It's Not Your Drinking, It's Your Thinking - Part 2

What a crazy time we are living in with Coronavirus and I know we are all struggling with the anxiety and fear that comes with all of this uncertainty. And on a funny note  I heard a story the other day about a journalist who was doing a segment on how to trim your own hair because all the hair salons and barbers are closed  so she was doing this piece, standing in her bathroom to show you how to cut your own hair looking in her mirror, not realizing that her husband was in shower in the back part of the bathroom, where the mirror had a perfect view of him in the shower.

And because everyone was watching her, they didn’t notice her completely naked husband in the shower and they continued running the whole piece.

You guys! Can you imagine! How would your partner react if you were sitting at breakfast and you’re like, “Honey, I need to tell you something. I just live recorded you, naked in the shower, for the state of California to see.”

I’m thinking this may be a challenging conversation so embarrassing.

The struggle is real

Okay, this week we are going to do a Part 2 of It’s Not Your Drinking, It’s Your Thinking  I got a ton of emails from you guys after last week’s episode telling you how much you enjoyed it and you had some light bulb moments thinking about your own behaviour, and I had planned on doing more episodes on this topic anyway, so I decided to move some things around and do another one now.

“There are some real pitfalls in life that we fall into just in our thought processes. How we view the world and other people, not recognizing our own shortcomings and how we could be better as individuals, always blaming others instead of looking at ourselves first, playing the victim role like life happens to you, and not because of you.

The struggle is real, my friend and I had all these same f’ed up thought processes and I am living proof that you can go from a hot mess to a really good, healthy, strong, and confident person with a little work and guidance. And that’s why I’m here for you!

Let me say thank you for all of you joining me in the Addiction Unlimited Inner Circle membership site. I have gotten some incredible feedback and I will continue to ask for your feedback as we grow this thing because I want it to be exactly what you want.

You said you want more support, you want community, and you want more between my podcast episodes, so that’s exactly what I’ve done. And I am super excited to give you more cool info in there and we will do some live workshops with me for Inner Circle members and it will continue to grow and evolve and be even better!

I got this recommendation on my professional FB page and this is so good! By far one of the best comments I’ve ever gotten, and I will tell you why after I read it

He says:

Thank you, Carson such an amazing comment on my page and I am blown away and super grateful for this.

I’ll tell you why this one struck a chord with me, because I feel like he really gets what I’m doing.

My whole career, people have asked me, Are you a Coach? Or, do you do addiction? And I’m like, it’s the same thing!!!!

I am a Coach, through and through I coach people to create change in their lives. And the process for creating change is the same, regardless of what change you are making. My process is a framework that guides you to build the life you want.

Whether that requires quitting drinking, kick starting your new meal plan, changing your decision making process, healing from a divorce and building your new independent life, changing your spending habits and fears around money

Having a framework is the fastest way to create change in your life, and that’s what I offer, a framework.

No matter what you are going through, addiction, financial issues, relationship issues when you make a decision to change your life, you are doing just that, changing your life. Change doesn’t only happen in one area, even if you are focusing on one area change is overall because change comes from your thought processes.

When you start working on quitting drinking, you are changing your thoughts and your actions and that change will bleed over into all the other areas of your life, right?

So for my whole career people want to put me in one box or the other, but to me, it’s all the same box. I am a Coach.

I teach you how to build your dream life one step at a time with a simple framework that takes away all the guess work so you can make real progress real fast.

It’s about life, and for those of us with addiction, your sobriety has to be the first priority because you can’t do anything else in life if you are stuck in all the drunken drama.

When Carson says, she can connect with anybody and appeals to a broader range of people that have issues not only related to sobriety and addiction, but about life.

YeSSSS!!!! That’s what it’s about!  It’s about life  addiction and alcoholism are only a symptom of my life issues. I have life issues.

I was selfish, I was a liar, I was stuck playing the victim and acting like everything happened TO me rather than because of me, I was dramatic and irresponsible and manipulative, I was lazy and lost and didn’t know how to be be different I couldn’t figure out the first step to take to be different and alcohol played a huge role in that.

But, surprise surprise! When I put the alcohol down, all of that other stuff didn’t magically disappear. Because I had spent a lot of years practicing those behaviors and my framework that I Coach you with and that I Coach myself with works on those struggles.

Out of all the years of school I have and all the different topics I have studied and obsessed over, my Life Coach tools have been the most valuable tools in my toolbox.

And I firmly believe when you are in a place that you become willing to follow suggestions, and you are willing to be teachable, and you are willing to do some work even when you don’t want to when you get in that place, with the right teacher you can change your entire life.

And that’s why I do the work I do. And that’s why I work a hundred hours a day because I love it. I am still in such a state of shock at the person I have become, literally every day it amazes me that this is me.

