This episode is for you if you are looking for a dose of inspiration as you learn about this motivational story about how Mz Skittles went from investing $300 into her first business to making multi millions.

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Mz. Skittlez, often dubbed ‘The Kris Jenner of Marketing,’ is a highly sought-after marketing maven based in Atlanta, renowned for her ability to conceive and execute campaigns and strategies that elevate brand recognition and drive substantial sales. With over a decade of experience, Mz. Skittlez has proven herself as a marketing powerhouse, steering her own fashion brand, Cupcake Mafia, from a $300 investment in 2011 to a $2.4 million-dollar business in just four years.

However, success was met with adversity when an acquisition-gone-wrong led to financial challenges, forcing Mz. Skittlez to sleep on an air mattress. Undeterred, she leveraged her expansive network and marketing expertise to regain control of her company. Her entrepreneurial journey, marked by ups and downs, showcases her ability to engage audiences and translate attention into sales.

Currently, Mz. Skittlez is the visionary behind the Icing Agency, a full-service marketing consultancy she founded in 2015. This agency provides a range of services, from graphic design to brand development, and emphasizes her commitment to supporting up-and-coming female founders, particularly minority entrepreneurs. Her client list includes notable names like Tamar Braxton, Kountry Wayne, Shear Share, and SPERGO, featured on Shark Tank.

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to the show.

I am so excited to be here. Thanks so much, Lucy.

Your show is amazing, so I’m so happy that I could get on here to chat with your audience really quickly.

Well, let’s start from the beginning. You founded your fashion brand, the Cupcake Mafia. You went from an investment of just $300 into a $2.4 million business in just four years. Tell us a little bit about that.

Yeah, so I started with $300. I mean, it was literally my first 30 t-shirts and my logo and my website and that’s all I had. I had friends that knew how to create t-shirts and had a t-shirt brand before and he guided me on it.

And actually, if we want to tell a little bit of secrets, I was even scared to start with $300. So my friend who had a t-shirt brand gave me $150 to push me over the edge to get started. And in four years, we were in retail stores all over the U.S. and then going now to opening up different retailers globally as well. And then we got approached by Forever 21 in our fourth year to do a $1.4 million deal with Forever 21, which led me to partner with investors. And then I got fired from my company and it led me on a journey to really figuring out how to not put my eggs in one basket and what my true gifts and talents were. And that led me to my marketing agency, the ICA agency, my digital community for women, which is called Girl Mop, and then now I’m the owner of the largest female-focused coworking space, which is called The Bakery Coworks.

So that pitfall literally pivoted me into all of these different areas and lanes.

Yeah. And you speak a lot about your acquisition gone wrong story, right? That really led you to some financial challenges in between that left you sleeping on an air mattress.

I love this story. So tell it.

So yeah, I got fired from my own company, okay. And that led me to literally sleeping on an air mattress. I had an apartment above overlooking Central Park.

And I was like, oh my God, I have this apartment. And then I had nowhere to actually move back to in Atlanta. So that shifted everything for me.

I ended up on an airbed, but honestly, I always tell people it’s what I needed. That airbed story brought me closer to God. That airbed story literally transformed my life in ways that I didn’t know.

It made me believe in myself. It made me believe in my power. It made me open my mind to other opportunities, which was starting that marketing agency that in 2020 did $16 million.

So if it wasn’t for the airbed story, I probably would have just kept operating and building out that clothing brand to who knows if it would have worked or not. And then years later after putting my eggs in one basket for 10 years, then I would have failed and then had not been on this wavelength of where I am now. I mean, I’m talking about for six months, I slept on an airbed and directly after that, I went to China and opened my own factory in China and operated my factory in China for four years, going to China literally multiple times a year, taking women there so that they wouldn’t ever get beat in a middleman situation again either.

So I mean, I’ve been able to do so much and I’ve learned so much along the way, but it all came from that very big traumatic experience.

I love that story so much. And I love how you mentioned that it’s through these low points in our life that we grow, right? We don’t grow from having comfort or when everything is going smoothly, we grow when we hit these obstacles.

And then obviously you are here today with me because you obviously did not let those setbacks stop you.

Yeah, I didn’t. I didn’t let it stop me. I knew that it was so much more inside of me, you know?

And not only did I know that it was so much more inside of me, I surrounded myself by people that poured into me. And I think that’s the biggest thing. I tell my friends all the time, I tell people all the time that when I was on the airbed and I called one of my best friends who had exited her company, and I was like, Alex, can you look over my resume?

I’m about to work at Best Buy at night to pay for my store, like the staff that I had at my retail store. And she was like, girl, if you one multi-million dollar company, build it again, like build another one. And it was that that I needed for somebody that wasn’t myself to pour into me and tell me like, you did it once, you can do it again.

And that exact conversation is what gave me the momentum. And I was like, but how do I do that? And she was like, get on Periscope, start sharing your information, start talking about what you went through.

Like don’t be embarrassed. Don’t sit around and crawl under a rock, like use this as the momentum you need to go into something else. And that’s what I did.

And that’s how I actually started my agency. And then also someone came to me and was like, they needed a consultant for a multi-million dollar marketing idea for a retail brand. And they were like, we know that you’re the perfect person.

All you need is an agency. And they told me exactly what to do, how to start. So I think when you are in the darkest of times, it is also so important for you to find people around you that can pour into you.

And that is not going to let you give up. And it’s not going to let you throw in the towel. You know, like I have friends around me.

I say this all the time. I have friends around me that when I want to throw in the towel, they throw it right back.

That is so true. You got to have your tribe who’s rooting for you, but they’ve also got to have the same vision and goals as you though, right? Sometimes a lot of entrepreneurs, they’re, they’re not getting these positive feedback or positive energy from people around them is because say their family, they’re not in entrepreneurship.

They’re not, they’re not having the same goals and visions. So that wouldn’t work.

A hundred percent. Yeah. A hundred percent.

You have to change your circle. You got to change your circle. You got to find people.

There are so many communities. There’s so many, I mean, there’s so much out here where you can meet people that are like-minded. If you have friends that you’re in a circle with, or your colleagues don’t pour into you, then you need a new circle.

You need, I always say, if it’s not reciprocal, like if you can’t pour into them and then they pour in you and you pour into them, then you’re not in a circle, you’re in a cage. And so, you know, you need to get out of the cage and find new people that will pour into you, that will inspire you. And there’s so many communities, entrepreneurs, the female founder collective, girl mob.

Like there’s so many communities. I own a community myself and I’m still in other communities because I feel like your network is your net worth at the end of the day. And so it’s not, you know, the opportunities that come in your life often are from other people.

It’s not even from what you know and the degrees that you have. It’s from someone saying she’s the best person for the job.

I love everything you just said. So you have actually pivoted many times in your own business as well, right? Yes.

I talked about the importance of pivoting and how pivoting is good for you in business. Would you agree with me?

A hundred percent. Yes. I sit around and I watch so many business owners drown in their own, like, like drown in the thought process of like, I started it, I have to finish it all the way through.

But meanwhile, you could have pivoted and saved the business. Like you want it to think about Blockbuster, right? Blockbuster was there.

I mean, I’m probably dating myself, but I remember going with my mom on every Friday to get a movie from Blockbuster. That’s why it’s not around anymore. No, because there’s Netflix, there’s Amazon movies, there’s all these other ways.

No one’s buying a DVD. No one’s buying a VHS tape, but they were not, they didn’t want to change. They didn’t want to convert their business model.

Oftentimes it’s not about you just converting your business model. I always tell my clients that you should be finding five ways minimum to make money doing what you currently are doing. For example, if you do skincare, right?

If you’re like, I am a statistician, I do skincare. I make all of my money behind the chair, working on a client’s face. No, you should one, have your own skincare brand so that when that client gets up, you can now sell them the routine on how to keep their skin beautiful in between treatments, right?

