One of the most important principles we can live by is COURAGE.

Because courage is like the gateway emotion to opening up or lives and living our dreams.

Even if our dreams our getting sober and overcoming anxiety (these were my big dreams back in the day!).

And so we'll dive deep today into how to become more courageous, like practical strategies and techniques to living courageously.

The bottom line is that emotions shouldn't get to steal your dreams.

Courage is the path out, the way to blaze your own trail in life.

Courage leads to freedom.

​So let's do this, let's get courageous and expand TF out of our lives!

Transcript: 
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​  Emotions shouldn't get to steal your dreams. Quite often when we want to go live our dream life, when we have a big dream on our heart, we start to take that action. It could be very uncomfortable.

We get slammed with fear, with doubt, maybe guilt, shame. Imposter syndrome, something comes up and stops us. So here's how we get through that. First of all, we expect it, expect the discomfort. Don't be surprised when it feels uncomfortable. When you start taking action towards your dream, don't let your feelings steal your dreams, expect that it's going to be uncomfortable and have a plan for it.

 

Hello, Courageous Bestie. I'm Kirsten Johnson and welcome to the Sobriety Bestie podcast, where we adventure together through emotional sobriety, unapologetically expressing yourself and building a purpose driven business because the world needs your wisdom. Each step you take opens up infinite possibilities because your transformation is not just for you.

It's a beacon of light for those you're called to serve. So get on comfy, repeat your mantra. This is Sobriety Bestie. Is courage and take that next aligned step into creating the business and life of your dreams. I'll be your guide.



  📍 📍 Hello, courageous bestie. This is such an important topic, how to have courage, how to live more courageously, how to be courageous in sobriety. How to step out on your own in the world, how to create courageously, create your own path in life. So if you've been wanting to live more courageously, if you've been wanting to come alive, and to really go for it in life.

Now that you're sober, now that you're overcoming your anxiety, now that you want to start a purpose driven business, now that whatever is going on in your life and you have a dream on your heart, no matter where you are, no matter where you want to go, if you want to be more courageous, this podcast episode is for you.

Now backing up a little bit, I didn't always live courageously. I don't always live courageously. It's not something you have to do every day. It is something you can do every day. It's an offer to do. When you have a goal in your heart, when you have a big dream and a big vision that you want to move towards, that's way the F outside your comfort zone.

That's when we need to be courageous. That's when we need to have a plan for our courage. That's when we need to have a way through the right mindset and some actual practical tools in order to really go for it in life, and that's what we're going to talk about today. So when I got sober, I felt like I was afraid of everything.

My life was really limited. Maybe this is where you're starting out now. You're been dominated by fear for some time. Maybe you're an early sobriety. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to share your message. Maybe you have a big dream on your heart that you want to live. And usually it is fear and sometimes skills, sometimes resources, sometimes ability, whatever that's blocking us.

Quite often it is fear and our relationship with that fear that we can look at changing in order to expand our lives. Nothing is static. We are either growing and evolving, or we are shrinking and contracting. The invitation here is to expand, to grow. Courage is about growth. Courage is about stepping outside of your comfort zone.

So if this is your comfort zone, right? Courageous actions are outside by definition of our comfort zone, and that's how our comfort zone grows. And that's really what we want as a dream lover. We want to be courageous for the sake of our dreams. And so when I got sober, it felt like I was afraid of everything.

I had, it felt like all the fears, I was afraid to leave the house. I was, uh, I would have anxiety attacks at recovery meetings. I felt like I was unemployable. I wasn't working for quite a bit of my early sobriety. Um, on and off. I had different contracting jobs. Uh, maybe you saw the podcast episode about how I wanted to make money and travel the world.

Those were contract jobs though. My mind wasn't working that well at the time. My brain was racing all sorts of thoughts. It was hard to, um, function. I had a lot of anxiety. It was very disabling. Debilitating. And so I had a lot of growth ahead of me, a lot of courage to embody an order to break free. And this is the mindset that did not work for me.

