From Sobriety To Recovery: An Addiction Recovery Podcast

Your brain is ready to adapt to sobriety & recovery, Ep30

Your brain can adapt to anything. As humans, we have shown that ability time and time again. Start seeing your perceived failures as feedback opportunities, your perceived successes as steps forward, and the whole journey as a rebuilding of your mental superhighways - because your brain has a plasticity to it that is remarkable in its adaptation scope.

Brain plasticity, also known as neuroplasticity, is a term that refers to the brain's ability to change and adapt as a result of experience. When people say that the brain possesses plasticity, they are referring to the brain's malleability.

You are what you repeatedly do. You have to be consistent to build new neural-superhighways of positive-outcome behaviors.

How do we build experience, skill, talent, and expertise?

• Proper Practice
• Time Investment
• Trial & Error

This is what gets you better because you get to practice - you need to "fail" in order to develop new strategies.

Hippocampus grows because you are building new memories of the practices, perceived failures, and perceived successes.

The right kind of practice builds the right kind of neuron buildup.

When you feel upset by a situation, ask yourself:

How can I handle this to get a positive outcome?

Is this really that important?

Is this going to matter tomorrow? 3 hours, day, weeks, or months from now?

After the fact:

How could I have handled that differently?

It is not acceptable to lose your sh!t over a situation.

Thank you so much for listening and being a part of this wonderfully supportive community. No longer are we living in the shadows!

Also, please subscribe, rate and review the show to help us spread the word about this awesome free content. Your simple action of rating and reviewing does wonders in helping others find the show.

If you have questions you'd like addressed on the show, want to book me to speak at an event, or want to recommend or be a guest on this show, please contact me through any of the social media links below or via email. Feel free to contact me here for any other reason as well:

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Email: jesseisinteresting@gmail.com

 

 

Pushing your emotions down leads to an explosion you can't control, Ep29

On this weeks episode we discuss our feelings, forgiveness, and allowing ourselves to pace through them when others so often want to hurry us through both - and, in fact, we have probably hurried others through their feelings and forgiveness process too.

Below is the entire page that lead our group session and is now the theme for this episode

Today I will not jump over my wounds to forgive too soon. It is necessary for me to live with my feelings as they are. When I deny deep pain and anger and push myself to forgive, I keep that pain and anger from ever being healed. I will go into my feelings as they are and give them all the space they need to mushroom, to have their moment, to live inside of me without my beating them to death. Whether or not my feelings are reasonable or good or nice, they are there. Denying them only keeps them alive in a turgid state. Today I let my emotional infection boil up and then in its own time drain and heal.

I let my feeling run their course

Never does the human soul appear so strong as when it forgoes revenge and dares forgive an injury - E.H. Chapin

Thank you so much for listening and being a part of this wonderfully supportive community. No longer are we living in the shadows!

Also, please subscribe, rate and review the show to help us spread the word about this awesome free content. Your simple action of rating and reviewing does wonders in helping others find the show.

If you have questions you'd like addressed on the show, want to book me to speak at an event, or want to recommend or be a guest on this show, please contact me through any of the social media links below or via email. Feel free to contact me here for any other reason as well:

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Always do your best & avoid the negative self-talk & feelings, Ep28

Always doing your best means you put in max effort without over-extending yourself so much that you slide into a H.A.L.T. zone. When you do your best, and you really, deep down, know you did your best you will keep those negative feelings at bay.

* Agreement #4. Always Do Your Best
Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret.”
― Don Miguel Ruiz

• The path to personal growth is paved with self-love, kindness and forgiveness… not criticism, judgment and punishment.
  • remember that sometimes your best will be ridiculously awesome. And, at other times it won’t be so awesome.

“Just do your best — in any circumstance in your life. It doesn’t matter if you are sick or tired, if you always do your best there is no way you can judge yourself. And if you don’t judge yourself there is no way you are going to suffer from guilt, blame, and self-punishment. By always doing your best, you will break a big spell that you have been under.”
― Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom

* The Fourth Agreement is the action of the first three, enabling them to become positive habits.
- It's the agreement that asks you to do just enough, but not too much.
- Perfection is not the goal (it never is!). Doing your best means falling down and getting back up.

