Hey, it’s Molly from alcohol minimalist. What do you do in this October? I would love to have you join me in my more sober October challenge. What do I mean by more sober October, it simply means that we’re going to add in more alcohol free days than you currently been doing, whether that’s one or two or 31. It’s up to you, you get to set your own goal and that’s why it’s more sober October. You can check it out and learn more at get got sunnyside.co/molly It’s totally free. I’ve got grises I’m going to be going live every week to announce the prize winners. And it’s just going to be an awesome event. So I would love to have you join me. You can learn more at get.sunnyside.co/molly and you can get registered today. Welcome to the alcohol minimalist podcast. I’m your host Molly watts. If you want to change your drinking habits and create a peaceful relationship with alcohol, you’re in the right place. This podcast explores the strategies I use to overcome a lifetime of family alcohol abuse, more than 30 years of anxiety and worry about my own drinking and what felt like an unbreakable daily drinking habit. Becoming an alcohol minimalist means removing excess alcohol from your life. So it doesn’t remove you from life. It means being able to take alcohol or leave it without feeling deprived. It means to live peacefully, being able to enjoy a glass of wine without feeling guilty and without needing to finish the bottle. With Science on our side will shatter your past patterns and eliminate your excuses. Changing your relationship with alcohol is possible. I’m here to help you do it. Let’s start now. Well, hello and welcome or welcome back to the alcohol minimalist podcast with me your host Molly Watts coming to you from Oh, it’s a snow covered Oregon. Yes, that’s right. We got hit with Well, gosh, at my house about seven inches of snow this past week. It was crazy, completely an anticipated. I don’t know what happens to the weather forecasters here in Portland. But honestly, no one was talking about this being this big of an event. And it kept me home from work for a day. And it’s really still here. This is it happened on Wednesday night into Thursday, we got a little more snow last night, still in this pattern of kind of late night snow early morning, but it’s raining this afternoon. So hopefully it will watch most of it out. Wow. Anyway, so here on the podcast this week. Before I get started, I do want to let you know about something that I’m pretty excited about. I have been making some changes to step one, which is my online course and coaching program, I’m getting ready to kind of evolve everything into a new program that I’ll talk more about later, I’m not ready to talk about it completely. But right now, step one, which used to be a I used to just launch it in in group format is now available to anyone anytime you can sign up and get started right away, you still get a one on one coaching session with me. And then you can dive into the course materials on your own self paced, and you don’t have to wait for the next time that I’m going to open it. This is the way it’s going to be right now until I am ready to transition everybody. Everybody that’s in step one that has ever signed up for step one, automatically will become a part of my new program when it launches. That program is really something that I am so excited about because it is vailable to you, when you sign up for it, it will be the same as step one has been you will have access for the rest of your life with these people that have signed up with me for step one in the early parts of this program in the early parts of enrollment in the early parts of me launching a course at all, they really got in at the ground level, this is still right now really ground level in terms of investment and also in terms of what’s coming down the line for the future. So if you’re interested at all go to www dot Molly watts.com/step. One, learn more kind of about what’s in there now, what’s being added to it, and how you can get involved right away if you don’t want to wait anymore. You don’t have to you can start taking action and really creating that peaceful relationship with alcohol that I talk about all the time. Okay, on this week’s show, I I’m super excited to be joined again by Elizabeth Benton. Many of you who have listened to this show who have read my book know that Elizabeth’s work and her book chasing cupcakes was really an integral part. I know kind of odd, because it’s has nothing to do with alcohol. But it has a lot to do with mindset. And this is where Elizabeth and I completely align. Elizabeth was on the show, gosh, now almost a year and a half ago, we talked about that in this episode. And she was gracious enough to come back on this week and talk with me about consistency, I will have to tell you that this is that thing that is at the root of everything that we do in our lives in terms of both habits, that service and habits that don’t serve us. It’s what we do consistently over time that matters. And consistency is the number one thing that people struggle with the most in terms of applying the tools that I talked about in Elizabeth’s work. And we just had a great conversation, all about consistency. So I hope you enjoy it. Here is my conversation with Elizabeth Denton. Good morning, Elizabeth, thank you so much for coming back on the alcohol minimalist podcast. I just cannot wait to have a conversation with you again. Thanks for having me back. It’s been a while. It has I was just saying to you before I pushed record that I went back and listened to that first episode that I did with you. And