Think Different to Drink Different with Maggie Jenson

Pod Maggie Jenson Deb: Welcome back to the Alcohol Tipping Point Podcast. I am your host, Deb Masner. I'm a registered nurse, health coach and alcohol-free badass. And today on the show I have Maggie Jensen. Maggie is a behavior change specialist. An alternative recovery coach and she's also the owner and operator of Magnify Progressive Wellness. And Maggie, I'm excited to have on the show because she uses some like out of the box strategies to help people think different, to drink different. I love how you have that slogan or never drink at all. So thank you Maggie, for being on the show today. Maggie: Thank you. We were just chatting before we hit record that it's been a long time that I've been listening and it's just been a happy day to wake up knowing that we get to have this conversation today. Oh, good. Deb: Well, can you give a little bit more of an introduction about who you are and what you do? Maggie: Yes. Thank you. So I was really excited to talk with you because you are open-minded to these out-of-the-box strategies, and I think one of our very first conversations was you saying, oh, I love the idea of alternative recovery and. That just drew me to you and this podcast even more because a lot of times I feel like I get shut down with alternative approaches. You know, in our, in our sphere, in our circle of you know, the impact we're trying to make, A lot of times people have their minds made up of how it should look and what's going to be the quote unquote magic pill. And I think there's a lot of ways around it. So to kind of put it into short terms, I. Created magnify with the view of basically saying, I don't want myself or clients to live the rest of their life fighting the urge. My mom took the traditional AA recovery route, 12 steps, and even when she was abstaining, she was not enjoying. And she would say every, every day she would tell me as a young girl there's no sense in me knowing this, but she would say, man, today I just, I know I'm fine, but I really want a freaking drink. And I didn't want that to be my life when I started struggling with alcohol, and it seemed like the more I followed the traditional steps, the more those urges were occurring, the more the dangerous behavioral relapses were occurring. And I, I started doing some things that would challenge people's logic and it worked, and I've just been studying why it worked on a subconscious level, how it worked on a physiological level and applying that with clients and it's. I was tearing up yesterday thinking about it. It's just a magical experience to be a part of, to see people go from, you know, pretty close to rock bottom, to now being like, wow, I haven't thought about alcohol in a month, in two months, in three months. And it's really just a, a blessing to be a part of. Deb: Yeah. I love that cuz I think for a lot of people they're just like, I just don't wanna think about drinking. Yeah. I'm tired of thinking about drinking. Mm-hmm. and and even if you're not drinking, you could still be obsessing about drinking and that's not like true freedom from alcohol, alcohol. That's, that's why I call myself like an alcohol free badass. It's like, I really do feel free because I don't obsess about drinking. Yeah. Which is so, such a relief. Maggie: Good. . It's like breaking up that, you know, romantic relationship with it where you mm-hmm. miss it. If you're not using it, if you're not drinking it, you miss it. And it's like that freedom comes from finally realizing like, I don't want that, like that toxic X, you know, I don't wanna be with that person anymore. That's where that freedom comes in. And so I love that, that metaphor, . Well, can you share about your experience with drinking and how you've gotten to where you're at now? Yeah. And I'll, I'll try to put this again in as concise of a little nutshell as I can, but it goes way back for me. I grew up despising alcohol 100% because my mom started to drink. Very dangerously when I was only five. So my parents got a divorce. I mean, up until then, pretty regular family. I was the youngest two older brothers, and my mom was a school teacher. My dad was military and Around the time that I was born, my dad was deploying a lot, so my mom was home alone with us and by the time I was five it just seemed like she lost her identity and she was lonely. And that's when she started to drink. And I was about six years old when my brother. told me that they were getting a divorce. They, my brother told me, my, your mom, our mom is an alcoholic. And, you know, for a six year old, what does that mean? Now I have to define it. Now I have to know that that liquid that she's drinking is changing her, her essence. And by seven, I was going to AA with her. So, Have been exposed to the ideas of addictive behavior and the evidence of it, and also the ideas of AA and 12 Steps for quite some time now. And even at age seven when I was going to AA with my mom and. My aunt was telling me addiction is a disease. Your mom is never going to recover. She's either going to be a full-blown alcoholic, or she's gonna have to go to meetings every day to be able to maintain her recovery. And like, wow. Somewhere, just in my gut at that age, I, I didn't feel like that was right. I didn't feel like that was the. But over time, you know, you just go and you get involved in these things, especially at a young age. You just start to believe it through the Al-Anon groups, through seeing