* “Under any circumstance, always do your best, no more and no less. But keep in mind that your best is never going to be the same from one moment to the next. Everything is alive and changing all the time, so your best will sometimes be high quality, and other times it will not be as good.”

* Ruiz explains it energetically, “If you try too hard to do more than your best, you will spend more energy than is needed and in the end your best will not be enough. When you overdo, you deplete your body and go against yourself, and it will take you longer to accomplish your goal. But if you do less than your best, you subject yourself to frustrations, self-judgment, guilt and regrets.”

• All of us can start doing this right now. Doing our best is enough. Some days our best can look a lot like - not so great.
• Doing our best includes accepting and forgiving ourselves and others for collective weaknesses and faults.

* “If you do your best in the search for personal freedom, in the search for self-love, you will discover that it’s just a matter of time before you find what you are looking for. It’s not about daydreaming or sitting for hours dreaming in meditation. You have to stand up and be a human. You have to honor the man or woman that you are. Respect your body, enjoy your body, love your body, feed, clean, and heal your body. Exercise and do what makes your body feel good.

** While these agreements sound like they should be common sense, we're all capable of sliding backward and into the grasp of the lower - integrity, humility, and gratitude mindset.

** Being human, our egos - the tranced-out state we can wander off into - all of these examples and more move us away from the positivity of the agreements.

• Resisting these 4 agreements leads to disappointment (in ourselves and others,) anger, suffering, and other calamaties that drive us away from our true self - the one that knowingly took this addiction recovery journey.

• Being mindful of our decision to follow these 4 agreements permits us the freedom of peace of mind that comes with knowing the best we can do is just the best for right now, or today, and later, or tommorrow - everything can feel, look, and sound differently.

“If you are impeccable with your word, if you don’t take anything personally, if you don’t make assumptions, if you always do your best, then you are going to have a beautiful life.”
― Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal

 

Also, please subscribe, rate and review the show to help us spread the word about this awesome free content. Your simple action of rating and reviewing does wonders in helping others find the show.

If you have questions you'd like addressed on the show, want to book me to speak at an event, or want to recommend or be a guest on this show, please contact me through any of the social media links below or via email. Feel free to contact me here for any other reason as well:

Facebook: https://facebook.com/fromsobrietytorecovery

Twitter: https://twitter.com/jessemogle

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Email: jesseisinteresting@gmail.com

 

 

Ask questions because you're not a mind reader, Ep27

No one is a mind reader - regardless of what you, your significant other, friends, or family might think. Ask questions in order to communicate clearly about the wants, needs, and desires of all parties involved.

My therapist loves to remind me to speak concisely. She says, "take out 17 words, then respond." So before you speak, ask yourself - are you performing mental gymnastics to get out of a lie, confrontation, or an otherwise lack of integrity moment? If so - don't. No one wins when you try to convince yourself and others of something you know isn't forthright, true, and integrity-based.

Three keys to not making assumptions:

*1. Ask questions

• Are you a mind reader? Assuming you know what other people are thinking or feeling about you is a limiting thought - and serves no purpose in your personal growth, sobriety, and recovery journey.
  • The Best way to not ever have to assume? Just ask the person what it is they meant, said, feel, etc. when you aren't sure.

*2. Listen to the answer

• When we try to read minds we will usually get it wrong. This will lead to misunderstandings, arguments, and many other undesirable consequences.
  • Give them the space to give you their answer and the consideration to not interrupt.

*3. Be equally open when they ask you questions so they don't have to assume.

• When we communicate in a way that leaves no room for misunderstanding or interpretation we alleviate any space someone would have to assume.
  • Make sure you answer their question clearly and completely, without being cagey, so they also get a clear answer to their questions.

This process could feel very vulnerable.
That's awesome!
In that vulnerability, you will find the healing and recovery, from your past experiences, that led you to not asking questions and assuming when you were using.