So you can sell that client, your skincare brand. You can also sell people now that never makes it to your chair. That’s out of town, but may follow you on Instagram or may love what you do.

You now can sell them your skincare line. That’s from all over the world. You can now train other estheticians on your special techniques and how you’ve been able to do it.

You can also create a training for your clients on what to do, what not to do, what not to eat on how to keep their skincare, their skin routine beautiful, right? Cause I, if I go to a esthetician every two weeks and then she’s selling me a course and the proper skincare on how to keep my skin beautiful, I will buy it because I’m going to trust her expertise. So I just think that people think that this is the only way, right?

And then what happens during COVID when people don’t want to lay in front of you to get their skin. Now it’s nothing. They can’t do anything for you.

Like you can’t do anything. You can’t make any money. But if you would have had those other four streams of income streaming, you wouldn’t have been out of business, right?

So I think that is so important to pivot and not just completely go from doing skincare into baking cookies, but maybe you do skincare. Then you have a class. Maybe you have an ebook.

Maybe you have a training manual. Maybe you have a planner, the skincare planner that you sell on your website. It’s so many other things that you can do that will allow you to pivot and still do what you love every single day.

So much truth in that because we as entrepreneurs, we wear so many hats and yes, you can, you can have all the things, just not at the same time. You just don’t start them up at the exact same time, but then you can go on to the next, right? Yes.

I love how you mentioned there’s so many opportunities and a lot of women, especially they get stuck in choosing between having a or B, but why not both, right? Why not? A, B, C, D, E.

Yeah. And I think that’s important in seeing the opportunity when your audience gives you that feedback, right? What I’ve seen is women, they are in a certain niche, but their audience is asking them for something else.

But, and they say, Oh, I’m sorry. I don’t offer that. Why not create this extra offer?

Absolutely. And for me, when it came to my marketing agency, right? I feel like I have a doctorate degree.

You guys see it behind me. I’m like, I’ve worked, I’ve been doing this for nine years. If anybody, there’s no one that can tell me about marketing.

Like, obviously I’m always a student, but I know what I’m talking about. I’m watching cases. I’m doing so much research on So I set my tiered price of what I wanted to work with, right?

Like, Oh, this is the minimum budget needed to work with my agency. But then I started to realize like, wow, there’s so many women that I want to help. There’s so many women that I want to be able to change their lives, but they don’t have the budget.

So I had to create different tiers of access to my company, which is our a la carte division where you get to work with my team. I get to see all of the work, but you don’t hands on directly with us, but this is for budgets under 5,000. And then I created another tier, which is like a mid range.

And then I created the elite portion of my agency where you get hands-on services done for you. You’re working with my team, me and you are speaking weekly. So that pivot opened us up to more business because everybody maybe cannot afford a $15,000 retainer a month, but there is someone that still needs that initial marketing services and maybe they’re at like 7,500, maybe they’re at 5,000.

And I want it to be like, okay, I can’t go from telling you, you need marketing and branding and all these things, marketing, brand strategy, all these things. And then just tell you, Oh, well, you can’t afford me. So go to Fiverr.

You can’t afford me, go to Upwork. And then that customer gets the wrong or doesn’t really know what she wants. So she’s not going to get the best out of her money.

I had to be able to do it somewhere. I already have the team of people that are amazing and know what they’re doing. Why can’t I develop these other levels and layers for clients to be able to access my agency?

Yeah, I totally get that. And sometimes people get stuck. They are stuck in the overthinking and you know, when that happens, I would say, okay, go ahead, go get yourself someone on Fiverr for like $15 and get it started.

But then immediately work on something bigger, right? Because sometimes in the beginning, you just really get stuck.

Yeah, totally. I always tell people when you’re looking at your brand, and when you’re looking at your business, when you start to talk about it in the world, it’s now the world’s idea. It’s now the world’s concept.

So best person to market that idea is the one that’s going to be known for it. There’s so many brands in this world that are doing the exact same thing, probably have the exact same look, but it’s only one that you know about because like there’s so many smart cars, there’s so many electric cars. But at the end of the day, everyone’s talking about Tesla because it was quickest to market.

It was biggest to all the influencers, all the celebrities. Oh, Elon Musk is a whole person. So at the end of the day, you got to think about like, okay, yeah, I can go on Fiverr, pay $10 and get this terrible logo and get this terrible marketing plan.

Or I can truly believe in myself, invest in myself. And when I go to market, people are going to say she did that first and she did it best. So it’s the best marketer that wins.

Yeah. And I know you speak a lot about this idea of having forward thinking, and I really resonate with that because I talk about how I believe there is always a way. And when you have that mentality, you’re moving forward.

Even if that means failing forward or having these challenges, we’re still making progress, forward progress.

Absolutely. Everybody in my company, the people around me must be forward thinkers. Like there’s just not an opportunity for you to be around me.

I have this sheet. Oh, I just took it in the other room, but I have this sheet, um, in my office. And it literally says, before you come to me, do these things, ask yourself, like, what would I do if she wasn’t here?

What decision do you think is best? Like basically what’s the best case scenario? Are we losing money?

Are we losing customers? Are we like, once they done all of that, then they have their answer. They didn’t need me to answer it.

But most people don’t trust themselves. They don’t trust their thought process. They don’t trust their thinking, which causes them to be like, let me ask someone else.

Let me ask someone else. Let me ask someone else. Let me ask the boss.

Let me ask. No, I need you to trust yourself because you made it through a whole interview out of all the people that I was interviewing you and you got the job. So there was something about you that you trusted yourself to make it through that interview.

You answered the questions. You weren’t just, when I asked you, Oh, how’s your, how’s your day? You didn’t reply.

How’s your day? Like you didn’t ask me for the answer in your interview. So I know that you have the answer.

I know that you have the, the answer. And all you need to do is forward think, okay, if I make this decision, what will be the outcome? What is going to happen after that?

What is going to happen after that? What is going to happen after that? To me, that is how I think, like, I’m already thinking like, all right, well, cause right now I’m planning, even though I’m not there yet, but I’m planning for my exit.

I built an amazing business, business and businesses. I worked a very long time. I have an amazing team, but I ultimately want to exit one of my companies.

All right. Well, if I want to exit one of my companies, how do I remove myself from the brand now? So that my personal brand is not so wrapped up into the company that they think that the company cannot exist without me.

So how do I pull myself back to where the company can live on its own? Right. How do I build my SOPs, my trainees, my guide?

So when any CEO comes and sits in this seat that I’m in now, they’ll be like, Oh, easy. Like everything is there. Every question is answered.

Everything that I could have possibly thought that Mary would have explained to me about this particular role or this particular part of the job is already in this handbook. It’s already in this manual. And then I also think, okay, once I exited, I wake up one day and I’m like, I have an exit, like, oh my God, million dollars, multimillion dollar, billion dollars.

What am I doing? The time that I want to spend with my kids, where do I want to live? How do I want to show up?

Am I still going to want to be on Instagram? What is that going to look like? Do I want to speak at schools?

Like, I think that you should be forward thinking in every single thing that you do.

I love that so much because, you know, in the beginning, when you were in that first initial $300 investment, you didn’t think about the exits, right? So if you’re listening and then you’re in the beginner stages, know what’s possible because of Mary.

And honestly, I want to say that I didn’t think about the exit, but I did think about, I’ve been a forward thinker for so long. So while I was not thinking about exiting, I was thinking about how is this going to go global, right? And so I think for the people that are in the startup stages of their business, for me, it was $300.

And I was like, Oh my God, I have these t-shirt lines. If I could literally pull up right now, our first photo shoots, our first photo shoots were done as if it was a major brand already. Like I knew that if Macy’s was to call or, you know, a bigger retailer, ladies footlocker was to call me, I wanted the photography and the branding that I had to be enough, right?

I didn’t want to have to rebrand and, Oh, now I got to take me out of it. Oh, now our messaging is swayed. I have to sway it this way or sway it that way.

