From Sobriety To Recovery: An Addiction Recovery Podcast

Ep 123 - I talk a lot about NLP, I mean, A LOT. I credit my personal growth and transformation, not just in sobriety and recovery but my whole life in general, on my steadfast focus and discipline of actively applying and evaluating NLP thinking, processes, techniques, and language patterns into my life. This episode is my beautifully structured metaphor about how life is a huge pot of soup and NL...

Ep 122 - Optimistic thinking, the power of positive energy, growth mindset, empowerment - these phrases and words are very well known to you if you have been on this ride with me for any period of time. Today I am going to go through some of my favorite quotes that I have set aside from an inspirational calendar gifted to me by a peer and client. Just hit play and let's discuss your highest empowe...

Ep 121 - Why are humans so hell bent on making life such a struggle. It's like we seek out anxiety and stress. How often do you choose the sugary snack, the argument, the field mindset over any action that would be more advantageous to your growth and the upward momentum toward your best, empowered self. In this week's episode we get into Stuart Wilde's book, "Life was never meant to be a struggle...

Ep 120 - How is self sabotaging holding you back from your full potential? This is a hard question to ask oneself when releasing the old version of yourself for a more advanced, empowered you. When the first steps of sobriety are taken it is enough to awake sober let alone ask much more of ourselves. As the journey goes from sobriety to addiction recovery, in order for us to really spread our wing...

Ep 119 - Why are you making the decisions you make? What is the driving force that compels to decide and do what you do? How are these drivers showing up in your life? Are you happy with your results? Now that I have peppered you with questions, let's get to the meat of this show! Time, Energy, Money, and People. These four components of life are generally the drivers in why, what, and how we make...

Ep 118 - The way you picture your bad memories, the trauma, and the sufferings you have endured, are radically holding you back at a subconscious level. As you journey from sobriety to addiction recovery you are preparing yourself to release all of the baggage and skeletons anchoring you in the past. As human beings our unconscious triggering returns us to places in our mind that we have long want...

Ep 117 - When we connect with another person we are opening ourselves up to the wonderment that is human interaction. After this last year, with all the physical distancing, I think as we begin to move to a return to openness that we begin to ask ourselves - how do I listen, how do I communicate, how am I heart-centered. 117 shows. I have been looking forward to this number for so long I half expe...

Ep 116 - Reflection on what we have achieved is often lost in the fray of our daily lives. I have even said that it is important to congratulate the commitment to the journey and not the progress itself - and this is for the benefit of the unconscious mind, but thats for another episode. In this episode I dive into why looking back on your journey is a healthy thing to do. When it is the most adva...

Ep 115 - Accepting who you used to be is a huge step toward the self-worth we seek to internalize in our addiction recovery. This means feeling into the love you have for yourself or perhaps it means, to you, loving yourself for the first time in a long time. Our behaviors are not who we are nor are they who we were. We behaved the way we did because we were being run by unconscious programming th...

Ep 114 - Don't release what makes you happy when stress and anxiety constrict around you. When emotions overwhelm some people find themselves laid up in bed or on the couch unable to get up and do much of anything. The irony of that lack of action is that the very thing that you loved to do before the funk, the stress, and/or the depression laid you up is the very thing that can begin to lift you...

Ep 113 - Is happiness an emotion, a mood, a state of mind? I have said, many times, that I think seeking happiness is a fool's errand because emotions are fleeting and constantly making it your goal to be happy would require you to always be in the emotion of happy - and the human experience doesn't open us up for happiness 100% of the time. What if happiness has been a state of mind all along? Wh...

Ep 112 - Creativity is an inherent desire every human strives to fulfill within themselves. How we define creativity could use some clarification and I am here to guide you toward that outcome. I reference the Netflix movie, "The Creative Brain," so for a more in-depth discussion on this topic I encourage you to head over there and check it out. It talks very openly on topics of creativity, open-m...

