August 31, 2025 • 54 mins
Long gone are the days when sober was a dirty word... and thank #^$% for that!
I sat down with the fab Sarah Rusbatch and we went everywhere. Three and a half years since her last visit on the show and we reminisced on how she’s swapped tequila slammers for training plans and is flying to London to run a marathon for her 50th. She’s written a best seller, Beyond Booze, and what I love is her whole philosophy isn’t just how to stop drinking, it’s how to build a life you don’t want to escape. We bantered on dopamine traps, grieving old identities, the masks we wear, and why self-awareness isn’t a one and done job (annoyingly).
We jammed on the glory of midlife strength, women’s health, and the shift from doing to being. Sarah talked about balancing her drive with actual stillness, breathwork, and listening to intuition (yeah, yeah.. I'm taking notes). My favourite bit was the reminder that discomfort is where the good stuff lives. Choose easy and the win feels flat. Choose hard and you grow into someone you’re proud to wake up as. If ya'll are sober curious, sick of winter pub culture, or just ready for tiny experiments that change your life, this one will hit home.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
She said, it's now never I got fighting in my blood.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
I'm tiff. This is role with the punches and we're
turning life's hardest hits into wins. Nobody wants to go
to court, and don't. My friends at test Art Family
Lawyers know that they offer all forms of alternative dispute resolution.
Their team of Melbourne family lawyers have extensive experience in
(00:29):
all areas of family law to facto and same sex couples,
custody and children, family violence and intervention orders, property settlements
and financial agreements. Test Art is in your corner, so
reach out to Mark and the team at www dot
test Artfamilylawyers dot com dot au. The fabulous Sarah Russbatch
(00:54):
welcome back to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
It's been a red hot minute, hasn't it It has?
Speaker 3 (01:01):
I think we worked out how many years did we
work out? It was the other day. It felt like
it was a week, but it had actually been about
three and a half years or something.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Yeah, time is very warped ever since the time time,
the pandemic time. But in my mind, time has been
so warped since then, where it's kind of gone fast
but stayed the same. It feels like yesterday is forever
ago all at once.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
What is with that?
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Or is that just getting old? Am I blaming it
on a worldwide event when it's just it's just how
life gets faster and faster as every year passes.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Yeah, because I think about that a lot, because having
a thirteen and a fifteen year old, you talk about time,
and you talk about something as being two weeks away,
and they're like, oh my god, that's forever. I can't
wait that long. And I'm just like, gosh, I remember
when it was what it was like to be a kid,
and to think that two weeks felt like such a
long time away. Now I'm like, yeah, right, two weeks
(02:02):
feels like tomorrow.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
I can't imagine being a parent because I've got a
couple of young clients, and the two young girls I'm
thinking of are both around the same age, which right
now is seventeen, and you know, it feels like they
in my mind, they are stuck as these you know,
(02:25):
fourteen year olds, because they were they were probably fourteen
when they started. And we have these conversations now and
it smacks me in the face. I'm like, oh, you're
a grown up. If you're a grown up.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
What am I right? I know we're just getting ancient tif.
I'm like, I've got I turned fifteen next year. That
really is old.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Like what are you going to do for that celebration?
Speaker 3 (02:50):
I Am flying to London to run the London Marathon.
Oh that is awesome. Yeah, well it's basically going to
be the year of festivities of because we have to
go out with a bank with our fifties. And so
I've been in the ballot for London Marathon ten times
and every year I got the email going nah, try
(03:11):
again next year and mark this year. I literally got
the email and it's like four weeks after my fiftieth.
So I get to go home to London. I get
to see all my friends and family and one of
my best friends got a charity place so we're running
it together. It's like all my dreams come true.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
That'll be amazing. What a milestone event.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
Right, And Like when I was heading into my forties
for my fortieth birthday, I was like, right, how much
boost can I get? What other party drugs can I
get hold of? What celebration can I do? Until seven
in the morning, And that was my fiftieth and I'm like, oh, yes,
I'm going to my health retreat to do like hot
saunas and cold water therapy, and then I'm going to
London to run the marathon. And so yeah, it goes
(03:54):
to show what can change in ten years.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Big time, big done. I feel like just this week
has felt I've said to a couple of people this week, Okay,
we've had a really good winter here, like I think
really late start to it hasn't been super cold. I'm real,
I'm rubbish in winter. But it's dark.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
It's dark.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
I come home, have dinner, and then it's dark, and
it's hitting me that I'm really ready for my days
to be longer. So that the part of the day
that's my part to switch off and just be like
it's still daytime. And I think I was wondering if
part of that is also that idea of drinking culture,
(04:35):
like what do you do after dark? If people, you know,
when you see your friends and you don't want to drink,
like I rarely ever drink, and so if someone's like, oh,
come out for a we're going to go to a
bar or are we going to have a drink, and
it's like, ah, I want you, I want to do
something else, but it's dark.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
And miserable and there's nothing else to do. Yeah, it's
interesting at you because I did some research into this
in terms of is it harder to stop drinking in
winter or summer, And a lot of people thought it
would be summer because there's so many social things going
on and the barbecues and everything else. But in actual fact,
I reckon it could be winter depending on what your
(05:15):
social life is like, because in summer there's so many
more things you can do with your friends. You can
go play pickleball, you can go down through a frisbee
in the park, you can go for a walk because
it's late at night, whereas in winter there's actually fuck
all to do apart from go and sit in a
pub or in someone's house and drink red wine exactly, And.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
That's not my gym. Come on, Sunshine, Yeah, totally tell
us what you've been up to for the last few years.
So last time we had you on and we talked
a lot about your you work with gray area drinking,
in the area of gray area drinking, so that not
quite alcoholics, but people who identify that drinking is a
bit of a crutch and are not a great outcome
(05:54):
in their lives and just working people through that tell
us give us the update. Three years, one long time.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
It is a long time. I wrote a book and
it got published last year. So that was a dream
come true for me. And not only did I I
mean I was just happy to have a book published
and to get you know, a publisher, but actually wanted
to publish it, and all of that was amazing, but
it also became like a best seller straight away. And
just every week if I get messages from men and
(06:25):
women all over the world telling me your book has
changed my life, and just the legacy of that is
just incredible. So the book is Beyond Booze if anyone
is listening and feels like they were a sober curious
and want to explore what life might look like alcohol free.
So I wrote my book. But then I also became
(06:47):
really curious in the after part of not how to
not drink, but how to create a life that I
love so much I don't need to drink, And that
was what the book was about. So it's called Beyond Booze,
how to create a life you love alcohol free. But
what really interests me is is not just the how
(07:09):
to not drink and how to get over the cravings
at five o'clock when you would normally have a drink,
but it's actually what are the fundamental changes in my
life that I probably need to make in order to
remove this crutch. Because most of the time, alcohol's not
the problem. Alcohol's actually a solution, but then it becomes
a problem. So we think that alcohol's the problem, but
(07:31):
in actual fact, it's what's underneath that. Is it that
I'm drinking because I'm not living in alignment with my
purpose or my values and I feel completely disconnected to myself?
Is it that I'm drinking because I'm so overwhelmed and
stressed and I have nothing else in my life that
lights me up? And it's the only moment in a
day that I get a big fact open me in
here sitting on my sofa, pour in a glass of wine.
(07:52):
So it's getting people to question that and then we
change that, And that's the juicy bit. That's the stuff
I love really getting into with my clients is how
am I going on this journey? So I'm building emotional recognation,
so I'm building resilience, So I'm discovering what my values
are and living in alignment with them.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
I love that we were having a conversation on Harpsi's
show yesterday and was talking kind of around the subjective
or helping people, but also the idea of when you're
helping people when you sometimes feel crapper in the moment
than maybe the conversation you're having with them. And I
was mulled out in my head all the time, that
(08:33):
idea of this like dopamine, dopamine versus serotonin, and this
life that we put together that we logically think about
so we have the absolute gift of being able to
think and be aware and be conscious of our thoughts.
That then we have this biology and all of this
(08:56):
unconscious stuff simmering underneath, and the best we can do
is puzzle it all together along the way. And each
day you wake up and you might be good or
you might be crap, and then you've got to figure
out why, and then you've got to make adjustments. And
some of those adjustments, you know, you can tell a
story about them, but sometimes it's your biologies at play.
(09:18):
It's like, oh, no, I've hooked onto another thing that's
you know, like phones, they're a dopamine here, don't mean,
don't mean, don't mean, don't mean, And then we sit
there confused, like, oh, why am I miserable?
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Yeah? I know. I interviewed someone in my last Alcohol
Free Challenge who's a specialist in the neurotransmitters and especially
about dopamine. It was so interesting and he specializes in
all areas of what brings us dopamine, so whether it's
poor an addiction, gambling, alcohol, drugs, and phones. But he
was talking a lot about phones and the problem there
and how people are spending so much time scrolling and
(09:55):
watching mindless stuff that they stop having any have time
or perception of time changes as we started this conversation,
so he was saying, if you want to create a
hobby in your life, like, think about, well, what do
you like watching people doing on tiktop? Because maybe you
like watching cooking videos, so maybe you want to go cooking.
Maybe you like watching gardening, so you want to do that.
(10:16):
But then all these people trying to go, oh, I've
got no time because I'm spending all my time watching
the other people do it, I've got no time to
do it myself. And we were laughing, just coming off Oh,
world is crazy that we go, Oh yeah, I love
watching cooking videos. I'd love to do cooking. We've got
no time because I got to spend all my time
watching the cooking videos, and it's just like, oh my god,
what have we done to the human race.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
I used to laugh at myself when I first started boxing,
because people would watch the fights and have and ask
me about my opinion on who's going to and I'm like,
I don't watch fights. I do fights like I do
the boxing. I don't watch the boxing. And it probably
in that early early time of learning, it would have
been beneficial for me to watch some of the fights
(10:58):
and learn that way, but it was I was always
a doer. No, I don't see it and watch sport.
Have no interest in watching someone else do the thing
that I could be learning to do.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
Yeah, yeah, I'm definitely the same like that. Just go
out and do it. I've got no interest in spending
my time watching someone else doing it. Yea. But yeah,
it's interesting when you go down that rabbit hole of
looking at dopamine, and you know, some of his top
tips were like delay, delay, delay, how quickly you pick
up your phone in the morning, do something hard in
(11:30):
the morning, So make your bed, have a morning routine,
you know, doing those things that delays the gratification that
the brain gets. Used to go for a walk without
your phone, getting some natural sunlight, like all the little
things that you can do that just really help us
to increase natural dopamine instead of getting these huge dopamine
punches from unnatural sources that really start playing havoc with
(11:54):
our neurotransmitters and the homeostasis that we have. And it's fascinating,
and I think this work is something that is going
to just be so much more leader as time goes
on and people become more and more addicted to fones.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Well, I loved when so recently I had the absolute
pleasure of having a chat to you and your group.