So I’ve always thought about like, when I started Cupcake Mafia, my concept was I would be the streetwear version of Juicy Couture. And so when I started to think about Juicy Couture and how they literally infiltrated the market when it came for, for our, you know, for our ages, like 16, 17, 18, everyone wanted Juicy Couture. Like everyone needed to have a like the fleece with the bling on the, on the butt, right?

Like everybody needed that, right? And so like, when I thought of that, I’m like, you didn’t really see the owners. You didn’t really see the founders in all of the photo shoots.

You didn’t see them on all, you’ve seen models, you’ve seen the celebrities, you’ve seen the Paris Hiltons of the world, you’ve seen all of those people. And so I wanted to make sure that my brand fit that same wavelength. I was thinking about the forwardness of when this company goes global and it’s sold in Japan, like it was, and it’s sold in Africa, like it was, I want this company to be bigger than me.

So I definitely think that you should be thinking about that in your starter stages.

So much goodness. So much goodness. What is a favorite quote that you go by?

Oh my God. So some of my, one of my favorite quotes, this is like something I live by is a slow rise to the top is better than a fast fall to the bottom. I truly believe that like when people look at me, they’re like, oh my God, you’re an overnight success.

Just we’ve seen you. I’m like, really? I started my company 12 years ago, my first company.

And now I’ve been in my marketing agency nine years. So I don’t know about overnight. If overnight takes 12 years, then yeah.

Okay. Overnight. But I think when you slowly rise to the top, every single pitfall, every single bump that you encounter, it just makes you stronger.

But I always tell people, if you look at a ladder, right? If I just came and put a ladder in the middle of the floor, it was like, Hey Lucy, jump to the top of the ladder. If you did it, you may make it to the top, but you’re going to fall off because you didn’t have that time to like balance yourself and pace yourself.

And the momentum of the jump is going to cause you to cause the ladder to fall over quickly. And that’s when we get overnight successes that never make it to their next business. Or that’s why we get music artists that are here today going tomorrow, because like one day you’re hearing that song.

You cannot, every single radio station is playing the song, but they didn’t have time to actually build their career up, build their name up, build their brand, the ability of build their visibility up to where customers actually cared about them after that one song. Right? So I, that is my favorite quote, a slow rise to the top is better than a fast fall to the bottom.

Beautifully said.

Thank you so much for your wisdom. Everyone go follow Ms. Skittles on Instagram so you can get that dose of inspiration yourself and all of the ways to connect with her will be linked in the show notes. Thank you so much.

Thank you, girl. I appreciate it.

If you are a women with a pelvis, this episode is for you. 

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Tami Lynn Kent is a women’s health physical therapist, founder of the original method of Holistic Pelvic Care™ for women, and author of Wild Feminine, Wild Creative, and her newest book Wild Mothering. 

We talked about: 

• What is pelvic care? 
• Pelvic bowl vs pelvic floor. 
• What are bad habits for your pelvic floor?
• How do you know if you have pelvic floor problems?
• How to take care of pelvic health?
• and so much more…

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

So let’s start from the beginning. What is pelvic care?

Well, it’s something that we all should be getting as women.

I think if you think of what if I ask someone, what do you think of as women’s health? They usually name the PAP exam, which is a little bit sad that that’s what we think of, right? Because a PAP exam is really looking for problems.

It’s not preventative. It’s not holistic. It doesn’t help with just general wellness and health.

The pelvis is actually part of our immune system. And we need all the flow of the organs, the chi, the hormones to be flowing well there. And most women that I see as a pelvic physical therapist have congestion.

So we ought to be coming in and receiving internal massage and getting more in touch with the chi of our bodies, accessing it, working with it in a way that’s more preventative, holistic and serves us in mind, body and spirit.

So when I hear the word pelvic, what comes to mind is actually pelvic floor. Is that correct?

Well, I think of the pelvis as the more the whole bowl. So yes, pelvic floor is the base, the muscles at the base of the pelvis. I think that’s one thing is whenever I start with a woman that comes in, I start with a literally an anatomic model of the pelvic bowl, which includes all the bones, the ovaries, the womb, so that she can see because you think we most of us don’t actually know our anatomy, haven’t even seen it and myself included when I started in a PT school.

So I share that and I teach and you can take better care of what you know. So I think of the pelvic bowl as the whole space and all of the muscles, the organs, the chi, the beauty that is there.

So what are some of our daily bad habits for our pelvis?

Well, number one is sitting too much, which I’m guilty of as well. I mean, we are just more sedentary. So movement is really key.

We get a lot of congestion from sitting, congestion, meaning tension, blood flow, not flowing as strongly. And that builds over time kind of like rocks in a river. So things aren’t flowing well.

So movement is really key, getting up at least every hour, moving the body, taking walks. Another one is just not being connected to that space. For many reasons, we tend to be, Western culture tends to be more head oriented, mental.

And so we lose touch with that sort of basic, beautiful rhythm that’s natural within our bodies. And if we connect to that more, we tend to take better care of ourselves because it’s the part of ourselves that will say, get up, stretch, enjoy a cup of tea, take a walk. It’s different than our mind, which might just push, push, push and keep us going rather than living rhythmically.

We’re so guilty. We’re both sitting right now, by the way, right?

And if you tune into your pelvis, you can actually feel your pelvis kind of doesn’t like it.

It’s just, we’re very good at cutting it and just dissociating from it. So we don’t actually hear it. So because I’m more attuned and I’m listening to it more, I just, I noticed my pelvis actually saying, get up and move.

You know, it wants to feel that blood flow, that chi flow, and we’re more naturally meant to be movers.

But how would you know, like, how do you know you’re at the point that you’re actually having a problem with your pelvic problems?

Well, that’s the thing is, so as a women’s health physical therapist, I used to work in a hospital setting. So my oldest son is 24. And when he was born, I left and started my own practice and just never left doing that.

But in the hospital setting, I was mostly seeing women by referral from a urologist who were having problems, urine leakage, pelvic prolapse, pain. I would say what we actually want to do is not just treat symptoms, but back up and treat more preventatively. So yes, I was seeing women with problems.

You know, if you have a problem because you have pain or prolapse or urine leakage. But what I found from working on women’s bodies is everyone had tension. Everyone had disconnection.

Everyone had imbalances from birth injuries, life, menstrual products. And so actually doing bodywork on everyone more preventatively before they had symptoms. So it is much better for us.

And that’s why I talk about it more in a holistic manner of actually coming in, getting a pelvic massage, learning how to do self massage, becoming more aware of your own anatomy, and then get to the level of the chi, the energy of the organs, we can actually be a lot healthier and actually avoid those problems and tune into the beauty and power that’s in this space for us. You mentioned pelvic massage. Is that something we can do ourselves?

It is. So I’ve written three books, as you mentioned, and in Wild Feminine, I talk about how to do self massage. It’s not hard.

You know, you can do massage in any part of your body. You can massage your pelvic floor. And I describe how to do it more specifically in that book in chapter two.

But really it’s about just kind of realizing that you need massage there. I think aren’t even aware of what could be women’s health care, right? Another way is to actually go and see a women’s health physical therapist or practitioner that I’ve trained in holistic pelvic care, which they’re listed on my website, wildfeminine.com, and learn, you know, go in and have a massage. And that kind of teaches you when you have a professional that works and knows how to work with it, then it kind of helps you learn how to then work with your own body.

That’s great information because as women, we grow up to know, oh, well, my muscles are sore. I need a massage, but we don’t really think about the part of us that’s actually really important, such as the pelvic floor.

Absolutely. I think of body work as essential health care, just as a healer myself as a physical therapist. And I certainly didn’t grow up that way.