The mindset that did not work for me now that I was sober in early sobriety is the mindset that I had when I was drinking. The mindset I had when I was drinking was kind of, if it scares me, I'm not going to do it, or I'm going to drink to deal with my fear. So. Drinking to deal with fear is not an option in sobriety.

Drinking to deal with fear is not an option for a courageous bestie. Is it? Cause we want to be courageous and expand our lives and not doing the things that scare us isn't cool. If it's something that's on our heart, if it's a dream that we want to live. So the question becomes like, how can I do this thing?

And so when I stopped doing the things that scared me, I stopped driving on freeways. I stopped. I didn't kind of form at all of public speaking. I wouldn't talk in class. I wouldn't take courses in college that involve public speaking if possible. Like I did everything to avoid speaking publicly. I did not drive on a freeway for three and a half years.

So I had very specific phobias and dogs as well. I very specific phobias. And I just said, well, I just won't ever do those things again. Now that works in a way avoidance can work in a way to limit our fear. But as a courageous bestie, we're here to break through those fears when we have a dream on the other side.

And so. In sobriety, I had a new mindset. This is the mindset that I'm inviting you to consider adopting. And the mindset was I take action in alignment with my heart and my spirit. It's worth saying again, because it sounds simple or easy or woo woo or whatever, right? But this is literally the mindset that I embraced in early sobriety that shifted everything.

I take action aligned with my heart and my spirit. What that meant was if there was something that I wanted to do, And even though it scared the ish out of me, I would still do it so that I could pursue my dream. I would find a way to get through the uncomfortable feelings so that I can actually walk in the direction of that dream and therefore be more likely to live that dream.

It's not like I didn't feel uncomfortable. I did, but courage and fear essentially feel the same, but courage has action. So if we get scared about moving forward and we don't move forward, that's called fear. If we're scared about moving forward and we move forward, that's called courage. The invitation, courageous bestie, is to be courageous.

And so we could really break this down into two steps. Get really clear on what it is that you want. What is your heart and your spirit want? What is your dream? What is your goal? What is your desire? What is however you want to phrase it? What are you moving towards? Where is the destination that you want to bring your life to?

What is this next goal? It could be a big goal, a little goal, but getting clear on where you want to go. And then the next step is to take consistent action in that direction. Now, as we take consistent action in that direction, we're going to feel uncomfortable AF, right? Cause it's, it's outside our comfort zone.

That's what courage is. That is the courage. Here is the other thing that I embraced in early sobriety when I was working on my courage muscle. Yes, It is a muscle. We get used to it. We get used to being courageous and it changes our brains. All these new actions that we do for this new life build up and change our brains.

When we get sober, we have a specific brain, right? Likely very damaged from alcohol and that brain can rebuild. It's like. The way I look at it is like alcohol, it injures our brain. It injures some of our abilities, our impulse control, for example, our interoception, our ability to feel what's happening inside of our body.

And then in sobriety, some of that heals on its own, just being out of harm's way. Our body can actually heal, right? You take yourself out of. Alcohol is essentially a poison. You're no longer poisoning your body. Your body will start to heal on its own. So not only will it heal on its own, but we also actively do some of this healing or growth work or some sort of work to move our life forward.

And so when we start to take these new actions, Towards our dreams, we get clear in our dream and start to move for it. We're starting to change our brains. So maybe we can't imagine in the first step or the second step. Let's say there's 30 steps to our dream. We can't imagine taking that 25th step or that 26th step or those steps down the line.

But! The person who takes those future steps isn't who you are today. You're just taking that next step today. So if your big dream is to like do a TED talk and that scares the ish outta you, but you feel called to share a big message with the world, and it's something like doing a TED talk, that's not the first step.

Not if you have a phobia. Public speaking, I had a phobia, public speaking. So if you're starting with a phob. Public speaking, and you want to share an inspirational message with the world. You're just doing that next step. The next step could be, what do you want to talk about? Why is that important to you?

