Welcome to Redesigning Life.

I'm your host, sabrina Soto, and this is the space where we have honest conversations about personal growth, mindset shifts and creating a life that feels truly aligned.

In each episode, I'll talk to experts in their fields who share their insights to help you step into your higher self.

Let's redesign your life from the inside out.

On this episode, I'm speaking with author Holly Whitaker.

I found her through her blog Hip Sobriety, but she also wrote this incredible book Quit Like a Woman.

Whether you're sober, curious or you're figuring out how alcohol fits or maybe doesn't fit in your life during these really stressful times.

This is such a great episode, what a great conversation I had with her.

So I want to get started.

So I've been reading your book Quit Like a Woman and it's been phenomenal.

I actually thought it was quite ironic that I was reading it on my Mexican vacation and having margaritas and then reading this, and funny when I would talk to people while I was on vacation talking about what was in the book, which, by the way, is phenomenal.

Thank you.

Everybody, like a lot of people got triggered.

I mean no, but like fights and arguments, and, and there was no argument.

It's really what you were talking about, especially about how advertising has really shifted smoking to the alcohol industry.

It's not your opinion.

Yeah, it's fact, it's fact and people got annoyed.

And then, when I didn't drink, I also saw people getting triggered Like why aren't you drinking?

Which also I want to talk about, because what I didn't understand is, if you go out to dinner with a friend of yours and she orders a sandwich and you would order a salad, are you upset?

No, but think about it.

When have you ever gone vegetarian?

Like when I was vegetarian and I would go to Thanksgiving and I'd be like I'm going to make you know to make vegan gravy, everyone would be like I mean, people were not cool with it.

I was apologizing for what I was eating and not going in and saying you shouldn't eat meat, but there was, on that level, a lot of resistance.

Have you ever experienced?

that yeah, I mean, I wouldn't say I'm vegan, I'm non-dairy pescatarian, so I eat fish once in a while, but still.

But the point is but that's different, because then it kind of it makes it inconvenient to them because they have to make something else.

But in a case that we're going to a restaurant and we're both ordering a drink, and I happen to order a sparkling water and you order whatever the hell you do.

Why does it matter what's in our cup?

Because people think about themselves.

And.

I don't mean that like people are so selfish, I mean we really have a hard time getting outside of what anybody else's behavior means for us and our own behavior.

Yeah, Let me take a few steps back of why I even got to know you and your blog and it's amazing for anybody listening Hip Sobriety and her book is called Quit Like a Woman and she also has the Tempest Sobriety School too.

So there was a lot to cover.

But I read, so I oh my God, this was years ago.

I was reading the New York Post and they were talking about Annie Grace and I just read it and I lived in New York at the time, which drinking is a huge part of the culture there, Because it's easy you walk down the street or downstairs, there's a bar and let's go for a drink, and I realized that my drinking was just not getting out of hand because I didn't think anything of it.

But when I read her book it sort of opened my eyes.

So, I took steps back from living in that way.

And then, when COVID hit, I'm telling you, Holly, like there were no rules, like whatever, mimosas do it you know, like white wine for lunch, let's do it.

And then I saw my mental health, which was already deteriorating because of COVID, gets so much worse because of the drinking.

So I started to kind of delve back into that research and I feel like the way that you say this information and you share your stories is so, I don't want to say humbling, but easy to digest, and also you open up your life, which I love, on your blog.

I also read your blog about toxic relationships.

I wrote that when I was in a really bad relationship.

Okay, not only did I read that like four times.

I sent it to friends of mine who were in toxic relationships and I watched that Reese Witherspoon movie because I was like I want that, I want that sign, I want that sign.

Wait, which one Wild you?

talked about how she was oh my God.

Sign.

I want that sign.

Wait, which one Wild.

You talked about how she was, oh my God.

First of all, I haven't read that blog in probably three or four years.

But tell me about it, remind me about it.

Why did I?

You said that you were watching this movie and she had written her ex-husband's name on the sand one last time.

And then she let him go and you were like well, how do you do that?

And then you were, you did that bath and you let it go, and then you ended up meeting somebody great.

Yes, how do things work like that?

Are you still with him?

No, I mean, he ended up meeting me in Rome, like a year later, I think, and then, um, getting back to his ex-girlfriend on the way to our trip.

