Olivia Farrelly is a Trauma-Informed Alcohol-Free Coach and Mentor with an MSc in Health Psychology. Olivia is the host of No More Booze- The Podcast, an award-winning podcast that is breaking new ground in Ireland’s sober-curious space.
Olivia has spent over 20 years in programme delivery and is now using her expertise to help hundreds of people remove alcohol from their lives. Her mission is to destigmatise over-drinking and inspire others to experience the freedom, joy and vitality that an alcohol-free life unlocks.`
You can connect with Olivia at:
www.greyareadrinker.ie
No More Booze - The Podcast | Podcast on Spotify
https://open.spotify.com/show/037RmUDIJ3hW44FI5YLRjN
Instagram (@greyareadrinker)
Books Olivia Mentions:
Drink by Ann Johnston
Drink by Professor David Nutt
Olivia's affirmation: “i get more of what I am"
_______________________________________________________
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to The High Vibration Reset, the podcast for women
ready to step into their next level of success without
burnout, overthinking, or ever feeling undervalued.
I'm Kyra Conlon, your host, and I've spent the past 18 years
helping ambitious women to shifttheir mindset, their energy and
(00:24):
lead with more confidence. So welcome to episode 3 of the
podcast with Olivia Farrelly. Now Olivia is a trauma informed,
alcohol free coach and mentor. She also has an MSC in Health
Psychology and she. Is the host of.
(00:44):
The No More Booze Podcast, an award-winning podcast that is
creating space for Ireland's sober curious.
Now. Olivia has spent over 20 years
in program delivery, but she's now using her expertise to help
hundreds of people remove alcohol from their lives.
(01:08):
And her goal is to destigmatize overdrinking and inspire others
to experience the freedom, joy and vitality that an alcohol
free life unlocks. So in this episode, I chatted to
Olivia about how alcohol lowers our vibration and how it can
(01:31):
negatively impact our energy andemotional state.
How it contributes to things like anxiety, feelings of shame,
guilt, and just an overall low vibration.
So Olivia shared her personal experience and when you hear her
(01:53):
toe you will be emptying those bottles of wine down the sick.
Because Olivia is a high vibration individual and really
a testament to what living alcohol free can do for you.
So if you are sober curious or if you just want to hear more
(02:15):
about how we can live in high vibration, I know you're going
to enjoy this episode. But as always, let us know what
you thought in the comments. And if you're enjoying the
podcast, please make sure you'refollowing.
We don't want you to miss any episodes.
So, let's dive into the episode,and I hope you enjoy the
(02:39):
conversation. Hello and welcome to the High
Vibration Reset and welcome to Olivia Farley.
Thank you so much for agreeing to come on the podcast, Olivia.
Umm, I am really looking forwardto this conversation and I know
(02:59):
a few people I know are also looking forward to this
conversation. So for those of you who don't
know Olivia, Olivia is an alcohol free coach and mentor
and she's the host of no more Booze podcast.
So you may have heard her before, but, uh, Olivia, I have
(03:20):
lots of questions for you that I, uh, I think lots of people
are going to benefit from, but if you wouldn't mind starting
off with just tell us a little bit more about who you are and
maybe your own relationship withalcohol and how you started to
do what you do. Yeah, thanks for having me,
(03:42):
Kira. Podcasts on my life.
I love them. I'd say I listen to 10 a day,
but yeah. So I'm Olivia, I'm 44, I'm
married. I have two small children.
Well, they're ten and eight, I suppose.
In terms of my relationship withalcohol, I gave it up almost
seven years ago. So in the 4th of July 2018, I
(04:06):
began drinking as a teenager like everybody else.
I went to university, I drank like everybody else.
I did a master's, actually I didn't drink that much.
My master's. I travelled around the world.
So I, I, I suppose when I look back, I drank mildly at some
stages of my life, heavily at others and not at all at others.
(04:28):
So I had a very typical relationship with alcohol in of
when I looked at other people around me, but it was woven into
so many aspects of my life. Umm, it definitely provided part
of my identity. Umm So if we look at
celebrations, nights out, connections, everywhere I went,
(04:50):
almost everywhere I went, there was alcohol involved.
Now, I suppose in the run up to me giving it up, we were never
home drinkers. Me and my husband Gary, we
didn't really drink at home. We might share a bottle of wine,
but it wasn't nightly thing. I suppose that I would have
poured a glass of wine. It was more to do with
connection. And so, uh, I suppose when I had
(05:11):
kids, and I know this from working with a lot of clients as
well, when they have kids, your life drastically changes.
So what you were able for beforehand, you're not really
able for afterwards. So we were getting a lot less
sleep. Umm, we were more sleep
deprived. There was less time for us.
So, umm, when I go out, you know, maybe once a month, I
(05:32):
suppose that's 3536, I'd drink and I'd feel the effects for 5-6
days, right? So in terms of my motivation, my
consistency, whereas I was able to stay in bed, you know, on a
Sunday and really recover from ahangover.
When I had kids, I wasn't able to do that.
So a series of events. Listen, 2018 was kind of like a
(05:55):
desert compared to what it's like now in terms of alcohol
free, sober curiosity, all thesekind of blood work buzzwords.
So a lot has changed since then.So when I became sober curious,
I didn't know I was sober curious.
I didn't consciously go into sober curiosity.
I just knew that I couldn't feellike I was feeling.
So there was a number of events.I won't bore anybody, I'm sure
(06:19):
if you're listening to this and you know, you drink, you know
that sometimes you drink too much and you feel really bad as
a result. So there was a few of those and
then one day enough was enough. I was sick and tired, sick and
tired, and my wise became too big.
I wrote a list of them, six of them.
(06:39):
But something big happened. As in, there was a click.
There was a resolve within me and I knew I'd never drink again
because I couldn't, couldn't keep feeling the way I was
feeling. I wasn't at my best, I was
stuck. I was.
I know all this now because I do.
So much self reflection, but notknowing then I didn't know it
was the thing that was keeping me stuck.
(07:00):
It was nothing else, you know. And not only do you know it now,
but I suppose you've seen from working with so many people the
exact same pattern happen again and again.
Absolutely. And when they come to me, I can
see them. I can see them and me.
I can see me and them. You know, that kind of small,
stagnant and oh, I don't know ifI can do it.
And you know, how, how, what will my life be like?
(07:23):
What will my identity be? You know, how will people accept
me? There's absolutely very real
fears and real fears, especiallybecause we live in this country
where our identity internationally, but also among
ourselves is seen as really gorgeous, jovial, great crack
and the alcohol loosens itself. Absolutely.
(07:46):
But I suppose when is the time that you have to act in the
fullness of who you are and say,oh, it's not actually going that
well for me. So, you know, OK, so I, I have
low, low level anxiety. My mood is very inconsistent.
I'm very inconsistent. I've lack of motivation.
I might be high performance, butI might have a silent depletion,
(08:10):
you know, So it's all these things that people need to ask
themselves. And I suppose having a little
bit of faith, having that, you know, faith and believing in
other people that they say, you know, when people say giving up
alcohol is the best thing that will ever happen, believe them.
Put your trust. You know, because I've well
(08:32):
over, I'm approaching 80 guests on my podcast now, some world
renowned coaches, people from all walks of life and every
single one of them say the exactsame thing.
They give it nobody. Absolutely nobody.
Yeah. And there might be a phase
between, you know, solidifying the new habits, of course, where
(08:53):
it might be a bit tough, but ultimately it's the best thing
that ever anybody ever does. It's what you're hearing, yeah.
Absolutely. Well, what I'm hearing, what I'm
seeing, what I'm feeling as well.
So, and I suppose what, what happened for me is that I decide
I went back to university, I hadthis incredible passion for it.
(09:14):
I was like, people to know this,you know, went back to UL, did a
course down there, then retrained as a coach, launched
the podcast. And I know I'm not alone.
And I suppose that's the greatest thing about being a
human being. We think we're alone.
But when we come into community and we start speaking up about
something, we know that we're not alone.
(09:34):
It's so powerful that our experience is universal, that
humans generally go through the same levels of development.
So like, you know, OK, so alcohol could have had lots of
benefits when we were in our 20sand very few costs.
But then the scales begins to turn, you know, so there's far
more costs than there is actually benefits.
And it's, it's realizing that point at your life where you go,
(09:58):
OK, it's, it's costing too much.It's taking more than it's
given. And it's taking responsibility
for that. That's it.
Important. We use the term Olivia Gray area
drinking. So what exactly does that mean?
Yeah, so I suppose when I talk about it, it's from my own
perspective. So when I look at it, I was a
(10:18):
Gray area drinker. I personally never felt
physically dependent on alcohol,you know, so I never felt the
need to get up and that my Physiology needed that drink.
So I could easily have none. I could, but when I had one, it
was kind of an all or nothing's type scenario.
So if we look at Gray area drinking, it's somewhere between
(10:40):
kind of the now and again drinker, the person who can have
half a glasses, uh, Prosecco andcarry on living their lives.
And then the person who's, I suppose what we typically know
and see as rock bottom drinking.And then maybe somewhere in the
middle, it's somebody who can, you know, that they might make
rules around their drinking. They can rarely have just one
and it doesn't look like there'sa problem on the inside, but
(11:03):
they're kind of questioning it on the inside.
There's a lot of negative thingslike anxiety and regret, guilt,
shame, all those low vibration feelings.
Yeah. And, and what do you think is
the normal, like is there a normal type of drinker in Irish
women, you know, normal professional women?
(11:25):
Is there a certain type that yousee more than others or is it
just a range of well? It, it's a range of, but I
suppose what people come to me, uh, because they resonate with
what that, what I'm saying and what I've said.
So it's typically, uh, somebody who came of age in the 80s or
90s where there was that push todrink more, there was more
(11:47):
economic freedom. People had their own money.
They were able to. It was a bit of a ledet culture
that was kind of, uh, by osmosiscame from the UK over to here,
that kind of thing of we can keep up with the boys, you know?
And so they, I suppose, you know, came of age drinking the
Alco pops and then the mommy wine culture, the pink my drink
(12:10):
phenomenon. And they're literally drinking
in similar ways to what they didin their teens and their 20s.
But physiologically, our body can't keep up with it.
So, you know, there's a lot of changes that happen.
And certainly I suppose women inperimenopause and menopause are
common to me with sleep disturbances, low level anxiety,
(12:30):
like that kind of dullness. So they're just not thriving
now. They're not at rock bottom.
They're at one of my favorite clients said to me, they're at
rock middle. So it's not rock bottom.
We're in the rock middle, functioning really well, but
just not getting the most out oflife, you know?
Right, right. So as you know, this podcast is
(12:50):
about living in high vibration and that is kind of that our
thoughts, our emotions and our habits and actions are aligned
with a positive forward focus, let's say.
So you know, when we're in high vibration, we can have a
positive impact on our own livesas well as the lives of those
(13:11):
around us. So what is the biggest negative
impact of alcohol on that? So how does alcohol disrupt
coherence or high vibration? Yeah.
So if you look at how we feel with a hangover, right,
typically, and I've, you know, this is across the board, guilt,
(13:33):
shame, regret. If you have a tendency to black
out, then there's a lot of self flagellation, self loathing
right there. If we think of an like an
emotional scale, they're at the very bottom.
Things like lethargy, right? You don't care, you don't care
about going to the gym, you don't care about letting your
(13:53):
friends down. It's that very low vibration.
So Alka, and we all know, we allknow, I'd say every single
person has said this in their lives.
Alcohol is a depressant, right? So, so it makes us feel low, it,
uh, depresses our central nervous system.
We're not light, we're not joyful generally.
So you can only think about the bad things that you did.
(14:15):
There may be low level anxiety, low level mood, you mightn't be
very stable, you mightn't be very regulated.
And then it affects our prefrontal cortex.
So we don't make the best decisions when we're under the
influence, right. So, and, and, you know, I had a,
a doctor on my own podcast a couple of months ago and she
said that, uh, you know, umm, levels of cortisol are still
(14:38):
very high in our system even a week after a drink, you know,
wow, it affects so much that we don't know about, right.
And there's so much research coming out now.