And then how could you practice talk? Can you write up a talk? So way before you end up on some sort of public stage, you've got to think about what are you going to talk about and then do a practice talk, talk to your wall, talk to your bed, talk to your couch, talk to your dog, talk to like an audience.

That's not going to judge you. Right. If you have a dog, give the talk to your dog, and then maybe you put your camera out and maybe you do the talk to your camera or your phone, right? And you record it on your phone and then you watch it back. That's not easy. It's not easy to give a speech to your phone.

I mean, it's not really hard either, but it's not like an easy action if you're not used to speaking, but you're working this new muscle of being courageous and then watching it back isn't easy. A lot of us don't like watching ourselves back, but watching yourself back, you'll be able to see what your audience, your audience would see your dog, but actually a real audience.

If you're going to do a talk on a stage, then you watch it back. Then maybe you do it again. Because now you've seen you've been a little bit funny in the video and you know how you can correct it and you can work on. Mastery so that you keep taking these steps and then eventually you do a talk in front of actual humans.

Right? But the 1st step was just what are you going to talk about? So, by the time you move into taking all these steps towards that big dream, you are a new person. You're you're not a beginner. After the beginning, you're in third grade, then in fourth grade, then in fifth grade with your goal, right? These things stack, your skills stack, and as your skills stack, as these steps stack, your brain actually changes.

You're, we're creating new neural pathways in your brain. I call it brain blazing. Think about trailblazing. If you're going out on a path and the ju, you're in the jungle and you're blazing a new trail in the jungle, so you have your machete and you're cutting. It's really hard at first. You're cutting through all the foliage and all the jungle, and you're cutting through all the bushes.

So at first it's really hard. It's a lot of effort. You're sweating. It's a lot of work. But then when you go back down that trail again, you might have to cut a little bit, but not as much. And then you keep going down, and then it becomes like the beaten down trail, right? It's a well trotted trail, so it's not hard anymore to go through that trail that you've already blazed.

Because it's not new anymore. You've done it. You keep doing it. It creates something new in this jungle trail that we're talking about. This is how our brains work. If you keep doing this thing, eventually your brain is going to shape shift, um, in a way that makes it more easy. So you keep going down this road in your brain, giving the talk or whatever your dream is.

Eventually those neural connections are stronger. It's easier. The person who does the 25th step towards the dream is not the person who does the second step. So we start where we are and we do what we can, and we just take each step is courageous. It might be scary AF to do that next step, but we just keep taking those steps and they stack up and they stack up to an entirely new life.

We quite literally. Walk ourselves into a new life, one small, courageous step at a time. Emotions shouldn't get to steal your dreams. Here's what I mean. Quite often when we want to go live our dream life, when we have a big dream on our heart, we start to take that action. It could be very uncomfortable.

We get slammed with fear, with doubt, maybe guilt, shame. Imposter syndrome, something comes up and stops us. So here's how we get through that. First of all, we expect it, expect the discomfort. Don't be surprised when it feels uncomfortable. When you start taking action towards your dream, don't let your feelings steal your dreams, expect that it's going to be uncomfortable and have a plan for it.

You can have a conversation with your emotions. It might sound weird, but it works. This is what I mean. Oh, there you are fear. I was expecting you. Oh, there you are doubt. I was expecting you is a very different than fear or doubt arrive and you stop and don't move forward towards your dream, fear and doubt arrive and you say, there you are, I was expecting you do a breath, shake your body, something, get rid of the emotion, get rid of the feeling ground back into what you want to do and continue moving forward.

Expect the discomfort. We can go a step further here. Courageous bestie, because I know you're here to be courageous, right? I'm here to be courageous too. Let's do this. Let's get courageous up in this jungle podcast. Here's what I mean. Not only do you expect discomfort, Embrace it, become friends with it, learn to love it.

Now that might sound like heresy, love discomfort. I'm inviting you to love discomfort. You could change your relationship with the discomfort, change your relationship with the so called negative feelings or the things inside of you that you would prefer not to feel. So there are sensations in your body.