it blew your mind that dropped when Roman was eight weeks old. That’s so crazy. I know. And what’s really crazy is, well, not crazy. But at that time when we were talking, I was kind of going through the what, you know how much it changed for you and what a what are the big two years in advance since I really started following you. And now as I’m sitting here talking to you 18 months forward? Again, it’s been a pretty momentous 18 months. Yeah, that’s for sure. I feel like I’ve lived a few lifetimes in the last few years, I would have to agree with you. I think that’s a fair fair statement. So before we dive into the conversation that I want to have today, which is all about consistency, something I know you’re very passionate about, I would really love for you to just update because not all of my listeners follow. I talk about you all the time. So a fair amount of them just know you and follow you as well. But for those who don’t bring them up to speed on kind of what’s been happening the last 18 months, and I’m going to link the last episode in the show notes, folks, so you can go find it. But since that time, because Roman at the time was eight weeks old, that was in the summer of 2021. And now here we sit in the February of 2023. What’s happened since then, Elizabeth, just a couple things, just a couple of bugs. Yeah. When Roman was about eight or nine months old, I found out I was pregnant again, which was wonderful. We really wanted to get pregnant again. And I didn’t imagine it happening that quickly. But I was certainly grateful for that. And was kind of making fun of myself. Early in the pregnancies I found out right away. I was testing very early. And I kept saying to my husband, like I’m showing really fast. And I don’t know if it’s because it’s my third pregnancy in just a couple of years. Or like, what if it’s twins, and I was saying it in jest because I don’t have a history of twins in my family. And you know, that would just be kind of wild. And I just felt like I was ballooning. I was like what is happening here and found out a couple of weeks later that I was in fact pregnant with twins. And more than that it was identical twin girls, which was just such a gift but also heavy because my my firstborn was a girl who died unexpectedly when she was just two weeks old. And so that was instilled as I’m still like, holy crap, I have twins and we had a pretty uneventful pregnancy up until about 2021 weeks when so I always thought that you could just have identical twins or fraternal twins, but apparently there’s many more types of twins than that. And my twins shared a placenta, which makes it higher risk. And we found out that they were basically experiencing twin to twin transfusion, we had to go down to Johns Hopkins kind of an emergent situation, to have surgery on the twins in utero, to make sure that they would share nicely the resources coming to their shared placenta, right that went well. We seem like we were in the clear in a good spot. But then at 26 weeks, everything changed very quickly. I was admitted to the hospital had a placental abruption. Jen, both girls waters broke. They managed to keep me pregnant for another week after that, which was wild. And the twins were born at 27 weeks. And they were born very, very, very ill. And we weren’t sure if either of them would make it. And the after 93 days in the NICU, which was a couple hours away from home, they were discharged and they’re home now. They’re now almost seven months old, they’re doing really well. So it’s been crazy going back and forth for over three months to a NICU that’s a couple hours away from home, I had a one year old at home, it’s just, you know, and then going through the uncertainty of are my kiddos gonna live after losing Gagne? So recently? Oh, my goodness. I mean, the scope of that when I was I mean, I, you know, obviously, I follow you. So I listened to you. So I kind of was updated along the way. But it’s just the her. I don’t, this is why this whole conversation about consistency is really amazing. Because I don’t know how anyone stays even remotely consistent. Given your life right now. I mean, honestly, and it’s just amazing. And it makes every I mean, it, you know, makes me feel like, Oh, my goodness, what the world do I have to a complain about be like, you know, not do what I say I’m gonna do for myself. It’s so, but jeez, Louise? Well, I am very, very glad to be talking to you and have both Piper internally doing so well, and your beautiful little family growing as it is because the last time that we spoke one of That’s what you told me, the last thing you shared with me, I asked you what you were most excited about. And what you told me then in the summer of 2021, was that you were most excited for your family and growing your family. And so I know it didn’t come about in the way that you expected. But you know, it’s, it’s happening. And that’s so amazing. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. So, okay, we’re gonna pivot now to consistency, because this is a conversation that, obviously, I think is I think you’ve kind of boiled it down into for your clients and for the people that you listen or work with, that. It’s really at the end for really almost all of us with anything that we’re trying to accomplish. It’s the people that are able to build the skill set of consistency, that really tend to achieve their goals. Would you say that’s a fair? Shot? Well, you know, it’s interesting when I look back, at the time in my life, when I was struggling the most I was the most overweight, I was in debt, I generally speaking, had a life that I didn’t love. And I was constantly chasing strategy, right? I wanted to know, what’s the right diet? And how can I get myself to stick with it? And what’s the best way to get out of debt? And I was just so drawn to strategy. I read books, and I read articles. And I was always jumping from like, Well, I’ll try this too. I’ll try this too. I’ll try that. And I never realized that the one skill I was going to need no matter what was the one skill I was lacking, the one thing I hadn’t chased or invested in or really put forth effort towards. And that was the skill of being consistent. And I see this all the time in my clients that they’re like, Well, you know, I tried counting macros, but I don’t think that’s right for me, and I want something that’s a little more flexible. So instead, I’m gonna do this thing, or, you know, I was trying to get out of debt with a budget. But now I followed this other person who has this other approach. And I’m like, Look, here’s the fact of the matter. They’ll all probably work. They’ll all probably work. But you are going to remain in this cycle, like I remained in this cycle until we learn consistency. And consistency is something that people just generally hope they stumble upon. Like, if I find the right plan for me, then that plan I’ll be consistent with without ever really acknowledging the fact that no, no, you won’t be consistent until you decide to build the skill of consistency. Because just like playing the piano, or learning a new language, it’s something you have to build. And the great thing is it can be taught. But the unfortunate thing is that most people aren’t looking at it as the thing they need to do because then it doesn’t matter what path you pick, except for the extent that you enjoy it, because you’re going to be successful with it once you have developed and continue to develop this skill called consistency. Yeah. And I think you so there’s two things there that I think are really important that you kind of inherent part of that conversation. We’re always looking for the next new thing. We’re always thinking for the answer the solution. And that’s part of it too, because we’re being provided all these, you know, new, flashy, shiny, right? Ideas that this is going to be the answer. None of the other answers were the answers, this is the new answer. And we fail to realize that the at its core, what you need to do isn’t shiny, flashy and super exciting. It’s actually kind of boring. It’s called doing it and just doing it again and again and again. Well, and the other piece of that is in that pursuit of the next shiny thing, or like, oh, there’s this new book, I should follow this way, or somebody said, they’re doing this, and I should do that. What that stems from, is the fact that it’s easier to project failure on something outside of ourselves, it’s a lot easier, more comfortable to say, Well, it’s because this plan didn’t work. For me, it’s because that thing is not the right fit for me, instead of saying, I’m not being consistent, and that is something I have to fix and learn and grow within myself. That’s a lot less comfortable. And takes a lot more ownership and accountability and follow through, then that plan wasn’t for me, I’m gonna try this other thing. Yeah, absolutely. And that kind of falls into the the reason that people get that way is this, this idea that they have that think that people get a story told to them or they see this, that consistency equals perfection, like I have to be perfect if I’m not perfect, that I’m not consistent. And that is just, that is part of the problem that I see all the time, I really feel like it’s actually in my space in my world, really fueled by sobriety recovery programs in AAA, like AAA, you know, it’s kind of a lexicon in and has really developed a narrative of what it what it means to have a relationship with alcohol. And they have, you know, their thing is like, if you screw up your back to day one, right, so you’re no longer where you are, you’re back to day one. And I think that is just so and I’m not talking about recovery in my world. But it’s a narrative that drives people’s thinking, in terms of how they set themselves up for failure, which really, is how to stay consistent, you have to be able to accept that the struggles are going to come, the missteps are going to come, the urges are going to come. And that’s not a problem, if you right, going. Right. And not only is it not a problem, it’s part of the process, we can look at anything, whether we talk about any business that has been built, or we talk about anybody’s weight loss journey, or we talk about anybody’s financial overcoming process, we will not find one that is quote, perfect, we will not find a person that is perfect. It doesn’t exist. This is an imaginary ideal that we event that we that we invent, and then we evaluate ourselves against. And I always think of this notion of like, okay, let’s say that you and I went to a running track, okay. And we said, we’re going to run together, and we’re going to hold this particular pace. And we start out and we’re holding this pace, but then, you know, I roll my ankle. So I stopped for a second to walk it off, I fell off the pace. In our minds, this idea that we’ve created a perfection means now I have to go back to the beginning and start over to have a successful race holding this pace. And every time I fall off, I have to go back to the bidding, beginning. I mean, that’s crazy. That’s not the way that it happens, the way that life happens, but we’ve just created this alternative narrative, in large part because it just lets us off the hook. We