So um yeah, he was still better than the guy before, um, but yeah, I do remember that.

Yes.

So thank you for that, and my girlfriends a lot of them thank you for that too.

So thank you for being so vulnerable, because we've all been in those relationships that you can't you can't get out of.

You can't get out of them.

It is this same cycle, um, so I appreciate that.

But back to to your book why, like quitting, like a woman, and I loved all of your stories about like how you know you and the girls would get together when somebody like lost their job and you're drinking whiskey, and that's what you did and I find that that's what we're.

We all have been coping with COVID and I heard that alcohol like alcohol consumption has been up by 300%.

Yeah, what, tell me, what really sort of catapulted you to choose to just finally stop?

Yeah?

I think it was.

I mean, I write about this in my book and there was, there was all these tiny little pieces, and I think we at Tempest so it's an organization that I run and we help people, you know basically build, you know uh holistic paths to uh recovery, which can mean abstinence or not, um, but we talk about the recovery journey and we talk about it in six steps and we basically say there's ether, and ether is essentially where you have there's problematic drinking going on.

This doesn't necessarily have to qualify as alcohol use disorder, this is just problematic drinking, um.

And you, the ether is essentially you have, you have a problem and you just don't know it.

You're not in that space that can at all absorb that something is wrong.

And then you move from there into inkling, and that's just where you get a little hit of something.

And that's like you reading a post article with Annie Grace and going, huh, you know, and I think it's just we have we go through a process of awareness that allows us to start to see, and I think it's just we have we go through a process of awareness that allows us to start to see things.

And I'm not just talking about alcohol, I'm talking about anything.

We move typically from the dark into the light and that process is really slow.

And so for me, there was a period of time where I was just crawling through my life and I could not actually identify that alcohol was a problem.

It was that my life was a problem and it was, and my my relationship with alcohol would change when my life changed.

And then I think there was a bunch of different things that occurred over a period of 2010 and 2011.

And finally, in 2012, where I just started to get these hits Like I went to a three day meditation retreat at Esalen.

I lived in San Francisco, so this was a few hours away, and Esalen is this vortex.

Yeah, it's a beautiful place in Big Sur that is kind of like a hippie commune.

I don't know it's a beautiful place in Big Sur that is kind of like a hippie commune, I don't know.

It's a healing place, I don't know how else to say it.

There's yurts and healers and I went there and I had three days and in that I was able to see how sick my depression was, how unhappy I was, and then I was going to change my life forever.

And I drove back to San Francisco and by Monday I was just right back to where I was and I think I kept on having these moments where I would see something and I'd be like, oh right, there's another way, I don't have to live this way.

But for me, the real, there was two things that were real final moments.

One was just how many.

I woke up one morning and I had uh, I had been, I would binge drink a lot and so I would go, I could.

There were times I could quote, unquote, take it or leave it, but uh, you know, I, I could, I could.

Uh, alcohol was not.

I wasn't drinking like you see in the movies when you see alcoholism portrayed.

I wasn't carrying around bottles in my bag, I wasn't hiding bottles in my car, I wasn't waking up every morning and drinking, but when I was drinking it was really, really problematic.

And I had this one moment where I woke up in the morning and I woke up with alcohol in my hand.

And I woke up, um, it was before work, I had to lead a meeting in a short period of time and I just was.

I also was bulimic and I also, um, I may smoke cigarettes and I smoked pot.

And a lot of times those four things would converge alcohol, pot, uh, food, uh, and then, uh, tobacco, and I would just ruin myself.

And then I cleaned myself up and I ruined myself and I cleaned myself up.

So I had this one moment where I was just so, I was, I was maybe 32 at the time and I was just exhausted by it.

And then I had this other moment where, once you know, that morning I actually just really cried for help, I actually named it and said I can't go on living like this.

And again, this wasn't like I can't go on living with my alcoholism, it was just I can't keep this up, I'm exhausted by myself and the life that I built for myself.

And then, uh, I started.

That allowed me to start looking a little deeper and questioning my relationship with alcohol and maybe putting a name to it Like this has to change.

And then I started to change my relationship with alcohol.

I started reading a book very similar to Annie Grace's book.

Annie Grace's book is called this Naked Mind.

