Day 78

You hold all of the power.

 

Following on from yesterdays idea of not receiving; only creating, let’s take this idea even further….

YOU CANNOT HAVE ANY ONE ELSE’S EXPERIENCE

And no one else can have yours.
There is no giver of experience meaning that right now in this moment you can close your eyes and feel totally 100% in control of your life. You are in the driving seat of your car, and cars don’t go anywhere without an intention of where you are going; there is a plan, a map, a route entered into the sat nav. You would be shocked if your car decided it was going somewhere else and drove off in the opposite direction to where you had decided to go.

SO TAKE BACK YOUR POWER

Right now.
You are the ruler of your world, no one else.
Take that role back.
Right now.

There is a reality where you have it all, everything that you’ve ever imagined. And if you play small and keep going on the merry-go-round of addiction you are turning your back on that dream; saying NO to what is possible, what is available. And when you do that your dream sits on the shelf getting dusty, because no one else can have it. No one else has the same set of visions as you do, so it gets unused; unrealised, and what a shame that would be; what a waste.

So look before you.
See the opportunities.
If you have had the dream in your head, THEN IT IS POSSIBLE, because you couldn’t have thought of it if it wasn’t. Because you cannot have someone else’s experience:
You have your dreams
They have theirs
Each dream is different.

Think back and see if you can find a time when YOU had someone ELSE’S experience…..
…..you can’t come up with one because it’s impossible.
You can be with someone and have an experience together, but you still have separate experiences of the same event, which are slightly different from each other.

This is what it means to fully take responsibility for yourself; to fully recognise that YOU are creating your own experience with your beliefs, thoughts, words and actions. And until you can fully OWN this fact then you are going to struggle during your recovery, but once you do KAPOW! It all makes sense! You take BACK your power, get in your car of life, decide where you are going, and drive off into the amazing future of your dreams.

That’s what we did yesterday on retreat.
Let go of the old way of doing things.
Drew a line in the sand.
And began to build the life we WANT for ourselves.

It’s all out there for the taking.
So don’t leave your dreams up on the shelf neglected.
Get them down and dust them off.
BELIEVE in yourself and them.
For they are yours and yours only, there to be enjoyed.
So what is holding YOU back from doing that?

 

Day 79

Prioritising Your Feelings

 

 

We have it all back to front; we go through life putting everyone else first, and then wonder why we are stressed, tired, anxious and resentful. Giving from an empty cup does this and it’s easy to get angry, lash out and say “f*ck it I need a drink”.

The times I look on Facebook and see a stressed out mum say,
“Ggggrrrrr the kids have played up today, thank god it’s wine o’clock”
“Oh I really need this tonight”

When what they really need is to fill that empty cup up and look after themselves.
This is the chain of events when we take that drink which we falsely believe is ‘helping’ us and calming us:

• Drink a glass of wine =
• A toxin is now in your body =
• Your body is now on red alert and stops all digestion from happening so that it can deal with getting this poison out first =
• Intoxication; you have taken yourself away from reality, away from your loved ones; you have stuck two fingers up at your life =
• Body goes into dehydration =
• Your brain shrinks =
• You are now in a highly acidic state and craving all sorts of rubbish food of which you have no control over consuming =
• YOU ARE NOT YOURSELF, YOU’VE CHANGED INTO SOMEONE ELSE

When I look back on this I can see that what I was actually doing was running away from standing up and dealing with my problems. I eagerly turned into this ‘other’ person who I could hide behind and pretend that x, y and z wasn’t happening. However x, y and z was always still there once the booze wore off and I still had to deal with it at some point if I were to move on.

So we’ve got to get to the feelings that are underneath, take care of ourselves so that our cup is always FULL. Have a level of connection, through meditation, straight to our feelings so that we can act on the warning signals BEFORE the triggers take hold.

And each of us are different in ways we can fill our cups up. Mine starts with an early night and good nights sleep, which leads to waking up refreshed, which leads to good choices first thing of journalling, meditating and exercise. Then I want to have a healthy breakfast, and my day snowballs positively from there.