how hard it was for her to abstain. I hated alcohol. I hated what it had done, but by the time that I was 12 and then my brother was 14, my middle brother he in again, trigger warning here, we're gonna go into some tough subjects. But he, we were home alone and he took his life. He was always, The sibling that really absorbed what my mom did, and he was somewhat of the enabler. He protected me, but also protected my mom and 14 year old boy. I mean, he had no outlet. So it was only about six months after that that I started drinking. And despite hating it, I remember the first words that came outta my mouth when I had that buzz was, wow, no wonder my mom is an alcoholic. Hmm. And it was like this emotional forgiveness for her where it was like, now I see why she uses this now. Oh my gosh. I finally feel okay. And it was almost like my mind was saying, you know what? We're gonna use this too. And it was just a, a snowball effect. From there, it was every emotional outburst, outburst I had to drink. I mean, and this was early adolescence. And then when I got into high school, I was the cool girl that could drink hard with the boys. And I was doing really well by the book if you look at, you know, my grades and my extracurriculars. But I was very quickly becoming I guess a high functioning alcoholic. Throughout that time my mom just was spiraling even worse, and, It was getting to the point where every time she drank, she would lash out on me for Eric's death because I was home alone with him. And I never really had that parental love and healing moment with her. It was always me being the adult, having to nurture her for her. So there were a lot of things, and I'm still uncovering all of them in my own healing journey. There were so many things that solidified my behavior as a drinker, but then also contradicted it. And I feel like woke me up. I'm so thankful that eventually despite lots of mayhem, lots of hurdles in my twenties job opportunities missed DUIs, things of that nature. I eventually woke up and I thought what I'm modeling with aa, what I'm trying to do with the 12 steps is just leading me to become more of an angry and depressed drunk and so . It took a long time and it was propelled by my father's passing when I was 28. It was like this light bulb went off that life is so short and I am, I had wasted all of this time that I had with my dad because I was so depressed about my mom and my. and it was this switch that flipped for me to say, I'm not going to waste any more of my precious time sad about the past because I'm wasting the time with people that I might not have that much longer with. And so it's kind of this formula where my mom's drinking and my brother's death caused me. Succumbeded to the alcoholic behavior, and then it was my father's death that woke me up from it. And that's some way that I can look back and say, I'm thankful for all of my experiences because as soon as I started saying, you know what, instead of admitting powerlessness instead of ruminating on the shame and guilt and what I need to make amends for, I'm gonna actually think about how to set up little wins in my day, and this was February of 2020. I said, how am I going to set up little achievements for myself, small goals that I can then move forward feeling that dopamine feeling that energy and that winning feeling from. And I stopped thinking about alcohol. I just said, I'm gonna stop reading. Quit lit. I'm gonna stop identifying as somebody who has an issue with alcohol and I'm gonna start reading things about the mind where I can actually gain control of my behavior. And it was an accumulation of this these amazing light switch moments going off where I was like, you know, Now it's been like three or four months and I haven't thought about alcohol and it's in the middle of quarantine and everybody else is drinking so heavily. And here I am. I've actually reversed my, what I felt like I reversed my issue. I reversed my behavior. And it was just a really magical experience. But it wouldn't have been it wouldn't have happened had I not gone through all of those rough milestones. . Yeah. Deb: Well, thank you for sharing your story and, and your past with us. It, it kind of reminds me of, you know, how you are appreciative of, of having to go through that. Mm-hmm. , you know that saying like, things don't happen to you, they happen for you. Yes. And it, it's only like in hindsight that we can appreciate that. I'm still acknowledge like how painful it was, but how. It's brought you to where you are Maggie: today. Yeah, and I spend a lot of time now studying what creates the outcome for people. Two people could go through the same experience and come out with entirely different perspectives. And for the 15, 16 years of my life that I was drinking so dangerously, My perspective was this has happened to me and I will always end up being hurt no matter what the situation was. I was emotionally programmed to believe that there would be failure at the end or heartbreak. Oh, I just, I just never will end up lucking out was kind of my, was kind of my. Mentality because of these experiences. But when I started to flip that perspective, like you said, and see it as this has happened for me to teach me something, to guide me somewhere, and I think that's such a simple cliche way to think about it, but it's what every successful person says that has overcome adversity. They just simply switched their perspective of what they went. Hmm Deb: mm-hmm. . Well, I, I would