Some of her theories come from a book by Alan Carr, who is made famous for his ability to help people quit smoking with psychology and what he would call exposing liminal thinking and exposing the subconscious things that drive the decisions we make.

So I read this book by Alan Carr, which was called the Easy Way to Control your Alcohol, because, again, I wasn't interested in cutting out alcohol, I was interested in controlling it.

But that book started to do a number on me and I had this night out with one of my friends in San Francisco where I really didn't want to drink and I want.

I was watching the whole scene unfold.

I was watching her buy the second drink, I was watching her pick up men that I didn't want to talk to, and then I watched her get progressively I like sloppy drunk and I wasn't in.

I wasn't in on it, I wasn't having fun with it.

And then her behavior was really um, it was just gross.

And then she got in the taxi and there was this huge fight and she, we were running like chasing her down the street.

Well, she just, I mean, it was just one of those moments where I was, you know, as I write this, I I'm trying to like get her, I'm trying to like for her safety, get her into a cab.

I'm handing the cab driver my credit card and saying I'll pay if she pukes, Because back then, um, it was really hard to get, uh, taxis in San Francisco, and I'm like managing this whole process and she is, you know, she hates me for it and I just felt too old for it.

I just didn't want that life anymore.

I felt ridiculous and I felt exhausted by it, and so there was a collection of things, but those were two real poignant moments that shaped that decision.

I don't want this.

You were a little bit younger.

So what about for the house moms who are homeschooling their kids right now, overwhelmed because maybe they're not working, their partner's not working and they don't have those crazy nights to sort of have that one moment of awakening?

What can you say to those people to make them stop and think whether or not alcohol is playing a role in their life that isn't helping which, by the way, alcohol is never going to be helping anybody's life but that maybe is really more unhealthy than they think it is?

Yeah, I think that everybody, no matter what situation that you're in, you get to have an epiphany and I think you get to have that awareness and it doesn't have to come crashing down like in something as cliche as a bar scene.

It really, I mean, more than often, the way that drinking shows up is in the mundane or is in the the trope of our life, and that's why it's so hard to peel our life away from it.

Because if you are in your home all day and let's just say you're, you're, you're this person, you're raising kids, um, you're, you know, maybe you're juggling a job and juggling you know, your family and all that's going on in the world right now, and it's normalized to drink during the day.

You can't see a way out of it.

You cannot see how you're going to unwind at night without wine or how you're going to make it to five without that relief, because that's what alcohol does, it's.

It's no matter really how much we're drinking If we aren't on the spectrum of alcohol use disorder all the way up to having severe alcohol use disorder.

It's really habit forming and I think it's really hard for people to really see when maybe it shows up in their life on a regular basis, how they're going to get out of it or even see how they're going to have happiness without it.

Because a lot of times we tie up so much of our reward or our release or our relaxation or connection, or our sex or our partner connection time, so much of the, the more um, what we, you know quote unquote rewarding parts of our lives are tied up with alcohol.

So you really can't see a way out and I think the thing that I always say to everybody is that you just allow yourself to.

I mean, it's amazing what we can, what we can do subtly.

We think we have to make these really huge shifts and like throw out all the bottles and then, you know, start meditating every night and doing a whole number of things and become this different person.

But the truth is we just allow for our, we allow for things to, to, to come in and we allow for ourselves to make subtle changes.

And I really like this book called Atomic Habits.

Have you ever read?

that, no, I've never read it.

It's by James Clear and he essentially talks about how, how, all you know, I think all of these little things that we do really add up to make big change.

Wow, I don't like this, or wow, maybe this isn't helping me, or maybe this is increasing my anxiety, or maybe this is increasing my depression, or I'm tired of this, or anything that you allow to enter the picture of the narrative, to break it up, you're basically allowing yourself to develop a new thread of thinking, you're allowing yourself to move into a different direction and in that space, that's where we start to essentially change our direction, change our habit.

And so these things, these, you know I didn't quit drinking overnight.

It was a buildup over years and a change and a shift that came over years.

And so, while maybe some of the more pointed or extreme things that I did to eliminate alcohol from my life might've happened in a condensed period of time let's say over six months really there was I can look back over the course of my life and I can see how, um things that I did led me to drink more and how things that I did helped me inevitably decide that I don't want this in my life anymore.

And all that being said, it doesn't make it any.

It's a big change when you do remove it, you know.