Like I think you'd need to be very, your, your head needs to
be in the sand if you're trying to ignore it because it kind of
is everywhere. All the research there.
(14:58):
But if conversely, then you takeit out so you've nothing
dragging you down. So every morning you wake up,
it's clarity now, within reason,of course, right?
Like what? Clarity, joy, consistency,
passion, motivation, enthusiasm,optimism.
So you can make better choices because you're consistent.
(15:20):
So it's not this, you know, hamster wheel of, you know, am I
here again? And then you're like, you have
all these goals on a Monday, butthey're gone by Friday because
maybe you had a couple of glasses of wine on the Thursday
night to Friday night to Saturday night.
You know, who wants to live their life?
Meh. You don't want to be grand.
You want to be great. Absolutely not.
(15:42):
Yeah. Yeah.
Well, what about just one glass every now and again?
Does that still disrupt that flow?
Yeah, just based on even what I said a minute ago, it would
still, it would still. Well, I have found anyway, it
would still, you know, impede our thoughts so our it blocks
our creativity. But also, if we're talking about
(16:04):
all or nothing Gray area middle lane drinkers, 1 is never
enough, you know? So one tends to lead into 234
because of the balls and the feeling that ish evokes within
us. And have you seen Olivia
connection with alcohol and burnout?
I mean is that? Yeah, yeah, absolutely,
(16:24):
absolutely. Well, if you look at alcohol and
its effect on our sleep, right? So obviously sleep is incredibly
important for our mental health,for our physical health.
And you know, when we drink too much, and I know this has been
well covered and especially at the age of maybe women in
midlife, if you're choosing to, I think it was doctor Mary
Claire Hafer said this, if you're choosing to have a drink,
(16:46):
you're choosing not to sleep, you know, so alcohol then, you
know, we've a series of mini, mini awakenings during the night
when we have alcohol in our system as it's trying to leave
our system. And then, you know, we don't get
into that R.E.M. that powerful sleep.
So, you know, it doesn't have that restorative effect.
And we all know this. You wake up and you think you've
(17:08):
had eight hours sleep, but you're never, you're never going
at full pace like you you would if you weren't drinking, you
know? Yeah, yeah.
A couple of years ago I gave up alcohol and it was my reasoning
at the time was to take back thecontrol.
So at the time it wasn't about, you know, I didn't have a
(17:29):
problem with drinking. I was an an habitual drinker,
Yes. And obviously all of the
research that I had done about habits and good habits and bad
habits, and it was a lot of whatyou are describing, that I'd
have a drink, I'd regret it, I'd, you know, feel low, dull.
And so for me, it was about I want to take control of this.
(17:54):
I don't want to be having a drink just because my husband's
having a drink or just because it's Friday night or whatever,
all of this. But what I started to realize
while I was doing this was that it was a lot about my mind.
So it was the beliefs that I had, you know, So we say it
(18:15):
helps us relax. I presume just what you've said
about the sleep, it's not helping us relax at all.
What it? Is.
Numbing our emotions. Is that fair to say?
Yeah, absolutely. And you know, a lot of people
that I work with have very, verystressful jobs.
So they, you know, are, I don't want to say misguided, but they
(18:40):
have a belief system that maintains that if we have a
drink that it will basically calm us and calm our nervous
system. And it does.
And you know, you have a glass of wine and the shoulder drop
happens. But we all know that it just
temporarily numbs it and it comes back even stronger the
next day. So what we put off today, we get
(19:02):
double tomorrow, you know, So it's it's a huge amount about
relearning how to feel, how to cope, how to, you know, sit with
big emotions. And I suppose, but I've learned
from my own experience as a human on Earth, right, is that
when we have these massive feelings, overwhelm, underwhelm,
(19:23):
disappointment, rage, guilt, whatever it is how we we can't
sit with them. We weren't taught how to cope as
kids, you know, So what do we do?
We have a cigarette, we eat the bit out, we drink our heads off,
pick up the phone. And I even noticed that myself,
you know, and you know, if I have an overwhelming emotion or
(19:44):
feeling, I'll grab the phone andthen I'll be like, no, no, no,
no, no, put the phone away. You know, So it's all right.
Developing self-awareness, becoming a a detective in your
own life. Just looking at what are, you
know, what is my belief system? OK, Do I think that sober people
are dull or boring? Have I bought into that
(20:06):
glamorizing, romanticizing alcohol and myth?
You know, I'm not anti booze, Kira.
I'm not A lot of people around me drink.
My husband drinks. I have no judgement on that.
What I'm saying is. I can't drink right now at this
phase of my life. I can't say I didn't enjoy
(20:26):
drinking because I did. That would be a lie, right?
But there was, it was knowing when it was time to stop.
Now it was probably time to stop10 years before, you know, but
better late than never. And I, it's, it's all for me.
I'm definitely a spiritual seeker.
It's very much what is my path And definitely it was divine
(20:47):
timing for me. Fabulous.
That sounds, yeah. You were lucky that you you
sought it out at the time that you did.
It's interesting though as well that you know, all of these kind
of emotion numbing habits that we have.
Did you see that when you moved from alcohol that you, you know,
(21:10):
sought out something else? Did you start shopping or eating
or? I love all of those things.
I shop and eat to my hearts content.
No, do you know what? So I notice certain things about
myself, right? So and I notice these patterns
and other people. So I'm highly sensitive, right?
I spent my entire life being highly sensitive and possibly an
(21:32):
empath, right? Yes, an empath, right?
Yeah. So highly sensitive and maybe a
bit of ADHD. We haven't done the test yet,
right. So a very overactive mind, a
very mind that's prone to obsessing about things.
I'm, I don't think, and I've talked to my therapist about
this a lot, right. So I don't think I've an
addictive personality. I've an obsessive 1.
(21:53):
So I hyper focus on things and then I forget about them, right.
But what happens is so when I gave up, I went.
It was a lovely time in my life.You know, I'm I'm a real self
help queen. I resort to podcasts, books.
That's always been my modus operandi from I was about 17 or
18. So I loved kind of reading and.
(22:15):
Learning. Absolutely.
But what I I went hell for leather into I exercise, so that
gave me a lot of clarity, right?I did a lot of hit stuff and I
went hell for leather well into,uh, cleaning my own gut health.
So repairing my gut did a lot ofstuff work on that.
And I was able then to access a lovely bit of intuition, did a
(22:38):
bit of meditation. Still do it.
You know, all those gorgeous affirmation works and, and as
well, you know, a few CBT tools like catch it, challenge it,
change it. When I catch myself, let's say
catastrophizing something, right?
And the fear sets in. I I have a few little umm,
affirmations that I say it's like, no, no, no, if not this,
(23:01):
there's better things out there.And my favorite one at the at
the minute is I get what I am right.
So it's a very conscious. So I want to be bliss.
I want to be content, I want to have peace, I want to energy
have love, all of these gorgeousthings.
And when I, I, you know, I'm happiest when I'm feeling like
that, but also I'm C in control of my feelings.
(23:24):
So I set the tone for how I feel.
So if I'm not feeling great, if I've a low vibe in the morning,
so I listen to music, I'll do a beautiful meditation.
I'll move my body, so I'll move that emotion, emotion out of my
body. Do a lot of that kind of, um,
you know, breath work and movingthings out and you know, it's,
(23:47):
it's funny, like our body alwaysremembers.
I tasted something the other dayand it brought me right back to
1996 because it was wow. It was a Taco for I so and it
was literally like I used to eatthese like 25 years ago, right?
Or maybe more. My maths always gets me in
trouble. But like the body remembers.
(24:09):
So we need to, we need to out maneuver our own physical and
our own memory as well. So it's it's a huge journey of,
I suppose, biological, psychological and social
transformation. We have to attack it from a lot
of different angles. That seems like very tough work,
(24:30):
but it just happens incrementally.
It's the greatest this giving upof alcohol is the greatest
personal development journey anyone will ever go on.
So this is it, you know, and you've got a lot of a lot of
things there that I, I want to pick, come back to habit
replacement. But I think this is the thing.
It's that most people with theirrelationship with alcohol, now,
(24:55):
I might be, that might be a sweeping statement.
But you know, a lot of the people that we come across that
don't like their drinking habits, it's not that they have
an alcohol problem. It's that they're using alcohol
for a reason, to soothe themselves, to hide their
(25:15):
emotion, to not deal with what'sgoing on in their lives.
Yeah. Is that fair to say?
Yeah, or it's to connect, to connect with somebody, to
connect with themselves, an older part of themselves, a
Wilder, more carefree version ofthemselves that they might have
lost along the way. But it's a stress relief as
(25:37):
well. So a huge amount of the women I
and it's generally women. I've four men that I've worked
with on hundreds of women now atthis stage.
But they do it for stress relief.
So they have, the mental load isintense and they might have
outrageously, uh, stressful jobswith lots of, uh, you know, lots
(25:59):
of responsibility and they come home.
And the easiest way to stop thinking about, I suppose, stop
that overthinking, the overthinking mind is the quick
glass of red wine or white wine or whatever is your drink and
that and that's it. The quick fix.
It's the quick fix, Yeah, yeah. But it is, uh, misplaced in
(26:19):
terms of, as you said, it is a short term fix that creates
larger problems. Yeah, yeah.
So in that if you're in that situation, Olivia, you know,
what we're talking about here then is that, you know, it's
masking changes or you know, there are things that need to be
healed, faced, dealt with in order to get through to the
(26:44):
other side. Because is it fair to say that
if you just stop drinking, you're not going to be magically
better? There's work to be done between.
Yeah, there's always work here. There's always work.
Nothing comes fast or easy, doesit?
And I always say this like the practice of alcohol free living.
(27:06):
You have to practice it. It's best understood through its
practice. And I won't, you know, I won't
fix anybody. We'll give people the the tools
to fix themselves, but it can't be done on to you.
You have to do it. So I suppose taking out alcohol
is one thing, but adding in all the other things.
So the things that keep us vibrant, vital, connected,
(27:31):
regulated emotional regulation is a massive part of this.
So you know, when we when, when a trigger comes our way, OK, So
what do we do? You know, do we go from naughty
to 100 or do we create that space between our stimulus and
our response? And that's probably one of the
greatest lessons as well. And like we, there's so many
(27:54):
practices like meditation and breath work and you know, our
food, what we're eating, what we're consuming, what makes us
feel happy, that these in conjunction with removing the
alcohol will be the main body ofthe work.
And for me, initially, when I gave up, I started to drink
kombucha. Yeah.
(28:14):
So if my husband was having a drink, I had a nice kombucha.
So I felt like I was still having something and I wasn't
drinking water all the time. Now, I do drink water all the
time and I'm happy with the water, but so do you recommend
that there is a replacement? Because as I was saying, you
know, when we give up a habit, generally the easiest and
(28:35):
quickest way is to kind of hijack that neural pathway and
replace it with something else. Yeah.
So what's your? Yeah, I'm a big fan of kombucha
as well. I have a lovely turmeric 1
today, so yeah. So that's what a lot a lot of
people I work with now, obviously they practically
weren't invented when I gave up,right?
(28:56):
So I didn't really, I, I, I'd have like a soft drink, but
there are, there's so much available now.
You can get like 00 gin and tonics.
You can get whatever. So you feel kind of part of the
connection. So you don't have to work on
that identity shift immediately.So you can still be part of the
gang field because as we all know, we're hardwired for that
(29:17):
connection there. But yeah, so, umm, kombucha is
really good. I like yourself, I like a water,
but you know, umm, there's in terms of, you know, the people
that I've worked with and me myself, like I, I never drank
beer, rarely drank beer when I was drinking alcohol, but
sometimes I'll have 1A00. Yeah, often, you know, if I'm at
(29:40):
a wedding or something like that.
But it's about, I suppose a lot of people say this.
So we keep the ritual, we just change the ingredient, you know,
and then we can, you know, wean ourselves off that habit if we
want to as well, and replace it with water or kombucha or
something. So, you know, that's interesting
(30:00):
as well. You mentioned earlier as well
about identity, because that definitely was one of the
hardest things for me. Part of my identity is Guinness,
OK. I started drinking Guinness very
young and, and I, you know, as you said earlier that I was part
of that culture where I can drink as much as the lads pints
(30:23):
of Guinness, you know, and it wasn't almost a challenge to be
able to drink like the lads. I love rugby.