created this alternative narrative that every time we quote, fall off the pace, we have to go back to the beginning, what actually happens is, we just have to get back on it. And that is normal. And that is not wrong. That is not bad. That is not failure, that is normal part of the process that exists in everybody’s journey, in one way or another. Yeah. And I think to that I listened to I was listening to and I am sorry, because I don’t remember which episode it was of yours. It was a recent one. You were talking about when you really addressed this idea of consistency in your own life when you kind of went from because you and I both right? I mean, there were many, many years where I was highly inconsistent, and lead and lead my life with inconsistency as opposed to trying to lead my life with consistency. One of the things I loved was this idea that you had you said, you know, it’s not about being perfect. It’s not like I’m always perfect, but when I have that when that thought comes in because it happens to us, all right, you have this ideal plan. It’s set in place and then something happens or it’s you know, life happens, you’re tired. You know, you don’t feel like cooking what’s on the menu, etc? Who knows, right? You instead of just accepting that first thought that comes in that says, I don’t want to, I’ll just start again tomorrow, I’ll you know, put it in putting it off into the future you really like will not allow your brain to go down that path and you ask yourself, what would I need to think right now not trying to motivate yourself to do the thing that you’re trying, you know, that you’re not wanting to do. But just ask yourself so that you don’t ingrain that habit of thinking, again, which I think is so important. And such a big part of becoming more consistent is understanding of being aware of our own thinking, and how and stopping that even as even if we don’t, you know, even if we don’t do the run, make the meal right there in the moment, being aware of the thought and asking ourselves, what would it take? If I wanted to write right now in this moment? Yeah, you know, I was talking on another podcast about this the other day, how I think it was on Valentine’s Day, I was driving home from a massage. And I was driving home, right about the time where when I got home, I needed to start dinner. And I of course, had a plan for what we were going to do for dinner. But having just gotten this great massage and kind of feeling a little more chill, I just didn’t want to come in the door and have three kids that need me and have to cook dinner. And in that moment, I challenged myself to say if I was driving home looking forward to cooking dinner, if I had a really good attitude about it, how could that be? So like? What perspective would I need to have in order to look forward to it? And like you just mentioned, the reason I do that is not for the outcome of cooking dinner? The reason I do that is because we have to think about our thoughts as like this container, right? And if your thoughts are just the same container of your familiar thoughts, oh, I don’t want to but I have to this is such a pain, like I don’t want to work out I’m tired. The actions are directly tied to your familiar thoughts, right? So if you have this predefined container of this is how I always think about these things, then your subset of actions is also this predefined container. And that’s why people get so frustrated, like, how can I want to change but I just stay in this pattern and I stay in this cycle? It’s because your container of thoughts is remaining the same? So when I asked myself the question, as I’m driving home from my massage, if there was a perspective out there, that would leave me feeling like I want to cook dinner? What would that look like I do that to push out the edges of the container. That’s why I do it, I do it to open up the realm of possible options are possible choices that can flow from it, I’m doing it in my mind, I imagined that I’m like pushing out the edges, I’m expanding the bubble of most familiar thoughts. Because when I do that, I open up the possibility of new behaviors. And so many people are just operating within the same container of familiar thoughts. And that’s why they stay making the same choices over and over and over and over over. So when you have to think of the way that I like to think about it is I wrote about this and tools for the trenches that when you go to the eye doctor, right, you’re wearing glasses, I wear contacts. Yeah, when you go to the eye doctor, we know that experience where they take that the black lens just had it, I literally just found it the other day. So you know, it’s called an occluder. And they put it up against your face. And they’re like switching back and forth between different lenses. And they’ll say, is it more clear like this? Or like this? Is it better with one or with two? Is it more clear here? Or is it better here? And they’re basically displaying for us that through a different lens, we see things either more clearly or less clearly, our perspective is the same way. So when I’m driving home thinking like oh my god, I don’t want to cook dinner like this is so annoying. This is so annoying. That is a lens that I am putting over my decisions, right? I when I look at it this way, I feel this way and I choose these things. I’m limiting myself to this range of potential choices. However, that perspective can be swapped out for a different perspective. So I’m asking myself, is there a perspective that would lead me feeling grateful for this opportunity? And so I’m doing it to just try on different