Yeah, because of what you just said everything wedding drinking, uh, raise drinking, birthday drinking, holidays drinking it's like everything's drinking date night drinking, first date drinking, you know anniversary drinking everything's about drinking Everything and it's so tied up in almost every emotion we use.

We can use alcohol and I love there's this book called um never enough, but Judith grizzle, and she talks about addiction, but she specifically talks about alcohol and she says in it I've always found it um extremely curious that we that we um use it a present to uh celebrate peak experiences, right, and so it's just, it's a very odd thing and we've thrown alcohol and we've tied it into almost every single thing that we do, which is problematic.

Yeah, yeah, and, and more so that people don't understand.

I had a friend of mine not too long ago who drank.

We all went out and we had rented this house out and we you know, everybody was drinking in the next morning.

Um, they came into my room and they're like I'm having a panic attack.

I think I'm having a heart attack.

I don't know what I'm.

What's happening.

I'm like it's called a hangover.

Like you literally drank poison last night and you feel what do you?

What did you expect that you were going to feel like this?

morning.

I know I used to have panic attacks from hangovers.

I am like did you ever?

They call it anxiety.

Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah, it's awful.

Yeah.

And then you really think it has nothing to do with alcohol.

No, it's just a coincidence that I feel this way, but last night I drank a bottle of wine.

No, it's not a coincidence, it's.

You're literally drinking a poison, a depressant.

Of course you're going to feel depressed, but that's what I don't understand about alcohol, is that?

How do you?

Why don't you just feel depressed immediately?

I feel like less, less people would drink it.

If you drink a shot, well, you do feel depressed pretty quickly, and so alcohol is a depressant and this is also why I love Judith Grissel's work.

So she talks about an AB process and so anything that we do, essentially whatever we put into our body, our body is constantly trying to seek stasis, seek stasis, so it's always going to counter it.

So if you take coffee I drink a ton of coffee I am always tired, I crash hard after I have a shot of espresso, and that's because my body is counteracting all of the adrenaline and all of the caffeine, um, all the uppers that come from drinking a cup of coffee.

And so when you drink alcohol, which is actually a depressant, um, your body may feel like um, immediately it's, it's essentially, like you know, getting this relaxation response from it.

But we go down pretty quickly and so our body first, essentially, is fighting it by shooting us with um, adrenaline and cortisol.

But then you know pretty quickly after we are um, you know we're, we're basically coming down off of that, and then we drink more alcohol and our bodies basically, over time, the more alcohol that we drink, the slower we're going, the more turned off we get and our body's doing all sorts, it's flooding us basically with anxiety because we're drinking a depressant, and so you get two effects.

You get one, the effects from actually consuming what is a depressant, but then you're also dealing with what the body's doing to counteract the depressant in your system.

And then you know, as if that's not enough, then your body also is getting an enormous amount of sugar, and so your body's correcting for that, which is why the next day, when we're going through a hangover, we have that empty, shaky feeling because our blood sugar is completely off.

This is why drinking in the next day is typically something that can soothe it.

So it's basically one of the most fundamentally damaging things we can put into our body.

And we, you know you're getting I've heard people talk about it like as a Swiss army knife, because I know, you know, I would get like okay if I drink.

That's my reward.

I'm going to push through.

You know, work at night, but also it's what I'm using to help me fall asleep, and that's because there's a really complicated process our body goes through when we put a substance like that in it.

When, yes, and you actually get worse sleep if you've been drinking than if you didn't have a drop of alcohol.

But somebody said something to me recently when I was talking about your book, and they said well, what about all those people in Italy?

They drink every day and they live to be like 100 and something.

It's like what do you say to people like?

that.

Well, I've spent a lot of time in Italy and the people in Italy do not drink like us.

Typical Italians do not get drunk.

I mean, there's a lot of Western, like American influence that where there is more binge drinking, but for the most part you don't have more than a glass of wine.

It's not the same thing.

It's not, we're not hit over the head.

America has a very different past with alcohol, based on prohibition and then just based on.

You know, life in America is quite different than life in Italy.

Meaning Italians live with their families longer, they're more indexed on family, there's more community, there's more focus on leisure time.

There's just a very different culture.

So they're not as stressed out as we are, um, they're not as disconnected and lonely as we are, and they also use alcohol, um, far more ceremonially, uh, than than we do, and so, um, they're living to they.