But then as I came into this profession, and I learned a lot of things, and then I did a lot of massage with my children. And I think of general body work as good health care. So if we can just apply that also to our pelvises and understand that there’s a lot we can do to help our chi and our health of our pelvises on, you know, in a preventative way so that we feel better and feel vibrant and feel healthy and avoid problems.

And you mentioned this type of massage, would you say is covered by normal insurances?

If you go to a physical therapist, it’s in a standard clinic, they usually do take insurance. And so it’s something to check out with the clinic you were planning to go to. So yes, it would be covered under physical therapy.

I don’t take insurance because insurance is such a difficult thing to take as a provider. And I tend to work more efficiently, I might see someone just for two visits and not take insurance out of pay pocket. So it’s really quite affordable in that manner.

So there’s a few different ways to access that care.

Yes, beautiful souls, you deserve the luxury of getting your pelvic checked and getting a massage in that area. I think more commonly, women would feel tension more than pain, right?

Yes, I would say if you have pain, you’ve gone further down the route of tension causing problems. Most women have tension. And sometimes I think it’s like a lot of parts of our body, we are so used to it, it feels normal.

So what will happen is women come and see me, and they might not really realize it’s sort of like the jaw, you don’t realize you’re carrying tension, and then someone starts working on it, you realize, oh my goodness, I’m carrying so much tension there. And so they’ll leave my office and they just feel better. It’s a little bit like a facial too, you know, if you get facial massage, you realize, oh, I’m carrying so much tension in my face.

And then after the massage, you just feel more vibrant, you feel more blood flow, you feel better. It’s the same.

Beautifully said. And obviously, you talk a lot about feminine energy, and this all connects. So for someone who might be new, let’s go back and talk about feminine energy.

How is that different than what we’ve been taught in school? Like, tell us more.

I think I started to be curious about feminine energy, because I was working with the body and the pelvis and women so much. And I felt this kind of potency, if you will, like, like just a vibrancy, and not every woman felt connected to it. And it was more piqued my curiosity, what is this, and I would give that name feminine, it’s not just female, of course, males and females both have the yin yang, the feminine masculine, but to me, that’s where I had to unpack what I thought of as feminine, you know, was feminine, how you dressed, or was feminine, a color, what was feminine, I came to understand it more as an energy, and I would describe it as the energy that infuses life with all beauty. So it’s sort of like the inhale.

It’s when you look outside, and you see the beauty in the in the sky and the flowers, that’s the feminine, it’s like this, it is an expression. So in a way, it’s tied to beauty, but it’s something that do we give that to ourselves, I think of the masculine more as the worker bee, you know, the one that gets things done the task orientation, and in Western cultures, we’re usually encouraged to check things off the list, get things done to be productive, that tends to be more masculine. In nature, the feminine is take a pause, take a moment, inviting the beauty, notice the presence of the moment that beauty, the color, the textures of it.

And that’s to me is what I came to know as feminine.

Beautifully said. And would you agree with me if we really need to tap into that feminine energy, because the go go do do do masculine energy can get only get you so far?

What I learned kind of the hard way too, because I myself was like a, you know, recovering academic, hardcore, task oriented female, I started to realize that I was depleting myself. And so were the women I was serving. So yes, if you’re only in your masculine, you’re only using your energy, and you can only get away with that so long without the infill without the receiving.

So to me, the feminine is vital for for living well for replenishing and also for just enjoying life. You know, when you’re task oriented, you’re, it’s a list, and it’s never going to end, it’s linear. So the feminine gives you that pause gives you that refill gives you that wonder in the moment that actually makes life really worth living, makes it more beautiful.

And so I think it’s essential for living well.

Beautifully said. And I think a lot of women, we don’t actually take care of a body or start thinking about our pelvic care until we actually either have a child or feel the tension for someone who might be a little bit younger, who might not have a child yet, would you say pelvic care is still important?

Yeah, that’s one of the aspects where I when I left the hospital. So in the hospital, I was seeing women post menopausal and older. And when I left the hospital and started my own practice, I started seeing women much younger of all ages.

So I’ve seen women, you know, 18 1920 years old in their early 20s. And what I was surprised by was how much tension young women carry as well. And I think they’re able to mask it a little bit more because you know, life hasn’t had the impact as much yet.

But it’s beautiful to get that worked on more preventatively. And just you don’t know it’s there. And then but once you clear it out, it feels so much better.

Also, younger women are sometimes having menstrual cramps, you know, menstruation isn’t supposed to be painful at all. And so again, that’s thought of as normal, but it’s not. That’s a sign of tension.

And so I’ll have women come in and they just feel they feel better, their periods are smoother and easier. And I think also when you’re younger, attuning to your own center on an earlier side of life, you tend to know a little bit more about what you want and who you are. Whereas we can if we’re not attuned to that we can shape ourselves to the outer world to either our jobs or partners or what something external is telling us and then we have to course correct later.

So it’s nice to kind of get that connection early on and you tend to chart your life a little bit more with yourself included.

Great to take those preventive actions before it happens. But for someone who might be going through menopause or a little bit older, how would you say is the best way to take care of pelvic health?

Well, once again, I say pelvic massage. So I’m menopausal. So I really know that in my own body and things tend to you know, we have less hormone flow.

And so in a way, that’s sometimes why symptoms are silent until menopause because when you have less hormone flow, things will show up a little bit more. So again, if you have health in the tissues, working with the massage, working with the breath and the chi, you’re going to be healthier and more vibrant. So regardless of what is happening.

Thank you. Well, is there a favorite quote that you go by in life?

There’s so many because I love so many books, but I was going to just share the one that I have at the beginning of Wild Feminine. It’s from Marian Woodman, who is an elder that’s passed on and I really honor her. She wrote many books, she understood the feminine well, she wrote this, she says this quote from her book Bone Dying into Life, the great work that is beginning is the realization of the feminine as the bridge between God and humankind.

And what she meant by that is, here we are in our bodies living our lives, but what makes it deeper, what makes it more magical, what brings in the mystery is the feminine. So I just invite everyone to ponder what is the feminine and how do you access it in your life?

Great reflections. Thank you for your time, Tami. Where can we connect with you?

Best way to connect with me is on my website, wildfeminine.com. I have classes that I teach. I offer sessions, distant, long distance sessions and in-person and also all my books are there and some of my classes that I teach.

So that’s a great way to connect with me. I’m also on Instagram, Tammy Lynn Kent. Look forward to connecting with some of you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Lucy.

This episode is for you if you are going to through any type of heartbreaks. We are not just talking about relationship heartbreak, we are talking about heartbreaks in general, and that’s including career transitions, bankruptcy and other hardships.

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Sara Avant Stover (she/her) is an author; teacher and mentor in women’s spirituality and entrepreneurship; and a Certified Internal Family Systems Practitioner. After graduating Phi Beta Kappa and Summa cum Laude from Columbia University’s all-women’s Barnard College, she had a cancer scare, moved to Thailand, and embarked on a decade-long healing and spiritual odyssey throughout Asia. Since then, she’s gone on to uplift tens of thousands of women worldwide. Sara has been featured in Yoga Journal, The Huffington Post, Newsweek, Natural Health, and on ABC, NBC, and CBS. She lives in Boulder, CO.

In this episode we talked about:

• Why is it important to expand the heartbreak conversation beyond just grief, break ups, and death.
• How do single heartbreaks then lead to cascading losses?
• How can we become more aware of how this impacts us?
• Where do you see most women getting stuck on their heartbreak journeys and why?
• What are the most important mindsets or practices women need to embrace during their heartbreak journeys so they don’t get stuck?
• and so much more

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

I love your newest book about heartbreak. And since we’re talking about healing from heartbreak today, I felt it was important to point out that we are not just talking about relationship heartbreaks. We are talking about any heartbreak in general, and that can include career transitions, bankruptcies, and other hardships, right?

What are some examples of types of heartbreaks that you’ve seen or worked with with your clients, Sarah?