perspectives and open up new subsets of action. What I came up with was when I think back this is just me kind of daydreaming as I’m driving. When I think back to my childhood, some of the things that standout to me are the most mundane moments of like family dinner. It wasn’t some big holiday. It wasn’t a party. It wasn’t when I got some big gift or some milestone moment. It was like, when we were sitting around our round table, that was like way over varnished. And my dad would say like, who did you make smile today? Those moments that are the moments I could approach as a mom with my own kids is like, Oh, crap, I gotta make dinner again like this is. Here we go again, another dirty bib, another dirty highchair, another opportunity to wash the floor, because Roman throws everything. When I have that perspective, I’m missing the opportunity to create the fact like dinnertime could be Romans favorite memory, when he gets older. And so then I’m driving going, Well, gosh, how can I capitalize on that? How can I make it a really at something that’s my favorite memory to dinner time with my kids when when the twins are in bouncy seats, one next to me and one next to my husband and Romans in a highchair? And he’s saying stupid stuff? Like, how can I just lean into that instead of, I don’t have to choose the perspective of I don’t want to make dinner. And this is annoying. And it’s a chore. And I don’t have to choose that perspective. And it changes everything. It also fosters consistency, because I can opt into perspectives that align with the subset of behaviors I want to choose, whether that’s working out or it’s, you know, being on a budget or any number of other things, we always share, we have a default perspective. And sometimes my default perspective is I don’t want to cook dinner. But I get to choose out of that. And so does everybody else. Yeah, and I this is exactly the same things that I talk about with people with regard to, you know, it’s a habit of thinking, right, it’s habit of thinking just as much as it’s habit of behavior. And I love that idea of a container and expanding those that container to be able to allow other perspectives. Yeah, it really will challenge we have to be willing to challenge our ideas and our old stories, and are typically self limiting a lot of self limiting kind of beliefs, right. And again, that also fosters into this idea of taking action today, as opposed to waiting until tomorrow, and a lot of us, a lot of us do that. I did that for years. Just you know, I’ll start again on Monday. I’ll, I’ll figure it out tomorrow. And one of the ideas that I got from that you’ve shared that I love is that tomorrow’s intentions have no place in today’s plans. Yeah, tomorrow’s intentions have no place in today’s plans. And that’s kind of you know, it’s all falls into the same thing, because it’s, it’s in that moment, right. You could have just as easily said, Oh, all right. I’ll just, I’ll just, we’ll just grab something. And tomorrow I’ll do with a will have a family dinner tomorrow. Right. Right. Right. We’re always pushing off into tomorrow. That’s where inconsistency lives, right? Yeah. And we’re giving ourselves credit for our future intentions. And I always say like, future intentions are great. I think it’s awesome that you’re going to work out tomorrow. I think it’s great that you have a plan to eat healthy tomorrow. I think it’s great that you have really positive aspirations for tomorrow. But don’t manipulate yourself out of action today, based on what you’re doing, or planning to do tomorrow, because that’s what that is. You’re, you’re manipulating yourself in that moment. And using your intention for tomorrow, your promise for tomorrow as a means to let yourself off the hook for today. So I always say to myself when I’m like I can work out tomorrow or I can, you know, I can do two workouts tomorrow. So we’re still giving myself the same amount of work in a week. And I’m like, Listen, what if you want to do two workouts tomorrow, do two workouts tomorrow, but you’re not going to use tomorrow’s pledges as the way to let yourself off the hook for today. Tell me what you’re going to do today. You’re having trouble finding time to work out today. Okay, cool. Do a three minute workout, but not no workout. And tomorrow’s plans cannot be used as a negotiating tactic as a way of manipulating yourself out of what you could do today. Stay focused on what you will do today and leave tomorrow out of it. Just a quick break to talk with you about Sunnyside. You’ll hear me talk about it on the podcast and truthfully I have so many students and group members that share with me how Sunnyside is their preferred tool. It helps them build their healthier drinking habits and really create that peaceful relationship with alcohol. It’s a tool that I feel very confident in recommending. And the Sunnyside team has recently in September launched a new iOS app. And that iOS app is going to just enhance It’s the existing text message experience. It makes it easier to build healthier drinking habits for anyone looking to cut back or simply drink more mindfully. The new Sunnyside community is also available only in the new iOS app. And it gives you access to an engaged community of like minded people who are also on a journey to cut back on drinking and build healthier drinking habits. It’s a safe private space. And you’ll get access to inspiration and advice from Sunnyside members as well as coaches. I encourage you to go check out Sonny’s site go to www.sunnyside.co/molly to get started on a free 15 day trial, that’s www.sunnyside.co/molly. This idea