We can call them emotions that you prefer not to feel, whether it's guilt, shame, doubt, anger, rage, anger, Anything anxiety, so you don't prefer to feel them, but they're here. So be with them, bring your consciousness into the sensations inside of your body. Where are they become curious to where the sensations physically are inside your body?

The ones that are emotions notice them and then boom, come back to conscious choice. Take that next step forward. You can be with your feelings without having them control your life. They don't need to jump into the driver's seat of your life. You can have the wheel of your life and drive it in the direction of your dreams, but you've got to do the consciousness work as well.

That's what I'm inviting you to do is the consciousness work. That's what I do. That's what I teach my students to do. That's what I'm teaching you to do here is instead of having a feeling arise and then stopping. Cause you don't want to have a feeling arise inside your body and then stopping and not pursuing your dream, right?

So when the feeling arises, notice it literally, where is it? Where is the feeling in your body? Notice it. Is it in your gut? Is it in your heart? Is it in your throat? Be one with the feeling, bring your consciousness into it, your awareness. Notice where the sensation physically is in your body. Then open your eyes again, take a breath and decide what you're going to do.

How are you going to move forward? What's the next step? Take that step. If it feels uncomfortable, notice where it feels uncomfortable. So when you move to a curiosity with your discomfort, you're no longer being dominated by it, but we can move even further. We can like, like seek it. I'm going to do things so that I can practice courage.

What's a courageous act. I could practice today. I'm practicing courage every day. What would be a courageous act that you could practice today? Like literally I'm asking you now, what would be a courageous act? That you could practice today. What do you want? Right? We start off with what do we want? What's your dream?

Big or small? It could be like a three year dream, a five year dream, a five minute dream. What's your dream? What is something that you want for yourself? What's something that feels impossible, but maybe just maybe it's possible. Maybe just maybe somebody else achieved it and therefore maybe just maybe you could achieve it too.

What do you want? What would the next step look like? Remember, we're not doing the 25th step right now on a 30 step plan. We're doing the 1st step and then the 2nd step and then the 3rd step. And by the time we do the 4th step, We're not the 1st stepper anymore. We're the 4th stepper. You know, we become the new people, the new person.

It doesn't require the same amount of courage to do step number 5 when you're on step number 4 as it would if you are on step number 1 because we're building that muscle. We're blazing that trail in our brain. We're Brain blazing, courageously brain blazing into living our dream lives. Now these dream lives might be big.

They might be small, whatever the dream is, right? My first dream in sobriety was to not have anxiety. I didn't even think that was possible. Was that maybe just, maybe the anxiety tax would one day go away. Otherwise, how the hell am I going to stay sober? How am I going to deal with all these emotions and all this anxiety?

If I can't drink, I can't drink because it'll kill me. That was clear. Alcohol was killing me. How do I stay sober with all of the emotional crap? So my biggest dream was to feel comfortable in my skin. And maybe that's where you're at right now. Now, remember the person who wants to feel comfortable in their skin on their first step towards their, and their second step, they're not the same person on their 30th or 100th step.

We change our brains by taking actions in the moment. So if you, if your current relationship with discomfort is one of avoidance, like mine was before I got sober, is drinking over it, is ignoring it, is doing cross addictions, like eating something, watching something, swiping left, right, whatever. If your relationship with discomfort is one of avoidance, uh, masking, covering, um, ghosting.

If you're ghosting your discomfort, you're going to have a very different life than if you're willing to befriend your discomfort, the invitation is to become, um, a discomfort lover, to learn, to love your discomfort and to learn, to be curious of it and what's going on and where is it and moving through it by getting grounded in it, grounding in our discomfort.

With what I've been saying on this podcast and really every episode of sobriety bested podcast I'll probably say it because it's probably the most important thing I can say really is to change your relationship with your thoughts and your feelings so that you're no longer being oppressed by your life that you're being liberated from unconscious behavior and unconscious thought patterns and and feelings coming up that you're not being controlled by this that you're free that you're liberated that you're more comfortable in your skin sober that you're courageously pursuing your dreams and Through the courageous pursuit of our dreams, we become confident.