From that splendid start you can deal with the small issues as they come up during the day, you are strong and ready for the bullets. In fact nothing can touch you from this place because you are ready for all of life. There can be no f*ck it moments from here because you are full of self-love and self-worth. And not only that; it is now actually overflowing from you and because you are in such a good place your loved ones can see you are strong and happy rather than about to break and they respond differently to you.

You have just had an effect on them simply from your attitude to yourself.
** Can you comprehend the power in that **
NO WORDS EVEN NEED TO BE SAID
It all comes from the fact that you prioritised yourself and your feelings. 
Your experience will be reflected back to you in the form of what you see externally, directly from your beliefs.
You are screaming inside = your kids will play that our externally
You are fighting with your partner in your head = your partner will shout at you and confirm what you were playing out
You are crying out for a drink/cake/line = someone will physically offer it to

CHANGE THE STORY
CHANGE YOUR FREQUENCY
PRIORITSE YOUR FEELINGS

Day 80

Who Are You Underneath The Addiction?

 

 

Ultimately what I teach is to connect to who you really are. To peel away the outer layers of ‘life’; your responsibilities, stresses, expectations and layers and layers of conditioning that has been placed upon and around you by society.

But Who Are You Underneath All That?

Perhaps you’ve never looked, or perhaps you have and found the process strange or scary. Or maybe you have had glimpses of your true unlimited self but that part of you gets covered over once more when you become overwhelmed once more with ‘life’.

What is more important though?
Getting caught up in day to day life?
Or spending a little time each day looking within and connecting to who you really are?

For me the part of the day that I stop my outer world from whirling around and carrying me off centre is the most important. Right now I am eagerly anticipating sitting on my cushion because meditation is the next part of my daily self-care routine (after writing my daily blog), and I know that I am going to reconnect to pure essence; my very spirit. I actually get really really excited about it!

For freedom, happiness, love, abundance, contentment and all of what we want to feel on a daily basis is ALREADY within us. You can’t genuinely get that stuff from others.
What other people give us is MOMENTARY happiness but the stuff that lasts all day comes from within. And meditation is the fast track to that connection; you will learn HOW to travel inside and discover the bounty that awaits.

So right now as you read this, close your eyes before you go any further and connect to your breathing and to your BEING-NESS.
Nobody else can ever experience what you are witnessing right now = your breath
Nobody else can ever experience what you are witnessing right now = your heart beat
Nobody else can ever experience what you are witnessing right now = your body
Nobody else can ever experience what you are witnessing right now = your EXPERIENCE

Celebrate who you are in this moment
Celebrate the wonder of your experience
Celebrate the uniqueness of your situation

And if you have no idea about who you are underneath the layers of what society has placed upon you then you have an amazing journey ahead of you, one which never ends and brings adventure after adventure. Finding passion and purpose along the way.
Uncovering your greatness.
And all of the answers are there within, there is nothing that you don’t know that you need to.
Freedom is waiting for you to discover.
Love is anticipating your attention.
True deep lasting internal eternal happiness; the type that sticks around even when it seems like your outer world is crashing in around your head, is anticipating your arrival. You can’t get it from someone else, you cannot find it outside of yourself, it all lies within….

Day 81

We Are All The Same Underneath

 

 

This weekend we had some members of Initiatives of Change International come to stay and spent much time discussing the meaning of life and how we progress into the future.
The movement was led for a number of years by the previous owner of our house, Peter Howard, with its roots going back to the 1930’s and a link to Alcoholics Anonymous. When Dominic and I found out about this coincidence a few years ago we felt we had been led to this group and began to get involved. The groups founder Frank Buchman and Howard were both Christian and this weekend I prayed as well as meditated, and had my eyes opened to our similarities….

What struck me over and over again was how Dominic and I as Buddhists have the exact same views as our Christian cousins. The only differences in the conversations were some of the language, with everything that we were all saying a complimentary mix of flavours creating an amazing recipe for the future.