that somehow doing the work is going to look different tomorrow, right? Or somehow that we we are it’s it’s that fresh, that fresh start that clean slate, all of it just does not allow us to embody or embrace the inherent necessity of struggling in these in these moments of when we choose to be inconsistent, where we can take action right then right, and not postpone what we need to do in that moment. And it’s really at the core, I think of being able to become a more consistent person. And what I love about what you’re talking about, and I know you have you are so passionate about this about consistency, you’ve developed a course around it. And is the idea of again, being a skill set, right? It is something that we can learn to do. And really, I think you’ve you said it, you use the word, the gift of awareness, right? It’s, it is a gift to become more aware of our default thinking of our default storylines. And we want to be able to challenge those in the moment. And when we do that, we can become more consistent. And sometimes the awareness begins after the fact. Because I hear this a lot that people will say, you know, I was like on autopilot. I didn’t even realize what I was doing until afterwards as though that’s a problem. And it’s not a problem. It’s not a problem at all. Like I think about this all the time. And in the context of my marriage. There are a lot of times where I am snippy and snarky and I don’t kind of reflect on my behavior until afterwards. That’s not a failure. It’s not problem because I have an opportunity to take action after the fact. No, I can’t time travel and redo it. But I can apologize and say, Hey, that was really crappy of me. I wish I had approached it like this. And I’m really going to make an effort moving forward to XYZ. And and if you notice that I’m caught up in the moment again, can you just remind me of this conversation and remind me of, you know, what I’m trying to do and why and how I’m trying to show up. That’s not a failure. People will just discount a moment as like, oh, well, because I didn’t even realize I was eating Oreos until afterwards, like I screwed up. No, you still have an opportunity with that awareness, even when the awareness comes after the fact. And oftentimes, for a while it comes after the fact. And to a certain extent, in some situations that will always come after the after the fact we’re never going to get to the point where we have perfect awareness, either ahead of time or in the moment, there’s always going to be situations where we’re afterwards reflecting going. I could have done something different. I wish I hadn’t done something different. And there are opportunities for rewiring mental patterns and ways of thinking and even improving behavior afterwards. Yeah, for sure, for sure. And that is, you know, I talk about compassion and curiosity and being curious, because we have to be willing in that moment, especially when people are feeling a lot of shame regarding those choices in those missteps and they’re not happy about the fact that they you know, for in my world, it’s drinking Off Plan, right, they had a plan and they didn’t stick to it, and they drink and there’s a lot of shame associated with it and like why, why can’t I and why didn’t die if we’re willing to after the after the fact take time to reflect back on really again, and it’s also this idea like it didn’t just happen to you, you actually did make a choice. So let’s let’s figure out where where our sinking went awry, so that we can next time be better prepared, then the then there is no failure. There is no right. We’re just as a part of the process. There will be hopefully less and less times of those missteps as we begin to reflect and understand what happened in that moment when we when we went off plan. You know, also something that, I think probably, again goes along hand in hand with setting intentions and working on the plans. And in that moment, right when we are not wanting to follow through with ourselves to be more consistent, to be more consistent. I know I’ve heard you say I say it with my people, have many reasons, make them strong. revisit them often. Yeah. Because in that moment, when you are looking, you know, asking yourself the question, what perspective would it take, if we only are focused on one thing? Is the reason that we’re doing whatever we’re doing that that one reason can fail us? Yep. Yeah, I got, like, give this example when, when I’ve been pregnant, you know, because I had three pregnancies and four babies in less than two and a half years. And for most of my life, my food and my workout, ambitions were tied to my weight. And I was doing it to either lose weight or maintain weight. And then you get pregnant. And, and I experienced this and so many moments of pregnancy, like, well, you know, I can have this thing because now like, I’m losing weight, right, now I’m gonna gain weight anyway, like, I might as well, it’s not going to hurt. But when I decided that I needed to have many reasons, many strong reasons and revisit them often for eating well and moving regularly, that have nothing to do with weight. That shifted so much, and then it has come into play. So often, if I’m, you know, recovering from a C section, I still have extremely strong reasons to eat well, I still have extremely strong reasons to move my body that have nothing to do with what I look like naked or the number inside my genes. And that has become so powerful, because if so many times I hear from people who go through an illness or an injury, and all of a sudden they start trashing their body and eating whatever, because