Quotes about making assumptions from:

― Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom

“In any kind of relationship we can make the assumption that others know what we think, and we don’t have to say what we want. They are going to do what we want because they know us so well. If they don’t do what we want, what we assume they should do, we feel hurt and think, “How could you do that? You should know.” Again, we make the assumption that the other person knows what we want. A whole drama is created because we make this assumption and then put more assumptions on
top of it.”

• If you assume the other person should know what you want then you are robbing yourselves of the opportunity to bond over the conversation about what you desire from them. Plus, having a manual for how someone is supposed to behave around you and not giving them access to it is just low-integrity and we aren't being that version of ourselves anymore...right?

“Humans are storytellers. It is our nature to make up stories, to interpret everything we perceive. Without awareness, we give our personal power to the story and the story writes itself. With awareness, we recover control of our story. We see we are the authors and if we don't like our story, we change it.”

• Don't assume, which is making up your own story, because then you give up the power that the knowledge of asking would bring you.

“You are no longer responsible for anyone's opinion. You have no need to control anyone, and no one controls you either... You don't need to be right and you don't need to make anyone else wrong...you are no longer afraid of being rejected, and you don't have the need to be accepted...you can walk into the world with your heart completely open, and not be afraid to be hurt.”
― Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom

Don't take things personally; It's them, not you, Ep26

Whatever happens around you, don’t take it personally. Nothing other people do is because of you, it's because of them. When we take something personally, we make the assumption they know what's in our world, and we try to impose our world on theirs.

 Why is not taking anything personally important?

• Because you are in control of your world, not theirs, so you have no idea why they just behaved that way toward you.
• Reacting emotionally is your old way of thinking and this new, better you, is more grounded and centered in your life and sobriety joureny.

What is not taking things personally look like.

• You shrug off insults
• You understand that people can still CHOOSE to believe in the old you, to see the old you, to think that nobody ever changes and you will always be who you were.
  • That is their limiting mindset about themselves and not for you to take on as fact. Their poison is for them to take alone.

How to not take things personally

1. Remember what someone say to you, about you, or around you is their own opinion of the world as they see it - it is their projection of their belief system upon you and not yours, so don't pay it any mind.

2. Breathe deep and think about what it would do to you to take on their insult as fact and why you know that's not helpful to your sobriety.

3. Laugh it off, walk away, continue doing what ever it is you were doing are acceptable responses to thier indignity toward you.

Remember - reacting is with emotion, responding is with thought.

What if you find yourself taking things personally.

• Breathe into the moment and ask yourself if it is worth your energy to take their poison as your own.
• Look at their actions as their own pain and suffering that they have to look forward to evolving from and then see if you can be of service to them.
• Be introspective of your actions and see where you can be a better role model for how to act in stressful situations.

 

Also, please subscribe, rate and review the show to help us spread the word about this awesome free content. Your simple action of rating and reviewing does wonders in helping others find the show.

If you have questions you'd like addressed on the show, want to book me to speak at an event, or want to recommend or be a guest on this show, please contact me through any of the social media links below or via email. Feel free to contact me here for any other reason as well:

Facebook: https://facebook.com/fromsobrietytorecovery

Twitter: https://twitter.com/jessemogle

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Email: jesseisinteresting@gmail.com

 

 

Honor your commitments to yourself and others, Ep25

Do you honor your commitments to yourself and others every time you make them? Have you stopped the blaming, complaining, criticizing, and gossiping? Being impeccable with your words means you live a life of integrity & your words/actions are honorable.

The first agreement is to be impeccable with your word. It sounds simple enough, but it is definitely not.

You can’t control every circumstance. But you can control how you react to it.

• A sin (or error) is anything and everything you believe, say, or feel which goes against yourself.
  
  • You go against yourself when you criticize, complain, blame, or judge yourself, others, or anything in the world.
• Being without sin is exactly the opposite.

When you are impeccable, you take responsibility for your actions, and you do not criticize, complain, blame, or judge yourself, nor do we indulge in guilt or shame.