And what I immediately loved catching up with you in
that initial chat beforehand was just how like everything that
you cover and that you're now talking about is all
of the stuff I love to talk about. Hence, while
(12:29):
I was like, Okay, you're going to come back on
my show because I feel like we're sol syses and
we just need to banter. But do you feel like
over the later years of this journey of leading people
has really sent you into depths you didn't expect.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
Oh god, yeah, I think it's And you all know
this yourself from having been, you know, on your own
journey of self growth and healing and everything. It's pushed
me to go to the places I wanted to avoid
within myself because I wanted to show up as the
most authentic version of me for the people that I coach.
(13:08):
And I don't take it lightly that I have the
privilege of coaching thousands of people every year and that
I don't want anyone to put me on a pedestal,
and I will always be honest and open with them.
But I've gone deep into my own therapy journey and
my own healing journey and peel back layers, and I
thought I was done, if I thought far out, I've
(13:29):
done this for six years. I'm kind of like, I'm sorted.
I'll take a break from it all. And then something
happened this year that led me kind of back on
my hands and knees to my therapist's office, going, fuck,
there's this whole other thing. And he was like, Oh
my god, how did we not know that was there?
And we've done this really deep, deep piece of work
that I had no idea went as deeply as it
(13:52):
did into me and my psyche and how I think
and what I believe. And it's been incredible. And I
don't take it for granted that I get to do
this work and I get to use my own learnings
as well to then be able to support others. And
that's what I love, and I'm sure that's the same
for you.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
I love that, Funnily enough, As I was leaving the
gym this morning, and I think about this often too,
I'm so curious about I wonder what I'm in the
middle of that I'm not even aware of yet. I
wonder what the big lesson that's literally unfolding or about
to for me, And when will I start telling that story?
(14:33):
Because we live life thinking that it's we've just come
through something and then we've arrived. Kind of it's like, oh,
I learned this thing and now I know, And like,
you know, I'm only forty two, so there's going to
be a lot more to know coming. There's a lot
more coming at me.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
Yeah, And I think I've started to see it as
there's a process of for me anyway, what to look
like a process of discovery, awareness, and then whatever that
healing might look like. Sometimes there wasn't healing. Sometimes it's
simple awareness, and then there will be a period of
integration of just kind of becoming used to that idea
and understanding and whatever. And then I'll get comfortable again
(15:18):
because I've got okay, I have peeled back that layer.
I'm in that place, and then something else will happen
that means another layer gets peeled back and then and
I like that there's no time scale on it. I
remember watching a lady talk who came into one of
my alcohol free groups, and she was in her late sixties,
and she said, I'm forever learning about myself, and I
hope I'm still discovering this stuff when I'm eighty, because
(15:40):
how boring would it be to feel like you've arrived
using you know, the words that you described there and going, well,
that's it. This is me. There's nothing else to know.
That actually makes me feel quite horrified, because there has
to for me. This is the experience of life, right,
is the growing, the learning, the evolving. We do better
(16:01):
when we know better, and that for me is how
I live my life.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
What do you think about We talked about that idea
of the personas the masks we wear and the versions
of ourselves. What's your take on that.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
I think it's everywhere, and I think it's even sometimes
when I think that I'm not wearing a mask, I
can then sometimes afterwards look back on it and go, oh, yeah,
there was still a mask on. It might have been
quite thin, but there was still a mask on. And
I'm very, very trusting of people, and I sometimes I
(16:43):
think I've taken my mask off with people that didn't
always deserve the mask to be fully off, and that has,
you know, caused her cause pain. And therefore I have
become a wee bit more guarded as I've got older,
which is healthy, right to you know, people that get
to see you completely maskless need to be people that
have earn't that and it takes time. But I think
(17:06):
so many people never ever know who they are without
their mask on, because they've spent their entire life wearing
the mask they think that they need to wear in
order to be loved, approved of, included, worthy, whatever the
words might be.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
I keep banging on about this, but this recent stat
that I'd gotten hold of about self awareness, and that
only ten to fifteen percent of peoples is tash Yurich
refers to this ret this particular research, so ten to
fifteen percent of people are truly self aware, And I
was like, oh, well, that evidence doesn't point strongly despite
(17:48):
the fact that I'm quite interested and curious and somewhat
obsessed with the topic, evidence doesn't point towards the likelihood
of me being all that self aware.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Yet.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
You know, who's to say, just because I'm interested in it,
that I'm anywhere near the top of that ten to
fifteen percent.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
Oh yeah, but I'd say you're way way higher than
the average person.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Yeah. I remember when I first the first times, I
guess I started communicating with people and getting feedback from
them of them saying, wow, that's really self aware, and
starting to I guess develop levels of self awareness, and
then getting frustrated at like, what's the point in self awareness?
(18:31):
Because then what do you do with it? Sometimes life
feels easier the moment before you're self aware, because then
you've got a bit of responsibility in an ownership you
don't really don't what to do with it. Yeah, but
then you think you're self aware, you think it's this
one time thing, and then next minute bam, another layone.
You're like, oh oh no.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
Oh, totally, totally. And I always say that, you know,
for me, my self awareness journey the moment I put
down the bottle because and I talk about it as
going from living unconsciously to living consciously, because when I
was drinking, there was just no conscientiousness whatsoever around why
(19:16):
I did what I did or why I was showing
up as I was. But once the alcohol was taken away,
you've got nowhere to hide anymore. So it's really hard
to not become curious about yourself because you've not got
that crutch. And while some people will swap alcohol for
(19:36):
another addiction, and most common is food, what food doesn't
do that alcohol does do is it doesn't skew your
perception of everything. You don't get drunk on food, you
don't lose your sense of awareness or pass out from
it or whatever. And so you're still there sitting with
how you are feeling. And that's where the gross really
(20:00):
begins because if you've been using alcohol, as a really
famous statistic in the alcohol free world that the day,
the age you are when you start drinking is the
emotional age that you are when you stop drinking because
you've relied on You've not had any emotional maturity, because
you've not really got much resilience, because what you do
(20:21):
is the moment anything hard happens, you just reach for
a drink. And so what a lot of us find
when we first stopped drinking, and I was forty three
when I stopped, was actually, fuck, how do I sit
with this feeling, this feeling of disappointment, this feeling of sadness,
this feeling of loneliness like whatever it is, or even
the good feelings like this happiness, this excitement, all of
(20:44):
these big emotions. I'm so used to having alcohol to
just numb that a little bit, and didn't know how
to be with it because no one's teaching this stuff
at school. No one told me how to sit with
the emotion of disappointment. And when I discovered alcohol, that
was a really great way of not having to feel
how you were feeling. And so you can't help but
go on this journey of learning. Okay, well, what is
(21:06):
it that works for me in those moments?
Speaker 2 (21:09):
And were those well that for you? Was that a
fairly ongoing feeling that sat with you for your work
or did that show up in moments.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
A bit of both. Really, I think there would be
moments where there would be very similar moments. So stress
was a big one, that feeling of overwhelm. There were
habitual moments of it's five o'clock on a Friday, and
then there would just be weird moments where you're just like,
this just feels wrong and weird, and I just wish
I had a drink to make myself feel better in
(21:43):
this moment. You know, even just the first time you
go to a pub and you're used to being Sarah
the party girl, and everyone you know knowing that you're
going to call the shots and you're going to be
getting tequila slammers after the wine and everything else, and
no one almost knows how to be around you, and
you don't know how to be around them. And you
all love each other and you all want to make
it okay, but you feel really clunky and out of
(22:05):
sorts in yourself, and that takes a little while to
get used to. And so there's lots of firsts that
you navigate. And the only way, and we call it
our sober muscle, like, the only way that muscle starts
to get stronger is by just continually doing those firsts,
and then sure enough you get the muscle memory, and
(22:26):
then it just gets easier and easier.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
I think you have to grave the part of you
that disappears when you give that up.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
You really do, and I don't think anyone talks about
that enough. So that's a really great question and point
to bring up, because you feel weird because you've got
to a point where alcohol's been really impacting you. Your
anxiety is through the roof. You're feeling rubbish, you're low
in mood, you're tired, you know all of those things,
(22:58):
and so you know it's the right thing to remove it,
but there's still that version of you that you need
to grieve. And what I get a lot of my
clients to do is actually write a letter to alcohol
as a breakup letter, because it's almost like the bad boyfriend, right,
you know, like the bad boyfriend that you have great
(23:19):
sex with, but he's just an our sohole and he
treats you like rubbish, but there's still something there that
you get from it that you keep going back. And
it's a bit like that with alcohol. It never not
for many people that I work with, does it get
to the point where it's one hundred percent terrible. It's
just that the tipping point has happened. So maybe it's
seventy percent bad and thirty percent good or whatever it is.
(23:42):
But there's still a little bit that you get from
it because we wouldn't keep doing it otherwise. So it
is okay to grieve that, to have an official breakup
with it, almost and to accept that that's in the past,
but it's okay to miss it, and it's o k
to still think about that a little bit.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Years and years ago. I never had a I'm quitting
our more. I kind of left alcohol behind when I
started boxing, and I was, but when I was younger,
I would drink to blank out, to blackout drunk. I
would I was a very hyperactive little drinker. So friends
love that, right, because you're fun Yeah, And it's really
(24:26):
funny because for a lot of years, certain people would
she hadn't. She had an alter ego name Francesca, and
people will still refer to Francesca and be like, bring Francesca.
I'm like, she's she doesn't exist anymore. And if they
push in pride, I'm like more inclined to get pierced
off at them because I'm like, that's actually not safe,
(24:50):
Like that's not fun for me just because it's fun
for you, and it's being okay with going. You might
like that version of Tiff, but she's not around anymore
and she's not coming out to play, and I'm okay
with it, So best you get okay with that. Otherwise
(25:10):
this version of Tiff won't come out to play either.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
Well, and that is what happens. Tiff and I see
it a lot. Like we've just done a whole module
in my program on connection and how our friendships change
when we stop drinking, and gray area drinkers tend to
surround themselves with other gray area drinkers so that you're
all the same, and then when one of you stops drinking,
it's super confronting for the other people and they're like,
(25:37):
you know, some of my ladies have had people say
to them, oh, you can't come unless you're going to
be drinking, or you know, things like that, because that's
just what they've always done together. And so there can
be an awareness of actually that friendship maybe didn't have
much more to it than the fact that we just
love getting pissed together.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
And it kind of takes away. I guess from the
intimacy of friendships when you realize how much we just
love people when we're boozed, which you know, it's like
those bathroom besties that you'd make when you're young. How
many best friends did you make in the bathrooms?
Speaker 3 (26:16):
That was like, why I love drinking so much? Like
you're my best friend, I love you. That was just
I loved it. That was music to my ears. Like
I was a girl that just craved connection, and so
like drinking and drugs for me were just a way
of making thousands of bathroom investies that made me fill
my cup and feel like I'm super popular. I've got
(26:38):
loads of friends. That girl that I'll never ever see again,
that was my best friend for an entire night. But yeah,
you don't realize I quite harshadow at all this Ah.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
What was great for you?