That’s why I knew early on that I wanted to dedicate my life to this work because I was so shocked by the changes I saw happening to myself that I knew all I wanted to do was help other people do the same thing.

I had my rock bottom moment

I can not tell you what an f’ed up crazy unhealthy overreactive hot drunken mess I was on the inside. Remember, from the outside you would have never known. But on the inside, I was a disaster. I was broken and sad I had been hurt and mistreated and taken advantage of I had been deceived and discarded like garbage I was abandoned and broken and heart broken. From years of bad luck and bad decisions.

And when the moment was right, I had my rock bottom moment, and I became willing to follow suggestions. I became willing to be teachable. I was willing to do the things I was told to do even when they seemed stupid to me.

When you get in that space and you are really open to be teachable that’s when you put your ego aside and all these hang ups about the word ‘alcoholic’ or feeling weird or embarrassed or ashamed or feeling like you are too good to go to AA  telling yourself you aren’t as bad as those people, or worse, going to a meeting and spending the whole time you are there judging the other people. Like you are some kind of authority about what is right and wrong and what people should talk about that meets your standards.

You know that’s your own drama and bullshit and insecurity. All that stuff is your ego. And your ego will not get you sober. It will get you to a fucked up and miserable life. But it won’t get you sober.

For me, my teacher was my sponsor. He 100% made me the person I am today. Well, maybe 50%. Because my mom built me on a solid foundation  my mom taught me integrity and honest and a crazy work ethic, and she instilled in me this ability to love people in a way that is deep and real and unconditional. All of that foundation was inside of me, even though I didn’t know it until I was sober.

So she built my foundation then Kev came in and he built me as an adult. He taught me how to take all the pain I had and he taught me how to forgive. He taught me how to take responsibility for my actions and my decisions instead of blaming everyone else when they didn’t do things the way I wanted them to.

He taught me to protect myself and how to build healthy boundaries. He taught me to love myself and he taught me how to be a person who is loveable and deserves love.

He taught me how to be honest, how to love and accept people for who they are, he taught me to apologize when I was a jerk and he taught me that it’s okay to be a jerk sometimes because we are all human and we will be jerks sometimes.

The important thing is, when you’re a jerk, you have enough respect for someone to go back to them and clean it up. Own your jerkiness and apologize. Because loving and honoring people is a great gift in this lifetime, and we all deserve to be loved and honored. Own your jerkiness and apologize because loving and honoring people is a great gift in this lifetime.

He taught me how prominent my selfishness was and he taught me how to be different. He taught me to be of service and to always be mindful of others instead of only being mindful of myself.

We get consumed in thinking about what we want  this is my plan and this is how I want it to happen, and I want this person to greet me in this exact way when I walk in the room, and I want to go to this place and I only want these people… me me me, I want I want I want  and that’s all I ever thought about.

Then, when people didn’t mind my silent rules of how I wanted them to behave, then I would get all self righteous and feel like I was mistreated or cheated or they did me wrong when really, all that happened was, they didn’t do what I wanted them to do. Because my ego told me everything should happen the way I wanted it to.

And as you are traveling this journey, figuring out yourself and your path and your own drama I want you to cut yourself a little slack. A very little slack, lol, because we like to cut ourselves wayyy too much slack sometimes and we don’t hold ourselves accountable.

This process isn’t personal. Meaning, you aren’t a personal failure. This isn’t that you are weak, or something is wrong with you. This isn’t a moral failing and you are right or wrong. It’s not about right and wrong.

I want you to start refraining from this instead of telling yourself you are wrong, or you did something wrong, or that was bad or that was good stop with the good and bad and right and wrong  let’s look at things as effective, or ineffective. Did it work, or not work?

When we put these crazy labels on things we create expectations. When we put these crazy labels on things, we create expectations. If this is bad, then I expect myself to not do it. Well, in a perfect world that’s great. In the brain of an addict, no one cares. But when you label right /wrong, good/bad then the committee will talk a bunch of trash when you do something wrong or bad.

Right? You’ll beat yourself up, the committee is telling you ‘you should have done better’, ‘you know better than that’, ‘you should be farther along by now’  it turns into negative self talk.

The truth is, none of it is good or bad.  It’s all just necessary.

It was necessary for me to be scared to death

My car accident was one of the worst experiences of my life. AND, it’s the best thing that ever happened to me. So was it good? Was it bad? Neither, it was necessary.

Necessary because the universe had tried to give me smaller signs and nudges to quit drinking, but like a good alcoholic, I don’t pay attention to small signs and nudges. They just don’t get my attention. So it had to go big and give me a sign that was terrifying and undeniable.

It was necessary for me to be scared to death. It was necessary for it to be that bad because I had to take it seriously. I needed to be scared enough to get willing. Fear and pain make you willing real quick.