love to hear some of your strategies . Yeah. I mean, where to begin, share, share with us some of your top tips or strategies. Maggie: Yes. So, well, first of all, I kind of mentioned this, and this is very polarizing and this is why I appreciate that you said let's talk about some out of the box strategies. Because every. Really promotes reading, quit lit and absorbing that type of information when you're on your journey. And what I noticed was the more that I absorbed quit lit especially more of like the storytelling versions. Hmm. Versus like Anna Grace's addictive or this snake in mind, rather more of the narrative. Storytelling versions caused me to continue to relate myself as somebody that struggled with alcohol. And so one of the major shifts that happened for me in February of 2020 was that I did read one quit lit book by Bex Weller the happier hour. And then I was like, you know what? I'm motivated to just go after my goals. And so I said, I'm not gonna read anything else about alcohol, but what I'm going to read is about the. And so I started studying things. And I'll go ahead and drop kind of a little quote here. One that clicked for me was Andrew Carnegie. He said in the early 19 hundreds, any idea whether feared or revered that is emphasized in the mind will begin at once to clothe itself in the most immediate and convenient physical form available, and, mm, that basically to me caused the wheels to turn of like, wow, I've been thinking about drinking or not drinking. I've been thinking about how much shame and guilt alcohol has caused me. I've been thinking about all the troubles with alcohol. Yes, of course I want to not want it, but I continue to think about it and if I continue to think about it and read about. I'm going to continue to see it in my physical world, and if I wanna stop thinking about it, I have to just stop resonating with it, if that makes any sense. Mm-hmm. . That quote. Andrew Carnegie's actually kind of one of the, I would say, grandfathers of what's known as the laws of achievement and the science of success. So some of the books that I started to read were things like Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. I started to read Earl Nightingale, the Strangest Secret where he says, the strangest secret is that any man is what he thinks about all day. And it occurred to me how much is missing in the addiction recovery area about psychology, about how your mind works. Versus putting it to this step process that a lot of times leaves your mind thinking and ruminating over shame and guilt. We need the mind to ruminate and dwell in an area where we feel fulfilled and we feel motivated, which is like totally paradoxical to , you know, this kind of, this demographic. We're not used to thinking about what we want. We're thinking about what we don't. , we're not used to imagining the good. We're imagining how things are gonna go bad. And so just simply switching the gear of my thinking into what do I actually want instead of what do I not want? I felt better. I felt better waking up and going after the, those little goals that I said. So immediately it was just like mindset implementation, mindset, education, some of the other books that I really loved, that I still keep in my rotation. Dr. Joseph Murphy's Power of Your Subconscious mind. Are you familiar with that one? No. Oh my gosh. He actually says in the book and I believe it was written in the seventies but he says, That addiction is a disease of instability, that you are programmed to react the way you do. And , I was like, what? So it's not this genetic disease and it's just this mental program that I react this way, and that made so much sense for me and it made me feel powerful. So I really suggest that to anybody again. I mean, with that book, he does put a lot of terminology into a lot of things, into religious terminology, but he has a very good way of explaining it in the ways of understanding universal intelligence and energy. So if you don't necessarily jive with religion, he also has that unique way of spinning it, of, Hey, this is the way that energy works in our. and to actually respond in the way that you want. You need to be thinking and acting like the person you want to become. And when I started to understand that, it was like okay, so thinking and acting like the person I wanna co become. If I do the 12 steps, first thing I say is I'm an addict and I'm powerless. That's not thinking and acting like the person I want to become. So it really taught me just to perceive things differently there. And I mentioned that I had to set small goals and some of those goals were around nutrition and fitness and going after a job that I actually liked and was inspired by. So I think a big issue for people that are stuck in their addictive behavior is, We haven't been thinking about the future and, and confidently planning goals. This was really powerful for me because I was always interested in fitness, but here I was with this fitness identity. So I'd go work out sometimes, and then in the back of my mind, I still saw myself as Party Girl, Maggie. So I was never consistently. Fitness girl, Maggie. And as soon as I said, you know what, I am going all in on being healthy wellness Maggie, and creating that as my identity. I had wanted to be a nutrition coach for a very long time. I had been talking myself out of it, thinking, oh, you can't do that. You're too much of a drunk. Oh, you could never go after that goal. I wanted to be a coach