Well, I also wanna name that this book also includes the global heartbreaks that we’re experiencing with climate change, with political divisiveness, with the level of uncertainty that we’re all living with. And this global heartbreak just moved to the forefront with the pandemic. So even if we as individuals are not living with heartbreak right now, we are all living with this broader context of this global anguish that’s happening right now.

And other forms of personal heartbreak that I speak about, in the introduction, I actually named like 21 different kinds of heartbreak. And some examples are losing a home in a natural disaster, or being a refugee of war, getting a challenging health diagnosis, your own or one from a loved one, raising a troubled teen, caring for an elderly parent, losing a pet, going through menopause, having an identity shift. All of these are examples of heartbreak.

And of course, there are many more as well.

I love that. As long as we’re human, we’re breathing, inevitably we’re going to go through some type of heartbreak, right? Why do you think it’s important to expand the heartbreak conversation beyond just grief, breakups, and death? Like the usual ones?

Because we already live in a heartbreak illiterate culture, where we’re all encouraged to hurry up and move on with it at all costs. And when this happens, we are already invalidating our own experience of suffering when we’re moving through a challenging season of life. But then when we turn to a book about grief or heartbreak, and it’s only talking about death or the end of romantic relationships, which of course are very valid forms of heartbreak.

But if that’s all that we’re reading about or really learning about, and we’re not feeling included there, then we can feel even more kind of estranged and outside of the normal flow of daily life. So I really wanted to make this an all-inclusive space so that people who are just experiencing any form of challenge can really recognize that their suffering is valid too and needs time and care and attention. Yes.

And I think we go through these difficulties and heartbreaks for a reason. I believe everything happens for a reason. And I think in life, like you talk about, there are so many types of heartbreaks that we can’t escape them.

These heartbreaks are actually mandatory in our life, right? But what we get out of these heartbreaks, if we choose to have a personal transformation through these heartbreaks, that is a choice. Would you agree with me?

Absolutely. One of the kind of taglines for the book is heartbreak is mandatory, transformation is a choice. And something that I see very often is because we live in a society that urges us to hurry up and move on with it and to put a smile on and just paint everything with pink paint, we often get stuck because we’re not feeling the feelings.

We’re not feeling the grief. We’re not feeling the anger. We’re not feeling the depression, the anxiety.

When we’re not feeling it, it can’t heal. And so the transformation actually happens by choosing to turn in and to feel those hard things and to get the support that we need to. And this book is a simple way to get that support, to just kind of learn how to be with these challenging emotions so that they can help to carry us through, so that they can help to bring us to the shores of our new lives.

And where have you seen most of the women that you’ve worked with getting stuck on their heartbreak journey?

Being afraid to feel the grief. I’ve worked with some women who went through a major heartbreak in childhood and still have not felt that grief. And they’re feeling disconnected from their creativity and wondering why.

And when we trace it back, it’s because they’re still afraid to feel the pain from that experience. I also see women getting stuck in anger, either suppressing the anger and turning it in on themselves or expressing it outwards through bitterness and resentment. And both of those things are normal and valid parts of the process.

But if we stay there, because we’re not fully feeling the anger, we’re not just letting that fire burn us and help us to transform into something else, we’re gonna get stuck there too. That is so true.

We want to feel the emotions, right? That’s a normal part of life. We’re human beings.

You don’t wanna- And we’re not taught how to feel. And especially as women, it’d be very taboo to grieve or to be angry. And we especially are taught to be pleasant and to be nice no matter what.

And so that can really hold us back during these times that are really asking us to fall apart and to get messy and to become undone.

So what are the most important mindsets would you say that women should practice if they’re going through any type of heartbreak?

One is to let it take as long as it takes. There is no set timeline. There is no right amount of time that you should be grieving.

And to really let your process lead you wherever it leads you. Another one is that there’s nothing wrong with you. We can feel a lot of shame.

We can feel like we’re really messed up when something isn’t working out the way that we wanted it to, or when it doesn’t look good to other people’s eyes. But the truth is there’s nothing wrong with any of us. And we all experience these things.

This is part of being human. And the last one I would say is this too shall pass. And that’s a phrase that I have at the beginning of the book.

I know it’s a very universal phrase and it’s very true that there isn’t permanence. Things shift and change. And even these hard seasons of life, they’ll pass.

Oh, I can’t agree more. Everything, I mean, even our life right now is temporary. Right?

Just, I mean, if we think back when the pandemic first happened, it seemed like it was never ending. And look at us now, we’re on the other side already. Right?

Absolutely. You know, there’s a fine line between thinking positively and really healing. What do you think about that? Putting that bandage, right? Just thinking positively. Is that beneficial to a heartbreak journey?

Yes and no. It is during the later stages. But in the earlier stages, we really want to embrace the concept that you have to feel it to heal it.

And it’s very normal to not be thinking positively when your world is falling apart. And if we try to again, paint that all over with pink paint, we’re going to get stuck because we’re not actually turning into what is and that what is, is the medicine that’s going to transform us. So the positive thinking will be a natural outcome of the healing when we allow it to happen.

But I think it’s a mindset that you can get through it. That in itself is a positive thinking though, right? It’s believing that yes, it’s going to take time to heal.

And we are always, all of us, we’re always healing from something in life. But I always believe, knowing that I will have the confidence to get through it. Just like you said, we can’t put a timeline on how long that’s going to take, but I have to believe that there is an end to this tunnel.

And I also want to validate that there’s sometimes devastation that’s so intense that it’s very natural and normal to doubt that we’ll make it through or that we have the capacity to. And there were certainly many points along my journey that I write about in the book where I felt that way, where I wanted to give up, where I just thought it was never going to end. And that’s also one of the reasons why I put that, why I made this book so encouraging to keep reminding people of this because we need other people in our lives to reflect back to us that we can do it, that they believe in us, even when we lose sight of that within ourselves.

That is so true. I always say this, I believe in everyone more than I believe in myself and more than everyone believes in themselves as well, because we are blinded, but someone else might have that bird’s eye view. For example, I’m a coach, I do that.

And you as well, Sarah, you have that bird’s eye view over your client’s journey as well. So working with a coach, whoever it is that you resonate with will help you expedite the journey for sure, but definitely seek help if you are in the midst of it, but it will take time. What other tips do you have for women who are looking for a transformation?

Well, another thing that I find is important is to have some sort of a spiritual connection. And I want to really emphasize that by spiritual, I don’t mean religious. If that means religious for you, that’s great too.

But by spiritual, I mean just a connection with something that’s greater than us. And that could be a connection with nature, with universe, with source, with spirit, or if we know that as God or goddess, whatever it is for us, that connection helps us to do what you were just saying, Lucy, to hold that bigger perspective and to remember that there is something bigger holding us, that we’re not breathing ourselves, we’re not beating our own hearts. None of us know how we got here or where we go when we die, but there is a larger mystery that’s living through us.

And if we can tune into that, that can help us to keep finding our next right step as we’re stumbling through the dark.

That higher power is there. It doesn’t matter who you believe in, but you gotta believe the higher power is there and everything’s happening for a reason and that you are learning from it. Nothing is extra.

Everything is mandatory in this journey. And you are in this journey for a reason and you are remarkable in your own ways. Sarah, what was your heartbreak journey?

What was the most devastating heartbreak you experienced personally?

It was the one that I open up this book with. It’s kind of like the first, I write about serial heartbreaks that I experienced between 2016 and 2020. And the first heartbreak was finding out the news of a really devastating betrayal where my former fiance came home one night and told me that he had been cheating on me, not just with one person, one time, but with many people over many years.

And with that news, I just felt like my entire sense of self was just spliced open, was just split apart. And it took me a long time. It took me several years to really weave myself back together again.

And this book was born out of that experience.

And what was most helpful for you to get out of that heartbreak?