We do not use our words against others in blaming, criticizing, or gossiping.

We honor our commitments and only make those we intend to follow through on. Most importantly the commitments we make to ourselves.

Do you honor your commitments?

• When you say you’re going to do something, do you really intend to follow through and then actually do it?
  • Do you say YES to every request, invitation, or ask because you think you need to, you're a people pleaser and you figure you can flake, make an excuse, or not show up when the time to follow through arrives?

When you tell yourself you are going to do something: workout, lose weight, go to a meeting, do you do it or do you rationalize an excuse to yourself so you can release the commitment without feeling guilty?

How to be imbeccable with your words by activvely listening to yourself and others.

1. Actively listen. (Try the eye, eye, nose, mouth loop if you get distracted.)
2. Take at least 5-10 seconds to truly pause and think about what the person has said before responding.
3. Choose your words slowly and carefully.
4. Practise using phrases to show people you are actively listening
   • that's interesting, I'm curious about that tell me more, what did you do then, that's awesome, that's cool, fantastic, tell me more.

5. Use words that are familiar and comfortable to you, not words to impress people.

6. Think of your words as a commitment, a contract - and honor them. Every time.

Thank you so much for listening and being a part of this wonderfully supportive community. No longer are we living in the shadows!

 

Also, please subscribe, rate and review the show to help us spread the word about this awesome free content. Your simple action of rating and reviewing does wonders in helping others find the show.

If you have questions you'd like addressed on the show, want to book me to speak at an event, or want to recommend or be a guest on this show, please contact me through any of the social media links below or via email. Feel free to contact me here for any other reason as well:

Facebook: https://facebook.com/fromsobrietytorecovery

Twitter: https://twitter.com/jessemogle

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Email: jesseisinteresting@gmail.com

 

Harness the Integrity of the Four Agreements, Ep24

The four agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz provides a roadmap toward the highest version of yourself. Integrity is crucial in your recovery journey and by harnessing it's virtues you will be freed of the negative weight and repercussions of actions that go against these agreements.

1. Be Impeccable with Your Word

No complaining. No criticising. No blaming. No gossiping. 



2. Don’t Take Anything Personally



How someone responds to you often says more about THEM than it says about you.

3. Don’t Make Assumptions



By asking questions you side step assuming you already know the answer. This creates clear communication between the parties involved. Be courageous and ask questions until you fully understand the actions, words, or behaviors.

4. Always Do Your Best

Understand that your best will be fluid, it will change day by day. Being comfortable with this fluctuation in yourself and others is paramount to an understanding, vulnerable, and loving relationship with yourself, your activites, and your realtionships.

Thank you so much for listening and being a part of this wonderfully supportive community. No longer are we living in the shadows!

 

Also, please subscribe, rate and review the show to help us spread the word about this awesome free content. Your simple action of rating and reviewing does wonders in helping others find the show.

If you have questions you'd like addressed on the show, want to book me to speak at an event, or want to recommend or be a guest on this show, please contact me through any of the social media links below or via email. Feel free to contact me here for any other reason as well:

Facebook: https://facebook.com/fromsobrietytorecovery

Twitter: https://twitter.com/jessemogle

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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessemogle/

Email: jesseisinteresting@gmail.com

 

Growth mindset v Fixed mindset & how they effect your journey, Ep23

A growth mindset is the ability to see everything as an opportunity to learn, grow, and experience from. That any ability and skill can be developed no matter your background or current abilities.

A fixed mindset is believing that skills, talents, knowledge, etc. are relatively fixed and can not be grown nor cultivated.

A growth mindset realizes every single opportunity in life is a chance for growth - and then, if your mind is open to it, you will learn something, you will experience something you had not previously even considered.

Realize your intelligence, abilities, skills, talents - everything about you can grow and develop in whatever way you decide.

If you have a fixed mindset around your ability to do this, that, or the other - you will probably not even try to learn, grow, and experience new things.

As you begin to complete things, learn things - grow into this new you - you will grow your discipline and your abilities.