hey, what’s the point, or they get their goal weight, and then they find that they put the weight back on, because they’re no longer driven by trying to lose weight, you have to have strong reasons. One of my big ones is longevity. I want to be here and healthy and capable, for as long as possible. With my kids and their kids. I want to have energy, that is a huge one. Regardless of what is happening with my weight, I know I have way less energy when I’m eating poorly, when I’m not working out than when I’m eating well, and I’m working out. I don’t want to have no energy, I don’t want to be sluggish. I don’t want to feel like I need a nap at two in the afternoon. I’ve got three kids under two, like I don’t have time for that I’m running multiple businesses. So energy is a huge piece of it. Even when like I find it for me, weight loss is really hard when I’m breastfeeding. Like just, everything’s out of whack. It’s really hard for me. And with past pregnancies, I’d be like, what’s the freaking point? I mean, like, I need the calories anyway, for milk production. And I’m not losing weight until I’m done nursing. I’m not losing weight at this point. But there’s so many more reasons that are compelling, I feel way better, not only is my energy better, I physically feel happier, I physically feel better in my body better when I’m laying in bed at night when I eat well. And those are really compelling reasons. Of course, I have to revisit them very, very often. But you have to have all of these strong reasons. Otherwise, something’s going to happen. That messes with one of your reasons. And this is why people lose their motivation and find themselves undoing progress that they worked really hard to create. Yeah, that just reminded me of something that I really think is important, right? This is a lifelong skill set. The skill set of consistency isn’t something that like, and I say it all the time too. And I really it does come back to your thoughts and really becoming a better thinker. In my opinion. I know you share that perspective in chasing cupcakes, it’s a big part of what you talk about is creating the right mindset and becoming a better thinker, and that helps us become more consistent. But at the same time, you know, it’s an on going lifelong. I really just love the fact like I said, I I am so grateful that I figured out how much agency I have in in that mindset in that creating how I want to that perspective, the gift of awareness and being able to shift that the oscillator whatever that’s called on the table. Do you how many people don’t realize They have power over their perspective. Oh, yeah, I do. I mean, not as many i Yes. Because i People tell me all the time they don’t really lazy it is such a gift to know, even if you’re not sure how to do it, even if you’re not doing it consistently now, the fact that you know, it is possible if you’re listening to this and you understand that you have that power, you know, that you just have to walk through the door, you just have to do a little bit of work. But that awareness is a gift not given to everybody, not everybody knows, or cares that they have an agency is the perfect word for it, that they have this amount of control over their feelings and their experiences and their behaviors all by optimizing the way they perceive things. Not everybody has that awareness. No, I certainly didn’t. I lived my life on default for, you know, 50 years. And it once that light bulb turned on, and that’s why I say all the time I talk about changing your drinking habits and creating a peaceful relationship with alcohol. You talk about weight, fat loss, and you’ve talked about, you know, getting out of debt and things like that and moving your body. But all of these doesn’t really matter. What it is that you are trying to trying to conquer first, in this in this realm of positive behavior change. At the end of the day, you are going to have to become a better thinker. If you really want to become someone that creates sustainable change in your life and is consistent over time. It is what you focus on and and it’s really all about understanding how much agency you have in your life to do that. I tell people all the time, I used to be the most dramatic person I know. I don’t know if you can relate to that. You think you were probably I think I just from our you know, our conversations you probably back in the past it was a little bit more dramatic. Right? into, you know, I think it’s called the note we I call it now that no drama llama right. There’s just it’s like, and that was all. That was all me that was all my doing my perspective. I’m not, instead of I used to say it like I mean, I literally like the thought was well, come on. I have four boys. I mean, hello. Like, doesn’t it just make sense to you that my life was traumatic, like, there was no other option available? Like that’s how I thought. And once I really understood the power of my brain to change that, life became a lot less dramatic and a lot more manageable. And I was able to take actions the way that I wanted to, and it isn’t because my life suddenly changed. You are someone who is living a life that I can’t even mean, it sounds overwhelming to me. And I’m sure that there is there are moments that you feel a little overwhelmed. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. The thing is about overwhelm is that too, is a prospective opportunity. You know, overwhelm is not a function of having three kids under two and being a stay at home mom, as well as running multiple full time businesses. Overwhelm is a function of focusing on more than the moment you’re in. Because even when I’ve got three kids crying, and I’m trying to get to a meeting, I can focus on just the moment I’m in like, right now, the goal is to feed Charlie and talk to Piper and let Roman fosse for a minute. Like, it’s okay, I don’t have to simultaneously be trying to do the next 10 steps and like, I gotta get up the door and I gotta brush my hair. And I got to do this, and I gotta do that. And I gotta know, I need to just be fully present, where I am overwhelmed as a thinking problem. Not a circumstance problem, not a life events problem, not an overload problem. It’s a focus thing. Yeah, yeah. Elizabeth, I could talk to you all day, which I know is probably something that would be really fun for me and possibly kind of a problem for you. So I just so tell people right now where’s the easiest place for them to connect with you learn more about the consistency course right now is in your in weightless mode are you are so we open up spots on the first of every month. And I do that just because I’m really involved with people individually, when they get started. We do an intake form. You know, one of the things when I put together all the tools and resources in the consistency course I sat back and I asked myself if somebody was to get access to all of these tools and resources, but fail, not do the work. Why? Why would that be the case? And one of the things that seem to mind very quickly was overwhelmed like all of this is great Elizabeth, but I don’t know where to start. And it just seems like too much. And so because of that I do an individual intake with everybody where they share their kind of history and where they’re at and what they’re struggling with. And I give them a singular specific starting point, unique to them. And then, you know, I do one on one calls with people. And so for that reason, I never just like, hey, we’re gonna let 100 people into the consistency course, because I would be limited in my ability to serve those people. So we opened it up to a small amount of people on the first of every month, and that just makes it so that I can, you know, serve people the way that I want to serve them. So the waitlist is right on my website, you can go to primal potential.com forward slash the dash consistency dash course. But the best way to like, find out what I’m all about is probably the podcast podcast is called Primal potential. We have like 1100 episodes, so you can stay really busy for a couple years there. And you can follow me on Instagram at Elizabeth Benton that’s kind of where I share a lot of the day to day, things going on in my world. Perfect. Awesome. Yeah. In fact, last week on the podcast, I was talking about one of the, an older podcast of yours that I was listening to, and I actually shared that I would say it’s like, by the way, PS folks, if you want to find you know, listen to all this, but there’s like 1100 episodes as opposed to my like, 115. So they’re just doing it for a lot of years. You’ve been doing it for a lot of years. And it’s fun to for me, especially I’m sure I don’t know how you feel about it, too. I’ve, when you go back and listen to those some of those earlier episodes, you’re like I know it’s it. And that’s I again, one of the things about podcasting, it’s a consistency thing, right? You you can’t you have to be willing to be able to get out there and do it every week. And not every I had to let go of like not every, not every episodes gonna be perfect. Not every episode is going to be, you know, it just, I mean, some are great. Some are okay, some are wonderful. And that’s okay, you know, showing factionist mentality in anything, whether it’s in podcasting, or it’s alcohol, or it’s with food. It’s an imagined ideal, that doesn’t reflect how anything was done. It’s kind of like, you know, you look at a TV show, like friends, for example, it really was never into friends, but it went on for seasons and seasons and seasons season. There’s not a single Perfect episode, like there’s not anything that everybody would agree was like a perfect episode. And there were certainly some episodes that had like more humor and others that have less humor, more that had jokes that landed and some that had jokes that didn’t land, you can look at anything and see that and you just have to discard this imagined ideal of what perfection is because that’s just not how the world works. No, and you just have to keep going. That’s right. That’s right. I do it imperfectly, like the rest of us. Going. Well, Elizabeth Benton, thank you so much for taking the time this morning and for joining us again. And folks, please check it out. She has wonderful just like 1100 Plus episodes and lots of tools on the website too. If you haven’t already read chasing cupcakes or tools for the trenches, you know that my my audience there, they’re on my recommended reading list. And I referenced chasing cupcakes in my own book. It’s something that was very instrumental in helping me even though it has nothing to do with alcohol. It helped me change my mindset and helped me change my relationship with alcohol. So I highly encourage you all to check that out. Elizabeth, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me. Thank you for listening to the alcohol minimalist podcast. This podcast is dedicated to helping you change your drinking habits and to create a peaceful relationship with alcohol. Use something you learned in today’s episode and apply it to your life this week. Transformation is possible. You have the power to change your relationship with alcohol now, for more information, please visit me at www dot Molly watts.com