So Guinness is very closely related to, to rugby in this
country, you know, So for me that was probably the, the, the
biggest challenge. Now I'm talking about giving up,
but I'm actually not completely off alcohol.
(30:45):
Just, uh, just to say that if anyone thinks I saw her having a
drink there, but for me, it was about taking back the control so
that I could introduce it and say no when I want, when I
needed to say no or when I knew I was just doing it for the
wrong reasons. There might always be wrong
reasons. But anyway, back to the
identity. So you know, that for me was the
(31:09):
biggest challenge because, and it still is a little bit in
terms of who you see yourself aswith this drink beside you also
part of our identity as Irish people, as we mentioned.
So how do we make that identity shift into not having a drink by
(31:34):
our sides to be who we want to be?
Yeah, I suppose it's all about our wise, our goals.
OK, so we're intelligent, autonomous beings, right?
All of us, without a doubt, or every single person.
So it's about what do you want your life to look like, right?
(31:55):
If you are OK with having one ortwo and it's not a problem,
absolutely knock yourself out. Go on ahead.
Right. It for me and the vast majority
of people that I work with, uh, moderation can never happen.
It's just because of our Physiology.
SO1 begets 1 begets 1 and that is the nature of alcohol.
(32:17):
I suppose we really need to say that it's a very addictive
substance. We all know in Ireland.
So it's all, it's all begar and begubs and you know, it's great
crack and oh, uh, but like, there's a lot of devastating and
we all know. Until it's not, yeah.
Until it's not exactly so you. So it's a very, very personal,
(32:38):
umm, I suppose it's a very personal decision and we can
work around it just based on your goals.
Like what is your vision for yourself?
What do you want to be like? Who what are the all the values
that you want to embody? And does drinking alcohol align
or misalign with this? For me, it misaligned big time.
(33:00):
I couldn't. I wasn't the person that I
wanted to be when I drank alcohol.
And for me it has been safer to have none as to have won.
So I could never trust myself tohave just won because I was the
bigger big albs. Whoo let's go when I had one and
one was never enough for little old me.
But again, it's a personal decision and I suppose it's all
(33:23):
this journey of navigating through what you want, what you
want your life to look like. I know mine is 8 trillion times
better without it, you know, then I suppose the aftermath of
it. So it is about getting that
vision of the future self, absolutely.
Who do I want to be? What does she behave like?
What does she look like? Is she, you know, getting out of
(33:46):
bed at 9:00 with a terrible headon her?
Or is she bouncing out of the bed at 6:00 AM, doing her yoga,
meditating, and, yeah, changing people's lives as you and I are?
I'm an awful dose in the morning.
Oh my God, I'm so positive it's ridiculous.
(34:07):
I make myself annoyed. But if you look at it as well,
right, so there's OK, there willbe a gap, right?
You give up alcohol and there'llbe a gap between drinking you
and sober you. OK, So like it would be remiss
to say that it doesn't loosen usall up and it invites crack,
right? OK, to a certain extent.
(34:29):
So you have this version of yourself.
You then need to become that version of yourself that you
want to be. So for me anyway, if I go to a
hen or if I go to a wedding, I'mgoing to be dancing.
I'm going to be a lot more outrageous than I generally am
because and I try and treat it like, umm, a game.
I'm like, how much fun can I have here now?
(34:49):
And nobody's going to remember little old sober me going around
the place, you know, And so that's how I choose to be.
And I've, I'm far more confidentthan I ever was because I know
I, I, I do everything from the truest version of myself.
I'm sober at everything, you know, I have nerves, I feel it.
But I know I've gone through so many milestones that I'm OK with
(35:11):
it. I've done the weddings, I've
done the hens, I've done the public speaking.
I've done whatever I've done. And I haven't had to have have a
little shot before. Amazing, amazing.
And that's it as well, isn't it?It's the realization.
And I've had friends say this tome like on a night, maybe
they're not drinking for a reason, maybe they've given up.
But it's, it's like. I feel the.
(35:31):
Giddiness and excitement and I haven't had a drink.
So we kind of associate that nice exciting feeling with
alcohol, but it's actually self created.
Absolutely, if we. Choose it so our mindset can
create that state. As you say, you can go to a
hand, you can go to a wedding and you choose to be in great
(35:54):
form. I choose this.
So it's a lot to do with mindset.
Yeah, all of it is to do with mindset.
And you know, I watch people at the beginning and I always say
this like it's, it's like peopleare at the bottom of a a set of
steps, right? And they're stuck at a bit of
mud and they don't know how they're going to keep going to
the top of the top of it. But when you get there, you'll
(36:16):
have this beautiful peripheral vision and you'll be lighter,
more confident, braver, all of these gorgeous things.
They just cannot see how that will happen.
But it's about holding faith. And again, you know, and there's
a lot of techniques and tools and strategies that we can use.
But once you get a milestone, soonce you get your first wedding
(36:36):
over you, your first bank holiday weekend, your first
holiday, you then have the experience of it, right.
So with the experience of it. Oh yeah, I did that last year
and it was actually grand. And you know, I'll often get
texts from people saying, Olivia, I'm at that 50th that I
said I was going to. And do you remember I was saying
I was so nervous. Well, it was actually grand
(36:57):
because once I set the tone for refusing the first drink, nobody
cares. And that's the thing, people
need to remember. They're too busy worrying about
themselves to even care what anybody else is doing.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
And it is, it's, it's getting over that first, as you say,
first anything. Yeah.
(37:19):
And seeing that it wasn't so bador actually had fun and it's
taken control of our mind that says no, you're not or you need
this because you don't. Now in saying that, so a lot of
it is around for us to make thatdecision.
It's around limiting beliefs that we have.
(37:41):
So as we mentioned, I needed to relax or I can't have fun.
What other limiting beliefs do you think are there that people
need to change? Or, you know, how do we go about
changing those beliefs? Yeah, absolutely.
I, I do a lot of work on personally on myself, like umm,
(38:04):
you know, my affirmations and I know I've heard this said loads,
but like the words we speak to ourselves become the home that
we live in, right? So we're making sure that the
home that we live in is beautiful.
So when I gave up alcohol, I dida huge amount of, uh, loving
kindness and meditations, right?Big fan of the AL Buddhists,
(38:25):
right? So it's all about, OK, So what
am I feeling here? Am I feeling fear?
And So what do we then counteract all of those feelings
with it? It's also a journey of emotional
literacy. So like what, what am I feeling
inside? You know, am I angry?
Am I frustrated? All of these kind of things.
And you know, where we can, where did these things?
(38:47):
So I had an affirmation track which was really nasty and I
kept saying the same thing over and over to myself.
One of them was that I was lazy like, and I kept that for a
very, very long time. There is not a lazy bone in my
body, right? But this, because maybe I'd
heard it somewhere along the way, I kept playing it and
playing it and playing it. So again, self-awareness when we
(39:11):
look, what am I saying to myself?
So what are my beliefs, right? Do I think that sober people are
boring? Do I think that I need to have
alcohol to have fun? Do I think that it's really
glamour? Do I think that why is everybody
else able to drink and not me? You know, there's a huge
grieving part in this as well. And I suppose we're at a stage
(39:31):
in our lives and I assume that, you know, maybe your listeners
are at a similar stage to me, but we have to let go of stuff.
We're not 20 anymore. But there's gorgeous value in
experience. And, you know, haven't
experienced a lot of life that you now have knowledge and like
there's a comfort in a slower pace.
(39:52):
And, you know, my own mom used to say to me when I was growing
up, content, Olivia, that's all you really need.
And I'd be like, like, how horrific.
And now I'm back going back to her saying you were dead right
now. Make content you know.
Yeah, well, my mom was the opposite.
She'd say how are you? And I'd say grand.
(40:13):
She hated that word grand, you know, because we needed to
strive for better than grand. So which is what you actually
said earlier though, which is, you know, meh.
OK, I'm just living. No, we have short lives.
We need to strive for excitement, for achievement,
(40:33):
for, you know, happiness is is there for us all to to take.
And the question is that people have to ask themselves is am I
achieving it like this or am I spending too many days feeling
regret, feeling disappointment in myself.
(40:54):
Then we need to, you know, look at ourselves, isn't it?
And and make different choices. So tell me this in terms of
people who are sober curious right now.
So you know, we've said a lot, there's a lot that people can do
change. Where should they start right at
(41:18):
this moment? Pen August paper and start
writing stuff out, right? So what does alcohol give you?
What does it take away? Right?
The pros and cons, right? So if one side of the list is
bigger than the other, that's a little note itself.
OK, So if it's causing a lot more harm, let's say than it is
(41:43):
good, right? OK, so that's a that's an
indicator. And there's so much there's
podcasts like my own. There's ones, there's so many of
them. And obviously have a listen to
them quick list. There are some fabulous books.
Two of my favorite are called both are called drink.
One is by Professor David Notch and the other is by Anne Dicey
(42:06):
Johnson. Fabulous books, very easy to
read. You will expand your mind.
Knowledge is power, right? So it's about getting as much
knowledge into you as possible. There's so many sober curious,
umm, Instagram accounts, apps. You can track your days, I would
say, and a lot of the research shows that give yourself well,
(42:27):
it's enough to see change, whichis 100 days.
So like 100 days from now. When is that?
You know, take it out, look at it on the calendar and then give
yourself the best opportunity tosucceed.
You know, plan and plan ahead. If you have a hen, make sure
look at the menu before you go look at for a alcohol free
(42:51):
options like there's lots and lots that people can do.
And again, what I said earlier, alcohol free living is best
understood in its practice. You can't theorize what it might
feel like. You have to experience it.
So set a date, say I'm go, I'm doing a challenge.
This dose on a podcast told me that it's the best thing I'll
(43:12):
ever do, you know, but like, believe in yourself as well, you
know, and it's the conversation around alcohol has changed so
much over the last 10 years and certainly over the last seven
since I've, umm, given up, you know, younger people drinking
less. There's a lot more alcohol free
options. There's a huge amount of
(43:32):
research coming out. Canada have changed their
guidelines. We're, uh, Ireland, we're
putting warning labels on bottles from next year onwards.
You know, so get educated and doso.
Once you have that education right, you can make up that,
make up your own mind. Make that decision for yourself
(43:53):
based on how it's making you feel.
If it's making you feel amazing,off you go.
If it's making you feel lethargic and you know, dulled,
drained, misaligned, stuck, whatever, then what you need to
do is just have a think about it.
Do the 100 days off you go. Experience it, but you say
(44:14):
preparation, so helping you, sorry, would it help you like to
just to visualize, let's say I'mgoing away for the weekend and
create a lovely positive visualization of how that
weekend is going to go and put your mindset needs to be aligned
with that. So when you have a negative
thought, replace it with some ofyour lovely affirmations.
(44:38):
Would you remind us of some of those lovely affirmations?
Oh, so I won't mind the one I'm flat out saying to myself in my
room. I have it down in the kitchen
and every time I see it, I'm going to look at it now so I get
more of what I am. So bliss, abundance, freedom,
joy, connection, peace, love, well-being, health and beauty.
So that's what I'm looking to attract more into my life and
(45:01):
how I, I believe, haven't read extensively around this.
How I believe I get that is by being it.
So that's what I want to be. I want to be kind,
compassionate, articulate, joyful, blissful, positive,
optimistic, abundant, all of those gorgeous things.
Gone is the regretful, you know,girl who had so much fear and
(45:26):
grief and wait, a lot of rage aswell.
It works. It called my poor hair has
earned her money over the last few years.
But like, it's about becoming this gorgeous version of
ourselves that we're happy and joyful and you know, because you
know, little Olivia's in here aswell.
I've done a lot of work on that too, you know, inner child work
(45:48):
as well. And, you know, we're giving
ourselves the best opportunity. Absolutely, yeah.
