Hey there, it's steve again and thank you for joining me for this week's podcast. And thanks again for following me at W W W dot Believe in big change dot com starting to accumulate quite a following up near 2600 followers in such a short period of time and growing by the day. So thank you so much for that. Thank you for that support. And today I'm here to hopefully reciprocate and give you my support and share with you my experiences again as I continue to grow and evolve in my recovery. What I want to talk about today is some of the things that I have done in the past applied used today and things that I am growing into in the future. So this podcast is gonna be the start of this discussion. It's going to be followed up with at least one more podcast because I think it warrants, its such a big topic in a touchy one. And that is what can we do following you know, post a negative stressful traumatic, painful, hurtful experience, very unpleasant. They say the research, the data says by the time we're an adult, we've experienced at least one form of trauma in our lives. Once a lot one is a lot to deal with. Some of us have experienced. Many of us have experienced more than that and it can go back to our, our childhood. A lot of it can it's a lot to deal with. A lot of stress comes with that. We shame ourselves. I shame myself even though we may have been wronged in a lot of cases, we are wrong taking advantage of used abused hurt. We somehow conditioned ourselves to to shame ourselves to think that we did something wrong, that we weren't enough for another person. Another situation, an incident, there's a lot of shame, stress, it can be traumatic for many of us. The abuse can be emotional, physical, sexual, that's painful. It's very touchy to talk about, can be very uncomfortable. I would say for me, most of my abuse was at an emotional level growing up. Some of it goes back to my childhood and as I grew up, I became a teenager and adult adult relationships business. You know, there were some relationships that were just unhealthy for and what I realized in looking back, which I'm gonna talk about how we can use the past to to grow and set us free realizing now that, you know, there were some tough times and some painful experiences for me and I'm here to compare my pain and suffering to yours. Many of us have it, it's ours. I'm owning it and I chose not to suffer anymore. And I'm gonna share with you a little bit further how I do that in the treatment recovery circles that call this, having a corrective experience, choosing to have a corrective experience. So we'll call this part one and I want you to know and I believe this about myself, the people I grew up with my parents, other loved ones. A lot of this is not our fault. We did the best we could, all of us. I'm finding out the stuff in the past just isn't useful for me anymore. It became unhealthy, including the fact that I became an alcoholic. That's how it played out. I didn't have enough healthy coping skills consistently to be able to regulate my emotions, moved through my shame set and maintain healthy boundaries. I mean, that just wasn't at my core consistently. It was shame, unhealthy boundary, unhealthy coping skills. Mine was alcohol. I became an alcoholic. That's how the script played out. I don't blame anybody, I accept it. I own it and I'm gonna share with you what I choose to do on a daily basis. It's not your fault. We coped and survived the best way we could and what I want to share with you is what I'm doing today. And again, I'm gonna break this up into a couple of podcasts because it's a lot I believe we have, you know, choices to make in our life and what I'm doing today, I believe is of a healthy nature and I want to share that with you. So some of this, a lot of it is a work in progress for me. I've done some of this in the past. I'm doing it today and things continue to evolve and I grow and I want to share it with you. I want you to be a part of it. So I got in this unhealthy place, there was a lot of shame, couldn't regulate properly. I drank too much. The script played out. You've heard me talk about it before I became an alcoholic. So I'm I'm coming from a place of fear more and more, not a place of love. I've read this somewhere come from one or two places. Fear of love. I'm learning to have awareness about where I'm coming from or could be coming from sitting still with it, my feelings, my emotions not taking action, especially when I suspect it's fear. We operate from fear. The ego usually doesn't turn out the way we planned planned it. So I suffered, I played the victim at times. I abuse the substance of alcohol, sometimes I was the abuser withdrawing from people and shutting them out and isolating and walling everybody out of me that's abusive. People don't have access to me. They care about me and steve checks out of life. I believe that, you know, I I inflicted that on others, also inflicted it on myself. So, you know, I I heard something the other day and this kind of gets into the law of attraction, which will be more of what I talk about in part two next week. I heard this the other day. What we fear is what we attract, thinking about the law of attraction, thinking about my past, thinking about my past in terms of just kind of being, which I'll talk about in a moment on a fact finding what's true about state because we have these painful experiences. We don't want to relive them again. So that's part of my underlying fear is, hey man, I don't, I don't want to relive that stuff. It's painful. It sucks, it hurts. You know, what can I do about that today? I used to think in some relationships that ended up not working out, that became toxic. Many of you can identify with that I believe, wondering how did, what did I do to attract this person thinking I was a good judge of character. So I've been working on that one I want to share with you where I'm at what I've done in the past and I'll talk more about what I'm working on today. So how can we choose to shift our focus, start to visualize what we want to