Speaker 3 (26:50):
What was.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
Was there something that you started to Was there a
habit or a thing or a behavior or a hobby
that you found that starts to really fill your cup
and make this transition easy.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
I think it was a few things. I think it was,
you know, exercise and doing all those things to get
the natural dopamine and time outside and everything like that.
But I think more than anything, it was the realization
and the constant connection to how much I liked myself
(27:28):
and how positive I felt. Because when you're drinking and
you don't want to be drinking, or you don't want
to be drinking as much as you're drinking, generally speaking,
the first thought you have in the morning is before
you've even opened your eyes or your shit, well you're
a loser. Oh well, you said you weren't going to
drink last night, and here we are again, feeling like crap,
(27:50):
you know, hungover. Maybe it's three am, and we've got
the three am sweats, and you know, the liver's pumping
and your cornisole's firing around your body and you can't
get back to sleep, and you've got a at a am,
and you've got to be up in three hours and
all of that, and so your self talk becomes incredibly negative.
And you can imagine how that sets the president for
(28:11):
the day if the first thing you're saying to yourself
that morning is well, you're shit and you're a loser.
And I think I never lost ever that sense of
pride of every morning waking up knowing I didn't drink
last night. And even now I'm six and a half
years alcohol free, there is not a single morning but
(28:33):
I don't wake up and just have that habitual moment
that I created early when I stopped drinking, of you're awesome,
look at you go? You know. And when you have
that self advocacy and you start talking to yourself like that,
what then starts to grow as a result of that
in terms of your confidence, your self belief, and that
(28:55):
changes lives. That's the stuff that transforms lives. People talk
about it as not drinking, but it's not even about
the alcohol. It's about what the alcohol does to that
self talk. And when we remove it, the pride that
you start to get and the confidence and self belief
allows you then to make decisions that you would not
(29:17):
have made if you were still drinking and talking to
yourself in such a bad way. And so I've watched
women go back to UNI, change careers, leave unhappy relationships,
like all these things that they've changed as a result
of their first thought in the morning is, oh, I'm
pretty awesome today.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
I do you reckon that? There's almost it almost creates
two versions of us. Right, do you think that when
we're drinking often or using alcohol in a less productive way.
Do you think we identify more with that version of
(29:55):
us or realize that there's you know, because what makes
me think of that as times where and I remember
once going to Thailand and walking down that wretched Bangalar
Road in the evening and it's and I just remember
because we go over there for boxing retreat. We take
boxing retreats there and you walk up Bangala Road as
an Aussie check and there's a whole bunch of boozehound
(30:16):
blokes from all over the world. You know, Oh, it's gross.
And I would just be like, oh, I don't even
want to sounds rude, but don't even want to, bloody
politely have to speak to you because you're so drunk
you're actually not you And if you were sober, you
wouldn't speak to me right now. So I don't even
want to interact with you. You know. It's like, there's
there's different, definite, two versions of you, And I just
(30:38):
wonder if we realize that and if we connect with
one more than the other when we're when we're drinking.
Speaker 3 (30:46):
I don't think we realize that when we're drinking. I
think we only discover it if we've developed drinking habits
in the way that the people I work with hat
I don't we think that's who we are. So a
lot of people think I'm extraver, I'm a party girl,
I'm x y Z. And then they stopped drinking and go,
oh my god, I hate people. And that's probably why
I was drinking, because I actually don't like being with
(31:08):
people and I can't be asked people and all of this,
And so what people start to discover is, well, what
do I actually like and who am I really? Because
alcohol is one version of me and that might have
been a version of me for ten twenty thirty years,
but I get to now discover who I am now.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
Just that's so funny. I was such a little like
little extravert when I was younger, and I remember there
were a specific time one of my tazzy friends ended
up three tazzy friends that all moved ended up in
some Kilda and reconnected, so we knew each other and
Tazzy and then we landed here and I remember one
day so having a conversation and somebody I don't know
(31:51):
what the question was, but I was kind of explaining
that I'm not. No, I'm pretty, I'm pretty extravert. I'm
pretty like probably a bit over the top really, And
she was like, tif are you serious? Like you are
when you're in your own environment, but if you go
to like one of my friend's house and you don't
know anyone, you're quiet asn't it? And I realized that
(32:12):
was the truth. And I was like, oh, I'm not
how I perceive myself to be. And it was such
an interesting moment. I was like, oh wow, I believed
one tiny part of myself that was on the Tiff
show the persona right, Yeah, so interesting.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
Yeah, yeah, and when and you know, alcohol is definitely
a mask for I mean, in my book, I've got
a whole chapter on what mask a You're wearing, And
it's all about the masks that that alcohol allows us
to put on. And when we remove that alcohol, we
get to start discovering who we are. And like, if
I've worked with women in their seventies and they've been
(32:55):
drinking for like over fifty years, and then now on
our journey of discovering, well, who the hell am I?
Because that's one version of me that there's all of
this other stuff to explore and to start to experiment
with to discover, well do I like it? Do I
not like it? And it's fun. It's about being curious.
(33:15):
It's about going, oh, what do I get to go
and try now to see if I like it? And
so some people might find it a wee bit daunting,
but I just find it's so exciting.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
What tends to prompt people who are entering into the
eighth decade of life to what's making women at that
age reflect and decide to leave booze behind?
Speaker 3 (33:41):
Yeah, great question. There's a couple of things. I think
that they are sick and tired of feeling the way
that they're feeling. And you've got to remember that this
whole sober movement is fairly new in terms of people
loud and proud going out there and going I'm not
an alcohol but I've stopped drinking. And I feel great
(34:02):
for it, because historically, and for the generation that we're
talking about, the way that they saw alcohol and people
not drinking was someone was an alcoholic and that was
a term that came with shame and remorse and they
had to go down, like into a quiet church basement
and confess, you know, I'm Sarah I'm an alcoholic, and
they were the only people that stopped drinking. Otherwise you
(34:24):
didn't and you kept going, Whereas we've got this entire
movement now of people going, nah, not an alcoholic, but shit,
alcohol wasn't working for me anymore, so I've stopped. So
they're starting to be exposed to that message as well
as starting to realize it's not serving them and they're
not feeling great. And also there's just this whole movement
I think of people even in their seventies and beyond,
(34:49):
going I can do anything now, like you you know
you read about women going starting strength training in their seventies,
Like all of that is starting to happen, and I
think it's fantastic.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
This lady at the gym, I've told this once before,
pretty sure on this show, so I'll keep it brief everyone.
But I ran into this lady at the gym that
trains and she's a weapon, and we chat every now
and then, and she wants to start boxing. But she
was training for a powerlifting comp, her first powerlifting comp,
and she had an online coach, and she was also
(35:20):
doing a foreign fitness and one day she came in
dug out of her bag pulled out an eight four
sheet and she's like, look at this. And she just
won the Australian record for the powerlifting right her first competition,
and I think it was maybe I can't remember the
(35:40):
number of the full total of kilos, but I said, oh,
what were each of you lifts? And she went through
the bench and the squad and the dead left and
she goes, yeah, pretty good. I mean for my age,
I'm like, ye have great numbers. How old are you?
Speaker 3 (35:53):
Sarah?
Speaker 2 (35:54):
She was eighty eighty and she's doing her PETE qualification
and she's just want to set the Australian record And
I just went I want to be And she's funky.
She's funky like she looks like her energy is so
young and vibrant. But I want to be that.
Speaker 3 (36:13):
Yeah, totally. I was talking to a girlfriend about this
actually just last week and we were saying how this
never before been role models like there is now for
women in their fifties and beyond who are talking about
strength training, who are talking about being fit, where they're
not changing their body to fit the aesthetics of what
men say they should look like, but they're doing it
for themselves. And you know Dr Stacy Simmons and the
(36:36):
work that she's doing around women's health and well being
and all of this, it's a it's a moment in
time that I think we're going to look back on
in Gears to Come and Go. That's the moment that
women's health and fitness changed because it stopped being about
going to the cardio section and make yourself look thin
for the men, and it started being about going too
the weights room and make yourself strong for yourself and
(36:57):
for your future self. And that is so powerful.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
M And I mean you would know through your running,
I know, through boxing and through strength, when you start
to build a strong physiology, like that unconscious mind, all
that unconscious stuff, that all of that shifts and change.
Like I never expected that that first choice to do
a crazy, ridiculous twelve week boxing challenge. I never thought
(37:24):
it was going to change my life. And even as
I got into the next two years of doing more
of those in training and being obsessed with them, I
thought I was leaving, you know, I thought I was
being careless with work. I thought I was doing to
the detriment of my career and my grown up part
of my life, when in actual fact, there became a
(37:45):
point where I kind of looked over my shoulder and went, shit,
that's made me a better person, a better employee, or
a better business person. Like that's changed me in all
these ways. I didn't realize that skills were going to
transfer like that.
Speaker 3 (38:01):
Yeah. Yeah, I feel exactly the same, both with my
running and with the strength training that I've been doing.
I've done a twelve I've been doing a six month
strength training program, and I think what you have to realize,
both with marathon training and with the strength training is
it's there's no quick win. Your body won't change overnight.
You can't run a marathon after one run. It is consistency,
(38:24):
it's discipline, it's patience. But what I've noticed in terms
of how strong my mind is as a result of
how strong my body has got since I've really switched
up and been doing so much heavier strength training, I
never expected that.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
Like, it's great, and that whole idea of what you
performance was what you think or how you feel doesn't
always matter.
Speaker 3 (38:51):
And that's a.
Speaker 2 (38:52):
Bit a bit of a pushbull. It's like you're listen
to your body, but sometimes you're not listening to your body.
So it's understanding the nuance of that I listened to
my body and respect what it needs, but also especially
in a sporting aspect, this was so true in boxing,
but also know when and how to apply those in
the moments of Once I went into sparring on three
(39:14):
hours sleep, and as I pulled up at the gym,
which was an hour's drive, that's when the fatigue hit
and I was like, whow, Well, if I had felt
like this before I left the house, I wouldn't be here.
But now I'm here, and I walk in the door
and I'm told that I'm going to do some round
sparring with John Maneu and I'm like, okay, ouch, well
this is going to be really bad. I'm like, this
is this is bad for me. And it was the
(39:35):
best I'd ever sparred. And that became something that I
held in my and it was so important. It was
so important for my mind to realize that when it
needed to, it could overcome any obstacle, because I shouldn't
be that good and that clear and be able to
perform at that level on three hours sleep.