And whether you're listening to this podcast or watching it, I'm
sure you can hear in in Olivia'svoice that that beauty and high
vibration and bliss. So you really are living what
you're talking about. Actually, I'm going to ask you
to send me your affirmation and we'll put it in the show notes.
(46:12):
If you're if you're willing to share.
It sounds fabulous. So one of the things you do,
Olivia, is help people take a break now if they want.
If somebody wanted to work with you, do they have to be
committed to giving up alcohol forever?
Or no, not forever, but certainly for a time.
(46:32):
Yeah, yeah. So they ha again, they have to
experience. So what I would say to most
people, well, every person who comes knocking on my virtual
door, it's a case of right, let's do 100 days.
So I'll say right, 100 days fromtoday is this.
And let's get a plan in place. What do you have coming up?
What are your triggers? You know, what have you learned
(46:52):
about yourself and why you drink?
And is it response to a stressor?
Is it a stressful job? Is it for connect?
Is it for connection with yourself?
It's a loneliness board and whatever it is.
So we'll definitely make a plan and then we'll see how we go.
So I do a group mentoring program.
I do one a month. Umm, so people come into a
group. There's gorgeous, uh, peer
(47:13):
support, lots of accountability,there's lots of connection,
beautiful resources. And I teach a bit on that.
Uh, but it's, it's all about untangling from beliefs,
attitudes and, and, and moving forward and stepping into that
new version of ourselves. As well, Brilliant sounds sounds
amazing. And that support, you know,
(47:34):
sometimes people are afraid to come into group.
Yeah. I've seen that myself where
people, you know, they think they want one to one.
But over the last couple of years I've done a lot of group
coaching and what's most, umm, powerful in that is the
sustained success that comes outof it.
(47:55):
Yeah. Because we have that layered
learning of seeing other people recognizing our own problems and
other people knowing we're not alone.
It really is powerful. You're seeing that.
Yeah. Oh, unbelievably right.
And I suppose with alcohol it's a tiny bit different because
it's very shame orientated and there's a lot of stigma.
(48:17):
So people, no matter what their pattern of drinking is like,
they still feel that they're theonly one and admitting to having
a problem like so I use the language of alcohol caused
problems in my life. Therefore it was a problem,
right? So, and, and you know, it was,
there's no denying that it wasn't because it produced all
these inner problems within me, right?
(48:39):
So coming into a group and like,I have a lot of really
successful women who, you know, who want to, well, they're
assured of confidentiality, but they kind of want to stay hidden
because admitting to this is a big thing as well.
You know, when it's deep and it's dark and it's stigmatized,
but we try and keep it light, you know, and, and future
(49:02):
focused that it will be the greatest thing you'll ever do.
And again, the tools, the strategies, all the support and,
and what I notice is so beautiful.
So you know, at the minute a lotof the clients are and and the
people on the group mentoring courses are going on holidays.
So they will keep us updated andgo, oh look, this beer I got
(49:22):
this in Spain or I said this to the waiter and guess what,
nobody cares. And you know, by their haven't
bring in their experience to group as well, they'd say, oh, I
got caught out on this situationand they didn't know how to
handle it, but that I rememberedwhat you did, you know, Mary and
you know, and then Mary goes, ohgreat, I'm helping.
(49:44):
So we're all helping each other to live our best lives because
we're all gorgeous and people just want the best for
themselves, you know? And it's removing the stigma and
the shame. Yeah.
But one of the things that I would say that hold people back
is their lack of belief in beingable to follow through.
(50:04):
Yeah. You know, So what do you say to
those people who, you know, might be interested in doing
this? But like 100 days, that's a long
time and I probably won't succeed.
So what would you say to those? Little mindset when you like.
I suppose when you look at it, alcohol makes us mistrust
(50:28):
ourselves. OK, So what will dampen our
integrity? So when you say you'll do
something, sometimes you don't. So you have this unbelievable
mistrust within yourself. OK, so again, we need to tweak
that mindset. Absolutely you can do it.
You have full support here. Like it.
There has never really been a better time.
(50:50):
So what I say is similar to whata woman in Australia or America
will say because again, like that the human experience is so
universal. But and you know, umm, if, if I
can do it, you can do it. But that's so true.
You know, when somebody's identity, my identity was so
built around alcohol and from I'd say the age 1516, I had
(51:13):
great crack with it. You know, I really enjoyed it.
It was very much part of my identity until it wasn't.
And it's about recognizing that within yourself.
Brilliant. That's brilliant, you know, and
it is true. I mean, I've been a coach for
many, many years and, and you know, I've come across that from
(51:34):
people so many times that they're just afraid to trust
themselves that they have failedso many times that they just
don't believe they can do it. It's like the weight loss
problem as well. How many diets have I tried and
it never works? So, but I've never experienced
anyone that has the real desire and is ready to commit that
(51:58):
fails. You know, once we have that
desire and the support from somebody likes, from somebody
like you who's been through it, who's also guided hundreds of
people through it, and, you know, if you follow the process,
it works. Absolutely, absolutely.
And it's about having that belief in yourself and a huge
(52:21):
amount of it is readiness to change, you know, so you're
ready for this change. Umm, and I can notice people,
they say, you know, you notice the language they use, how
involved they are, how vulnerable they are.
And they're so eager to learn, you know, and it's, it's so
evident who you know, is really ready for it.
(52:42):
And a huge amount of people are,they're sick and tired of being
sick and tired, you know, and they've, I suppose when you look
at it, alcohol always ends up the same way.
So it goes through our body generally the same way.
So we could have given it 1000 chances.
So it will always be the same, but we need to be different
then. Yeah, yeah.
(53:03):
Stop making the same mistakes. Stop doing the same things and
expecting different results. Exactly.
Olivia, what do you do when you have a bad day?
So what are your high vibration habits?
OK, so I love music. So I'm a true 1990s girl and I
still listen to the same rave and I'll be like Alexa play
(53:27):
Avicii or Swedish Ice Mafia. So I, I get a lot of energy from
music. I get a lot of energy from
laughing. So I happen to be married to a
very, very funny man and we laugh a lot, which is gorgeous.
Uh, so I laugh, I dance, I listen to music, I exercise as
well. So I know, and I know if I'm,
(53:49):
and I obviously I get in low moods, but I know haven't had
enough experience that it would pass that it might end up a day.
Uh, but I know I'll be back to normal tomorrow.
Plus I have a lot of affirmations that I say to
myself. And again, the one was, I get
more of what I am, but it's thisor something better, you know?
(54:10):
The best is yet to come. Of course it is.
If it wasn't, we wouldn't be here, you know?
Yeah, yeah. But that shift is sometimes with
music or with an affirmation when you just need to shift your
state. Yeah.
Yeah. Brilliant.
And joy. I mean, it's probably a silly
(54:31):
question because it seems like there's a lot of joy in your
life. What are you getting?
Where are you from at the moment?
So I've, I'm doing a lot of walking at the minute and you
know, I would have had a bad relationship with walking for a
long time. So I've set a goal to do at
(54:52):
least 10,000 steps a day and I'mgetting so much joy.
My local park and I never gave it credit, right?
So I'm spending a lot of mornings there and it is just
exceptional birds getting so much enjoyment out of birds at
the minute. I know it's so simple, right?
But ducks, Have you seen how ducks sleep?
(55:16):
I would witch, I would witch around the birds.
But with the ducks now I'm. Ducks, dogs, dogs hanging out
windows, very simple things, butvery joyful things.
Because it's not the you know, I'm not going to be Jlo here.
I'm not going to have a private jet.
I don't want one, right, But I don't, it's my, I always thought
when I was younger, my life willbe massive.
(55:39):
And the things that bring joy are like, you know, amazing cars
and but it's not it's smiles, it's joy, it's having fun with
people, you know, it's duck sleeping, you know, it's all of
them. It's very, very ordinary.
And if we can see the joy in theordinary, then you know our
(56:00):
lives aren't meaningless. Deeply, richly meaningful.
About 10 years ago, my husband bought me a little book on
garden birds and I didn't pay too much attention to it.
I did like the idea but I didn'tgive it time.
And I remember my eldest son saying you're a bit, you're a
bit young for that yet now aren't you?
(56:21):
But the most joy I'm getting from is the Merlin app.
Have you come across that? No, I have.
Oh my gosh, Merlin downloaded. You can't.
It records birdsong or it'll tell you what birds singing.
So I'm very fortunate in where Ilive.
There's woods beside my house and there are just so many birds
(56:42):
in my garden. And you'll have this list of
birdsong. And I still can't recognize it
now without the app. But that sparks joy.
It really, really does. As you said, it's simple, simple
things. If we connect with them fully
and if we're fully present, there's a lot of joy in that.
Absolutely. And joy is such and it's such a
(57:03):
mood shifter as well, you know, like and again, so when we look
at so you know, I said earlier, when we take alcohol out, we
have to put loads of things in. So one of the things that we do
is, well, what gave you joy whenyou were 12 or 13 or 15 or
whatever? And we go back to basics because
we knew more than before. The world conditioned us to, you
(57:24):
know, want Jlo's life or privatejets or whatever.
But like I I don't know most people I think.
That's what was going to bring. Exactly.
But maybe it's knitting, you know, Maybe it's definitely.
Knitting. It's definitely knitting, you
know, or maybe it's, it's whatever it's cooking, it's
(57:46):
drawing, it's meditating. Like, I know I when I was a kid,
I, we, I'm from the country likeliterally a field.
And I used to go up into our field at the back and literally
and where people would say, where are you going?
And I was like, I'm going to do my life's work.
All I wanted was inner peace. That's all that was.
(58:07):
My biggest goal in life was to achieve inner peace.
Wow, that's powerful. And you have.
To a certain extent, I'm not fully there, but every day, you
know, if you're not winning, you're learning.
There's no failing and it's all about just experience in life.
And I actually probably one of the greatest things that has me
(58:30):
like unbearably positive is thateven in an adverse situation,
you know, I will always say, what is this here to teach me?
So, you know, what is it? What is this devastation?
Or, you know, I'm not without lots of challenges because I
have had lots of challenge, but what is it here to teach me?
OK, maybe it's that. Maybe it's that, maybe it's
(58:50):
that, you know, And again, we'realways learning.
A lot of wisdom there, Olivia, and you definitely weren't
finding inner peace sitting at the bar.
Absolutely not. I thought I was I thought I was
but look, it aren't IA lot more and you know, you'll find that
with the sober community again. So all the people on Instagram
and all the I've met nothing butgorgeous, beautiful, connected,
(59:13):
compassionate people who give off their time and you know, a
lot of them are highly sensitive.
A lot of them have ADHD brains. A lot of them are empaths, but
they're so giving because alcohol has brought us to places
where we definitely did not wantto go to.
Yeah, And the removal of it has created space to find so much
more joy, happiness and experience in life.
(59:37):
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
So these conversations are getting longer.
We're going to have to wrap it up.
Thank you so much, Olivia, for sharing all of your wisdom and
experience with us. And.
Yeah, thank you to everybody listening in.
Wishing you all a wonderful inner day and we'll see you next
(01:00:02):
time. Thanks, Kira.
So I hope you enjoyed that episode and if you are sober
curious, make sure that you check Olivia out.
The links to her website and social media are below and she
also does monthly group mentoring, so if you want to
(01:00:22):
find out more about that, make sure you drop her Adm or just
get in touch with her. She is such a wonderful warm
human being. She will definitely help you on
your path to getting sober. As always, remember this podcast
is accompanied by a quiz, the High Vibration Reset Quiz, and
(01:00:47):
that's there to help you to identify what's really blocking
your success. It could be overthinking,
overworking, maybe it's feeling undervalued or maybe you are a
bit misaligned in your direction.
So don't forget to take the quizlink is below.
(01:01:08):
And if you're enjoying what you're hearing in this podcast
and you're interested in workingmore seriously on creating that
high vibrational state, I'm launching a program in the
coming months to support women to step into high vibration.
My goal is to create more high vibration leaders and high
(01:01:34):
vibration is about creating thatcoherent mindset and emotional
state so that we can lead ourselves and others in a much
more positive way. Living in high vibration is
going to help you to create a state of flow.