That's how we become confident. Sober is we build up the competence because the more that you're courageous and taking these new actions. The more that you're building your ability to take these courageous actions, you're building your competence and you start stacking up your competence by stacking up your courageous actions and then you become confident because you keep doing the thing.

So you're confident that you can do the thing because you have all this evidence has stacked that you've been doing the thing. So now you're courageous and now you're competent and now you're confident. All because you were willing to allow the discomfort to be in your body while you still pursued your dream.

It sounds really simple when I say it like that, and we can complicate the F out of it, but it doesn't have to be that complicated. It's just, what's the next step. What's the next step forward. What would being courageous say, look like, let me know, DM me. What would it be? Send me a message. What would it be like, what's the next step forward?

What is your next courageous step forward? Start with your dream. And then what's the next step. I want to hear you claim it, claim it, claim it right now with me. Say it. I am courageous. This is courage. This is courage. So when you're being courageous and it feels uncomfy AF, then your mantra becomes, this is courage.

This is courage. This is courage. This is courage. That was my mantra when I was in early sobriety and I started taking courageous action aligned with my heart and my spirit. This is courage. Otherwise I could call it anxiety. I can call it doubt. I can call it fear. Those would all have been true, but I was doing the thing when we're doing the thing, it's courage.

So telling myself in my mind, because we can choose our mindset. If we want to be deliberate, which is the invitation here, this is courage. It was way more motivating for myself, way more helping me take the action to say in my head, literally to say in my head, this is courage. Then this is anxiety. This is fear.

This is doubt. All of it was true. If I didn't take the action, then it wouldn't be courage. But because I was taking the action, it was courage. So this is anxiety. This is doubt. This is fear. While they're true, it's also true that it's courage. This is courage. The commitment is to being courageous. Because that opens up our entire life.

It's the gateway emotion. When I was a kid, they talked about pot being the gateway drug. So when that was like, dare, then we remember the dare stuff, drug abuse, resistant education. We had like the dare shirts that came to our, I think it was like police officers came to our elementary school and told us about don't do drugs.

They're bad. Just say no there. So

the gateway emotion. To everything that unlocks everything in life that we really want for ourselves. All the desires, even the dreams that we think there's no way that it can be true is courage, a willingness to be courageous, a willingness to be uncomfortable for the sake of our dreams. Like, are you willing to feel uncomfortable for five seconds, for 20 seconds, for three minutes?

If that's the price tag for your dream, how bad do you want your dream? Are you willing to feel uncomfortable? And if you're in sobriety, it might feel a little bit. Harder to feel uncomfortable because we're the kind of people that don't want to feel uncomfortable to the point where we're going to drink alcohol, which is kind of literally a poison so that we don't have to feel our feelings.

I certainly did. I didn't want to feel uncomfortable. I never wanted to feel who wants to feel uncomfortable. Nobody, but when we're willing to feel uncomfortable, that's the small price tag. If I'm uncomfortable for one minute, I can live my dream for five minutes, for a week, for two minutes, for two seconds, for however long, you know, then I can actually be who I want to be in the world.

I'm thinking right now, like an early sobriety, I'd be in a recovery meeting and they'd call on me to speak. I would freak the F out. I had a proper phobia of public speaking of speaking in groups. And what I learned was is that if I just started speaking anyways, I would feel really, really uncomfortable.

I don't know, 30 seconds, a minute. The second they call my name, my anxiety spikes, my heart rate races, all of the stress chemicals, the biochemical experience in my body was very intense and I would start talking cause I felt like I had to do what they were saying in order to stay sober and I'd start talking and I'd like, you know, maybe I'm sniffling or crying cause I'm freaked out that I'm even talking in front of a group.

And then within a minute, like the emotions kind of calmed down a little bit because it's a biochemical experience. I got shot with adrenaline and all the stress chemicals. And then it kind of calms down. Then it's not as scary. Then after I'm done talking, maybe I'm like judging myself for what I said or didn't say, but I generally feel a lot better.