It is a positive feedback loop. As you do things, you learn new things, and you realize you can learn and do new things all the time.

Creating that loop will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. You will know you can grow BECAUSE you are growing which will fuel further growth.

Thank you so much for listening and being a part of this wonderfully supportive community. No longer are we living in the shadows!

 

Also, please subscribe, rate and review the show to help us spread the word about this awesome free content. Your simple action of rating and reviewing does wonders in helping others find the show.

If you have questions you'd like addressed on the show, want to book me to speak at an event, or want to recommend or be a guest on this show, please contact me through any of the social media links below or via email. Feel free to contact me here for any other reason as well:

Facebook: https://facebook.com/fromsobrietytorecovery

Twitter: https://twitter.com/jessemogle

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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessemogle/

Email: jesseisinteresting@gmail.com

 

Partying sober & day-to-day sobriety, Ep22

Going to concerts and events you used to party at can be hard, but there are plenty of ways to change how you see the partying going on around you. It's all in perspective and today is the day to start making that change - in your behavior, your attitude and your thoughts.

Bonus: how to fill your normal days with activities that keep you humming along in sobriety.

1. Play it out through to the credits.

2. Really watch everyone chase the dragon

3. Realize you don't have the ability or strength to party for 1 night and move on.

   • I do not want to manage it anymore
   • I am moving toward my best life
     • not away from being a drunk, druggy
   • Toward having fun sober
     • not away from hoping to enjoy myself sober

How to fill up the time in your normal day

• get a job

  • get a job you actually like

• get a hobby

  • or 3

• learn to enjoy learning

  • find things you are interested in and start learning about them

• start working out and be healthy

  • go for walks, hike, explore your city, neighborhood

Thank you so much for listening and being a part of this wonderfully supportive community. No longer are we living in the shadows!

 

Also, please subscribe, rate and review the show to help us spread the word about this awesome free content. Your simple action of rating and reviewing does wonders in helping others find the show.

If you have questions you'd like addressed on the show, want to book me to speak at an event, or want to recommend or be a guest on this show, please contact me through any of the social media links below or via email. Feel free to contact me here for any other reason as well:

Facebook: https://facebook.com/fromsobrietytorecovery

Twitter: https://twitter.com/jessemogle

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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessemogle/

Email: jesseisinteresting@gmail.com

 

Obstacle Thoughts - change your perception of your negative thoughts, Ep21

Obstacle thoughts: thoughts that are perceived obstacles to the goal or destination you want to achieve.

- Purpose, direction, and reason for what we are doing with our lives
- Without goals, there is no direction or movement and only stagnation

Obstacle thoughts strengthen themselves by providing evidence through your own actions
- Law of Attraction
- Frequency Bias or Illusion (Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon)
- Confirmation bias
Reticular Activating System - the idea that you see what it is your conscious and unconscious mind is looking for.

Through my actions, the thought becomes more believable the more I think it, fell it, and embody it.

How do we change this?
How do we do it?

You can not do this in your head!

• write it all down
• must be outside of your head
• as an external, separate thing
• obstacle thoughts are optional

When you are in a rush to overcome your current situation you miss out on the skill set that comes from overcoming your own current thinking.

In order to think differently, you have to know what you are thinking now.

• you have to know where you are
• where do I want to go
• what are the obstacles in between

The realizing and overcoming of the Obstacle Thought is the objective - not achieving the outcome!

Thank you so much for listening and being a part of this wonderfully supportive community. No longer are we living in the shadows!

 

Also, please subscribe, rate and review the show to help us spread the word about this awesome free content. Your simple action of rating and reviewing does wonders in helping others find the show.

If you have questions you'd like addressed on the show, want to book me to speak at an event, or want to recommend or be a guest on this show, please contact me through any of the social media links below or via email. Feel free to contact me here for any other reason as well:

Facebook: https://facebook.com/fromsobrietytorecovery

Twitter: https://twitter.com/jessemogle

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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessemogle/

Email: jesseisinteresting@gmail.com