You have crappy performance at work, not doing a good job, being late, not doing work on time or half-assing it. And you don’t care until your boss tells you are about to get fired. NOW all of a sudden you care. Fear of financial stress, uncertainty, losing your things all of that fear and discomfort makes you get your shit together.  Fear makes you get your shit together.

Was that situation good? Or bad? Neither, it was necessary. Because you were letting yourself slide and you were being someone you aren’t proud of, so it was necessary that you get your buns chewed to get you to self-correct.

You needed to get willing to stop being lazy, stop leaving the house late, stop hitting snooze on the alarm, stop f’ing around, stop hitting the Starbucks drive-thru when you are already 5 minutes late to work. You have to get willing to get up a little earlier, to manage your time better, to sacrifice the Starbucks when you don’t have time because your priority is your job and not your coffee.

And if you are late, or you do hit the snooze button I want you to think about it, not as a moral failing and you are a bad person but that that decision was ineffective.

If the goal is to do a better job at work to be on time, to be a good employee who deserves respect then hitting the snooze button is ineffective. Because it won’t get you where you want to be.

It’s not right or wrong or good or bad it’s just ineffective.

If you want to practice being a better parent then maybe you decide to spend some more playtime with your kids get on the floor with them, go outside and run and play with them and be hands-on creating memories with them and being in that moment with them then, standing around passively while they do their thing isn’t effective. Because it isn’t getting you to be the parent you want to be.

It doesn’t mean you are bad and you are a bad parent and a bad human it’s just not effective. So regroup and figure out what is effective.

When you want to have a pity party and feel sorry for yourself because your life is a mess I want you to think, “Is this effective? Or ineffective?”

It’s totally ineffective! But what the committee in your head will tell you is that you are a bad person, you are weak, you will never get your shit together, you are going to feel bad forever and no one will ever love you.

Sounds a  little extreme, right?

The reality is, the pity party is ineffective. Reaching out to someone and starting a conversation would be effective because it would distract you from your pity party and make you think of someone other than yourself that’s effective.

Getting in an online meeting would be effective. Talk to another alcoholic.

You know, we say talk to another alcoholic because, well #1, we are the coolest people ever. We are the funniest and smartest people on the planet so why wouldn’t you want to talk to another alcoholic? But #2 because we love and accept one another on a different level because we understand one another and want to protect each other.

There is no better way to feel understood than when I talk to someone who has the same thing that I have.

It’s just like all my girlfriends that have kids they want to hang out with other moms because they understand one another’s insanity.

Or like my mom she’s a crazy talented seamstress so she likes to hang out with other sewing ladies so they can talk about sewing lady stuff.

Those of us who are single like to hang out with other single people because we talk about the same struggles and share funny dating stories.

It’s simple you guys like-minded people want to be around likeminded people. This isn’t just an alcoholic thing.

learn to put your ego in check

And I’d be willing to bet, when you hang out with other parents, or with the mommy group, you don’t love every other mom in the group but you probably still go back. So it’s okay to go to a meeting, not love everybody in the group, and still go back. I promise you, I don’t love everybody in any group my family, my workout class, or my hiking Meetup I go to  but I don’t stop going because I have grown up now and I understand that everybody doesn’t have to be exactly the way I want them to be. It’s okay for people to be whoever they are however they want to be and it’s okay for me to love them anyway.

That’s what happens when you grow up and learn to put your ego in check everything and everyone doesn’t need to be my way.

Another great example – if you are judging other people and deciding all the ways they could improve themselves and all the things you don’t like about them the first thing you need to do is look in the mirror because you are the person that needs improving if you were comfortable with yourself and confident and happy you wouldn’t be judging everyone else. So look in the mirror and get honest.

Then, think is this behavior effective, or ineffective? Does it serve you in any way to be tearing people down? Is it effective for your own recovery? Or ineffective? Does it make you feel better, or worse?

It is entirely ineffective because all it’s going to do is make you feel worse about yourself, your situation, and your need to get and stay sober.

And, it would be very effective for you to get your buns over to the Recovery Toolbox and join the Inner Circle membership site it’s free for the month of April even if you join today you have access to ALL the information and videos that have already been posted in there and all the upcoming stuff I will post the rest of the month!

Use promo code FREEAPRIL on the checkout page.

I hope you are staying strong and staying safe as the Coronavirus starts to wind down. There is a conversation about starting to reopen our country a little bit I hope we do that slowly and safely, so we don’t have another surge of this crazy virus.

You guys know where to find me, I’m going live on FB regularly so you can find me there and if you have any questions you want to get a response to, email them to hello@angelapugh.com.

As usual, I will link to all the good stuff in the show notes the membership site and our weekly recovery meetings in there, how to work with me privately, and how to join the FB group.

I hope you guys are having a fantastic day, and I’ll see you next week!

You Can’t Stay Clean, If You’re Still Living Dirty

Look for the similarities, not the differences