And then after the meeting, someone says, I really related to what you said, or thank you for sharing that. Or I'm so and so nice to meet you. Then you have a friend, right? Then you feel good that you actually did the thing that was scary. And that you, maybe you made a friend or whatever the time that we are courageous, we can look back and see all the benefits.

And then it wasn't that long that we were in the discomfort. So the amount of time that we're in the actual discomfort, that's the price tag that courageous besties, which is, you know, that we have to pay in order to live our dream. And it stacks, it stacks over time. We stack courage on courage, on courage, on courage, on courage.

And then our comfort zone gets so big. And then people are like, how did you do it? How are you living your dreams in sobriety? How are you getting through all that uncomfortable stuff? And you're like, just one day at a time. I'm just feeling a little bit uncomfortable for the sake of my dream. I'm just paying little, I'm paying little steps each, each day.

I'm paying a little bit, I'm paying a little bit of discomfort. And as I pay those little bits of discomfort every day, meaning I'm being courageous for the sake of my dream, the dividends stack, it becomes a compounding interest. Our entire life blooms and it looks nothing like it used to. People are like, how the hell did you get over your anxiety?

How are you sober? How are you living your dreams? How are you doing a Ted talk? How are you moving overseas? How are you doing a business? How are you doing all these things that obviously required a lot of courage? You're like, I'm a courageous bestie. I just, one day at a time, my courage is stacking up and it compounds over time.

So we're either not doing the things that scare us and our life shrinks and gets small, or we're doing this, doing the things that scare us that are aligned with our hearts and spirit or our dreams or desires, however you want to say it. And our life gets bigger and bigger and bigger. So the question is, what do you want?

You want your life to expand over time? Do you want your life to contract over time? The choice is yours. The cost is a willingness to be uncomfortable in the moment. Are you willing to feel discomfort? Let it be inside your body as you pursue your dreams. I'm drawn this home, this point home. I know I'm kind of repeating myself here because we can really simplify it like this.

I really hope that you adopt this mindset because it will, it can, it just might shift everything. And don't you want that for yourself? Don't you want an expanding life where you get to like, live a lot? If not all of your dreams, what if it is possible for you? What if you can overcome your anxiety? What if you can share your message with the world?

What if you can master your emotions? What if you can suffer less or not suffer at all? What if you can do all the dreams that you always wanted to do things that seem so impossible right now? What if the impossible was possible? What if, and what if you just took that next step? And then the next day, take the next step, and then the next step, and then what would happen?

You're stepping into a whole new life, right? New action leads to new life. And it starts to me with a commitment. To being courageous. So we commit to courage and when we're committed to courage as a principle that we live our life by this is literally what I did to shape shift my entire reality in early sobriety and brings up emotion because I was literally I was totally fucked.

I was afraid of everything. So I had to do something new for a new result. And so because I was afraid of leaving the house, I was afraid of driving on freeways and dogs and public speaking and having anxiety attacks every day. I made a commitment to myself. I'm willing to be as comfortable as long as it takes to recreate my life.

I'm just willing to be uncomfortable. I couldn't imagine what my life would be like when I did that. I was way beyond. My wildest dreams, I could not imagine that not only I'd overcome my phobia of freeway driving, that I would go on a 13, 000 mile USA road trip where I drove the entire time. Somebody who avoided freeways for three and a half years, drove for 95 days across America and drove on all the freeways.

Like in all these states, right? From California, all the way up to New York and Canada and down to Florida and Key West and all the way back. I could not have imagined that I'd go from a phobia of dogs to falling in love with a Bali dog, which is a quite aggressive breed that I was particularly afraid of.

And the Bali dog, my quarantine bestie was a Bali dog. I fell in love with this dog. I also went from a phobia of public speaking, as I've talked about to obviously doing this podcast for you today, but doing talks on stages and choosing public speaking as a major part of my career and the fear of leaving the house, I moved overseas for nearly a decade, living on an island, being a digital nomad.