They do have high life expectancies.

Italy, I think, has.

The last time I checked, I think they were like the second in the world.

But that's for other, from other factors.

It's not because you drink a little bit of alcohol.

I can't remember, I'm sure it's some European country.

Sweden.

We're down the list.

Yeah, it's not us.

Nope, not us.

Yeah, that you also wrote on your blog which I loved when you were in Italy and it could have been with your ex that it was like you were sitting across from them and you were having such a great time together and he was like so seriously like what do you do for fun?

And I'm sure you get that a lot yeah.

Well, I don't anymore.

I mean, I guess it's also partly because I am quarantined by myself and nobody asks me anything anymore.

But yeah, I got that a lot when I first quit drinking and I think people because again we, I was drinking it was just so interesting because everything we did was so focused on the drinking that we had to, my girlfriends and I had to think of ways that were not focused on alcohol in order to have fun, and this led us to doing things like going to a shooting range.

We were like, well, you can shoot.

I guess you don't need to drink to shoot guns.

Well, you probably shouldn't, you definitely shouldn't, but we did go and drink afterward, and so we just can't imagine it, because everything we do, alcohol is basically pulled into it.

So alcohol, you know, makes weddings more fun.

It makes first dates tolerable.

You know, you can.

I used to sneak alcohol into movie theaters before movie theaters started serving alcohol, and there's, you know, yoga is paired with alcohol.

Now there's all these different ways that alcohol is introduced as, like, the fun maker, and so we think that the only thing that we do that actually produces fun is alcohol.

But the truth is, alcohol is often just paired with peak moments, and so what I had to do when I first quit drinking was really shift my mindset and almost think of this, like how is this going to be an adventure?

Oh my God, I'm going to go out, I'm going to stay out with my friends all night long and I'm going to try and dance in public and not be hammered doing it, and that, like there was just all of these firsts for me.

And so what I found from my you know, my experiment with it, right Was that was that I was drinking to make things that weren't fun more fun.

Yes.

And that I just stopped doing that.

So I just stopped going to weddings, and I stopped because I hate weddings.

And I stopped going to big parties.

No, you can't just not go to weddings, you can't just say no yeah you can what I can't not go to my cousin's wedding.

You can't just say, no, yeah, you can what.

I can't knock on my cousin's door, you can say no to everything.

Well, okay, like you, probably there's probably some weddings you have to go to, still, I don't know.

But I mean, we do get to make the rules that we live by, you know.

And so I think I decided I really do not like big parties.

I'm very, very socially anxious.

I do not like big groups of people are like intimacy, and so I stopped doing things that I found taxing and that I used to only do because I would be able to drink through them, and then for the things that I absolutely loved.

I mean, the thing with alcohol is, especially if you're drinking it in a habitual way let's just say that you have, you get your hit from two glasses of wine at night, and so what ends up happening is that your reward system starts really indexing on that glass of alcohol, meaning that your body is releasing dopamine in anticipation of the drinking, and what ends up happening is, because alcohol and other drugs produce a larger release of dopamine, your body starts to basically downgrade your ability to receive the effect that dopamine gives to you.

It's our motivation.

So what ends up happening is, over time, if we're continuously drinking, our reward system gets hijacked, and so we need higher doses of dopamine to actually feel motivation to do anything, which means that, uh, the pleasure that we receive from things that don't produce high dopamine hits uh ends up being less important to us, and so it ends up happening when you remove alcohol.

Is that you don't need that large?

Um, you're, you're basically your, your, your reward system.

Excuse me, I just swallowed a bug One second.

Um, there's these little flies in my house anyway.

Um, are you okay?

Yeah, I eat like four bags a day.

Oh, that's protein.

It's disgusting.

Um, I have a lot of houseplants and I don't know if something's going on with them.

Anyway, maybe one of your listeners can tell me what to do with my house flies, yeah, please.

But anyway so your dopamine system corrects itself, which means that you start to get pleasure from the things that are meant to induce pleasure, and so I can get hyped about going and looking at a sunset, I can get hyped about going into a church, and then the other piece of this, too, is that dopamine is a here and now, meaning that we are or, I'm sorry, not a here and now, but like it basically indexes us on like a future reward.