Ep 111 - Do you feel the desire inside you to heed the call of your purpose. Having a clear view and embracing what sparks you up and seeking it out - that is your purpose calling you. It is the solid feeling that your journey is not bound by a destination, rather by the experiences that come from truly living in your seat of wise-minded empowerment. My sobriety reintroduced me to the things I had...

Ep 110 - I am not looking forward to this moment, to this action, but I am looking forward to the aftermath, what I will receive or become after I do this or this is done to me. This quote from the Yellowstone TV show sparked me to bring this topic to you around my principle of 'Be Decisive.' You have a choice, every second of your life, to do one thing or do another. Going backwards and using aga...

Ep 109 - Self esteem comes from external validation, whether it be from what you see in the mirror, the things you have accumulated, or from another person telling you how they feel about something you have done or accomplished for yourself or them. Self-worth is valuing yourself through yourself. When you realize you have value and that you matter, to yourself above all others, then you are in co...

Ep 108 - In this episode we are going to discuss how the Adult Ego interacts with the Kid Ego. Some might call the Kid Ego the id because the id is where the impulsivity of a human comes from and when you think of a kid do you also think of an impulsive human? Probably, yes. Ego develops from the id and ensures that the impulses of the id can be expressed in a manner acceptable in the real world....

Ep 107 - Humans are meaning making machines so it is only natural that we would seek to make meaning out of why we chose the path of addiction over alternate paths that were also in front of us - whether we saw them or not, they were there. In this episode we will discuss... 1. How we make meaning out of everything to give it a meaning, structure, and an order to the chaos that is the human experi...

Ep 106 - Life is a series of goals set and goals accomplished or, unfortunately, goals not achieved. Let's discuss the fortitude you have inside of you right now that when harnessed will lead you to the wise minded sense of self and the empowerment that comes with it. The smallest next step will add up to thousands and thousands of steps and then you look back and it's like, "how did I get her," a...

Ep 105 - When did you decide something was a problem? Are your feelings around the issue swirling you into a deeper, and deeper chasm of undesirable inner-self talk? Are you so deep into the problem that seeing a solution would be like cutting through concrete with a butter knife? Focusing on the problem is a precarious precipice to find yourself teetering upon. There is a light ahead, it is the l...

Ep 104 - Creator, Coach, and Challenger. Victim, Hero, and Bully. These are the two dynamics at play while you are journeying through your life. These two models, and which one you choose to be in, will determine so much of your life. Up till now, you may have not even known you were living in these models. You will after our time together today - and moving forward you will choose to be the Creat...

Ep 103 - A man whom I consider a best and dear friend passed away and in his honor, for the support he genuinely presented to me when I was using and when I stepped into sobriety - he gets the whole show. It's a small token paid toward a man who saw something in me when I didn't even think I was worthy of the oxygen I was breathing.  I will never forget you Sunshine. You lived life to the fullest....

Ep 102 - Do you desire to move through your sobriety and recovery with a sense of strength and determination toward creating the life you have always desired? Justin's podcast dives into the lives of those in addiction recovery and how they are creating their life with purpose. His own story is heart-wrenching and his determination to bring about the change he wanted to see in his life is a testam...

Ep 101 - False emotions appearing real. That's one of my favorite acronyms for FEAR and it is often at the heart of our procrastination, buffering, and down right quitting. When you over complicate something, when you are consistently getting ready to get ready to start, when you are attempting to plan out 117 steps in advance in hopes you will cover any possible issue that might arise - this is y...

The journey continues, it's just a new day in my life, and yet the significance of each passing year is not lost on me, nor do I anticipate that it ever will be. Four years sober, January 13th, 2021. And the 100th episode of this show!! In the same week!! This was totally not planned out a year ago. About 8 weeks out, when I realized this could all happen together, I began the "Back to Basics" ser...

You can choose to change anytime you desire. New Year's and the whole resolution thing is just a procrastination mechanism that has shown a very low success rate. Yes, for some of you it has worked and I commend you for being on the better side of this law of averages. When it comes to making changes in our lives it is natural human behavior to seek out strategies to show us a way to make the chan...