A few things. One was what we were talking about, feeling the feelings and getting support to do that when I found that to be hard. Another thing that we just spoke about, having a connection to a higher power and really using prayer and using ritual to connect me with that higher power, using journaling to open up to a deeper wisdom to help guide me.

And the third thing was a cutting edge psychotherapeutic technology called Internal Family Systems or IFS that I now am certified in that helps us to work with the different parts of our personality that can feel challenged during heartbreak. The parts of us that feel grief, that feel anxiety, that feel depression. And also the younger parts of us, like the older wounds from past heartbreaks that maybe were unresolved, that come back to the surface in adulthood when we’re moving through challenging times.

So combination of those three things, I would say is what supported me the most.

And how did this system, the IFS system help you heal from your heartbreak exactly?

It helped me to really go back to those childhood wounds that were not fully resolved and that had come back up to the surface during the heartbreak. And that were somehow unconsciously driving the bus of my life. For instance, they were the parts of me that led me to be in that kind of relationship in the first place.

Parts of me that I didn’t realize it at the time, but held a deep sense of unworthiness, that held a fear of abandonment that allowed me to tolerate being in a relationship where I was being lied to so much. And so IFS helped me to heal those parts of me and to really emerge with a deeper sense of wholeness and a sense of being at home in myself.

I love that. And do you feel like now looking back in hindsight, do you think that relationship now for it happened for bringing you your abundance now?

Yes, and I don’t say this in a Pollyanna kind of way, but I really see that as that experience and everything that happened in those several years that I write about as one of the greatest gifts or maybe the greatest gift that I’ve ever experienced because I could not be who I am right now. I could not have the life that I have right now without having gone through that. I would not wish that on anyone, but I trust that that was my path.

And I’m just so proud of who I am as a result of all that.

I love everything you just said. And I asked that question exactly for the same reason. I am so grateful for each heartbreak I ever experienced in my whole life because once you’re on the other side, you really get to appreciate what it teaches you and what kind of transformation and opportunities and new profound ways of thinking that it’ll bring you and the rest of your life is a new beginning.

So in that, I am grateful.

Yes, and that’s us living the truth of choosing that transformation, right? Having to go through that heartbreak and then choosing the transformation so that we can experience this fruition on the other side of it.

And that is the decision. And that is the decision that you can make that will either change you or break you, right? You can let the situation break you if you don’t choose to let it become your opportunity of transformation.

And that’s why we’re here today because we hope that in every negativity you find in life, you see that as an opportunity for an upgrade in your life, no matter how hard it is. And actually the harder it is now, the easier it is on the other side and the bigger the transformation.

I totally agree.

Be grateful for everything life throws at us. And Sarah, in the difficult times, is there a favorite quote that you go by to help you live your better life?

Yes, this is a quote that I share at the beginning of the conclusion to the book. And this was a quote that was kind of like my lighthouse through those years, because I just saw that of, I saw this quote and I just felt like I want to get to that point. So this is by, I’m not sure if I’m saying his name correctly.

So forgive me if I’m not, Paruki Murakami. Once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure whether the storm is really over.

But one thing is certain, when you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in.

100%. Well, thank you for sharing your story and your insights on heartbreak with us today, Sarah. It was a pleasure to have you. Where can we find you?

The best place is at my website, sarahavantstover.com. And there you can find my book wherever books are sold.

And you can also find me on Instagram at sarahavonstover. And my podcast is called Herself. So any of those places I’d love to connect.

Beautiful, thank you.

Thank you for having me.

Hello hello beautiful souls, this episode is for you if just thinking about entering a room full of strangers, without a friend by your side makes you want to crawl into a shell or simply cancel.

While bringing a plus-one to a social event is completely fine, I’ve found that it is much more fun, productive and beneficial to actually go to events solo, and that’s what I’ve been doing so here is the why and the how.

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Why do I go to events alone now? Primarily for five reasons:

1. Independence and freedom: When you go alone, you’re free to explore and engage with others without being chained to the expectations of another person. You have the autonomy to make decisions based solely on your own preferences and interests. When you’re solo, you have the freedom to come and go as you please, allowing you to fully immerse yourself in the event however you wish or take breaks whenever you need to. You’re not bound by the schedules or preferences of others.
2. Better Networking: Being alone encourages you to reach out and connect with new people. Without having to comfort to familiar group or your friend, you’re more likely to strike up conversations with strangers, potentially expanding your social and professional networks. I usually talk to the first person I see who is either sitting next to me, also alone or arrives early like I did. 
3. Opportunity for Introspection: I am a big advocate for doing reflection work to improve our lives. So being alone in a social setting can provide that much needed valuable time for introspection and self-reflections. It allows you to observe your surroundings, contemplate your thoughts and feelings, and more importantly gain insights into yourself. I love taking notes and reflect on them.
4. Openness to New Experiences: Without the safety net of companionship, you may be more open to trying new things or engaging in activities you might have otherwise said no to. This openness can lead to unexpected discoveries and new experiences and new opportunities worth going alone for.
5. Personal Growth: I know it can be hard to step in the door alone. But stepping out of your comfort zone by attending events alone can be a powerful way to build your self confidence. It challenges you to rely on your own social skills and adaptability, in turn upgrading your personal growth and resilience.

And if you still need a dose of confidence to make going to events alone not only happen but make the experience even more enjoyable, here are my top tips: 

1. Remember You Belong: One of the top reasons you can feel lonely and daunting at an event alone is saying to yourself that “you don’t belong”. Reaffirm and remind yourself that you were invited for a reason. You chose to attend for a reason. The ad you saw on Instagram or wherever that led you here was meant for you. Whatever it is that brought you to where you are now was for a reason. You have every right to be there and enjoy yourself just like everyone else.
2. Set Realistic Expectations: Don’t put too much pressure on yourself to be the life of the party or make a certain number of friends or that you must get a number of collaborations. Instead, focus on simply enjoying the event and being open to new connections. I go to events with no agenda other than having fun. If a new opportunity rises from that, that’s icing on the cake. I’ve indeed signed clients from events, but that was never my agenda, my intentions were always to be authentically myself and to really make friends. Shift your focus from worrying about how you’re perceived to simply enjoying the experience. Engage in activities you genuinely enjoy or seek out conversations that bring you happiness.
3. Start Small: Begin by starting conversations with just one or two people. It can be less overwhelming to focus on building connections with a few individuals rather than trying to mingle with the entire crowd. I’ve been to events where I talked to hundreds and I’ve also been to events where I only talked to one or two people. But guess what, it’s the events where I only talked to one or two people, they are still on my feed and we’re still supporting each other and keeping the connection. 
4. Ask Open-Ended Questions: People generally enjoy talking about themselves. Ask open-ended questions that encourage them to share more about themselves, which can help break the ice and if they are the person that got to talk more, they will actually remember this conversation as a very good one. .
5. Find Common Ground: Look for common interests or experiences that you can bond over with others. This can help you feel more connected and confident in social interactions.
6. Take Breaks if Needed: It’s okay to step away from the crowd for a few minutes if you need a breather. Find a quiet corner or step outside for some fresh air to recharge and gather your thoughts. I always bring some extra snacks to events where I can just go out in the middle of a session to get some sun and get a quick bite to recharge. Back in March I was at the Alt Summit, on the first day I went back to my room and took a nap in the afternoon. The second day when I told people that I took a nap everyone’s reaction was that I was so brave and that they wished they had given themselves permission to take more breaks. And I was like it’s my life, of course I get to take breaks whenever I need to. Even when I pay for a conference, my health and wellbeing is still my top priority. 
7. Focus on Having More Fun: Before the event, visualize yourself having a great time and making meaningful connections. Positive visualization can help boost your confidence and ease anxiety before you go. And While at the event, shift your focus from worrying about how you’re perceived to simply enjoying the experience. Engage in activities you genuinely enjoy or seek out conversations that bring you happiness.