(01:01:54):
So check out the link below and make sure you get on the wait
list to be the first to know when we go live.
And if you want to find out moreabout working with me in general
or your company is looking for amotivational speaker, you can
find out more details on my website of how to work with me
or Papa's an e-mail or Adm. So thanks again for tuning in
(01:02:19):
and make sure you're following the podcast so that you don't
miss the next episode. Have a beautiful inner day and
thank you for tuning in.
Welcome to The High Vibration Reset, the podcast for women
ready to step into their next level of success without
burnout, overthinking, or ever feeling undervalued.
I'm Kyra Conlon, your host, and I've spent the past 18 years
helping ambitious women to shifttheir mindset, their energy and
(00:24):
lead with more confidence. So welcome to episode 3 of the
podcast with Olivia Farrelly. Now Olivia is a trauma informed,
alcohol free coach and mentor. She also has an MSC in Health
Psychology and she. Is the host of.
(00:44):
The No More Booze Podcast, an award-winning podcast that is
creating space for Ireland's sober curious.
Now. Olivia has spent over 20 years
in program delivery, but she's now using her expertise to help
hundreds of people remove alcohol from their lives.
(01:08):
And her goal is to destigmatize overdrinking and inspire others
to experience the freedom, joy and vitality that an alcohol
free life unlocks. So in this episode, I chatted to
Olivia about how alcohol lowers our vibration and how it can
(01:31):
negatively impact our energy andemotional state.
How it contributes to things like anxiety, feelings of shame,
guilt, and just an overall low vibration.
So Olivia shared her personal experience and when you hear her
(01:53):
toe you will be emptying those bottles of wine down the sick.
Because Olivia is a high vibration individual and really
a testament to what living alcohol free can do for you.
So if you are sober curious or if you just want to hear more
(02:15):
about how we can live in high vibration, I know you're going
to enjoy this episode. But as always, let us know what
you thought in the comments. And if you're enjoying the
podcast, please make sure you'refollowing.
We don't want you to miss any episodes.
So, let's dive into the episode,and I hope you enjoy the
(02:39):
conversation. Hello and welcome to the High
Vibration Reset and welcome to Olivia Farley.
Thank you so much for agreeing to come on the podcast, Olivia.
Umm, I am really looking forwardto this conversation and I know
(02:59):
a few people I know are also looking forward to this
conversation. So for those of you who don't
know Olivia, Olivia is an alcohol free coach and mentor
and she's the host of no more Booze podcast.
So you may have heard her before, but, uh, Olivia, I have
(03:20):
lots of questions for you that I, uh, I think lots of people
are going to benefit from, but if you wouldn't mind starting
off with just tell us a little bit more about who you are and
maybe your own relationship withalcohol and how you started to
do what you do. Yeah, thanks for having me,
(03:42):
Kira. Podcasts on my life.
I love them. I'd say I listen to 10 a day,
but yeah. So I'm Olivia, I'm 44, I'm
married. I have two small children.
Well, they're ten and eight, I suppose.
In terms of my relationship withalcohol, I gave it up almost
seven years ago. So in the 4th of July 2018, I
(04:06):
began drinking as a teenager like everybody else.
I went to university, I drank like everybody else.
I did a master's, actually I didn't drink that much.
My master's. I travelled around the world.
So I, I, I suppose when I look back, I drank mildly at some
stages of my life, heavily at others and not at all at others.
(04:28):
So I had a very typical relationship with alcohol in of
when I looked at other people around me, but it was woven into
so many aspects of my life. Umm, it definitely provided part
of my identity. Umm So if we look at
celebrations, nights out, connections, everywhere I went,
(04:50):
almost everywhere I went, there was alcohol involved.
Now, I suppose in the run up to me giving it up, we were never
home drinkers. Me and my husband Gary, we
didn't really drink at home. We might share a bottle of wine,
but it wasn't nightly thing. I suppose that I would have
poured a glass of wine. It was more to do with
connection. And so, uh, I suppose when I had
(05:11):
kids, and I know this from working with a lot of clients as
well, when they have kids, your life drastically changes.
So what you were able for beforehand, you're not really
able for afterwards. So we were getting a lot less
sleep. Umm, we were more sleep
deprived. There was less time for us.
So, umm, when I go out, you know, maybe once a month, I
(05:32):
suppose that's 3536, I'd drink and I'd feel the effects for 5-6
days, right? So in terms of my motivation, my
consistency, whereas I was able to stay in bed, you know, on a
Sunday and really recover from ahangover.
When I had kids, I wasn't able to do that.
So a series of events. Listen, 2018 was kind of like a
(05:55):
desert compared to what it's like now in terms of alcohol
free, sober curiosity, all thesekind of blood work buzzwords.
So a lot has changed since then.So when I became sober curious,
I didn't know I was sober curious.
I didn't consciously go into sober curiosity.
I just knew that I couldn't feellike I was feeling.
So there was a number of events.I won't bore anybody, I'm sure
(06:19):
if you're listening to this and you know, you drink, you know
that sometimes you drink too much and you feel really bad as
a result. So there was a few of those and
then one day enough was enough. I was sick and tired, sick and
tired, and my wise became too big.
I wrote a list of them, six of them.
(06:39):
But something big happened. As in, there was a click.
There was a resolve within me and I knew I'd never drink again
because I couldn't, couldn't keep feeling the way I was
feeling. I wasn't at my best, I was
stuck. I was.
I know all this now because I do.
So much self reflection, but notknowing then I didn't know it
was the thing that was keeping me stuck.
(07:00):
It was nothing else, you know. And not only do you know it now,
but I suppose you've seen from working with so many people the
exact same pattern happen again and again.
Absolutely. And when they come to me, I can
see them. I can see them and me.
I can see me and them. You know, that kind of small,
stagnant and oh, I don't know ifI can do it.
And you know, how, how, what will my life be like?
(07:23):
What will my identity be? You know, how will people accept
me? There's absolutely very real
fears and real fears, especiallybecause we live in this country
where our identity internationally, but also among
ourselves is seen as really gorgeous, jovial, great crack
and the alcohol loosens itself. Absolutely.
(07:46):
But I suppose when is the time that you have to act in the
fullness of who you are and say,oh, it's not actually going that
well for me. So, you know, OK, so I, I have
low, low level anxiety. My mood is very inconsistent.
I'm very inconsistent. I've lack of motivation.
I might be high performance, butI might have a silent depletion,
(08:10):
you know, So it's all these things that people need to ask
themselves. And I suppose having a little
bit of faith, having that, you know, faith and believing in
other people that they say, you know, when people say giving up
alcohol is the best thing that will ever happen, believe them.
Put your trust. You know, because I've well
(08:32):
over, I'm approaching 80 guests on my podcast now, some world
renowned coaches, people from all walks of life and every
single one of them say the exactsame thing.
They give it nobody. Absolutely nobody.
Yeah. And there might be a phase
between, you know, solidifying the new habits, of course, where
(08:53):
it might be a bit tough, but ultimately it's the best thing
that ever anybody ever does. It's what you're hearing, yeah.
Absolutely. Well, what I'm hearing, what I'm
seeing, what I'm feeling as well.
So, and I suppose what, what happened for me is that I decide
I went back to university, I hadthis incredible passion for it.
(09:14):
I was like, people to know this,you know, went back to UL, did a
course down there, then retrained as a coach, launched
the podcast. And I know I'm not alone.
And I suppose that's the greatest thing about being a
human being. We think we're alone.
But when we come into community and we start speaking up about
something, we know that we're not alone.
(09:34):
It's so powerful that our experience is universal, that
humans generally go through the same levels of development.
So like, you know, OK, so alcohol could have had lots of
benefits when we were in our 20sand very few costs.
But then the scales begins to turn, you know, so there's far
more costs than there is actually benefits.
And it's, it's realizing that point at your life where you go,
(09:58):
OK, it's, it's costing too much.It's taking more than it's
given. And it's taking responsibility
for that. That's it.
Important. We use the term Olivia Gray area
drinking. So what exactly does that mean?
Yeah, so I suppose when I talk about it, it's from my own
perspective. So when I look at it, I was a
(10:18):
Gray area drinker. I personally never felt
physically dependent on alcohol,you know, so I never felt the
need to get up and that my Physiology needed that drink.
So I could easily have none. I could, but when I had one, it
was kind of an all or nothing's type scenario.
So if we look at Gray area drinking, it's somewhere between
(10:40):
kind of the now and again drinker, the person who can have
half a glasses, uh, Prosecco andcarry on living their lives.
And then the person who's, I suppose what we typically know
and see as rock bottom drinking.And then maybe somewhere in the
middle, it's somebody who can, you know, that they might make
rules around their drinking. They can rarely have just one
and it doesn't look like there'sa problem on the inside, but
(11:03):
they're kind of questioning it on the inside.
There's a lot of negative thingslike anxiety and regret, guilt,
shame, all those low vibration feelings.
Yeah. And, and what do you think is
the normal, like is there a normal type of drinker in Irish
women, you know, normal professional women?
(11:25):
Is there a certain type that yousee more than others or is it
just a range of well? It, it's a range of, but I
suppose what people come to me, uh, because they resonate with
what that, what I'm saying and what I've said.
So it's typically, uh, somebody who came of age in the 80s or
90s where there was that push todrink more, there was more
(11:47):
economic freedom. People had their own money.
They were able to. It was a bit of a ledet culture
that was kind of, uh, by osmosiscame from the UK over to here,
that kind of thing of we can keep up with the boys, you know?
And so they, I suppose, you know, came of age drinking the
Alco pops and then the mommy wine culture, the pink my drink
(12:10):
phenomenon. And they're literally drinking
in similar ways to what they didin their teens and their 20s.
But physiologically, our body can't keep up with it.
So, you know, there's a lot of changes that happen.
And certainly I suppose women inperimenopause and menopause are
common to me with sleep disturbances, low level anxiety,
(12:30):
like that kind of dullness. So they're just not thriving
now. They're not at rock bottom.
They're at one of my favorite clients said to me, they're at
rock middle. So it's not rock bottom.
We're in the rock middle, functioning really well, but
just not getting the most out oflife, you know?
Right, right. So as you know, this podcast is
(12:50):
about living in high vibration and that is kind of that our
thoughts, our emotions and our habits and actions are aligned
with a positive forward focus, let's say.
So you know, when we're in high vibration, we can have a
positive impact on our own livesas well as the lives of those
(13:11):
around us. So what is the biggest negative
impact of alcohol on that? So how does alcohol disrupt
coherence or high vibration? Yeah.
So if you look at how we feel with a hangover, right,
typically, and I've, you know, this is across the board, guilt,
(13:33):
shame, regret. If you have a tendency to black
out, then there's a lot of self flagellation, self loathing
right there. If we think of an like an
emotional scale, they're at the very bottom.
Things like lethargy, right? You don't care, you don't care
about going to the gym, you don't care about letting your
(13:53):
friends down. It's that very low vibration.
So Alka, and we all know, we allknow, I'd say every single
person has said this in their lives.
Alcohol is a depressant, right? So, so it makes us feel low, it,
uh, depresses our central nervous system.
We're not light, we're not joyful generally.
So you can only think about the bad things that you did.
(14:15):
There may be low level anxiety, low level mood, you mightn't be
very stable, you mightn't be very regulated.
And then it affects our prefrontal cortex.
So we don't make the best decisions when we're under the
influence, right. So, and, and, you know, I had a,
a doctor on my own podcast a couple of months ago and she
said that, uh, you know, umm, levels of cortisol are still
(14:38):
very high in our system even a week after a drink, you know,
wow, it affects so much that we don't know about, right.
And there's so much research coming out now.
Like I think you'd need to be very, your, your head needs to
be in the sand if you're trying to ignore it because it kind of
is everywhere. All the research there.
(14:58):
But if conversely, then you takeit out so you've nothing
dragging you down. So every morning you wake up,
it's clarity now, within reason,of course, right?
Like what? Clarity, joy, consistency,
passion, motivation, enthusiasm,optimism.
So you can make better choices because you're consistent.