for people struggling with their drinking behavior, get fit, get healthy, and remain focused forward. And by doing that, by actually going confidently into that goal, it was like the alcohol thought processes just dissipated. And if I did think about alcohol, it was like, oh, well that's gonna get in the way of my workout tomorrow. Oh, that's not gonna make me feel good to study for my exams. That's not gonna make me feel good to go forward with life. And I know I kind of speak in like these ominous quotes a lot, but they really got me through. And they're now like these rotating mantras in my mind. But Robert Hein, which was a, a sci-fi author, but he wrote. In the absence of clearly defined goals, we become strangely loyal to daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it. And I was for 16 years, ju, almost 16 years, which is basically. So emotionally immersed in all of the daily trivia he said, she said, oh my gosh, can you believe how? And you know, I had so many triggers because I wasn't appropriately processing the emotions of my mom's drinking or my brother's suicide. So anytime anybody said a joke about, oh, I'm just gonna kill myself, I'm gonna go jump off the roof, you know, I would get so absorbed in that and I would you know, drink my sorrows. I would have to make a scene. I would have to cause drama around. When once I realized that like I had goals and I was focused forward and I was feeling good about myself, if somebody joked about that, like now I'm just like, huh, okay, I'm gonna go forward with my life. They don't actually mean that. So it became like this antidote system of like getting up, working out. Tracking my food, working on my goal for my career, finally stopping telling myself that I'm not good enough going after these goals. That helped propel me forward and basically repel. those alcoholic thoughts and those that alcoholic behavior. So I know that's, whew, a lot of tips and they're not necessarily like just get up in the morning and take 10,000 steps. They're not necessarily just easy to the point. But that's what I do within Magnify is like break down that whole process into little tangible tools and strategies. Yeah, Deb: well I was just listening and nodding along cuz I, I can relate to a lot of what you said and just makes me think about like you know, that, that whole think, feel, act cycle, like oh yeah, what you think affects how you feel, and that then causes your actions and then your results. And so some of those quotes you've shared and. Quotes too. . . Ok, good. But that was kinda like the power of your thoughts and mm-hmm. , I, I mean, I agree. Like I find that so empowering because Maggie: it's, it's. Deb: You have complete control over your thinking. It might feel like you don't, but you do. Mm-hmm. . And so recognizing that can be so powerful in changing any behavior. I really just changing your life. So I really appreciated that. And then when you were talking about. Just kind of like the type of person you wanna be and leading with identity. I, I do a lot of identity work with my alcohol and my other groups too, like mm-hmm. , because I was the same. I, I had identified myself as a lush Maggie: Oh yes. I, I, . Deb: I wasn't all like mired in the shame necessarily, but I used it as an excuse for my behavior. Like, oh, I'm just a party girl. I'm just a lush. I just love alcohol. I love drinking. That's just who I am, you know? Maggie: Yes. . And so Deb: I had to change that like you did. Like I don't wanna be party girl, Maggie. I wanna be like health and fitness Maggie, and. That was the same way for me too. I was like, I can no longer identify myself as a drinker. Right. I need to identify myself in other ways. Maggie: And I do still Deb: like, relate it to drinking. Like that's why I say I am an alcohol free badass because Right. I would rather call myself an a badass than like an alcoholic or an addict. Maggie: 100. Deb: Yeah, so, so I found all that really interesting too. And then when you were talking about like, goals and, and, and living by the person you wanna be, it kind of made me think about like how we l all the values-based change that we do. Mm-hmm. , like living by our values. Yes. In. Yeah. So, so I was just nodding along as Yeah. And appreciating that approach too, and, well, thank you. I, I think it is what we see in modern recovery now. Like people don't call themselves alcoholic and the medical industry has gotten away from it and mm-hmm. , you know, the terminology Alcohol use disorder. . So yeah, that was my big take on your, your big tips, Maggie: Yeah, and I do, I am so , I'm so excited and it feels so refreshing to have this modern recovery like taking the world by storm of, it's just such a refreshing idea of like, let's not label ourselves, especially, let's not label ourselves with like the things that are not serving us. Mm-hmm. and. . It's so just exciting to be a part of this movement where we realize like, hey, something that might have worked almost a hundred years ago is actually not maybe the best model. And I love educating and learning myself about more of the spectrum that they have now outlined with alcohol use disorder and realizing, you know what? You don't have. Stage four, let's stop at stage one or two. Let's be aware. And it's not like you just wake up one day needing to go to AA because you're an alcoholic. Let's get you help when you're in stage one, two, and three. So yeah, I love the new advancements. I'm so excited to be alive at