Speaker 3 (39:56):
Yeah. Yeah, And so you surprise yourself all the time, right,
And so we've got to take the limitations off what
we believe we can and can't do. And I think
that's starting to happen in women's health. I really do
think there's a change happening and that's only going to
be a great thing for the next generation. I mean,
we were laughing in our WhatsApp group with my girlfriends
and my friend was talking about her stepdaughters and how
(40:18):
like they spend all their spare money on brunch and
physio and they're like eighteen and twenty, And I was like,
at eighteen and twenty, I spent all my money on
facts and booth and it's just like the next generation
brunch and physio. Who'd have thought it? Right? Right?
Speaker 2 (40:36):
Yeah? Yeah? What what are your goals? Like, what's next
for you? And maybe in terms of what you probably
never expected.
Speaker 3 (40:48):
Yeah. Obviously, next year is a big year for me
in terms of turning fifty, and it feels like I
actually feel like my fourties have just been the warm
up and that fifty to sixty is going to be
the big year for me. And I think that I'm
excited to see where that goes, both personally and professionally.
(41:12):
Something that I'm working on a lot with personally is
that balance with feminine energy. I have very strong masculine energy.
I'm quite hard, I'm quite ambitious, I'm quite driven. I
have all of those qualities, which are great. I'm not
taking away from them. But I also know that when
(41:33):
I balance that with my feminine energy and I allow
more of my intuition and I create more space for myself,
that's the optimal version of me. And it's hard because
the masculine energy stuff is all the tangible stuff of
here's the goal, tick that off, go there, you know,
(41:55):
it's all of that, whereas the feminine side of it
is way more about slowing down on which I'm not
great at the being as opposed to the doing. And
I'm so much better than I was. But that's all
the work in progress for me. I'd love to write
another book. I have been going so since writing my
(42:16):
book and doing my Gray area drinking coaching, which I've
been doing for over five years now. I've also retrained.
We've done more training as a menopause and menopause weight
loss coach, and so I've been running programs for women.
I trained under doctor Stacy Simms, and I'm doing some
programs around supporting women's health as their age, So really
teaching women about osteopenia and osteoporosis and how they can
(42:41):
really start supporting their bone health, understanding how weight gain
and fatigue and feeling crap and not inevitable in perimenopause.
I'm in the best physical and mental health is my life,
and I'm right in the middle of perimenopause. I'm forty nine.
My hormones are all over the place, but there is
a way to manage it. But you know, I did
a post on Instagram the other dative and I said,
(43:01):
probably a lot of people look at my life and
think it's boring. I don't drink alcohol. I go to
bed at nine point thirty most nights. I eat whole foods.
I train or exercise most days. I love doing jigsaw puzzles.
I like the things that drinking. Sarah, she didn't got
fucking hell, look at that might she's a barrel, I laughs,
isn't she? But in actual fact, this just makes me
(43:24):
so happy because this means that the version of me
that shows up every day she loves her life. She
didn't need to look forward to Friday night to escape
her life. Yeah, because she's in her life in enjoying it,
and that for me is what I just want to
keep working on, is the gratitude and the presence of
how far I've come and what I get as a
(43:46):
result of that.
Speaker 2 (43:47):
It's interesting, how I mean, if we need alcohol to
bring for us to rise to an occasion to perceive
ourselves with experiencing joy, is it really joy? Like? If
we can't access a level of intensity in feeling joyful
(44:10):
or good or happy or fun or whatever label you
want to call that emotion, if we can't do it
without a substance creating a chemical shift, does it really exist?
Speaker 3 (44:24):
Yeah? Wow, that's a big question. I would say no,
not if it's chemically and juice. Yeah, that's different to
authentic pure joy. Yeah, so different.
Speaker 2 (44:38):
Do you know what I've kind of decided a few
years ago or realized maybe putting two and two together,
that I'm so drawn to everything that requires such a
level of discomfort, like I might need my kind of
challenge pathways to be highly activated and pushed to their
limits to the point where I'm like, oh, I wish
(45:00):
I didn't I can't wait till I don't feel like
this about this. But then I realized that everything that
I really love is because it takes me to that
place first, whether it's speaking, whether it's boxing, whether it's
riding my motorcycle, Like everything that sticks in my mind
is something that I truly, truly love and deeply appreciate.
(45:20):
Required me getting over that hump, and I was like, oh, right, well,
I better stop wishing that I've felt good enough or
that I wouldn't feel scared like this before doing this,
because the moment that I do will be like everything
else that I don't do, I won't do it anymore.
Speaker 3 (45:38):
Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting because I was just thinking then
when you were saying that. My son asked me not
that long ago, you know, don't you love the questions
that kids ask mum? What's the best feeling in the world?
So I was like, right, Sarah, where could you go
with this? There's quite a few different ways that you
could answer that. And I said to him, do you
(45:58):
know what I said? For me? The best feeling in
the world is working really hard in discomfort for something
and then getting it. I said, if you always go
for the quick, easy option in comfort, you'll get it.
But the sense that you get of getting it feels flat.
(46:19):
That's dope for me. Whereas you work hard for something
and then you get it, I said, it's a completely
different feeling. I said, to never avoid the hard option
will because that will ultimately develop you as a person,
but will actually give you that best feeling in the world.
Speaker 2 (46:40):
Love that.
Speaker 3 (46:41):
How old your son fifteen?
Speaker 2 (46:44):
What do you reckon he's going to do with his lafe.
Speaker 3 (46:48):
Do the hard things, Let's hope. I don't know. And
it's an interesting one because he's now at an age
where a lot of his friends are starting to drink,
and so the alcohol conversation, you know, is coming up
more and more. And I'm like, I said, well, it's
not even a discussion point, I said, regardless of my job,
it's not even a discussion point at the moment. We'll
(47:08):
talk about it in a couple of years. But everything
I've researched and read about teenagers and alcohol is delay, delay, delay.
The younger they are when they start drinking, the higher
the chance of them developing alcohol use disorder. So just
you know, parking that. But I've said to him, you know,
this schooling system and gosh, I could talk about that
for five hours is not set up for the world
(47:29):
that these kids are going into, and I just say
to him all the time, go and travel, Go and
see the world. Go and get a job on a cruise. Shit,
go get your camper van and travel around Australia when
you finished year twelve, like, go and do stuff because
there's so much pressure just being put on. Get a job,
get a mortgage, get a house. And I kind of
(47:50):
feel like there's time for that. But I really hope
he goes and has that life experience.
Speaker 2 (47:55):
I love that. When you were talking before about the
mass and and feminine energy, I guess what's hard about that.
I'm really interested in how you how that plays it?
How do you do that right? And even in the question,
the answer is there, how do you do that when
you're trying to stop doing Like to access to feminine
(48:16):
is literally stop doing so. I feel like it almost
becomes a competition to geet good at not getting good
at something right.
Speaker 3 (48:24):
YEA yeah. For me, there's two sides of it. One
is I have a very very I wouldn't definitely the
addictive personality is there, but I naturally go into fight
off flight very quickly. I'm quite cortisol driven and dopamine driven.
(48:46):
So I love my work. I could work all the time.
I have to be in a be because because I
get so much fulfillment from it. So my body goes
for the things that I love doing. I love exercise.
I could definitely overexercise, you know, all of those things.
And so for me, it's coming back to the stillness
and practicing, you know, the going for a walk without music,
without a podcast, without that, where I'm not racing and
(49:08):
I'm just taking the dog and we're going slow. It's
doing my yoga Nidra, It's doing my yin yoga. It's
just slowing down and just being able to ask myself,
you know, what do I need right now? How am
I feeling right now? It's those, you know, the slower activities.
And then it's also intuition. And I've always been really intuitive,
(49:32):
but when we're up in our head all the time,
we lose that. And so again, when you create more space,
you get to listen to her speak a lot more.
And that for me has been breathwork. I've done some
breathwork sessions that have been fucking mind blowing. In terms
of that, It's like my soul has been talking to me.
I've gone to a place where I've just had messages come.
(49:55):
I've had contact with my dead grandma, like I've had
really tense I only do one on one breath work
because I can't bath going into a room and hearing
other people's stuff coming up. I just can't do it.
I do one on one. I have an incredible moment.
I go there and I might, let's breathe, and it's
ninety minutes and the stuff that comes up has been
(50:15):
insane for me. Wow.
Speaker 2 (50:18):
Yeah, I'm interested in exploring that a lot more. I
do like just breathwork meditations, not very long ones, just
before before bed and when I wake up. But I
all about one on one. I do like what I
like about meditations. Is it a Buddhist group or just
up the road for me? And every couple of weeks
(50:40):
when I'm free, on that night, I duck in there,
and there's something about the energy of a room. There's
something that you know the moment you go in, there's
a whole energy shift. And yeah, so it's definitely easier
in person. But yeah, I'd like to I'd like to
explore more breathwork because definitely the intuition, I mean I
(51:01):
feel much the same as you very in my masculine
very dewey, and I'm so intrigued by that feminine energy
and specifically intuition, and I think there's a lot of
spaces in what I do where I'm you immintuitive, you know,
in the way that I work with people one on
(51:23):
one when it's them focused, but when it's me focus,
I feel like there's that's where there's a disconnect for me,
a bit of a gap where it's I'm always like, oh,
I want to access something, and but when it's when
I'm the focus of it, I find it more challenging.
Does that makes sense?
Speaker 3 (51:40):
Yeah, totally totally. And I think the one on one
breath work, doing the sematic work, because I've done a
lot of talk therapy and I understand cognitively all the stuff,
but the biggest breakthroughs have been when I've been working
with my body and through the breath work and the healing,
like it's I don't think I've ever on a birth
(52:00):
work session where i haven't cried, But that's not a
bad thing. That's releasing stored emotions.
Speaker 2 (52:06):
Yeah, oh I love that. All right, that's going on
my list, Sarah, thank you and.
Speaker 3 (52:11):
I'm a really good person in Melbourne. I'll message you
after this.
Speaker 2 (52:14):
Please do Yeah? Great? Great? What if where can people
access you? And is there anything coming up that you
would like to promote?
Speaker 3 (52:23):
Yeah? So obviously my book is a great place to
start if anyone is curious about creating a life without
the reliance on alcohol. I have a women's Alcohol Free Challenge.
I run women's challenges four times a year and the
next one will be October, so just head to my
website Sarah Muspect dot com and then I'll be running
my menopause nutrition and menopause weight loss coaching program in November.
(52:47):
So again, all the information will be on my website
and come and say hi, I'm on Instagram and just yeah,
just keep staying curious is what I always say to people.
And there's a brilliant book if you've come across it
called Tiny Experiments No, and it's all about the concept
of just keep experimenting. See your life as an experiment.
(53:09):
And if you're not trying something new, you're never learning,
you're never growing, you're never going to keep evolving as
a person. So instead of like I always say with
my alcohol Free Challenges, it's not a prescription to saying right,
that's it. I can never drink alcohol again. It's a
tiny experiment of thirty days to be curious about. Well,
(53:30):
maybe this is a way for me to reflect on
is alcohol serving me or not? Because once a woman
gets to forty, there is no denying that alcohol impacts
you know, our hormones and everything like that. So start
seeing your life as an opportunity to have lots of
tiny experiments to create the best version of life for you.