Ultimately we are all the same underneath.
We all want to feel happy and healthy.
We all want to help others wherever we can.
We all want to serve humankind in our own unique way.
It was a beautiful meeting of minds, with the same one word being repeated over and over again from everyone in the room:
TRUTH

Living from truth.
Basing your life on truth.
Breathing, believing, speaking, acting in truth.
We all have it in common and it doesn’t matter what religion or non-religion you call that. It is living from the heart; the giving and receiving of love; being honest with yourself about where you want to go in life.

This weekend there was a deep and beautiful spiritual bond that went beyond labels and specific beliefs; it was more a meeting of intentions, and it opened my heart up even more. So get out of your head and the details, and into your heart and how you want to feel; live from that place xx

 

Day 82

Conversations Of An Emerging World

 

Every now and again a video comes along that makes so much sense to you that you have to watch it over and over again. Every single word that is said rings true and your whole soul says YES I AM WITH YOU.

This video did that to me eight months ago, and since then I have been sharing it with my tribe over and over again. And I realised that I haven’t yet shown it to this group so today is the day to do that. I hope you enjoy it as much as me and it is only four minutes long; four minutes that could change your life!

Click the screen below or here to watch, and enjoy….

 

Day 83

Unbelievable Sober Strength In Adversity

Getting sober and finding freedom doesn’t mean that life’s other troubles go away, but it does give you a different perspective to everything in your life.
I met Richard just over a year ago. He actually arrived straight from the hospital to undertake our residential retreat for drug and alcohol addiction, and amazingly has been sober ever since. Tragically Richards brother Adrian has a brain tumour which has obviously devastated the family, and up until a year ago Richard was causing the family more stress from his manic behaviour. There was an intervention of sorts and my husband Dominic and I spoke in depth to both of his parents, who were at their wits end.
What all of us have witnessed over this past year is nothing short of inspirational
In his sobriety Richard has supported his brother through the final period of his life, his family through their struggle to say goodbye, and still had time to support many on the QS forum. And he says himself that he could NEVER have done any of that if he was still drinking and drugging. Sadly Adrian passed peacefully away yesterday morning, and I’d like to dedicate today’s Daily Motivation to him and Richard. 

Richard has shown how sobriety can actually become your STRENGTH in adversity rather than a weakness. He has demonstrated how connecting to his truth he has accessed his heart and been able to open it fully; sharing it generously with his family.

Us addicts are not weak you know, we’ve just directed our strength into destroying ourselves rather than building ourselves up and channelling that energy into that which supports us. So imagine now that you can redirect the river, just like Richard has, and create the life that you deserve.

Last week I interviewed Richard just after his soberversary and I’ve not yet had a chance to edit the film, but I will get that done this week so that I can share his story in his own words. He has blown me away with his strength, determination, courage, compassion and LOVE this past year and it has been an honour and privilege to have been part of that journey. So this blog is dedicated to these two brothers xxxx

 

 

Day 84

“Quantum Sobriety Changed My Life”

 

This film is dedicated to Adrian Vitoria 1970 – 2016 

Richard walked into our lives just over a year ago as a very different person to who he is today. There was pretty much an intervention with both parents getting involved and he arrived straight from the hospital where he had taken an overdose.

In November 2015 Richard did the QS residential retreat and has been part of the online community since then. 1st November 2016 marked his one year of total sobriety from drugs, alcohol and anti-depressants.

It has been a privilege to watch this man literally turn his life around; rebuilding broken relationships with his friends and family. But not only that, his brother has been desperately sick with a brain tumour all of this year and Richard was able to ‘show up’, with his brother saying “you’re no longer scary”. What Richard has given himself is priceless; a year with his brother with full clarity and full presence.

It was just four days after filming this that Richards brother passed away peacefully, and all merit gained from sharing this video and message is dedicated to the memory of Adrian and his whole family in their grief.