Um, what ends up happening when we're not, like, caught in that dopamine cycle is that we're able to actually experience the present moment a lot more, and so we just end up enjoying things.

So what I've found in the long answer to your question is that alcohol doesn't actually produce fun.

Fun things produce fun, and when you remove alcohol, what you end up doing is getting real pleasure out of the experiences that you're having.

Your body normalizes and you start to experience wonder and awe and things that we are designed to experience.

So let's say, like a listeners, just listening to this podcast and starting to think, oh, maybe I should take a break.

How long do you think it takes you to find the bliss that you find now in the normal everyday tasks?

So I'm going to be really careful with this.

I think, like I, my life isn't just always happy.

I just actually feel my feelings and I actually experience life as it is, and I think that that in a in of itself is a reward.

So I don't want to be.

There's a lot of misconception.

I think there's.

When I first started talking about sobriety, everyone it had a really bad rap and there were, you know, there were straight edge folks.

There weren't a lot of, there weren't a ton of people that were just like sobriety is a really great thing, and it was really seen as a consequence of somebody that drank too much and lost their drinking privilege or flawed humans.

And so I was really adamant about presenting this picture of, like, the beautiful parts of sobriety, and I think in that what we've done um, not just me, but a lot of people that talk about it just end up really blowing up this like miracle picture of like how great life is, and so I think, like, life is still life.

Um, but for me, I put a lot of intent, I, it really is our frame of mind and our belief system counts for so much.

If we go into something thinking this is going to be miserable, I'm going to fail at it or anything.

That's a really negative small picture.

That's what we end up reaping.

I went into it like excited um for what I was going to experience without it in my life, and I also was always really adamant that, um, I want, like I wanted this experience.

I wanted to be free.

I had given so much of my life to, to all the things I was supposed to do, and it really got me nowhere and I really I really took advantage of this new like lens of life, and so for me, it was also just like I don't know, waking up for the first time and seeing the real world.

And so I have had a much harder time in the later years.

I've been sober for um.

I started, uh, in October 2012.

So eight years ago, I started to try and quit drinking and I stopped for good in early 2013.

So I'm seven and a half years sober and I have found it is that all of that intention I brought into that early sobriety was, is still, is now something that I have to call upon and be really like.

I really have to do the work of um, of being here for my life and being here to experience that.

So typically people are gonna.

I think it depends on the belief system that you bring into it, it's the willingness that you bring into it.

I think there's a lot of stuff that people generate, but anhedonia, which is the state that I was talking about, it's a real thing, and so I think you're going to find, like, if you talk, if you pull like a hundred people, you know who are going through this really mindfully.

Now, remember, this is not you know I, I am, you know, going through medical detox, I am going through rehab, I lost my you know.

Like alcohol, we have to remember it's.

I mean, it's, it's the third leading cause of preventable death in the United States, because 3.3 million people a year worldwide.

Um, people often struggle with it.

You know, it's not like opioids, where there's a pretty fast downward spiral.

Alcohol can be something that people manage and, you know, kill themselves with over a period of, you know, decades, and so it's a really, really harmful substance.

And so I always want to like keep that in mind too, in that, like it's not just this, like there's not just a diet trend or a gluten trend, like it's there's a real serious amount of recovery that comes into play for some of us, depending on where we start off and what we're bringing with us.

But I think, when you're talking about what like the average person can expect to feel when you're removing a depressant um, and like you're trying to regain like a, a sense of awe and wonder for life, that it one.

It really does depend on what you're using, what kind of mental state that you're in, belief system that you are working with and and with, and the intention you're putting around, what your process is.

And that's why, at Tempest and also in my book, it is really meant to be an empowering method versus a now you go over here sad method.

You don't get to drink, you have to be in recovery for the rest of your life.

But I also think that it's something that is.

I think I've never met somebody that has been through a process of recovery that hasn't felt a sense of awe and wonder that I have known on my path.

It's where, I think, I've witnessed some of the most pain and it's also where I've witnessed some of the most profound joy, and it is it is hands down where I have witnessed people experience the most profound joy and awe in their lives.

And two of my favorite authors, gabby Bernstein, which I know you love, and Brene Brown, are both.

They're sober and they speak freely about how it's changed their life.

I know I'm going to wrap it up, because I could talk to you for hours.