Speaker 2 (53:49):
I love that. I love that. Well, thanks for coming
on for another chant. It's been really, really good.
Speaker 3 (53:55):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2 (53:57):
Everyone go check it out. Thanks in the show, our
notes as usual, and we will see you all next time.
Speaker 3 (54:07):
She said, it's now never.
Speaker 1 (54:10):
I got fighting in my blood.
Speaker 3 (54:16):
Got it quite coast, gotta gotta got it.
She said, it's now never I got fighting in my blood.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
I'm tiff. This is role with the punches and we're
turning life's hardest hits into wins. Nobody wants to go
to court, and don't. My friends at test Art Family
Lawyers know that they offer all forms of alternative dispute resolution.
Their team of Melbourne family lawyers have extensive experience in
(00:29):
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and financial agreements. Test Art is in your corner, so
reach out to Mark and the team at www dot
test Artfamilylawyers dot com dot au. The fabulous Sarah Russbatch
(00:54):
welcome back to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
It's been a red hot minute, hasn't it It has?
Speaker 3 (01:01):
I think we worked out how many years did we
work out? It was the other day. It felt like
it was a week, but it had actually been about
three and a half years or something.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Yeah, time is very warped ever since the time time,
the pandemic time. But in my mind, time has been
so warped since then, where it's kind of gone fast
but stayed the same. It feels like yesterday is forever
ago all at once.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
What is with that?
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Or is that just getting old? Am I blaming it
on a worldwide event when it's just it's just how
life gets faster and faster as every year passes.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Yeah, because I think about that a lot, because having
a thirteen and a fifteen year old, you talk about time,
and you talk about something as being two weeks away,
and they're like, oh my god, that's forever. I can't
wait that long. And I'm just like, gosh, I remember
when it was what it was like to be a kid,
and to think that two weeks felt like such a
long time away. Now I'm like, yeah, right, two weeks
(02:02):
feels like tomorrow.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
I can't imagine being a parent because I've got a
couple of young clients, and the two young girls I'm
thinking of are both around the same age, which right
now is seventeen, and you know, it feels like they
in my mind, they are stuck as these you know,
(02:25):
fourteen year olds, because they were they were probably fourteen
when they started. And we have these conversations now and
it smacks me in the face. I'm like, oh, you're
a grown up. If you're a grown up.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
What am I right? I know we're just getting ancient tif.
I'm like, I've got I turned fifteen next year. That
really is old.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Like what are you going to do for that celebration?
Speaker 3 (02:50):
I Am flying to London to run the London Marathon.
Oh that is awesome. Yeah, well it's basically going to
be the year of festivities of because we have to
go out with a bank with our fifties. And so
I've been in the ballot for London Marathon ten times
and every year I got the email going nah, try
(03:11):
again next year and mark this year. I literally got
the email and it's like four weeks after my fiftieth.
So I get to go home to London. I get
to see all my friends and family and one of
my best friends got a charity place so we're running
it together. It's like all my dreams come true.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
That'll be amazing. What a milestone event.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
Right, And Like when I was heading into my forties
for my fortieth birthday, I was like, right, how much
boost can I get? What other party drugs can I
get hold of? What celebration can I do? Until seven
in the morning, And that was my fiftieth and I'm like, oh, yes,
I'm going to my health retreat to do like hot
saunas and cold water therapy, and then I'm going to
London to run the marathon. And so yeah, it goes
(03:54):
to show what can change in ten years.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Big time, big done. I feel like just this week
has felt I've said to a couple of people this week, Okay,
we've had a really good winter here, like I think
really late start to it hasn't been super cold. I'm real,
I'm rubbish in winter. But it's dark.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
It's dark.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
I come home, have dinner, and then it's dark, and
it's hitting me that I'm really ready for my days
to be longer. So that the part of the day
that's my part to switch off and just be like
it's still daytime. And I think I was wondering if
part of that is also that idea of drinking culture,
(04:35):
like what do you do after dark? If people, you know,
when you see your friends and you don't want to drink,
like I rarely ever drink, and so if someone's like, oh,
come out for a we're going to go to a
bar or are we going to have a drink, and
it's like, ah, I want you, I want to do
something else, but it's dark.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
And miserable and there's nothing else to do. Yeah, it's
interesting at you because I did some research into this
in terms of is it harder to stop drinking in
winter or summer, And a lot of people thought it
would be summer because there's so many social things going
on and the barbecues and everything else. But in actual fact,
I reckon it could be winter depending on what your
(05:15):
social life is like, because in summer there's so many
more things you can do with your friends. You can
go play pickleball, you can go down through a frisbee
in the park, you can go for a walk because
it's late at night, whereas in winter there's actually fuck
all to do apart from go and sit in a
pub or in someone's house and drink red wine exactly, And.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
That's not my gym. Come on, Sunshine, Yeah, totally tell
us what you've been up to for the last few years.
So last time we had you on and we talked
a lot about your you work with gray area drinking,
in the area of gray area drinking, so that not
quite alcoholics, but people who identify that drinking is a
bit of a crutch and are not a great outcome
(05:54):
in their lives and just working people through that tell
us give us the update. Three years, one long time.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
It is a long time. I wrote a book and
it got published last year. So that was a dream
come true for me. And not only did I I
mean I was just happy to have a book published
and to get you know, a publisher, but actually wanted
to publish it, and all of that was amazing, but
it also became like a best seller straight away. And
just every week if I get messages from men and
(06:25):
women all over the world telling me your book has
changed my life, and just the legacy of that is
just incredible. So the book is Beyond Booze if anyone
is listening and feels like they were a sober curious
and want to explore what life might look like alcohol free.
So I wrote my book. But then I also became
(06:47):
really curious in the after part of not how to
not drink, but how to create a life that I
love so much I don't need to drink, And that
was what the book was about. So it's called Beyond Booze,
how to create a life you love alcohol free. But
what really interests me is is not just the how
(07:09):
to not drink and how to get over the cravings
at five o'clock when you would normally have a drink,
but it's actually what are the fundamental changes in my
life that I probably need to make in order to
remove this crutch. Because most of the time, alcohol's not
the problem. Alcohol's actually a solution, but then it becomes
a problem. So we think that alcohol's the problem, but
(07:31):
in actual fact, it's what's underneath that. Is it that
I'm drinking because I'm not living in alignment with my
purpose or my values and I feel completely disconnected to myself?
Is it that I'm drinking because I'm so overwhelmed and
stressed and I have nothing else in my life that
lights me up? And it's the only moment in a
day that I get a big fact open me in
here sitting on my sofa, pour in a glass of wine.
(07:52):
So it's getting people to question that and then we
change that, And that's the juicy bit. That's the stuff
I love really getting into with my clients is how
am I going on this journey? So I'm building emotional recognation,
so I'm building resilience, So I'm discovering what my values
are and living in alignment with them.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
I love that we were having a conversation on Harpsi's
show yesterday and was talking kind of around the subjective
or helping people, but also the idea of when you're
helping people when you sometimes feel crapper in the moment
than maybe the conversation you're having with them. And I
was mulled out in my head all the time, that
(08:33):
idea of this like dopamine, dopamine versus serotonin, and this
life that we put together that we logically think about
so we have the absolute gift of being able to
think and be aware and be conscious of our thoughts.
That then we have this biology and all of this
(08:56):
unconscious stuff simmering underneath, and the best we can do
is puzzle it all together along the way. And each
day you wake up and you might be good or
you might be crap, and then you've got to figure
out why, and then you've got to make adjustments. And
some of those adjustments, you know, you can tell a
story about them, but sometimes it's your biologies at play.
(09:18):
It's like, oh, no, I've hooked onto another thing that's
you know, like phones, they're a dopamine here, don't mean,
don't mean, don't mean, don't mean, And then we sit
there confused, like, oh, why am I miserable?
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Yeah? I know. I interviewed someone in my last Alcohol
Free Challenge who's a specialist in the neurotransmitters and especially
about dopamine. It was so interesting and he specializes in
all areas of what brings us dopamine, so whether it's
poor an addiction, gambling, alcohol, drugs, and phones. But he
was talking a lot about phones and the problem there
and how people are spending so much time scrolling and
(09:55):
watching mindless stuff that they stop having any have time
or perception of time changes as we started this conversation,
so he was saying, if you want to create a
hobby in your life, like, think about, well, what do
you like watching people doing on tiktop? Because maybe you
like watching cooking videos, so maybe you want to go cooking.
Maybe you like watching gardening, so you want to do that.
(10:16):
But then all these people trying to go, oh, I've
got no time because I'm spending all my time watching
the other people do it, I've got no time to
do it myself. And we were laughing, just coming off Oh,
world is crazy that we go, Oh yeah, I love
watching cooking videos. I'd love to do cooking. We've got
no time because I got to spend all my time
watching the cooking videos, and it's just like, oh my god,
what have we done to the human race.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
I used to laugh at myself when I first started boxing,
because people would watch the fights and have and ask
me about my opinion on who's going to and I'm like,
I don't watch fights. I do fights like I do
the boxing. I don't watch the boxing. And it probably
in that early early time of learning, it would have
been beneficial for me to watch some of the fights
(10:58):
and learn that way, but it was I was always
a doer. No, I don't see it and watch sport.
Have no interest in watching someone else do the thing
that I could be learning to do.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
Yeah, yeah, I'm definitely the same like that. Just go
out and do it. I've got no interest in spending
my time watching someone else doing it. Yea. But yeah,
it's interesting when you go down that rabbit hole of
looking at dopamine, and you know, some of his top
tips were like delay, delay, delay, how quickly you pick
up your phone in the morning, do something hard in
(11:30):
the morning, So make your bed, have a morning routine,
you know, doing those things that delays the gratification that
the brain gets. Used to go for a walk without
your phone, getting some natural sunlight, like all the little
things that you can do that just really help us
to increase natural dopamine instead of getting these huge dopamine
punches from unnatural sources that really start playing havoc with
(11:54):
our neurotransmitters and the homeostasis that we have. And it's fascinating,
and I think this work is something that is going
to just be so much more leader as time goes
on and people become more and more addicted to fones.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Well, I loved when so recently I had the absolute
pleasure of having a chat to you and your group.
And what I immediately loved catching up with you in
that initial chat beforehand was just how like everything that
you cover and that you're now talking about is all
of the stuff I love to talk about. Hence, while
(12:29):
I was like, Okay, you're going to come back on
my show because I feel like we're sol syses and
we just need to banter. But do you feel like
over the later years of this journey of leading people
has really sent you into depths you didn't expect.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
Oh god, yeah, I think it's And you all know
this yourself from having been, you know, on your own
journey of self growth and healing and everything. It's pushed
me to go to the places I wanted to avoid
within myself because I wanted to show up as the
most authentic version of me for the people that I coach.