(15:20):
So it's not this, you know, hamster wheel of, you know, am I
here again? And then you're like, you have
all these goals on a Monday, butthey're gone by Friday because
maybe you had a couple of glasses of wine on the Thursday
night to Friday night to Saturday night.
You know, who wants to live their life?
Meh. You don't want to be grand.
You want to be great. Absolutely not.
(15:42):
Yeah. Yeah.
Well, what about just one glass every now and again?
Does that still disrupt that flow?
Yeah, just based on even what I said a minute ago, it would
still, it would still. Well, I have found anyway, it
would still, you know, impede our thoughts so our it blocks
our creativity. But also, if we're talking about
(16:04):
all or nothing Gray area middle lane drinkers, 1 is never
enough, you know? So one tends to lead into 234
because of the balls and the feeling that ish evokes within
us. And have you seen Olivia
connection with alcohol and burnout?
I mean is that? Yeah, yeah, absolutely,
(16:24):
absolutely. Well, if you look at alcohol and
its effect on our sleep, right? So obviously sleep is incredibly
important for our mental health,for our physical health.
And you know, when we drink too much, and I know this has been
well covered and especially at the age of maybe women in
midlife, if you're choosing to, I think it was doctor Mary
Claire Hafer said this, if you're choosing to have a drink,
(16:46):
you're choosing not to sleep, you know, so alcohol then, you
know, we've a series of mini, mini awakenings during the night
when we have alcohol in our system as it's trying to leave
our system. And then, you know, we don't get
into that R.E.M. that powerful sleep.
So, you know, it doesn't have that restorative effect.
And we all know this. You wake up and you think you've
(17:08):
had eight hours sleep, but you're never, you're never going
at full pace like you you would if you weren't drinking, you
know? Yeah, yeah.
A couple of years ago I gave up alcohol and it was my reasoning
at the time was to take back thecontrol.
So at the time it wasn't about, you know, I didn't have a
(17:29):
problem with drinking. I was an an habitual drinker,
Yes. And obviously all of the
research that I had done about habits and good habits and bad
habits, and it was a lot of whatyou are describing, that I'd
have a drink, I'd regret it, I'd, you know, feel low, dull.
And so for me, it was about I want to take control of this.
(17:54):
I don't want to be having a drink just because my husband's
having a drink or just because it's Friday night or whatever,
all of this. But what I started to realize
while I was doing this was that it was a lot about my mind.
So it was the beliefs that I had, you know, So we say it
(18:15):
helps us relax. I presume just what you've said
about the sleep, it's not helping us relax at all.
What it? Is.
Numbing our emotions. Is that fair to say?
Yeah, absolutely. And you know, a lot of people
that I work with have very, verystressful jobs.
So they, you know, are, I don't want to say misguided, but they
(18:40):
have a belief system that maintains that if we have a
drink that it will basically calm us and calm our nervous
system. And it does.
And you know, you have a glass of wine and the shoulder drop
happens. But we all know that it just
temporarily numbs it and it comes back even stronger the
next day. So what we put off today, we get
(19:02):
double tomorrow, you know, So it's it's a huge amount about
relearning how to feel, how to cope, how to, you know, sit with
big emotions. And I suppose, but I've learned
from my own experience as a human on Earth, right, is that
when we have these massive feelings, overwhelm, underwhelm,
(19:23):
disappointment, rage, guilt, whatever it is how we we can't
sit with them. We weren't taught how to cope as
kids, you know, So what do we do?
We have a cigarette, we eat the bit out, we drink our heads off,
pick up the phone. And I even noticed that myself,
you know, and you know, if I have an overwhelming emotion or
(19:44):
feeling, I'll grab the phone andthen I'll be like, no, no, no,
no, no, put the phone away. You know, So it's all right.
Developing self-awareness, becoming a a detective in your
own life. Just looking at what are, you
know, what is my belief system? OK, Do I think that sober people
are dull or boring? Have I bought into that
(20:06):
glamorizing, romanticizing alcohol and myth?
You know, I'm not anti booze, Kira.
I'm not A lot of people around me drink.
My husband drinks. I have no judgement on that.
What I'm saying is. I can't drink right now at this
phase of my life. I can't say I didn't enjoy
(20:26):
drinking because I did. That would be a lie, right?
But there was, it was knowing when it was time to stop.
Now it was probably time to stop10 years before, you know, but
better late than never. And I, it's, it's all for me.
I'm definitely a spiritual seeker.
It's very much what is my path And definitely it was divine
(20:47):
timing for me. Fabulous.
That sounds, yeah. You were lucky that you you
sought it out at the time that you did.
It's interesting though as well that you know, all of these kind
of emotion numbing habits that we have.
Did you see that when you moved from alcohol that you, you know,
(21:10):
sought out something else? Did you start shopping or eating
or? I love all of those things.
I shop and eat to my hearts content.
No, do you know what? So I notice certain things about
myself, right? So and I notice these patterns
and other people. So I'm highly sensitive, right?
I spent my entire life being highly sensitive and possibly an
(21:32):
empath, right? Yes, an empath, right?
Yeah. So highly sensitive and maybe a
bit of ADHD. We haven't done the test yet,
right. So a very overactive mind, a
very mind that's prone to obsessing about things.
I'm, I don't think, and I've talked to my therapist about
this a lot, right. So I don't think I've an
addictive personality. I've an obsessive 1.
(21:53):
So I hyper focus on things and then I forget about them, right.
But what happens is so when I gave up, I went.
It was a lovely time in my life.You know, I'm I'm a real self
help queen. I resort to podcasts, books.
That's always been my modus operandi from I was about 17 or
18. So I loved kind of reading and.
(22:15):
Learning. Absolutely.
But what I I went hell for leather into I exercise, so that
gave me a lot of clarity, right?I did a lot of hit stuff and I
went hell for leather well into,uh, cleaning my own gut health.
So repairing my gut did a lot ofstuff work on that.
And I was able then to access a lovely bit of intuition, did a
(22:38):
bit of meditation. Still do it.
You know, all those gorgeous affirmation works and, and as
well, you know, a few CBT tools like catch it, challenge it,
change it. When I catch myself, let's say
catastrophizing something, right?
And the fear sets in. I I have a few little umm,
affirmations that I say it's like, no, no, no, if not this,
(23:01):
there's better things out there.And my favorite one at the at
the minute is I get what I am right.
So it's a very conscious. So I want to be bliss.
I want to be content, I want to have peace, I want to energy
have love, all of these gorgeousthings.
And when I, I, you know, I'm happiest when I'm feeling like
that, but also I'm C in control of my feelings.
(23:24):
So I set the tone for how I feel.
So if I'm not feeling great, if I've a low vibe in the morning,
so I listen to music, I'll do a beautiful meditation.
I'll move my body, so I'll move that emotion, emotion out of my
body. Do a lot of that kind of, um,
you know, breath work and movingthings out and you know, it's,
(23:47):
it's funny, like our body alwaysremembers.
I tasted something the other dayand it brought me right back to
1996 because it was wow. It was a Taco for I so and it
was literally like I used to eatthese like 25 years ago, right?
Or maybe more. My maths always gets me in
trouble. But like the body remembers.
(24:09):
So we need to, we need to out maneuver our own physical and
our own memory as well. So it's it's a huge journey of,
I suppose, biological, psychological and social
transformation. We have to attack it from a lot
of different angles. That seems like very tough work,
(24:30):
but it just happens incrementally.
It's the greatest this giving upof alcohol is the greatest
personal development journey anyone will ever go on.
So this is it, you know, and you've got a lot of a lot of
things there that I, I want to pick, come back to habit
replacement. But I think this is the thing.
It's that most people with theirrelationship with alcohol, now,
(24:55):
I might be, that might be a sweeping statement.
But you know, a lot of the people that we come across that
don't like their drinking habits, it's not that they have
an alcohol problem. It's that they're using alcohol
for a reason, to soothe themselves, to hide their
(25:15):
emotion, to not deal with what'sgoing on in their lives.
Yeah. Is that fair to say?
Yeah, or it's to connect, to connect with somebody, to
connect with themselves, an older part of themselves, a
Wilder, more carefree version ofthemselves that they might have
lost along the way. But it's a stress relief as
(25:37):
well. So a huge amount of the women I
and it's generally women. I've four men that I've worked
with on hundreds of women now atthis stage.
But they do it for stress relief.
So they have, the mental load isintense and they might have
outrageously, uh, stressful jobswith lots of, uh, you know, lots
(25:59):
of responsibility and they come home.
And the easiest way to stop thinking about, I suppose, stop
that overthinking, the overthinking mind is the quick
glass of red wine or white wine or whatever is your drink and
that and that's it. The quick fix.
It's the quick fix, Yeah, yeah. But it is, uh, misplaced in
(26:19):
terms of, as you said, it is a short term fix that creates
larger problems. Yeah, yeah.
So in that if you're in that situation, Olivia, you know,
what we're talking about here then is that, you know, it's
masking changes or you know, there are things that need to be
healed, faced, dealt with in order to get through to the
(26:44):
other side. Because is it fair to say that
if you just stop drinking, you're not going to be magically
better? There's work to be done between.
Yeah, there's always work here. There's always work.
Nothing comes fast or easy, doesit?
And I always say this like the practice of alcohol free living.
(27:06):
You have to practice it. It's best understood through its
practice. And I won't, you know, I won't
fix anybody. We'll give people the the tools
to fix themselves, but it can't be done on to you.
You have to do it. So I suppose taking out alcohol
is one thing, but adding in all the other things.
So the things that keep us vibrant, vital, connected,
(27:31):
regulated emotional regulation is a massive part of this.
So you know, when we when, when a trigger comes our way, OK, So
what do we do? You know, do we go from naughty
to 100 or do we create that space between our stimulus and
our response? And that's probably one of the
greatest lessons as well. And like we, there's so many
(27:54):
practices like meditation and breath work and you know, our
food, what we're eating, what we're consuming, what makes us
feel happy, that these in conjunction with removing the
alcohol will be the main body ofthe work.
And for me, initially, when I gave up, I started to drink
kombucha. Yeah.
(28:14):
So if my husband was having a drink, I had a nice kombucha.
So I felt like I was still having something and I wasn't
drinking water all the time. Now, I do drink water all the
time and I'm happy with the water, but so do you recommend
that there is a replacement? Because as I was saying, you
know, when we give up a habit, generally the easiest and
(28:35):
quickest way is to kind of hijack that neural pathway and
replace it with something else. Yeah.
So what's your? Yeah, I'm a big fan of kombucha
as well. I have a lovely turmeric 1
today, so yeah. So that's what a lot a lot of
people I work with now, obviously they practically
weren't invented when I gave up,right?
(28:56):
So I didn't really, I, I, I'd have like a soft drink, but
there are, there's so much available now.
You can get like 00 gin and tonics.
You can get whatever. So you feel kind of part of the
connection. So you don't have to work on
that identity shift immediately.So you can still be part of the
gang field because as we all know, we're hardwired for that
(29:17):
connection there. But yeah, so, umm, kombucha is
really good. I like yourself, I like a water,
but you know, umm, there's in terms of, you know, the people
that I've worked with and me myself, like I, I never drank
beer, rarely drank beer when I was drinking alcohol, but
sometimes I'll have 1A00. Yeah, often, you know, if I'm at
(29:40):
a wedding or something like that.
But it's about, I suppose a lot of people say this.
So we keep the ritual, we just change the ingredient, you know,
and then we can, you know, wean ourselves off that habit if we
want to as well, and replace it with water or kombucha or
something. So, you know, that's interesting
(30:00):
as well. You mentioned earlier as well
about identity, because that definitely was one of the
hardest things for me. Part of my identity is Guinness,
OK. I started drinking Guinness very
young and, and I, you know, as you said earlier that I was part
of that culture where I can drink as much as the lads pints
(30:23):
of Guinness, you know, and it wasn't almost a challenge to be
able to drink like the lads. I love rugby.
So Guinness is very closely related to, to rugby in this
country, you know, So for me that was probably the, the, the
biggest challenge. Now I'm talking about giving up,
but I'm actually not completely off alcohol.
