to say she had all of these like little fun sayings.
And one of them was practice makes per minute.
She didn't believe there was anything, you know, no such thing as perfect.
I agree with her. And she used to say practice This makes per minute.
And so what we practice, we get better at doing.
And Dr. Lee talked a lot about this, for better or for worse.
If we're stuck in the drinking cycle, if we keep practicing being stuck in the
drinking cycle, we get better at doing that.
But if we turn towards this, I'm jumping on the moving sidewalk.
I'm starting my exploration of my relationship to alcohol. And I'm going to
start paying attention to all of the other things that are influencing my relationship
to alcohol and where I'm growing and learning and discovering.
And that's why, how often do you hear me say, like, this is a discovery journey.
This is not a recovery journey.
The way that we, you know, in this space, the way that we talk about it,
there's so much to discover.
And that's the really cool thing about doing this work and then celebrating
those new neural pathways that we're practicing and that we're creating when
we're learning like, huh, does alcohol really help me relax in the evening?
Is it really a reward? And now I'm starting to see.
Maybe not. I have proof now that says that maybe it's not.
I'm going to celebrate that it used to be like 10 out of 10,
but it definitely helps me relax. I believe that.
But now I'm seeing 7 out of 10. I'm starting to see a little hole in that.
I'm going to celebrate that. That is a proof of progress. What I like to call
a POP, a proof of progress.
You are making progress. And that is something that I think is so instrumental
in staying on that moving sidewalk, not jumping off of that moving sidewalk
and continuing in this journey.
It's looking for the abundance versus where the mind always wants to go to like
what we're not doing and where we are stuck and the lack and what we're trying to solve.
Instead, we shift our focus towards what are we doing? What are we discovering? What are we learning?
And how is that influencing my relationship with alcohol?
What could that, what's possible from here?
Yeah. Yeah. That's so good. And that's our I need Tina right there is looking
at the proofs of progress, right?
And there's so many different ways that we can do that.
One of them, and we have a whole podcast episode on this, is like alcohol-free first.
And there's a little download that you can get with the book of a whole list
of alcohol-free first that you can mark off and celebrate.
And this is what we just love to do in our community all the time.
It's just celebrate. It's what we open up so many of our fast calls with, right?
Of like, what's the proof of progress? What's your pop this week?
And so it's so good. Yeah.
For example, you showed up for this call. Okay. You drank last night and you didn't want to.
So you're, you're coming to this call and you're feeling like you were not successful,
except for the fact that you're showing up for this call.
That takes courage. That's saying I'm still on this moving sidewalk and not
getting off. So we're going to celebrate that pop.
So make a celebration brainstorm, celebration brainstorm, all your pops from your journey.
That's what helps keep us going and it makes it better what we're doing.
Number 10, I must understand that thoughts become things.
Yeah, yeah, that's so good. I never, ever knew how to pay attention to my thoughts
before. I didn't even think about my thoughts, right?
Which is so silly to say, but I never, ever was thinking about what I was thinking about.
And so this is just such great encouragement to pay attention to what stories
you're telling yourself. This is the name of our podcast, you guys,
is But Jesus Drink Wine and other stories that kept us stuck.
We tell ourselves so many stories, so many thoughts that then end up informing
how we show up in the world, right?
And getting really, really crystal clear about what thoughts are true and what
are no longer serving us is just the biggest, biggest life hack.
And it's so cool because I always say this, that when we've been given this
kind of like struggle with alcohol,
it ends up being such a blessing because I think that when you start paying
attention to what the craving voice is saying, you can start getting good at
paying attention to what the thoughts are saying, right?
Yeah. Well, I'm just reminded of one of the thoughts that kept me stuck.
One of my thoughts that became a thing was when I would tell myself when I was
feeling that discomfort going to church, feeling coming out,
staying up with friends and keeping the kids up way past their bedtime and going
to church the next morning.
And oh my gosh, can anyone tell that I had too much wine last night or whatever?
And I would, I would take the thought, but she's just drank wine.
And that, So that became a thing in my life where it kind of excused what I was doing.
So what I was doing was I was ignoring that nudge, that prompting from the Holy
Spirit that, hey, pay attention to this.
This isn't right. I was using a thought and justifying it when really that was
an opportunity for me to pay attention to what I was doing.
And I didn't even really know that that was something that had so much power
in keeping me stuck in that drinking cycle, for example. that story.
It's so, so important to, I didn't know I was separate from my thoughts, my thinking.
I didn't know that was something that we could pay attention to.
I didn't know about metacognition.
For sure, they were all of these
stories that were just spinning in the background, correcting my life.
And that's the really cool thing because it doesn't just relate to alcohol and
what I was telling myself about alcohol.
And so in that moment, when I'm justifying what I'm doing.
But using a strange wine, that wasn't really helping me get unstuck.
It was making it easier to stay stuck. Whereas I also realized the benefits
of alcohol, it helped me relax.
There's a reward for it. It helped me with social anxiety.
It helps me work connections, all of those things that were not true.
But the more I was not paying attention to them, the more they just directed
everything. They directed my actions.
I think that is something that I learned that was just like,
wait a minute, what I think about is how I feel and that influences and affects
actions and reactions and how I show up.
Once you understand that, you realize too that like, for me,
I realized that this wasn't a behavior thing that I had to pay attention to.