experience and how we can go about choosing. That takes a lot of courage to do that. I went to treatment multiple times for the disease of alcoholism that I have and I believe that when I came back and they told me, hey steve, it takes a lot of courage for you to come back and do what you're doing because I had a choice. I could have stayed out there and drank myself to death. I had enough hope, enough honesty about the fact that I had a problem, enough courage to do that. This takes a lot of courage to do this. Turning inward, it is an inside job, choosing to have this corrective experience I believe is an inside job and that's what I want to share with you. Now I talked about coming from a place of fear of love. How do I do that today? It starts inside self love had to start giving myself permission the first I had to, I'm gonna say I had to, I chose to, I needed to, I wanted to sometimes it's all the above. More and more. It really is. I choose to do this because I could choose not, choosing not to, I don't find useful anymore. That's gonna lead me closer to a drink. Today I'm gonna pass on that. I'm gonna choose this and share this with you to feel my feelings to learn how to sit with them that can be uncomfortable, observe them. Hey, what's going on? This is a good feeling. This is not so good. I'm starting to get worked up inside, stay with, hang in there. Even if it's four, I've talked about this in the past for 345 minutes. Such you're such, shut my eyes focused on my breath, learn to how to name them with help and reading stuff and educating myself and learning, I don't have to do anything with, I don't have to take any action. Even if it's a good feeling, I'm like, hey, this is it. I choose to just go, you know what I'm going to sleep on this. And most importantly to not pass judgment on me, not beat myself up the same man. I really want to lash out at this person and fire back. Okay. It's just a feeling I don't have to act on it. We've all probably felt that way. Coming from a place of love is not about payback and revenge and retaliation. That's coming from a place of fear to do these things that I just talked about. They call it the how being honest, open and willing, had to start getting real honest about what's true about me and I touched on that before the shame, the lack of boundaries consistent, the lack of healthy coping skills being consistent there and how it played out and taking ownership of that. I mean, for me to come to the table and to start telling people that I carry a lot of shame. I mean, Shane's like taboo for for for guys growing up and you know what it is for women to admitting that that takes a lot of courage. That's like saying, you know, some people think that's like a weakness, it's not that's being vulnerable and being vulnerable. I believe is how we counter our shame. Yes, a contrary action. Some of this is gonna feel contrary, Give your self permission to love yourself, otherwise you can fall prior have fallen prey to what I did without those boundaries. I started seeking external validation outside of me with others in relationships in life and business and it is never enough. So what did I do? I chose to isolate more and more and turned to the bottle that obviously wasn't useful for me anymore. I'm not sure that it ever was. Maybe it felt that way for a while. Number two, self forgiveness start to love ourselves, care for ourselves, work on being vulnerable, owning up to our stuff. The rigorous honesty, the story behind the story, what's really true about that is where I start to find my strength and my courage to take action. Now I can start to forgive myself for the way the script played out for some of the things that I did and said or didn't do and say when I decided to check out in life and not show up. When I forgive, I start to feel hopeful, I start to feel stronger, courageous to take more action. To believe in myself. I stopped believing in myself. I stopped trusting myself. So what happens? I stopped trusting others. I didn't know what to do with that. The message I thought I was hearing was mixed. The voices were mixed. I couldn't tell the difference anymore between the voice of my higher power and the voice of my ego. The self credit. I didn't know the difference I got very confused, I couldn't regulate and I drank and I drank some more. The third thing that I'm doing almost daily now is allowing the past to set me free versus holding me hostage hostages, fear paralyzed in fear stock. I can do something about this. So I'm on a fact finding mission, mission could be past relationships. Some of them are still in my life, some of them are not finding out what's true about me, checking the facts, what really played out and what was my role in that again? Turning inward, it's so easy to get drawn externally and will this I observe this about this person and I observed this about that person and I'm learning to say, hello, time out. Time to check in with steve be still with everything. Let's turn inward. Am I coming from a place of fear, love? Where's the ego at? And I can do that now without passing judgment again. What we fear we attract. So that's a lot for today. Again, I thank you for joining me next week. We're gonna talk about this a bit more. Talk about fact checking the present as we're choosing now to have a different experience setting and maintaining boundaries touching on that as well as empowerment. Taking our power back, permission to dream and start to create a new life that we want that new experience with purpose, passion and empowerment. Thank you again for joining me. Thanks again for following me and the messages. Please keep reaching out. It means a lot to me and uh we can do this together. Let's let's stick with this. Let's hang in there. I send you strength, Hope, courage, and love today. I love you, you do matter. And I pray that you believe that and you start to stick around long enough to start to feel empowered about this stuff. It's amazing. Good luck with that. I will talk to you again very soon, be well and God bless you.