(13:08):
And I don't take it lightly that I have the
privilege of coaching thousands of people every year and that
I don't want anyone to put me on a pedestal,
and I will always be honest and open with them.
But I've gone deep into my own therapy journey and
my own healing journey and peel back layers, and I
thought I was done, if I thought far out, I've
(13:29):
done this for six years. I'm kind of like, I'm sorted.
I'll take a break from it all. And then something
happened this year that led me kind of back on
my hands and knees to my therapist's office, going, fuck,
there's this whole other thing. And he was like, Oh
my god, how did we not know that was there?
And we've done this really deep, deep piece of work
that I had no idea went as deeply as it
(13:52):
did into me and my psyche and how I think
and what I believe. And it's been incredible. And I
don't take it for granted that I get to do
this work and I get to use my own learnings
as well to then be able to support others. And
that's what I love, and I'm sure that's the same
for you.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
I love that, Funnily enough, As I was leaving the
gym this morning, and I think about this often too,
I'm so curious about I wonder what I'm in the
middle of that I'm not even aware of yet. I
wonder what the big lesson that's literally unfolding or about
to for me, And when will I start telling that story?
(14:33):
Because we live life thinking that it's we've just come
through something and then we've arrived. Kind of it's like, oh,
I learned this thing and now I know, And like,
you know, I'm only forty two, so there's going to
be a lot more to know coming. There's a lot
more coming at me.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
Yeah, And I think I've started to see it as
there's a process of for me anyway, what to look
like a process of discovery, awareness, and then whatever that
healing might look like. Sometimes there wasn't healing. Sometimes it's
simple awareness, and then there will be a period of
integration of just kind of becoming used to that idea
and understanding and whatever. And then I'll get comfortable again
(15:18):
because I've got okay, I have peeled back that layer.
I'm in that place, and then something else will happen
that means another layer gets peeled back and then and
I like that there's no time scale on it. I
remember watching a lady talk who came into one of
my alcohol free groups, and she was in her late sixties,
and she said, I'm forever learning about myself, and I
hope I'm still discovering this stuff when I'm eighty, because
(15:40):
how boring would it be to feel like you've arrived
using you know, the words that you described there and going, well,
that's it. This is me. There's nothing else to know.
That actually makes me feel quite horrified, because there has
to for me. This is the experience of life, right,
is the growing, the learning, the evolving. We do better
(16:01):
when we know better, and that for me is how
I live my life.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
What do you think about We talked about that idea
of the personas the masks we wear and the versions
of ourselves. What's your take on that.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
I think it's everywhere, and I think it's even sometimes
when I think that I'm not wearing a mask, I
can then sometimes afterwards look back on it and go, oh, yeah,
there was still a mask on. It might have been
quite thin, but there was still a mask on. And
I'm very, very trusting of people, and I sometimes I
(16:43):
think I've taken my mask off with people that didn't
always deserve the mask to be fully off, and that has,
you know, caused her cause pain. And therefore I have
become a wee bit more guarded as I've got older,
which is healthy, right to you know, people that get
to see you completely maskless need to be people that
have earn't that and it takes time. But I think
(17:06):
so many people never ever know who they are without
their mask on, because they've spent their entire life wearing
the mask they think that they need to wear in
order to be loved, approved of, included, worthy, whatever the
words might be.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
I keep banging on about this, but this recent stat
that I'd gotten hold of about self awareness, and that
only ten to fifteen percent of peoples is tash Yurich
refers to this ret this particular research, so ten to
fifteen percent of people are truly self aware, And I
was like, oh, well, that evidence doesn't point strongly despite
(17:48):
the fact that I'm quite interested and curious and somewhat
obsessed with the topic, evidence doesn't point towards the likelihood
of me being all that self aware.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Yet.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
You know, who's to say, just because I'm interested in it,
that I'm anywhere near the top of that ten to
fifteen percent.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
Oh yeah, but I'd say you're way way higher than
the average person.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Yeah. I remember when I first the first times, I
guess I started communicating with people and getting feedback from
them of them saying, wow, that's really self aware, and
starting to I guess develop levels of self awareness, and
then getting frustrated at like, what's the point in self awareness?
(18:31):
Because then what do you do with it? Sometimes life
feels easier the moment before you're self aware, because then
you've got a bit of responsibility in an ownership you
don't really don't what to do with it. Yeah, but
then you think you're self aware, you think it's this
one time thing, and then next minute bam, another layone.
You're like, oh oh no.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
Oh, totally, totally. And I always say that, you know,
for me, my self awareness journey the moment I put
down the bottle because and I talk about it as
going from living unconsciously to living consciously, because when I
was drinking, there was just no conscientiousness whatsoever around why
(19:16):
I did what I did or why I was showing
up as I was. But once the alcohol was taken away,
you've got nowhere to hide anymore. So it's really hard
to not become curious about yourself because you've not got
that crutch. And while some people will swap alcohol for
(19:36):
another addiction, and most common is food, what food doesn't
do that alcohol does do is it doesn't skew your
perception of everything. You don't get drunk on food, you
don't lose your sense of awareness or pass out from
it or whatever. And so you're still there sitting with
how you are feeling. And that's where the gross really
(20:00):
begins because if you've been using alcohol, as a really
famous statistic in the alcohol free world that the day,
the age you are when you start drinking is the
emotional age that you are when you stop drinking because
you've relied on You've not had any emotional maturity, because
you've not really got much resilience, because what you do
(20:21):
is the moment anything hard happens, you just reach for
a drink. And so what a lot of us find
when we first stopped drinking, and I was forty three
when I stopped, was actually, fuck, how do I sit
with this feeling, this feeling of disappointment, this feeling of sadness,
this feeling of loneliness like whatever it is, or even
the good feelings like this happiness, this excitement, all of
(20:44):
these big emotions. I'm so used to having alcohol to
just numb that a little bit, and didn't know how
to be with it because no one's teaching this stuff
at school. No one told me how to sit with
the emotion of disappointment. And when I discovered alcohol, that
was a really great way of not having to feel
how you were feeling. And so you can't help but
go on this journey of learning. Okay, well, what is
(21:06):
it that works for me in those moments?
Speaker 2 (21:09):
And were those well that for you? Was that a
fairly ongoing feeling that sat with you for your work
or did that show up in moments.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
A bit of both. Really, I think there would be
moments where there would be very similar moments. So stress
was a big one, that feeling of overwhelm. There were
habitual moments of it's five o'clock on a Friday, and
then there would just be weird moments where you're just like,
this just feels wrong and weird, and I just wish
I had a drink to make myself feel better in
(21:43):
this moment. You know, even just the first time you
go to a pub and you're used to being Sarah
the party girl, and everyone you know knowing that you're
going to call the shots and you're going to be
getting tequila slammers after the wine and everything else, and
no one almost knows how to be around you, and
you don't know how to be around them. And you
all love each other and you all want to make
it okay, but you feel really clunky and out of
(22:05):
sorts in yourself, and that takes a little while to
get used to. And so there's lots of firsts that
you navigate. And the only way, and we call it
our sober muscle, like, the only way that muscle starts
to get stronger is by just continually doing those firsts,
and then sure enough you get the muscle memory, and
(22:26):
then it just gets easier and easier.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
I think you have to grave the part of you
that disappears when you give that up.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
You really do, and I don't think anyone talks about
that enough. So that's a really great question and point
to bring up, because you feel weird because you've got
to a point where alcohol's been really impacting you. Your
anxiety is through the roof. You're feeling rubbish, you're low
in mood, you're tired, you know all of those things,
(22:58):
and so you know it's the right thing to remove it,
but there's still that version of you that you need
to grieve. And what I get a lot of my
clients to do is actually write a letter to alcohol
as a breakup letter, because it's almost like the bad boyfriend, right,
you know, like the bad boyfriend that you have great
(23:19):
sex with, but he's just an our sohole and he
treats you like rubbish, but there's still something there that
you get from it that you keep going back. And
it's a bit like that with alcohol. It never not
for many people that I work with, does it get
to the point where it's one hundred percent terrible. It's
just that the tipping point has happened. So maybe it's
seventy percent bad and thirty percent good or whatever it is.
(23:42):
But there's still a little bit that you get from
it because we wouldn't keep doing it otherwise. So it
is okay to grieve that, to have an official breakup
with it, almost and to accept that that's in the past,
but it's okay to miss it, and it's o k
to still think about that a little bit.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Years and years ago. I never had a I'm quitting
our more. I kind of left alcohol behind when I
started boxing, and I was, but when I was younger,
I would drink to blank out, to blackout drunk. I
would I was a very hyperactive little drinker. So friends
love that, right, because you're fun Yeah, And it's really
(24:26):
funny because for a lot of years, certain people would
she hadn't. She had an alter ego name Francesca, and
people will still refer to Francesca and be like, bring Francesca.
I'm like, she's she doesn't exist anymore. And if they
push in pride, I'm like more inclined to get pierced
off at them because I'm like, that's actually not safe,
(24:50):
Like that's not fun for me just because it's fun
for you, and it's being okay with going. You might
like that version of Tiff, but she's not around anymore
and she's not coming out to play, and I'm okay
with it, So best you get okay with that. Otherwise
(25:10):
this version of Tiff won't come out to play either.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
Well, and that is what happens. Tiff and I see
it a lot. Like we've just done a whole module
in my program on connection and how our friendships change
when we stop drinking, and gray area drinkers tend to
surround themselves with other gray area drinkers so that you're
all the same, and then when one of you stops drinking,
it's super confronting for the other people and they're like,
(25:37):
you know, some of my ladies have had people say
to them, oh, you can't come unless you're going to
be drinking, or you know, things like that, because that's
just what they've always done together. And so there can
be an awareness of actually that friendship maybe didn't have
much more to it than the fact that we just
love getting pissed together.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
And it kind of takes away. I guess from the
intimacy of friendships when you realize how much we just
love people when we're boozed, which you know, it's like
those bathroom besties that you'd make when you're young. How
many best friends did you make in the bathrooms?
Speaker 3 (26:16):
That was like, why I love drinking so much? Like
you're my best friend, I love you. That was just
I loved it. That was music to my ears. Like
I was a girl that just craved connection, and so
like drinking and drugs for me were just a way
of making thousands of bathroom investies that made me fill
my cup and feel like I'm super popular. I've got
(26:38):
loads of friends. That girl that I'll never ever see again,
that was my best friend for an entire night. But yeah,
you don't realize I quite harshadow at all this Ah.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
What was great for you?
Speaker 3 (26:50):
What was.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
Was there something that you started to Was there a
habit or a thing or a behavior or a hobby
that you found that starts to really fill your cup
and make this transition easy.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
I think it was a few things. I think it was,
you know, exercise and doing all those things to get
the natural dopamine and time outside and everything like that.