It was a mind and a heart situation. As long as I desired alcohol.
I was never going to be truly free from it.
So I just love... And this is something that I remember. It was one of our TMP
gals, one of our Missing Peace girls in coaching when she was like,
Oh my gosh, Philippians 4.8.
Think about whatever is true. Noble, right? Pure, lovely, admirable,
excellent, worthy of praise.
She was like, Oh my gosh, it starts with whatever is true.
Yeah. Think about what is true. When we focus, when we renew our minds and we
come back to what is true, like true comes first.
And there was so much that showed up as true that I was not paying attention
to, but yeah, we can't, that's the, that's the gift of doing this work.
So for our tiny Tina, for this one, what are the stories that you're telling yourself?
Are you saying that it helps for
connection for reward for relaxation for anxiety
what also are the stories that you're
telling yourself about yourself like I know that I was in a place where it was
like never gonna get this or yeah I'm not very disciplined or you know so typical
mead here you oops I did it again like so typical and then what are the stories
that you're telling yourself about who God is.
That was the gift of doing this work that I never saw coming.
But then being able to say like, oh, I also have all these stories about God, who I thought God was.
And turns out, none of those stories were true.
I thought he was a dictator, authoritarian, always mad at me for all the things that I was doing wrong.
And so that just continued to keep me stuck. That was another way of my thinking
becoming a thing in my life where I was just continuing to stay stuck.
So what are those stories that you're telling yourself about alcohol,
about yourself and about God? What is true?
We take those stories and then we actually land on the truth of that.
Yeah, that's so good, babe. That's so, so good. There's more about that in the
book, Love, Life, Sober.
And then this is what we're doing every single day in our community.
We're looking at the stories that we're telling ourselves.
We're looking at the stories that we're telling ourselves about God.
And gosh, there's just so much beauty and growth and transformation happening
in there. I think of just even recently some gal posted about forgiveness and
it's just exactly what you just said, right?
About who, you know, who are you telling yourself that God is?
Is this person that's disappointed in you and angry with you all the time?
Or is he someone with unlimited compassion, patience, and forgiveness for you, right?
And this is just one of our leadership team members just posted this beautiful
thing about him being forgiving.
And so, yeah, that's what we're doing all the time in the space that you and I hang out in.
Yeah. And those that like, I gave those categories, like what are the stories
I'm telling myself about alcohol, about myself, about God, by the way,
like those are not categories that exist separately from each other.
All three of those categories influence your relationship to alcohol. Yeah.
Like it's all woven together and having a space where you can look at the stuff
and be curious about the stuff and ask the questions and be honest about what
you're thinking and be honest about what those stories are and begin to like, oh gosh, like,
hey, if that's not God's voice that I'm hearing.
Which voice is that? And oh, that makes sense. Having a place where you can
do that vulnerably, courageously, honestly, before God and other people, so, so important.
And I think that's what I just love more than anything about the work that we
get to do is that we get to do that in community with other women in that way,
because this is not complicated work.
It's like changing our mind to change our life. It's not complicated,
but it's not easy. It's hard. And it's.
Everything is easier when we get to do it alongside other people. So yeah, that's so true.
So if you guys want to hang out with us some more, if you want to learn more
about what we're doing, our podcast, well, hopefully Dr.
Lee, I'm sure he will link it in the show notes. It's called But Jesus Drank
Wine and Other Stories That Kept Us Stuck.
Come listen to us. Dr. Lee has made an appearance on that. It was one of my
favorite episodes of all time.
We also have, as we've been talking about our community where we have connection
calls, we have prayer request space, we have a worship list,
we have, oh my gosh, amazing masterclasses and speakers going on.
We also have a private space of gals that really want to hunker down and look
at their drinking and want coaching.
And that's called the missing piece. And so we coach in that group.
We also coach through my book, Love Life Sober, a 40-day alcohol fast several times a year.
We're wrapping up our Lent fast as we speak. I can't believe it.
And so there's just so much incredible things going on in our community,
which hopefully we'll have a link to as well.
And then if you want to get the book, it's called Love Life Sober,
A 40-Day Alcohol Fast to Rediscover Your Joy, Improve Your Health,
and Renew Your Mind. And it's pink.
So yeah, thank you so much, Dr. Lee, for letting us come and have these conversations.
We love your work so, so much. We're always talking about you in our community.
Biggest fangirls. Biggest fangirls ever.
And thank you so much for listening. And we hope that we get to meet some of
you Dr. Lee listeners really soon.
Bye, y'all. Bye, y'all. Wait, wait, did you just say y'all? Yeah, I got it from you.
Wow. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mead, Shirley, and Christy Osborne for
your time and bringing us these two incredible episodes.
Thank you for your wisdom and your insight and the way that you're smashing
faith and science together in the community that you're building around the world.
Friend, if you haven't checked out Mead and Christy's work, please go do so now. Follow them.
Two of my favorite writers, two of my favorite people on social media and podcasting.
I think they'll really be helpful to you in your life.
Make sure you subscribe to the show so you don't miss an episode.
We'll be back with more Tuesdays with Tata next week.
I'm Dr. Lee Warren. God bless you, friend. And don't forget,
you can't change your life until you change your mind. And the good news is you can start today.