(30:45):
Just, uh, just to say that if anyone thinks I saw her having a
drink there, but for me, it was about taking back the control so
that I could introduce it and say no when I want, when I
needed to say no or when I knew I was just doing it for the
wrong reasons. There might always be wrong
reasons. But anyway, back to the
identity. So you know, that for me was the
(31:09):
biggest challenge because, and it still is a little bit in
terms of who you see yourself aswith this drink beside you also
part of our identity as Irish people, as we mentioned.
So how do we make that identity shift into not having a drink by
(31:34):
our sides to be who we want to be?
Yeah, I suppose it's all about our wise, our goals.
OK, so we're intelligent, autonomous beings, right?
All of us, without a doubt, or every single person.
So it's about what do you want your life to look like, right?
(31:55):
If you are OK with having one ortwo and it's not a problem,
absolutely knock yourself out. Go on ahead.
Right. It for me and the vast majority
of people that I work with, uh, moderation can never happen.
It's just because of our Physiology.
SO1 begets 1 begets 1 and that is the nature of alcohol.
(32:17):
I suppose we really need to say that it's a very addictive
substance. We all know in Ireland.
So it's all, it's all begar and begubs and you know, it's great
crack and oh, uh, but like, there's a lot of devastating and
we all know. Until it's not, yeah.
Until it's not exactly so you. So it's a very, very personal,
(32:38):
umm, I suppose it's a very personal decision and we can
work around it just based on your goals.
Like what is your vision for yourself?
What do you want to be like? Who what are the all the values
that you want to embody? And does drinking alcohol align
or misalign with this? For me, it misaligned big time.
(33:00):
I couldn't. I wasn't the person that I
wanted to be when I drank alcohol.
And for me it has been safer to have none as to have won.
So I could never trust myself tohave just won because I was the
bigger big albs. Whoo let's go when I had one and
one was never enough for little old me.
But again, it's a personal decision and I suppose it's all
(33:23):
this journey of navigating through what you want, what you
want your life to look like. I know mine is 8 trillion times
better without it, you know, then I suppose the aftermath of
it. So it is about getting that
vision of the future self, absolutely.
Who do I want to be? What does she behave like?
What does she look like? Is she, you know, getting out of
(33:46):
bed at 9:00 with a terrible headon her?
Or is she bouncing out of the bed at 6:00 AM, doing her yoga,
meditating, and, yeah, changing people's lives as you and I are?
I'm an awful dose in the morning.
Oh my God, I'm so positive it's ridiculous.
(34:07):
I make myself annoyed. But if you look at it as well,
right, so there's OK, there willbe a gap, right?
You give up alcohol and there'llbe a gap between drinking you
and sober you. OK, So like it would be remiss
to say that it doesn't loosen usall up and it invites crack,
right? OK, to a certain extent.
(34:29):
So you have this version of yourself.
You then need to become that version of yourself that you
want to be. So for me anyway, if I go to a
hen or if I go to a wedding, I'mgoing to be dancing.
I'm going to be a lot more outrageous than I generally am
because and I try and treat it like, umm, a game.
I'm like, how much fun can I have here now?
(34:49):
And nobody's going to remember little old sober me going around
the place, you know, And so that's how I choose to be.
And I've, I'm far more confidentthan I ever was because I know
I, I, I do everything from the truest version of myself.
I'm sober at everything, you know, I have nerves, I feel it.
But I know I've gone through so many milestones that I'm OK with
(35:11):
it. I've done the weddings, I've
done the hens, I've done the public speaking.
I've done whatever I've done. And I haven't had to have have a
little shot before. Amazing, amazing.
And that's it as well, isn't it?It's the realization.
And I've had friends say this tome like on a night, maybe
they're not drinking for a reason, maybe they've given up.
But it's, it's like. I feel the.
(35:31):
Giddiness and excitement and I haven't had a drink.
So we kind of associate that nice exciting feeling with
alcohol, but it's actually self created.
Absolutely, if we. Choose it so our mindset can
create that state. As you say, you can go to a
hand, you can go to a wedding and you choose to be in great
(35:54):
form. I choose this.
So it's a lot to do with mindset.
Yeah, all of it is to do with mindset.
And you know, I watch people at the beginning and I always say
this like it's, it's like peopleare at the bottom of a a set of
steps, right? And they're stuck at a bit of
mud and they don't know how they're going to keep going to
the top of the top of it. But when you get there, you'll
(36:16):
have this beautiful peripheral vision and you'll be lighter,
more confident, braver, all of these gorgeous things.
They just cannot see how that will happen.
But it's about holding faith. And again, you know, and there's
a lot of techniques and tools and strategies that we can use.
But once you get a milestone, soonce you get your first wedding
(36:36):
over you, your first bank holiday weekend, your first
holiday, you then have the experience of it, right.
So with the experience of it. Oh yeah, I did that last year
and it was actually grand. And you know, I'll often get
texts from people saying, Olivia, I'm at that 50th that I
said I was going to. And do you remember I was saying
I was so nervous. Well, it was actually grand
(36:57):
because once I set the tone for refusing the first drink, nobody
cares. And that's the thing, people
need to remember. They're too busy worrying about
themselves to even care what anybody else is doing.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
And it is, it's, it's getting over that first, as you say,
first anything. Yeah.
(37:19):
And seeing that it wasn't so bador actually had fun and it's
taken control of our mind that says no, you're not or you need
this because you don't. Now in saying that, so a lot of
it is around for us to make thatdecision.
It's around limiting beliefs that we have.
(37:41):
So as we mentioned, I needed to relax or I can't have fun.
What other limiting beliefs do you think are there that people
need to change? Or, you know, how do we go about
changing those beliefs? Yeah, absolutely.
I, I do a lot of work on personally on myself, like umm,
(38:04):
you know, my affirmations and I know I've heard this said loads,
but like the words we speak to ourselves become the home that
we live in, right? So we're making sure that the
home that we live in is beautiful.
So when I gave up alcohol, I dida huge amount of, uh, loving
kindness and meditations, right?Big fan of the AL Buddhists,
(38:25):
right? So it's all about, OK, So what
am I feeling here? Am I feeling fear?
And So what do we then counteract all of those feelings
with it? It's also a journey of emotional
literacy. So like what, what am I feeling
inside? You know, am I angry?
Am I frustrated? All of these kind of things.
And you know, where we can, where did these things?
(38:47):
So I had an affirmation track which was really nasty and I
kept saying the same thing over and over to myself.
One of them was that I was lazy like, and I kept that for a
very, very long time. There is not a lazy bone in my
body, right? But this, because maybe I'd
heard it somewhere along the way, I kept playing it and
playing it and playing it. So again, self-awareness when we
(39:11):
look, what am I saying to myself?
So what are my beliefs, right? Do I think that sober people are
boring? Do I think that I need to have
alcohol to have fun? Do I think that it's really
glamour? Do I think that why is everybody
else able to drink and not me? You know, there's a huge
grieving part in this as well. And I suppose we're at a stage
(39:31):
in our lives and I assume that, you know, maybe your listeners
are at a similar stage to me, but we have to let go of stuff.
We're not 20 anymore. But there's gorgeous value in
experience. And, you know, haven't
experienced a lot of life that you now have knowledge and like
there's a comfort in a slower pace.
(39:52):
And, you know, my own mom used to say to me when I was growing
up, content, Olivia, that's all you really need.
And I'd be like, like, how horrific.
And now I'm back going back to her saying you were dead right
now. Make content you know.
Yeah, well, my mom was the opposite.
She'd say how are you? And I'd say grand.
(40:13):
She hated that word grand, you know, because we needed to
strive for better than grand. So which is what you actually
said earlier though, which is, you know, meh.
OK, I'm just living. No, we have short lives.
We need to strive for excitement, for achievement,
(40:33):
for, you know, happiness is is there for us all to to take.
And the question is that people have to ask themselves is am I
achieving it like this or am I spending too many days feeling
regret, feeling disappointment in myself.
(40:54):
Then we need to, you know, look at ourselves, isn't it?
And and make different choices. So tell me this in terms of
people who are sober curious right now.
So you know, we've said a lot, there's a lot that people can do
change. Where should they start right at
(41:18):
this moment? Pen August paper and start
writing stuff out, right? So what does alcohol give you?
What does it take away? Right?
The pros and cons, right? So if one side of the list is
bigger than the other, that's a little note itself.
OK, So if it's causing a lot more harm, let's say than it is
(41:43):
good, right? OK, so that's a that's an
indicator. And there's so much there's
podcasts like my own. There's ones, there's so many of
them. And obviously have a listen to
them quick list. There are some fabulous books.
Two of my favorite are called both are called drink.
One is by Professor David Notch and the other is by Anne Dicey
(42:06):
Johnson. Fabulous books, very easy to
read. You will expand your mind.
Knowledge is power, right? So it's about getting as much
knowledge into you as possible. There's so many sober curious,
umm, Instagram accounts, apps. You can track your days, I would
say, and a lot of the research shows that give yourself well,
(42:27):
it's enough to see change, whichis 100 days.
So like 100 days from now. When is that?
You know, take it out, look at it on the calendar and then give
yourself the best opportunity tosucceed.
You know, plan and plan ahead. If you have a hen, make sure
look at the menu before you go look at for a alcohol free
(42:51):
options like there's lots and lots that people can do.
And again, what I said earlier, alcohol free living is best
understood in its practice. You can't theorize what it might
feel like. You have to experience it.
So set a date, say I'm go, I'm doing a challenge.
This dose on a podcast told me that it's the best thing I'll
(43:12):
ever do, you know, but like, believe in yourself as well, you
know, and it's the conversation around alcohol has changed so
much over the last 10 years and certainly over the last seven
since I've, umm, given up, you know, younger people drinking
less. There's a lot more alcohol free
options. There's a huge amount of
(43:32):
research coming out. Canada have changed their
guidelines. We're, uh, Ireland, we're
putting warning labels on bottles from next year onwards.
You know, so get educated and doso.
Once you have that education right, you can make up that,
make up your own mind. Make that decision for yourself
(43:53):
based on how it's making you feel.
If it's making you feel amazing,off you go.
If it's making you feel lethargic and you know, dulled,
drained, misaligned, stuck, whatever, then what you need to
do is just have a think about it.
Do the 100 days off you go. Experience it, but you say
(44:14):
preparation, so helping you, sorry, would it help you like to
just to visualize, let's say I'mgoing away for the weekend and
create a lovely positive visualization of how that
weekend is going to go and put your mindset needs to be aligned
with that. So when you have a negative
thought, replace it with some ofyour lovely affirmations.
(44:38):
Would you remind us of some of those lovely affirmations?
Oh, so I won't mind the one I'm flat out saying to myself in my
room. I have it down in the kitchen
and every time I see it, I'm going to look at it now so I get
more of what I am. So bliss, abundance, freedom,
joy, connection, peace, love, well-being, health and beauty.
So that's what I'm looking to attract more into my life and
(45:01):
how I, I believe, haven't read extensively around this.
How I believe I get that is by being it.
So that's what I want to be. I want to be kind,
compassionate, articulate, joyful, blissful, positive,
optimistic, abundant, all of those gorgeous things.
Gone is the regretful, you know,girl who had so much fear and
(45:26):
grief and wait, a lot of rage aswell.
It works. It called my poor hair has
earned her money over the last few years.
But like, it's about becoming this gorgeous version of
ourselves that we're happy and joyful and you know, because you
know, little Olivia's in here aswell.
I've done a lot of work on that too, you know, inner child work
(45:48):
as well. And, you know, we're giving
ourselves the best opportunity. Absolutely, yeah.
And whether you're listening to this podcast or watching it, I'm
sure you can hear in in Olivia'svoice that that beauty and high
vibration and bliss. So you really are living what
you're talking about. Actually, I'm going to ask you
to send me your affirmation and we'll put it in the show notes.
(46:12):
If you're if you're willing to share.
It sounds fabulous. So one of the things you do,
Olivia, is help people take a break now if they want.
If somebody wanted to work with you, do they have to be
committed to giving up alcohol forever?
Or no, not forever, but certainly for a time.