But I think more than anything, it was the realization
and the constant connection to how much I liked myself
(27:28):
and how positive I felt. Because when you're drinking and
you don't want to be drinking, or you don't want
to be drinking as much as you're drinking, generally speaking,
the first thought you have in the morning is before
you've even opened your eyes or your shit, well you're
a loser. Oh well, you said you weren't going to
drink last night, and here we are again, feeling like crap,
(27:50):
you know, hungover. Maybe it's three am, and we've got
the three am sweats, and you know, the liver's pumping
and your cornisole's firing around your body and you can't
get back to sleep, and you've got a at a am,
and you've got to be up in three hours and
all of that, and so your self talk becomes incredibly negative.
And you can imagine how that sets the president for
(28:11):
the day if the first thing you're saying to yourself
that morning is well, you're shit and you're a loser.
And I think I never lost ever that sense of
pride of every morning waking up knowing I didn't drink
last night. And even now I'm six and a half
years alcohol free, there is not a single morning but
(28:33):
I don't wake up and just have that habitual moment
that I created early when I stopped drinking, of you're awesome,
look at you go? You know. And when you have
that self advocacy and you start talking to yourself like that,
what then starts to grow as a result of that
in terms of your confidence, your self belief, and that
(28:55):
changes lives. That's the stuff that transforms lives. People talk
about it as not drinking, but it's not even about
the alcohol. It's about what the alcohol does to that
self talk. And when we remove it, the pride that
you start to get and the confidence and self belief
allows you then to make decisions that you would not
(29:17):
have made if you were still drinking and talking to
yourself in such a bad way. And so I've watched
women go back to UNI, change careers, leave unhappy relationships,
like all these things that they've changed as a result
of their first thought in the morning is, oh, I'm
pretty awesome today.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
I do you reckon that? There's almost it almost creates
two versions of us. Right, do you think that when
we're drinking often or using alcohol in a less productive way.
Do you think we identify more with that version of
(29:55):
us or realize that there's you know, because what makes
me think of that as times where and I remember
once going to Thailand and walking down that wretched Bangalar
Road in the evening and it's and I just remember
because we go over there for boxing retreat. We take
boxing retreats there and you walk up Bangala Road as
an Aussie check and there's a whole bunch of boozehound
(30:16):
blokes from all over the world. You know, Oh, it's gross.
And I would just be like, oh, I don't even
want to sounds rude, but don't even want to, bloody
politely have to speak to you because you're so drunk
you're actually not you And if you were sober, you
wouldn't speak to me right now. So I don't even
want to interact with you. You know. It's like, there's
there's different, definite, two versions of you, And I just
(30:38):
wonder if we realize that and if we connect with
one more than the other when we're when we're drinking.
Speaker 3 (30:46):
I don't think we realize that when we're drinking. I
think we only discover it if we've developed drinking habits
in the way that the people I work with hat
I don't we think that's who we are. So a
lot of people think I'm extraver, I'm a party girl,
I'm x y Z. And then they stopped drinking and go,
oh my god, I hate people. And that's probably why
I was drinking, because I actually don't like being with
(31:08):
people and I can't be asked people and all of this,
And so what people start to discover is, well, what
do I actually like and who am I really? Because
alcohol is one version of me and that might have
been a version of me for ten twenty thirty years,
but I get to now discover who I am now.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
Just that's so funny. I was such a little like
little extravert when I was younger, and I remember there
were a specific time one of my tazzy friends ended
up three tazzy friends that all moved ended up in
some Kilda and reconnected, so we knew each other and
Tazzy and then we landed here and I remember one
day so having a conversation and somebody I don't know
(31:51):
what the question was, but I was kind of explaining
that I'm not. No, I'm pretty, I'm pretty extravert. I'm
pretty like probably a bit over the top really, And
she was like, tif are you serious? Like you are
when you're in your own environment, but if you go
to like one of my friend's house and you don't
know anyone, you're quiet asn't it? And I realized that
(32:12):
was the truth. And I was like, oh, I'm not
how I perceive myself to be. And it was such
an interesting moment. I was like, oh wow, I believed
one tiny part of myself that was on the Tiff
show the persona right, Yeah, so interesting.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
Yeah, yeah, and when and you know, alcohol is definitely
a mask for I mean, in my book, I've got
a whole chapter on what mask a You're wearing, And
it's all about the masks that that alcohol allows us
to put on. And when we remove that alcohol, we
get to start discovering who we are. And like, if
I've worked with women in their seventies and they've been
(32:55):
drinking for like over fifty years, and then now on
our journey of discovering, well, who the hell am I?
Because that's one version of me that there's all of
this other stuff to explore and to start to experiment
with to discover, well do I like it? Do I
not like it? And it's fun. It's about being curious.
(33:15):
It's about going, oh, what do I get to go
and try now to see if I like it? And
so some people might find it a wee bit daunting,
but I just find it's so exciting.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
What tends to prompt people who are entering into the
eighth decade of life to what's making women at that
age reflect and decide to leave booze behind?
Speaker 3 (33:41):
Yeah, great question. There's a couple of things. I think
that they are sick and tired of feeling the way
that they're feeling. And you've got to remember that this
whole sober movement is fairly new in terms of people
loud and proud going out there and going I'm not
an alcohol but I've stopped drinking. And I feel great
(34:02):
for it, because historically, and for the generation that we're
talking about, the way that they saw alcohol and people
not drinking was someone was an alcoholic and that was
a term that came with shame and remorse and they
had to go down, like into a quiet church basement
and confess, you know, I'm Sarah I'm an alcoholic, and
they were the only people that stopped drinking. Otherwise you
(34:24):
didn't and you kept going, Whereas we've got this entire
movement now of people going, nah, not an alcoholic, but shit,
alcohol wasn't working for me anymore, so I've stopped. So
they're starting to be exposed to that message as well
as starting to realize it's not serving them and they're
not feeling great. And also there's just this whole movement
I think of people even in their seventies and beyond,
(34:49):
going I can do anything now, like you you know
you read about women going starting strength training in their seventies,
Like all of that is starting to happen, and I
think it's fantastic.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
This lady at the gym, I've told this once before,
pretty sure on this show, so I'll keep it brief everyone.
But I ran into this lady at the gym that
trains and she's a weapon, and we chat every now
and then, and she wants to start boxing. But she
was training for a powerlifting comp, her first powerlifting comp,
and she had an online coach, and she was also
(35:20):
doing a foreign fitness and one day she came in
dug out of her bag pulled out an eight four
sheet and she's like, look at this. And she just
won the Australian record for the powerlifting right her first competition,
and I think it was maybe I can't remember the
(35:40):
number of the full total of kilos, but I said, oh,
what were each of you lifts? And she went through
the bench and the squad and the dead left and
she goes, yeah, pretty good. I mean for my age,
I'm like, ye have great numbers. How old are you?
Speaker 3 (35:53):
Sarah?
Speaker 2 (35:54):
She was eighty eighty and she's doing her PETE qualification
and she's just want to set the Australian record And
I just went I want to be And she's funky.
She's funky like she looks like her energy is so
young and vibrant. But I want to be that.
Speaker 3 (36:13):
Yeah, totally. I was talking to a girlfriend about this
actually just last week and we were saying how this
never before been role models like there is now for
women in their fifties and beyond who are talking about
strength training, who are talking about being fit, where they're
not changing their body to fit the aesthetics of what
men say they should look like, but they're doing it
for themselves. And you know Dr Stacy Simmons and the
(36:36):
work that she's doing around women's health and well being
and all of this, it's a it's a moment in
time that I think we're going to look back on
in Gears to Come and Go. That's the moment that
women's health and fitness changed because it stopped being about
going to the cardio section and make yourself look thin
for the men, and it started being about going too
the weights room and make yourself strong for yourself and
(36:57):
for your future self. And that is so powerful.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
M And I mean you would know through your running,
I know, through boxing and through strength, when you start
to build a strong physiology, like that unconscious mind, all
that unconscious stuff, that all of that shifts and change.
Like I never expected that that first choice to do
a crazy, ridiculous twelve week boxing challenge. I never thought
(37:24):
it was going to change my life. And even as
I got into the next two years of doing more
of those in training and being obsessed with them, I
thought I was leaving, you know, I thought I was
being careless with work. I thought I was doing to
the detriment of my career and my grown up part
of my life, when in actual fact, there became a
(37:45):
point where I kind of looked over my shoulder and went, shit,
that's made me a better person, a better employee, or
a better business person. Like that's changed me in all
these ways. I didn't realize that skills were going to
transfer like that.
Speaker 3 (38:01):
Yeah. Yeah, I feel exactly the same, both with my
running and with the strength training that I've been doing.
I've done a twelve I've been doing a six month
strength training program, and I think what you have to realize,
both with marathon training and with the strength training is
it's there's no quick win. Your body won't change overnight.
You can't run a marathon after one run. It is consistency,
(38:24):
it's discipline, it's patience. But what I've noticed in terms
of how strong my mind is as a result of
how strong my body has got since I've really switched
up and been doing so much heavier strength training, I
never expected that.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
Like, it's great, and that whole idea of what you
performance was what you think or how you feel doesn't
always matter.
Speaker 3 (38:51):
And that's a.
Speaker 2 (38:52):
Bit a bit of a pushbull. It's like you're listen
to your body, but sometimes you're not listening to your body.
So it's understanding the nuance of that I listened to
my body and respect what it needs, but also especially
in a sporting aspect, this was so true in boxing,
but also know when and how to apply those in
the moments of Once I went into sparring on three
(39:14):
hours sleep, and as I pulled up at the gym,
which was an hour's drive, that's when the fatigue hit
and I was like, whow, Well, if I had felt
like this before I left the house, I wouldn't be here.
But now I'm here, and I walk in the door
and I'm told that I'm going to do some round
sparring with John Maneu and I'm like, okay, ouch, well
this is going to be really bad. I'm like, this
is this is bad for me. And it was the
(39:35):
best I'd ever sparred. And that became something that I
held in my and it was so important. It was
so important for my mind to realize that when it
needed to, it could overcome any obstacle, because I shouldn't
be that good and that clear and be able to
perform at that level on three hours sleep.
Speaker 3 (39:56):
Yeah. Yeah, And so you surprise yourself all the time, right,
And so we've got to take the limitations off what
we believe we can and can't do. And I think
that's starting to happen in women's health. I really do
think there's a change happening and that's only going to
be a great thing for the next generation. I mean,
we were laughing in our WhatsApp group with my girlfriends
and my friend was talking about her stepdaughters and how
(40:18):
like they spend all their spare money on brunch and
physio and they're like eighteen and twenty, And I was like,
at eighteen and twenty, I spent all my money on
facts and booth and it's just like the next generation
brunch and physio. Who'd have thought it? Right? Right?
Speaker 2 (40:36):
Yeah? Yeah? What what are your goals? Like, what's next
for you? And maybe in terms of what you probably
never expected.
