Ep 74 This Naked Mind with Annie Grace
In this week's episode of Euphoric The Podcast, Karolina is joined by author Annie Grace as they talk about the empowerment of living an alcohol-free life, discovering your authentic self, and the importance of slowing down in order to speed up.
Annie Grace has revolutionized what it means to live alcohol-free. She wrote the book This Naked Mind, which later evolved into a company that has helped hundreds of thousands of people change their relationships with alcohol. With an approach of compassion and curiosity as catalysts for change, Annie also trains coaches in alcohol-free life coaching.
This episode is filled with wisdom, possibility, and encouragement. Enjoy.
Learning to ask the right questions
At the age of 33, Annie was living the life she had always dreamed of. Married with two children and two dogs, she lived in her dream home in the mountains, working at her dream job. Even with all of this, she woke up daily with a knot in her stomach, unhappy and feeling hopeless.
Alcohol took a bigger role in Annie’s life while working in New York City. She would attend cocktail hours with co-workers as a means of networking and meeting new people. It was the culture and in some ways an expectation to take part in social drinking. Six years later in 2011, Annie gave birth to her second child. She began struggling with severe postpartum depression. This was a turning point in her alcohol use, shifting from a social expectation into a self-medicating coping strategy.
Do you set rules or expectations for yourself when it comes to alcohol, only to feel miserable when you’re not drinking or living in shame when you break them?
Annie had an epiphany moment in 2013 while flying home from a business trip. She was drunk, hungover, and overwhelmed emotionally. Taking out her journal, she began writing. Her clarity came when she began asking a different question.
Shifting from:
“What’s wrong with me?”
“Am I an alcoholic?”
“Am I broken?”
Shifting to:
“What has changed?”
“What's different?”
“Why do I have control in other areas of my life but not when it comes to alcohol?”
There is power in changing the dialogue. For Annie this meant moving from shame and judgment toward compassion and curiosity. What ways do you judge yourself? What is a more compassionate question you could ask instead?
The power of curiosity to create newness
Annie made a new promise to herself: she would allow herself to drink what she wanted, no more rules, AND she would compassionately and intentionally look at herself and her life, asking what had changed. She dug into research and data about alcohol and began journaling what she was realizing about herself.
As Annie spent time understanding her emotional tie to alcohol and what she was trying to numb out, she also began noticing her desire to drink was decreasing.
Annie compiled all of her research, data, and journals into a PDF which later became her book, This Naked Mind.
Through her research, Annie began realizing that people have more power than they are often given credit for. When you change the way you think, you change the way you act. Annie now teaches her technique, ACT:
Awareness: Becoming aware of your thoughts. Stepping out of numbing to be able to hear your thoughts again.
Clarity: Getting clear on your feelings around these thoughts. How does it make you feel? How does it make you behave?
Turnaround: Shifting to a different narrative. What is another thought that you can believe instead?
You may become aware of a story that says,
“I’m not fun if I don’t drink.”
In clarity, you may notice this makes you feel self-conscious, boring, and causes you to isolate or drink more.
An incremental turnaround step could sound like,
“Maybe I’m fun when I don’t drink.” or
“I don’t know if I’m fun without drinking.”
These new narratives create space for curiosity and a new way of being. As your self-awareness and curiosity increase, you will begin getting honest with yourself in new ways. This is the birthplace for change.
A journey back to self, slowing down to speed up
Much of the work that Annie does is around coming back to yourself, rediscovering who you always were to begin with. As you grow, family, circumstances, society, and experiences cause you to adopt lies and unsupportive narratives about yourself. These shape the way you view yourself and show up in the world.
Annie describes this deconstruction process as an unlearning. In her journey she had to discover where in her life did she learn to “separate from other people” or learn that she didn’t belong. She asked herself, “where did I start to put on these masks and costumes.”
As you do the work of self-discovery and unlearning, you will rekindle your sense of self-worth and value. You will start noticing how you show up in the world, and whether it supports who you want to be.
When you notice yourself overwhelmed, stressed, living in fear or scarcity, it’s time to hit pause and slow down. These moments of grounding create space for reflection, enable you to get clear on what you’re feeling, and help you shift into a more supportive belief.
Some methods of slowing down could be journaling, exercise, meditation, or reading.
These moments of pause are opportunities to get curious, reset, and go again. You get to shift your energy to be more supportive moving forward. Slowing down to get clear on who you want to be will give you the momentum in going after the life you want.
NOTABLE QUOTE FROM ANNIE
“Maybe you're going to learn how to record the best podcast ever, or get the best tech for your website, or all these things that we think are the things, but “the thing” is the human, the human behind the whole thing. How peaceful and present and what type of energy is that human bringing? That puts something different out into the world.”
LINKS/RESOURCES MENTIONED
This Naked Mind by Annie Grace
Check out some of these book recommendations from Annie:
Stress Less, Accomplish More, The Power of Now, Loving What Is, The Go Giver, The Great Work Of Your Life, and The War of Art.
Become Euphoric 10 Week Group Coaching Program - now open for enrollment for a limited time! Program starts on July 26.
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