Remember, it’s perfectly normal to feel nervous in any social situation, especially when attending events alone. Be patient with yourself and recognize that social skills, like any other skill, is a learned skill and it will improve with practice and time. So go on adventures to attend social events solo and let me know how it went! Cheers to your continued journey to your own uprising and I’ll see you next week. 

Whether you’re looking to quit drinking permanently or are just taking a break, this episode is to help you quick alcohol.

We are not talking about alcoholics who need rehab today, we are talking about high achieving women who are regularly getting promoted at work or already running a profitable business, your relationships might be fine too, and you are not getting into any legal trouble, but you simply find yourself drinking more than you want to.

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Marci Rossi is a Certified Alcohol-Free Coach, Success Coach, Mindset Coach, and NLP Practitioner.

In this episode we talked about:

• Why willpower doesn’t work when quiting alcohol
• What are some of your best tips before someone ever even starts trying to quit
• What not to do when quiting alcohol
• and so much more …

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Whether you’re looking to quit drinking permanently or just taking a break, this episode is for you to help you quit alcohol. And we are not talking about alcoholics who need rehabs. We are talking about high-achieving women who are regularly getting promoted at work or already are running a profitable business.

Your relationships might be fine too. And you’re not getting into any legal trouble. We’re not talking about any of those, but you are simply finding yourself drinking more than you want to.

And for that reason, I have my special guest, Marci Rossi here today. She is a certified alcohol-free coach, success coach, mindset coach, and NLP practitioner. Welcome to the show, Marci.

Thanks so much for having me, Lucy.

Excited for our chat. Let’s start from the beginning. How often did you use to drink yourself?

It’s kind of varied depending on what was going on in my life. When I was really depressed and really stressed, it would, of course, skyrocket. It would be almost every day.

There were times in my life that it was every day. Other than that, it was, you know, normal quote-unquote drinking, right? So on the weekends would be when I would drink or maybe a particularly hard day and have a glass of wine at night.

But really, when I was struggling most, either in my career or personally, that’s when alcohol just became my default to turn to in order to relieve some of that stress and pressure that I was putting on myself.

So what was your breaking point? What was that point that you decided that you needed to quit?

My breaking point was kind of an extended point, right? So there was a big, huge gap between when I decided I needed to quit and when I was ready to quit. So it started with a dry January for me about four years ago.

Maybe I think four or five years ago was the first one. I’ve always been someone really into health. I love to read about the latest antioxidants and superfoods and all this kind of thing.

So I approached it from kind of a health benefit of just what would happen to my body if I took a break. And I went to the library and got a bunch of books about alcohol, hoping I could read about how terrible it was and I wouldn’t want it anymore. And I took this break and I ended up drinking maybe three times that month.

But one of those days, it was just a really hard day at work. And one of those days was somebody’s birthday. And so those things didn’t count, right?

But I was kind of arguing with myself too, because I knew it was just supposed to be 30 days. So I thought, okay, whatever, I did my best. And I tried it again the next couple of years.

And only one time was I able to make it the entire 31 days without drinking. And I was miserable. I had a countdown on my phone of when it would be February 1st.

I was thinking about what that first drink was gonna be. I was obsessing about the fact that I couldn’t drink. And that to me signified that there was a problem.

If I couldn’t go 30 days without being miserable, there was too much of a dependence there for me. But even at that point, I knew, okay, I have a problem, but I wasn’t ready to do anything about it. I think something that a very dangerous conception that we have in our world is that you have to kind of hit that rock bottom moment to decide to change.

And this was not a rock bottom for me. Like it was disappointing to realize that I was so dependent on alcohol, but I wasn’t getting into trouble. Kind of, you know, like you said earlier, I wasn’t getting arrested.

My relationships were fine. I was getting promoted every single year, year after year for five years in a row. Everything was going well, but there was this dependence there that just didn’t feel comfortable in my skin.

You know, I’m a control freak. I like to be in control of things. And this had control over me, which was really upsetting.

But it just took so much time for me to kind of accept it. Like I recognized it, but I didn’t wanna accept it. So it wasn’t until maybe 10 months later that I decided, okay, like something has to change at this point and I can’t do it on my own.

I’ve already tried. I couldn’t go 30 days. I’m not gonna be able to go the rest of my life.

And that wasn’t really the decision at that point anyway. I wasn’t trying to quit forever. I was trying to get it back under control because I had lost control.

And that’s an incredibly uncomfortable feeling for me, so.

And a lot of people I know try to quit and doesn’t work because they’re solely depending on their willpower. Yes. Would you agree with me that depending on your willpower alone does not work?

Absolutely. I mean, for any behavior change, right? Like if we’re trying to focus on willpower, people know generally that willpower is limited.

And so if you can start early in the morning, it’s easy to say no. I think it’s generally easy for most of us to say no to a drink at nine or 10 in the morning. But then when you’ve had to kind of say no to things all day long, by the time five o’clock rolls around, you don’t have that power left.

I think that’s a problem with a lot of coaching programs these days is they focus just on behavior, which is what willpower does. Willpower says you don’t drink or don’t drink today. And that’s just on the behavior.

But if you can remove the desire to drink, you don’t have to worry about the behavior, right? So I don’t have to convince myself, no, you don’t want to drink right now because no, I don’t want to drink. Like there’s nothing beneficial to me.

I don’t see any reason why it would add to my life without subtracting at least as much. So I think that’s the key there is when we focus on the behavior, we still have those subconscious desires, which means that we are fighting and we will have to continue fighting for the rest of our lives. I don’t want to do that.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to have to do that. I would rather just not want the substance to begin with. And then it’s just kind of a one-time decision and I’m free forever at that point.

I love that. So let’s go back and talk about desire then. What are some of the most common types of desires that you’ve seen working with your clients?

The number one, I think is relaxing, right? So that was definitely key for me. It’s definitely key for these really driven women who want to achieve or achievement is very key.

And to relax at the end of the day, to shut off our brains. Like if we are constantly thinking of the next thing, thinking of how we can succeed, how we can achieve that next goal, our brain is constantly going and that’s exhausting. And alcohol does kind of slow down your brain.

That is the physiological response to it. So that could be kind of tempting to shut it down, but really it’s just kind of pressing pause on things. And so instead of allowing you to go after things that will remove some of the stress, like you’re not gonna solve your problems when you’re drinking.

I know I never did, but you’re gonna be just pressing pause on those struggles that you’re having. So stress is a big one. I think we, especially in alcohol, we tend to focus on kind of the immediate reaction instead of the long-term reaction.

So yes, when you drink, then immediately you’re gonna feel that kind of relief, that little slowing down of the mind, which can be interpreted as relaxation. But then you don’t realize that several hours later, in order to compensate for bringing you down, your body brings you back up, right? So there’s the homeostasis effect there where your body’s releasing cortisol and adrenaline to kind of counteract that lowering effect that it has had.

And those are stimulating hormones, right? Cortisol is the stress hormone. Adrenaline is what you get when you go skydiving or go jumping off a plane or doing these crazy activities, riding a roller coaster.

So that’s coursing through your body. And for me, I never put two and two together. Like I recognized I was waking up around three, four in the morning when I had had a heavy night drinking and my heart would be racing and I’d be thinking of all the stupid things I’m sure I said that night, but I didn’t tie that to the alcohol because there was that delay there.

And I think that’s such a big problem with alcohol as we think about what it’s gonna do in this exact moment and forget what it’s gonna continue to do over time, over time to our skin, to our body, to our weight, to our mind, to our mental health. We think, okay, this is just gonna solve this one issue and it creates more. So stress, relaxation is definitely one of the biggest.

I think another big problem is that alcohol is everywhere. It is everywhere, right? So you wanna do something healthy and you wanna go to the gym and it’s yoga and wine night.

Or if you wanna go to book club, the book is kind of secondary. It’s really just an excuse to drink wine. And it’s a lot of people, there’s some judgment around alcohol and there’s still this notion that if you quit, it’s because you had a problem, not because you’re prioritizing your own health and your future.