(46:32):
Yeah, yeah. So they ha again, they have to
experience. So what I would say to most
people, well, every person who comes knocking on my virtual
door, it's a case of right, let's do 100 days.
So I'll say right, 100 days fromtoday is this.
And let's get a plan in place. What do you have coming up?
What are your triggers? You know, what have you learned
(46:52):
about yourself and why you drink?
And is it response to a stressor?
Is it a stressful job? Is it for connect?
Is it for connection with yourself?
It's a loneliness board and whatever it is.
So we'll definitely make a plan and then we'll see how we go.
So I do a group mentoring program.
I do one a month. Umm, so people come into a
group. There's gorgeous, uh, peer
(47:13):
support, lots of accountability,there's lots of connection,
beautiful resources. And I teach a bit on that.
Uh, but it's, it's all about untangling from beliefs,
attitudes and, and, and moving forward and stepping into that
new version of ourselves. As well, Brilliant sounds sounds
amazing. And that support, you know,
(47:34):
sometimes people are afraid to come into group.
Yeah. I've seen that myself where
people, you know, they think they want one to one.
But over the last couple of years I've done a lot of group
coaching and what's most, umm, powerful in that is the
sustained success that comes outof it.
(47:55):
Yeah. Because we have that layered
learning of seeing other people recognizing our own problems and
other people knowing we're not alone.
It really is powerful. You're seeing that.
Yeah. Oh, unbelievably right.
And I suppose with alcohol it's a tiny bit different because
it's very shame orientated and there's a lot of stigma.
(48:17):
So people, no matter what their pattern of drinking is like,
they still feel that they're theonly one and admitting to having
a problem like so I use the language of alcohol caused
problems in my life. Therefore it was a problem,
right? So, and, and you know, it was,
there's no denying that it wasn't because it produced all
these inner problems within me, right?
(48:39):
So coming into a group and like,I have a lot of really
successful women who, you know, who want to, well, they're
assured of confidentiality, but they kind of want to stay hidden
because admitting to this is a big thing as well.
You know, when it's deep and it's dark and it's stigmatized,
but we try and keep it light, you know, and, and future
(49:02):
focused that it will be the greatest thing you'll ever do.
And again, the tools, the strategies, all the support and,
and what I notice is so beautiful.
So you know, at the minute a lotof the clients are and and the
people on the group mentoring courses are going on holidays.
So they will keep us updated andgo, oh look, this beer I got
(49:22):
this in Spain or I said this to the waiter and guess what,
nobody cares. And you know, by their haven't
bring in their experience to group as well, they'd say, oh, I
got caught out on this situationand they didn't know how to
handle it, but that I rememberedwhat you did, you know, Mary and
you know, and then Mary goes, ohgreat, I'm helping.
(49:44):
So we're all helping each other to live our best lives because
we're all gorgeous and people just want the best for
themselves, you know? And it's removing the stigma and
the shame. Yeah.
But one of the things that I would say that hold people back
is their lack of belief in beingable to follow through.
(50:04):
Yeah. You know, So what do you say to
those people who, you know, might be interested in doing
this? But like 100 days, that's a long
time and I probably won't succeed.
So what would you say to those? Little mindset when you like.
I suppose when you look at it, alcohol makes us mistrust
(50:28):
ourselves. OK, So what will dampen our
integrity? So when you say you'll do
something, sometimes you don't. So you have this unbelievable
mistrust within yourself. OK, so again, we need to tweak
that mindset. Absolutely you can do it.
You have full support here. Like it.
There has never really been a better time.
(50:50):
So what I say is similar to whata woman in Australia or America
will say because again, like that the human experience is so
universal. But and you know, umm, if, if I
can do it, you can do it. But that's so true.
You know, when somebody's identity, my identity was so
built around alcohol and from I'd say the age 1516, I had
(51:13):
great crack with it. You know, I really enjoyed it.
It was very much part of my identity until it wasn't.
And it's about recognizing that within yourself.
Brilliant. That's brilliant, you know, and
it is true. I mean, I've been a coach for
many, many years and, and you know, I've come across that from
(51:34):
people so many times that they're just afraid to trust
themselves that they have failedso many times that they just
don't believe they can do it. It's like the weight loss
problem as well. How many diets have I tried and
it never works? So, but I've never experienced
anyone that has the real desire and is ready to commit that
(51:58):
fails. You know, once we have that
desire and the support from somebody likes, from somebody
like you who's been through it, who's also guided hundreds of
people through it, and, you know, if you follow the process,
it works. Absolutely, absolutely.
And it's about having that belief in yourself and a huge
(52:21):
amount of it is readiness to change, you know, so you're
ready for this change. Umm, and I can notice people,
they say, you know, you notice the language they use, how
involved they are, how vulnerable they are.
And they're so eager to learn, you know, and it's, it's so
evident who you know, is really ready for it.
(52:42):
And a huge amount of people are,they're sick and tired of being
sick and tired, you know, and they've, I suppose when you look
at it, alcohol always ends up the same way.
So it goes through our body generally the same way.
So we could have given it 1000 chances.
So it will always be the same, but we need to be different
then. Yeah, yeah.
(53:03):
Stop making the same mistakes. Stop doing the same things and
expecting different results. Exactly.
Olivia, what do you do when you have a bad day?
So what are your high vibration habits?
OK, so I love music. So I'm a true 1990s girl and I
still listen to the same rave and I'll be like Alexa play
(53:27):
Avicii or Swedish Ice Mafia. So I, I get a lot of energy from
music. I get a lot of energy from
laughing. So I happen to be married to a
very, very funny man and we laugh a lot, which is gorgeous.
Uh, so I laugh, I dance, I listen to music, I exercise as
well. So I know, and I know if I'm,
(53:49):
and I obviously I get in low moods, but I know haven't had
enough experience that it would pass that it might end up a day.
Uh, but I know I'll be back to normal tomorrow.
Plus I have a lot of affirmations that I say to
myself. And again, the one was, I get
more of what I am, but it's thisor something better, you know?
(54:10):
The best is yet to come. Of course it is.
If it wasn't, we wouldn't be here, you know?
Yeah, yeah. But that shift is sometimes with
music or with an affirmation when you just need to shift your
state. Yeah.
Yeah. Brilliant.
And joy. I mean, it's probably a silly
(54:31):
question because it seems like there's a lot of joy in your
life. What are you getting?
Where are you from at the moment?
So I've, I'm doing a lot of walking at the minute and you
know, I would have had a bad relationship with walking for a
long time. So I've set a goal to do at
(54:52):
least 10,000 steps a day and I'mgetting so much joy.
My local park and I never gave it credit, right?
So I'm spending a lot of mornings there and it is just
exceptional birds getting so much enjoyment out of birds at
the minute. I know it's so simple, right?
But ducks, Have you seen how ducks sleep?
(55:16):
I would witch, I would witch around the birds.
But with the ducks now I'm. Ducks, dogs, dogs hanging out
windows, very simple things, butvery joyful things.
Because it's not the you know, I'm not going to be Jlo here.
I'm not going to have a private jet.
I don't want one, right, But I don't, it's my, I always thought
when I was younger, my life willbe massive.
(55:39):
And the things that bring joy are like, you know, amazing cars
and but it's not it's smiles, it's joy, it's having fun with
people, you know, it's duck sleeping, you know, it's all of
them. It's very, very ordinary.
And if we can see the joy in theordinary, then you know our
(56:00):
lives aren't meaningless. Deeply, richly meaningful.
About 10 years ago, my husband bought me a little book on
garden birds and I didn't pay too much attention to it.
I did like the idea but I didn'tgive it time.
And I remember my eldest son saying you're a bit, you're a
bit young for that yet now aren't you?
(56:21):
But the most joy I'm getting from is the Merlin app.
Have you come across that? No, I have.
Oh my gosh, Merlin downloaded. You can't.
It records birdsong or it'll tell you what birds singing.
So I'm very fortunate in where Ilive.
There's woods beside my house and there are just so many birds
(56:42):
in my garden. And you'll have this list of
birdsong. And I still can't recognize it
now without the app. But that sparks joy.
It really, really does. As you said, it's simple, simple
things. If we connect with them fully
and if we're fully present, there's a lot of joy in that.
Absolutely. And joy is such and it's such a
(57:03):
mood shifter as well, you know, like and again, so when we look
at so you know, I said earlier, when we take alcohol out, we
have to put loads of things in. So one of the things that we do
is, well, what gave you joy whenyou were 12 or 13 or 15 or
whatever? And we go back to basics because
we knew more than before. The world conditioned us to, you
(57:24):
know, want Jlo's life or privatejets or whatever.
But like I I don't know most people I think.
That's what was going to bring. Exactly.
But maybe it's knitting, you know, Maybe it's definitely.
Knitting. It's definitely knitting, you
know, or maybe it's, it's whatever it's cooking, it's
(57:46):
drawing, it's meditating. Like, I know I when I was a kid,
I, we, I'm from the country likeliterally a field.
And I used to go up into our field at the back and literally
and where people would say, where are you going?
And I was like, I'm going to do my life's work.
All I wanted was inner peace. That's all that was.
(58:07):
My biggest goal in life was to achieve inner peace.
Wow, that's powerful. And you have.
To a certain extent, I'm not fully there, but every day, you
know, if you're not winning, you're learning.
There's no failing and it's all about just experience in life.
And I actually probably one of the greatest things that has me
(58:30):
like unbearably positive is thateven in an adverse situation,
you know, I will always say, what is this here to teach me?
So, you know, what is it? What is this devastation?
Or, you know, I'm not without lots of challenges because I
have had lots of challenge, but what is it here to teach me?
OK, maybe it's that. Maybe it's that, maybe it's
(58:50):
that, you know, And again, we'realways learning.
A lot of wisdom there, Olivia, and you definitely weren't
finding inner peace sitting at the bar.
Absolutely not. I thought I was I thought I was
but look, it aren't IA lot more and you know, you'll find that
with the sober community again. So all the people on Instagram
and all the I've met nothing butgorgeous, beautiful, connected,
(59:13):
compassionate people who give off their time and you know, a
lot of them are highly sensitive.
A lot of them have ADHD brains. A lot of them are empaths, but
they're so giving because alcohol has brought us to places
where we definitely did not wantto go to.
Yeah, And the removal of it has created space to find so much
more joy, happiness and experience in life.
(59:37):
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
So these conversations are getting longer.
We're going to have to wrap it up.
Thank you so much, Olivia, for sharing all of your wisdom and
experience with us. And.
Yeah, thank you to everybody listening in.
Wishing you all a wonderful inner day and we'll see you next
(01:00:02):
time. Thanks, Kira.
So I hope you enjoyed that episode and if you are sober
curious, make sure that you check Olivia out.
The links to her website and social media are below and she
also does monthly group mentoring, so if you want to
(01:00:22):
find out more about that, make sure you drop her Adm or just
get in touch with her. She is such a wonderful warm
human being. She will definitely help you on
your path to getting sober. As always, remember this podcast
is accompanied by a quiz, the High Vibration Reset Quiz, and
(01:00:47):
that's there to help you to identify what's really blocking
your success. It could be overthinking,
overworking, maybe it's feeling undervalued or maybe you are a
bit misaligned in your direction.
So don't forget to take the quizlink is below.
(01:01:08):
And if you're enjoying what you're hearing in this podcast
and you're interested in workingmore seriously on creating that
high vibrational state, I'm launching a program in the
coming months to support women to step into high vibration.
My goal is to create more high vibration leaders and high
(01:01:34):
vibration is about creating thatcoherent mindset and emotional
state so that we can lead ourselves and others in a much
more positive way. Living in high vibration is
going to help you to create a state of flow.
(01:01:54):
So check out the link below and make sure you get on the wait
list to be the first to know when we go live.
And if you want to find out moreabout working with me in general
or your company is looking for amotivational speaker, you can
find out more details on my website of how to work with me
or Papa's an e-mail or Adm. So thanks again for tuning in
(01:02:19):
and make sure you're following the podcast so that you don't
miss the next episode. Have a beautiful inner day and
thank you for tuning in.
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