By the way, what are your daily practices going to?

wrap it up, because I could talk to you for hours.

By the way.

What are your daily practices?

So I am a meditator and I've been.

I also display this.

I use Kundalini Yoga.

I've also written recently just about the founder of Kundalini Yoga, Nogi Bhajan, and so I use that, knowing full well what some of the atrocities that have occurred within that community Um, and but that still is my main practice, and so, um, I typically am working on a 40 day meditation.

Right now I'm doing something called the Sodarshan Kriya, which is a breath, uh meditation, Um, so that's a daily practice.

I am very, very big on um, uh, especially in these times, um, in positive thinking and also in in like writing the bigger story, and so that that can come from a number of different sources.

I, um, I might read Pema Chodron.

Um, I may read Ram Dass.

Um, currently I've been reading a lot of Wayne Dyer, Louise Hay, and I just recently read the Secret.

Well, they're really good, I mean.

I always read that and I'm just like I always am thinking, like sometimes the super positive thinking stuff like Wayne Dyer or like Louise Hay, or like the.

I'm reading the Secret right now and I just as embarrassing as it is I just read watched this movie with Katie Holmes about the Secret.

Oh, my God, I watched it too it was so good.

It was so good.

So, holly, I don't know if you know that the Secret completely changed my life.

It's the only reason I'm back on television.

13 years ago I watched it and the next day I found my HGTV job, so I've been a huge.

Yeah, it's crazy the story, but Mike Dooley, who was on the Secret, has been on the podcast too, and he became a friend of mine.

I am such a huge Hay House, like all of everybody who's either a Burla fan- I know, I know they're just look, I find it to be I forget how powerful what we intend and what we, the energy we bring to things, what we intend for ourselves.

I and I think I've really, in the last few years especially because around 2016, I started to get really grossed out about the spiritual community's apathy, um, for black lives, for, uh, sexual assault, for the me too movement, I for the election and the political climate, and I think I also I ended up moving more into this ballpark of like making sure, first and before anything else, I was acknowledging the reality and also not spiritually bypassing, and what ended up happening is that I forgot how powerful it is to believe in bigger things and to believe in things we can't see.

And it was actually one of my friends who I was talking to recently, who is so steeped in the reality of um, of, of, of social justice, and and, um, and and work, uh, she works on something called recovery for the, or they work on something called recovery for the revolution, and they were the ones that actually reminded me that they're um to the, the power of believing in magic and beautiful and big things, and so I really do have a strong practice of and I always have, but even more so recently of writing my intentions, writing my gratitudes and believing in things that are bigger than I can even begin to imagine.

But I also have to thank you, for you're the one who introduced me to Tosha Silver because of your blog, and I also need to remind you how powerful your words are, because what you were just saying, like we forget how powerful intention is.

But you wrote that blog years ago about that toxic relationship.

Yes, yes, I did the frankincense Epsom salt.

I had like more Epsom salt than water in that bath and I and I did it like a few days and I swear when I finally let go, like work started coming opportunities started coming and, and it's weird, because how does the how does that happen?

Like, how does the universe know when you finally let go of something that no longer serves you?

And it could be alcohol, it could be smoking, it could be drugs, it could be a person, it could be over shopping, it could be overworking, it could be social media, whatever it is for you, when you finally let go of something that is no longer serving you, you would be surprised how quickly the universe will work in your favor.

So, thank you, so thank you, vin.

Tosha Silver's work was Outrageous Openness.

It was like my Bible of 2014 and 15.

And I need to go back and read it again have you read, it's Not your Money.

No, I read Change Me Prayers, but I haven't.

That must be one of her new books.

It's her new books and it talks about money, but it really has so much more to do than money.

So I highly highly recommend it.

I'm going to get that, yeah.

I mean, her work is so profound and it does.

It indexes on that same thing, and that's like you can actually by letting go of the past and letting go of, like, I mean, everything is energy right, and so we move things out of the way and let go of things, it allows all this good stuff that wants to show up for us in.

Amazing Holly.

Thank all this good stuff that wants to show up for us in amazing sound.

Holly, thank you so much for anybody listening.

Don't worry, on my notes I'm gonna have holly's instagram, the quit like a woman book, a link to get it and about all about the tempest sobriety school so you can have any way to get a hold of her and if you have any tips on how to get rid of houseplant flies.