And so it can be scary to make these changes because you’re opening yourself up to that judgment, right? That you’re allowing people to form these opinions of you and thinking that you’re an alcoholic and thinking that you have these issues when really you’re just trying to do what’s best for you instead of just following the herd. So I think those are the two big ones, especially that I see with my clients is wanting to relax and also still wanting to fit in.

Belonging is such a key human need and it can be scary to think that we’re gonna do something that can kind of separate us from the herd, that can maybe isolate us from our friends or our family members or our loved ones, that sort of thing. So those are two, I think, that keep us really stuck in this cycle of continuing to drink, even if we’re realizing it’s not necessarily doing us any favors.

Such great insight. And obviously, if you try to find alternatives to relaxation, there are plenty, yes, right? There are tons of activities that you can do that fulfills your moments of joy.

But in terms of being left out, like you talked about, right? Wanting to be in a certain herd, how do you tackle that problem with your client?

So I think part of it is realizing that how we expect people to behave is not necessarily how things are gonna happen, right? So we may assume that if we quit drinking, our friends, families, partners, loved ones are going to shut us out. We forget that there’s the possibility that they may follow in our footsteps, right?

By changing our behavior, we’re gonna be changing the relationships, but there’s a possibility that we’re changing those relationships for the better, right? So a lot of times we hang out with friends and we’re drinking, but we’re not really connecting on a deeper level. I’m sure, actually, I’m not gonna speak for you, but I can speak for myself that I have had moments where I’m drinking and I make these quote unquote friends for the night, and then it does relationships just end because it’s just completely superficial.

It’s just based on who we turn into when we drink, right? Those conversations that we have that we don’t remember the next day, that’s not a true authentic connection with another human being. So we kind of sacrifice that depth and authenticity when we choose to drink.

And there’s the possibility that other people will see our behavior and decide to model it. They’ll see the changes in our physical health, in our appearance, in our mental health, and realize that this is something that they may want to pursue as well. There’s also a possibility that it doesn’t really necessarily have to change anything.

Like I still go to trivia nights. I still go to bars. I still go out.

You can still have fun with your friends without having a drink, especially these days, it’s continuing to grow with different options, both at the grocery stores and in the bars and restaurants where you have options to try different mocktails. You can still go out without necessarily having to have alcohol there, still be out and socialize that way.

So- I resonate a lot with everything you just said. I mean, there’s no right or wrong answer. I think it’s really about your decision and you having control over your life instead of letting it control you.

Yes, for sure.

So what are some other best tips you have for someone who maybe have tried at times and have failed before? Words of encouragement there.

Sure. So I can tell you it did not work for me. Reading about the dangers of alcohol did not work.

I know a ton and I can scare you up and down of all the different things that alcohol can do, but that wasn’t enough for me to change my behavior because something inside me said I need it. And it wasn’t until I took a deeper look at what that voice was saying and what I thought it was giving me that I was able to change that behavior. So things that didn’t work, just focusing on behavior.

I’m not going to drink today. Okay, I’m not going to drink after, you know, after Friday or I’m not going to drink after Monday. I’m not going to do this, that, and the other rules didn’t work for me.

I just found excuses to break them. Scaring myself into it didn’t work for me. Telling myself about, you know, the cancer risks didn’t help me.

It just scared me. And then I wanted to drink more to relieve that fear, right? So what did work for me was looking at those behaviors.

And that was something that I couldn’t have done alone. I did it in a coaching program. So I didn’t realize that coaching was an option.

I knew of it in terms of athletes, but didn’t understand that that was a profession or a course of treatment, essentially. And I knew also that rehab wasn’t for me. I was not drinking every day.

I was not getting in trouble. I didn’t need to take 30 days away from my life or longer to change my behavior. So that wasn’t an option.

And AA didn’t resonate with me. I think it can be very helpful for a lot of people, but I did not want to surrender to a higher power. I told you, I’m a control freak.

I wanted to take this in my own hands. I wanted to do this. And so surrendering to a higher power didn’t resonate with me.

And I’ve also met a few people in AA that still want to drink 5, 10, 20 years later. And I don’t want to be that, I told you. I don’t want to fight for the rest of my life.

I want to be one and done. I got stuff to do. I can’t be wasting mental energy on trying not to drink.

So I fortunately found a group coaching program, and we went through all the thoughts and beliefs that I had about alcohol. And changing those just completely removed the desire. There’s nothing in there, I believe, that’s going to add to my life.

So there’s no temptation there. And when there’s no temptation, you don’t have to struggle. You don’t have to fight.

Your behavior just changes naturally. So that was really important. That’s my tip, is to understand what it is that you think you like about drinking.

So some of the common ones I went through already was relaxation and socialization. But people, there’s status, right? So people that collect fancy wines and want to know, that was me when we went to dinner.

I wanted to have the wine list because I felt important knowing what it was that I was choosing. To celebrate. Imagine celebrating without champagne.

These are two things that we hold very closely together, but they don’t have to equal each other. Sometimes we drink actually to feel sad, to feel some emotions when we’re kind of numb. You know, it turns on those tears, those artificial, that artificial sadness that creates to socialize, to have fun, to relax, to fit in, you know, if you’re going to go for networking, to give us confidence.

Oh, I hated networking without a drink in hand because I just felt so, I mean, I felt insecure. I felt like I didn’t have anything important to say. I judged myself a lot.

And eventually I realized that it’s just a skill and it’s a skill I haven’t had to develop because I let alcohol do that for me. I let alcohol tell me that I’m not brave enough, that I’m not smart enough, that I’m not funny enough without it. And I internalized that belief that I am just not enough, period.

So it wasn’t until I took the chance and opportunities to network, to go try different events without a drink in hand that I can start to build that skill, right? I’m still not the most extroverted person in the entire world, but it’s coming. And with that comes the confidence to continue to do it going forward.

So it’s really taking a moment to think about what it is that you think alcohol is providing and analyzing whether or not that’s true. Now, some of those you can refute with science. Like I said, like the stress, you can look at the science and see what alcohol actually does to your body or you can decide whether or not that belief is serving you.

Like when I thought that alcohol made me funnier and wittier and more confident, it was really telling me that I’m less funny, less confident without it. And that’s just not something that I wanted to accept. So I got to challenge those beliefs and put them into practice to see is this actually something that’s true for me and does it empower me to make the kinds of decisions that I want in my life.

Woo, so good. Wow, Marci, touched upon a lot of good points there. And I think that gives our audience, if you are in this season of your life, definitely get help so that you can transform your mindset, right?

You can shift those perspectives and that’s gonna make a world of difference because what we hold onto as our belief, those limiting beliefs, that’s what’s limiting you.

For sure, I think people just don’t realize how many limiting beliefs they have around alcohol. It’s all the reasons you’re saying you need it is all the reasons you’re telling yourself you’re not enough without it, so.

Beautiful, and it’s a perfect time for a reminder that enough is a decision.

Yes, yes, love that.

Awesome, so what is your favorite quote that you go by in life?

I don’t know who this particularly is attributed to, but I can do hard things. That is the statement that I live by. It is something that I never believed until I did something I thought I would never do.

I had no intention of quitting drinking. I thought drinking was what made life livable and fun. And I did something that I never expected would happen and I’m better off for it.

I thought if I ever quit, I would be miserable and I can’t imagine the level of happiness that I have now. So being able to do hard things, I think we don’t give ourselves enough credit for the number of things that we can do. Everything that we’ve gone through in life has gotten us to where we are.

We’ve survived it all to get here, right? So we are so much stronger than we stop and give ourselves credit for. So that is definitely a quote that I live by.

So good. Thank you so much for being with us. Where can we find you?

I am at Coach Marci Rossi everywhere.

Perfect, thank you.

Thanks so much, Lucy.