Speaker 3 (40:48):
Yeah. Obviously, next year is a big year for me
in terms of turning fifty, and it feels like I
actually feel like my fourties have just been the warm
up and that fifty to sixty is going to be
the big year for me. And I think that I'm
excited to see where that goes, both personally and professionally.
(41:12):
Something that I'm working on a lot with personally is
that balance with feminine energy. I have very strong masculine energy.
I'm quite hard, I'm quite ambitious, I'm quite driven. I
have all of those qualities, which are great. I'm not
taking away from them. But I also know that when
(41:33):
I balance that with my feminine energy and I allow
more of my intuition and I create more space for myself,
that's the optimal version of me. And it's hard because
the masculine energy stuff is all the tangible stuff of
here's the goal, tick that off, go there, you know,
(41:55):
it's all of that, whereas the feminine side of it
is way more about slowing down on which I'm not
great at the being as opposed to the doing. And
I'm so much better than I was. But that's all
the work in progress for me. I'd love to write
another book. I have been going so since writing my
(42:16):
book and doing my Gray area drinking coaching, which I've
been doing for over five years now. I've also retrained.
We've done more training as a menopause and menopause weight
loss coach, and so I've been running programs for women.
I trained under doctor Stacy Simms, and I'm doing some
programs around supporting women's health as their age, So really
teaching women about osteopenia and osteoporosis and how they can
(42:41):
really start supporting their bone health, understanding how weight gain
and fatigue and feeling crap and not inevitable in perimenopause.
I'm in the best physical and mental health is my life,
and I'm right in the middle of perimenopause. I'm forty nine.
My hormones are all over the place, but there is
a way to manage it. But you know, I did
a post on Instagram the other dative and I said,
(43:01):
probably a lot of people look at my life and
think it's boring. I don't drink alcohol. I go to
bed at nine point thirty most nights. I eat whole foods.
I train or exercise most days. I love doing jigsaw puzzles.
I like the things that drinking. Sarah, she didn't got
fucking hell, look at that might she's a barrel, I laughs,
isn't she? But in actual fact, this just makes me
(43:24):
so happy because this means that the version of me
that shows up every day she loves her life. She
didn't need to look forward to Friday night to escape
her life. Yeah, because she's in her life in enjoying it,
and that for me is what I just want to
keep working on, is the gratitude and the presence of
how far I've come and what I get as a
(43:46):
result of that.
Speaker 2 (43:47):
It's interesting, how I mean, if we need alcohol to
bring for us to rise to an occasion to perceive
ourselves with experiencing joy, is it really joy? Like? If
we can't access a level of intensity in feeling joyful
(44:10):
or good or happy or fun or whatever label you
want to call that emotion, if we can't do it
without a substance creating a chemical shift, does it really exist?
Speaker 3 (44:24):
Yeah? Wow, that's a big question. I would say no,
not if it's chemically and juice. Yeah, that's different to
authentic pure joy. Yeah, so different.
Speaker 2 (44:38):
Do you know what I've kind of decided a few
years ago or realized maybe putting two and two together,
that I'm so drawn to everything that requires such a
level of discomfort, like I might need my kind of
challenge pathways to be highly activated and pushed to their
limits to the point where I'm like, oh, I wish
(45:00):
I didn't I can't wait till I don't feel like
this about this. But then I realized that everything that
I really love is because it takes me to that
place first, whether it's speaking, whether it's boxing, whether it's
riding my motorcycle, Like everything that sticks in my mind
is something that I truly, truly love and deeply appreciate.
(45:20):
Required me getting over that hump, and I was like, oh, right, well,
I better stop wishing that I've felt good enough or
that I wouldn't feel scared like this before doing this,
because the moment that I do will be like everything
else that I don't do, I won't do it anymore.
Speaker 3 (45:38):
Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting because I was just thinking then
when you were saying that. My son asked me not
that long ago, you know, don't you love the questions
that kids ask mum? What's the best feeling in the world?
So I was like, right, Sarah, where could you go
with this? There's quite a few different ways that you
could answer that. And I said to him, do you
(45:58):
know what I said? For me? The best feeling in
the world is working really hard in discomfort for something
and then getting it. I said, if you always go
for the quick, easy option in comfort, you'll get it.
But the sense that you get of getting it feels flat.
(46:19):
That's dope for me. Whereas you work hard for something
and then you get it, I said, it's a completely
different feeling. I said, to never avoid the hard option
will because that will ultimately develop you as a person,
but will actually give you that best feeling in the world.
Speaker 2 (46:40):
Love that.
Speaker 3 (46:41):
How old your son fifteen?
Speaker 2 (46:44):
What do you reckon he's going to do with his lafe.
Speaker 3 (46:48):
Do the hard things, Let's hope. I don't know. And
it's an interesting one because he's now at an age
where a lot of his friends are starting to drink,
and so the alcohol conversation, you know, is coming up
more and more. And I'm like, I said, well, it's
not even a discussion point, I said, regardless of my job,
it's not even a discussion point at the moment. We'll
(47:08):
talk about it in a couple of years. But everything
I've researched and read about teenagers and alcohol is delay, delay, delay.
The younger they are when they start drinking, the higher
the chance of them developing alcohol use disorder. So just
you know, parking that. But I've said to him, you know,
this schooling system and gosh, I could talk about that
for five hours is not set up for the world
(47:29):
that these kids are going into, and I just say
to him all the time, go and travel, Go and
see the world. Go and get a job on a cruise. Shit,
go get your camper van and travel around Australia when
you finished year twelve, like, go and do stuff because
there's so much pressure just being put on. Get a job,
get a mortgage, get a house. And I kind of
(47:50):
feel like there's time for that. But I really hope
he goes and has that life experience.
Speaker 2 (47:55):
I love that. When you were talking before about the
mass and and feminine energy, I guess what's hard about that.
I'm really interested in how you how that plays it?
How do you do that right? And even in the question,
the answer is there, how do you do that when
you're trying to stop doing Like to access to feminine
(48:16):
is literally stop doing so. I feel like it almost
becomes a competition to geet good at not getting good
at something right.
Speaker 3 (48:24):
YEA yeah. For me, there's two sides of it. One
is I have a very very I wouldn't definitely the
addictive personality is there, but I naturally go into fight
off flight very quickly. I'm quite cortisol driven and dopamine driven.
(48:46):
So I love my work. I could work all the time.
I have to be in a be because because I
get so much fulfillment from it. So my body goes
for the things that I love doing. I love exercise.
I could definitely overexercise, you know, all of those things.
And so for me, it's coming back to the stillness
and practicing, you know, the going for a walk without music,
without a podcast, without that, where I'm not racing and
(49:08):
I'm just taking the dog and we're going slow. It's
doing my yoga Nidra, It's doing my yin yoga. It's
just slowing down and just being able to ask myself,
you know, what do I need right now? How am
I feeling right now? It's those, you know, the slower activities.
And then it's also intuition. And I've always been really intuitive,
(49:32):
but when we're up in our head all the time,
we lose that. And so again, when you create more space,
you get to listen to her speak a lot more.
And that for me has been breathwork. I've done some
breathwork sessions that have been fucking mind blowing. In terms
of that, It's like my soul has been talking to me.
I've gone to a place where I've just had messages come.
(49:55):
I've had contact with my dead grandma, like I've had
really tense I only do one on one breath work
because I can't bath going into a room and hearing
other people's stuff coming up. I just can't do it.
I do one on one. I have an incredible moment.
I go there and I might, let's breathe, and it's
ninety minutes and the stuff that comes up has been
(50:15):
insane for me. Wow.
Speaker 2 (50:18):
Yeah, I'm interested in exploring that a lot more. I
do like just breathwork meditations, not very long ones, just
before before bed and when I wake up. But I
all about one on one. I do like what I
like about meditations. Is it a Buddhist group or just
up the road for me? And every couple of weeks
(50:40):
when I'm free, on that night, I duck in there,
and there's something about the energy of a room. There's
something that you know the moment you go in, there's
a whole energy shift. And yeah, so it's definitely easier
in person. But yeah, I'd like to I'd like to
explore more breathwork because definitely the intuition, I mean I
(51:01):
feel much the same as you very in my masculine
very dewey, and I'm so intrigued by that feminine energy
and specifically intuition, and I think there's a lot of
spaces in what I do where I'm you immintuitive, you know,
in the way that I work with people one on
(51:23):
one when it's them focused, but when it's me focus,
I feel like there's that's where there's a disconnect for me,
a bit of a gap where it's I'm always like, oh,
I want to access something, and but when it's when
I'm the focus of it, I find it more challenging.
Does that makes sense?
Speaker 3 (51:40):
Yeah, totally totally. And I think the one on one
breath work, doing the sematic work, because I've done a
lot of talk therapy and I understand cognitively all the stuff,
but the biggest breakthroughs have been when I've been working
with my body and through the breath work and the healing,
like it's I don't think I've ever on a birth
(52:00):
work session where i haven't cried, But that's not a
bad thing. That's releasing stored emotions.
Speaker 2 (52:06):
Yeah, oh I love that. All right, that's going on
my list, Sarah, thank you and.
Speaker 3 (52:11):
I'm a really good person in Melbourne. I'll message you
after this.
Speaker 2 (52:14):
Please do Yeah? Great? Great? What if where can people
access you? And is there anything coming up that you
would like to promote?
Speaker 3 (52:23):
Yeah? So obviously my book is a great place to
start if anyone is curious about creating a life without
the reliance on alcohol. I have a women's Alcohol Free Challenge.
I run women's challenges four times a year and the
next one will be October, so just head to my
website Sarah Muspect dot com and then I'll be running
my menopause nutrition and menopause weight loss coaching program in November.
(52:47):
So again, all the information will be on my website
and come and say hi, I'm on Instagram and just yeah,
just keep staying curious is what I always say to people.
And there's a brilliant book if you've come across it
called Tiny Experiments No, and it's all about the concept
of just keep experimenting. See your life as an experiment.
(53:09):
And if you're not trying something new, you're never learning,
you're never growing, you're never going to keep evolving as
a person. So instead of like I always say with
my alcohol Free Challenges, it's not a prescription to saying right,
that's it. I can never drink alcohol again. It's a
tiny experiment of thirty days to be curious about. Well,
(53:30):
maybe this is a way for me to reflect on
is alcohol serving me or not? Because once a woman
gets to forty, there is no denying that alcohol impacts
you know, our hormones and everything like that. So start
seeing your life as an opportunity to have lots of
tiny experiments to create the best version of life for you.
Speaker 2 (53:49):
I love that. I love that. Well, thanks for coming
on for another chant. It's been really, really good.
Speaker 3 (53:55):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2 (53:57):
Everyone go check it out. Thanks in the show, our
notes as usual, and we will see you all next time.
Speaker 3 (54:07):
She said, it's now never.
Speaker 1 (54:10):
I got fighting in my blood.
Speaker 3 (54:16):
Got it quite coast, gotta gotta got it.
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