So how do you go from full on phobias to living it out fully in the same category? Is a commitment to courage. So it doesn't matter what it is that you want right now. It matters that you commit to courage. And then each day you take that next step. And then as you take those steps, it adds up and you become a new person.

It's easier to do the big talk when you've given the talk to your dog first. It's easier to drive around the country when you drove around the block first. It's easier to move overseas and be a digital nomad when you first leave the house and walk to the recovery meeting, walk to the store, walk outside, you just do the next step and you become a new person and then new things are possible for you.

And then that's how we live a life beyond our wildest dreams. One courageous step at a time. Can you commit to that? Can you commit today right now to taking one courageous step today? What's that courageous step? Let me know. Claim it. Write it down. What's the courageous step you're going to take today?

That's all it is. What do you want? And what's the next step there? And tomorrow, do it again. And again. And again. And walk yourself deliberately into the life that's aligned with your heart and your spirit, with your dreams, with your goals, with whatever you want to be. You get to choose. You get to choose.

Does fear rule you? Or are you going to be courageous? It's a choice. It's a choice. You get to be courageous. You can choose to be courageous. You can do this. It's up to you. It might be a minute by minute thing, an hour by hour, day by day, week by week. We get a, we get to choose. This is like, you know, like Yoda in the forest or like, I don't know.

I had this wild ayahuasca experience. Maybe if you've done psychedelics, you know, I'm talking about where it's like, it's really clear that no matter whatever we're thinking is going to create our reality. If you're on psychedelics, it might be quite literally really scary, but we get to see through life's experiences that if I think fearful thoughts, I'm going to be limited and create a smaller, smaller, like contracting life.

If I think expansive thoughts and I take expansive moves, courageous moves, my life is going to open up and that's our choice. And that choice happens again and again. And again, we don't choose it once. We don't just one day take one courageous action. Now, there might be one action that makes a big change, like getting sober, the action of going to rehab for me created a big change.

Or it was deciding to go to rehab and then going to rehab. Right. And, but then I still had to choose every day to not drink in early sobriety. It wasn't easy to stay sober with all those feelings, right? We choose it every day. We choose courage every day. And when you choose courage every day, you are walking into a whole new life.

Bestie, courageous, bestie, um, a life beyond your wildest dreams. I know that in the next three to five to 10 years for me, I will be living a life beyond my wildest dreams today. Look, I am, I got sober in 2009, so I've been sober like a decade and a half at this point. I am currently living a life beyond my wildest dreams for when I couldn't stop drinking.

I could never have imagined that not drinking was possible. I could never have imagined that overcoming anxiety was possible. I am currently living. You are likely currently living to a life that is beyond your wildest dreams from a past self. There's no reason why you can't go forward, living a life beyond your wildest dreams.

And the way there is the commitment to courage. Commit to courage. I commit to courage. I commit to courage. Say it with me. I commit to courage. Even if you're like listening to this on a bus and people could hear you, I commit to courage. Even if you're watching this and someone's around you, I commit to courage.

Say it with me. I commit to courage. I commit to courage. I commit to courage. Say it with me. Say it out loud. I commit to courage. I commit to courage. Commit to courage. Commit to courage. Commit to courage. You can choose it. You can do it. You can commit to it. It's the path. It's the gateway. Courage is the gateway drug in sobriety or for anybody who wants to consciously create their lives.

Commit to courage. I commit to courage. I commit to courage. You feel that? You feel that? Does that feel good? Does that feel empowering? I feel empowered saying that. How do you feel saying that? I commit to courage. Are you still listening? This is getting weird. Let's just be courageous. Let's make that a deal.

Okay. Let's be courageous. Let's, uh, go on this whole podcast adventure together over the episodes. Be courageous. Let's change our entire lives. Won't that be fun? All right, Courageous Bestie, thank you so much for watching or listening to this episode and I will see you in the next episode. Have so much fun being courageous today.

​You got this. You can do it. Yeah. Tell me all about it. Let me know. Let a Courageous Bestie know how it goes. Bye.