Richard has handled himself with dignity and grace throughout this past year. He inspires the QS community and brings hope to new members just beginning their sobriety journey. He is a shining example of how Quantum Sobriety®️ is changing peoples lives and i’d like to thank Richard for sharing his message of transformation with the world.

 

 

Member Quote’s Of The Week.

 

In this section you will read something that has been said by one of the Quantum Sobriety Online Programme members over on the very lively private forum:

 

“I have a habit of running to wine because I am either doing too much or taking on too much. I have realised I do it to get a break. Not only physical but mental too……Now I read and meditation is also my saviour. I enjoy the simple things in life now and I try not to think that I’m letting people down if I say no. I now actually explain to them that I need me time because if I don’t then I will get stressed, depressed and turn to drink which I do not want to do” D, Online Programme, UK

 

“I’m home from the most amazing experience – a 5 day retreat at Quantum Sobriety. I was extremely sceptical and nervous, but my eyes are now open. Thank you to Jo, Dom, Nikki and Tommy as well as my fellow guests. I’ll always remember this week as a rebirthing of my new life x” S, Residential Retreat and Online Programme, UK

 

“18 months ago today I had my last drink. At the end of January of this year I had 8 months of sobriety under my belt, but I didn’t feel free. Stopping drinking had thrown up all sorts of feelings and questions about myself, along with the realisation that whilst I used alcohol as a crutch to become who I thought I should be, I didn’t actually like that person very much. The self-confidence I thought I’d had, had evaporated and I knew I needed some tools to work through all of this. I still felt like I was missing out, and I knew if this carried on I’d never stick to my sobriety. Amazingly, 2 days before the programme started, I came across QS via Jo’s Webinar on Soberistas and signed up. In the period since I’ve been part of QS I have had my wedding, honeymoon, 25 year college reunion dinner as well as some health investigations. I can honestly say that I doubt that I’d have been able to stay sober through these things if it wasn’t for the accountability, support and tools that QS has given me and the strong desire to still be part of this amazing community. Thank you ” H, Online Programme, UK

 

“Sitting here 8 days AF feeling physically fine and emotionally happy at the prospect of becoming mentally free of alcohol. The message from Jo that what you do now affects your future happiness and perception of yourself resonated with me. I don’t want to live in a cycle of shame and regret gnawing at the pit of my stomach.” S, Online Programme, UK

 

“At 11:20 am my darling brother Adrian passed a way. I was lucky to see him last night and we managed a high five. He went peacefully with his wife. I have had this past year had a very special year and a privilege to have been able to care for him. I am so thankful for my soberity!! As Adrian said to me this year ” You are no longer scary!” His love and light will be with me forever. I miss him so much. XX” Richard, Residential Retreat & Online Programme, UK

“You are a truly amazing man to have maintained sobriety through all these difficulties and you have given so much to your brother. Be very proud of yourself and take strength from the fact that your brother spent and enjoyed time with the sober you and is now at peace. You are an inspiration! With love xxxx”

“So very sorry to hear of your brother’s passing Richard. Reading your comments here on QS as you have journeyed by your brother’s side has been nothing short of inspirational. Hopefully the love and kindness you showed to him will go someway to help heal your loss over time. God bless xx”

“Can’t imagine what it would be like to lose my brother. I am SO glad you gifted him with your sobriety and presence and that would have brought him so much comfort and peace. Sending you lots of love ”

“Sending you love Richard. Your sobriety through such a tough time is inspirational….you are fantastic brother, brother in law Support to all around you. Your brother is at peace now.X“

“You are one amazing man & Adrian must’ve been so grateful for all your love & support this last year. My sincere condolences xx”

“sorry to hear your sad news and thinking of you. Stay strong. You have come such a long way. x”

“Your presence in this year has meant so much to so many.”

“Sending Love Richard – You’re strength in sobriety with such challenging times is Inspirational x”

“What an amazing and strong man you are Richard. Your sobriety is something to be proud of, and Adrian left his body knowing you are well and free. What a blessed gift that is for your brother and your family. Love and peace x”

Just some of the community support for Richard this week