this time. Basically, . Yeah, Deb: this is a really good time to quit drinking. Mm-hmm. , change your drinking, whatever that looks like. Mm-hmm. . And, you know, I do have a lot of people on the are, are from aa and it's been helpful for them and for a lot of people it, it helps them to identify as an alcoholic or an addict. I. Because it means something different to them perhaps. Right? I, I don't know. I mean, I don't identify with it, but, but it, you're right. Like choose what works best for you and what is empowering for you as you move forward and Just Maggie: navigating your relationship with drinking. Yeah. Something that is so interesting that I've found across the board, studying, like I said about how people get certain results, what, even if they go through the same experience, what causes one person to get good results and what causes the other person to quote. Fail or not get the same results and something that is very well understood, but yet somewhat mysterious still is the power of belief. Mm. If you just believe that a system is going to work for you. , you're going, your mind is going to switch to the frequency. And in magnify we look a lot at like energy and how energetics works in your body and the energy that you take on the frequency that you're thinking on. But when you can switch onto that frequency where you actually believe something is going to work, your mind is like a scent detecting dog. Where now you've given it the target of like, this is what we're gonna do. But when you don't believe the attitude, which is like you said, that thought feeling, action model, that's attitude summed up. Your attitude is gonna be, well, that's not gonna work for me, so I'm not gonna try, well, I don't wanna really do this. So your mind is gonna be sent detecting dog looking for all the reasons. Something is right or wrong. That's really not the question. It's what do you, what gets you jazzed? What do you actually look at and be like, you know what, this is gonna work for me. This is the perspective shift that I'm looking for. And you kind of mentioned, you know, I don't know why AA works for some people and doesn't for others, and I, I strongly. Believe and I think about this a lot, , but I strongly believe that it works for the people that resonate more with religious views and perhaps their quality of life. Is. Not to the point where they can quite believe in the confidence aspect. So they don't resonate with gaining personal confidence, yet they have to build themselves up in the community first. Mm-hmm. So really, I mean, and like I said, that's across the board with personal development or even with like medication placebo effect. If you believe something's going to work, your mind will release certain chemicals to make things work. And it's magical what we have locked. Under our skin. But it really will help when you have that positive attitude and you're like, you know what? Oh, this makes me feel good. This gives me that winning feeling. So I just have this strong sense of confidence now that belief and confidence. Yeah. . Well, what Deb: are some like tangible things someone can do to change their thinking? Because I mean, a lot of this is such big concept, like, but what, what's something someone could do today? Maggie: So this is something that I urge people to do starting today, but ongoing for life. And that's a thought audit. Mm-hmm. . This is really just ground zero to start becoming aware of why your behavior. Is what it is because a lot of us don't want to be behaving the way we are. We don't know why we are doing what we're doing. But we also aren't aware of the thoughts we're having. So what I always propose is a thought audit. So you take a piece of paper and you draw a line down the middle, and on the left side, you're gonna write out all of the things that you think that you notice, that you think throughout the day. Most of them that I want you to hone in on are the I am statements. You are likely not aware of all of the times throughout the day where you. I am a po. O s . I am not good enough. I am too afraid to do that. I could never do that. I am not a morning person. I am a crappy test taker. I am lazy, unfit, uncoordinated. I, you know, and so you start to see where all of these negative perceptions of yourself come from, and. One of the main perceptions for myself, and I know we just shared yours, was the lush. I said, I am a party girl. Well, believing that I was a party girl meant that anytime I was not acting as party girl, I felt like I was not operating with my values anytime that I was not party. Girl, Maggie. It. Uncomfortable because that was my self-image. So you start to see all of these self-image identity statements coming out. So write those all down and then challenge yourself to say, is this really me or is this a coping mechanism? Is this really my essence, or is this just how I'm programmed? So becoming aware of the negative statements on the left side of that sheet, and then on the right side of the. Eliminate all negative words from that statement and turn it into the polar opposite. And every time you think that thought from the left side, you bounce it out of your brain, you reject that idea, and you simply. Affirm the statement from the right side, which does take some memorization. But again, your mind is amazing and you're gonna start saying them automatically. It will become your self-image. And one of the fascinating areas of study that we implement in Magnify is Psycho Cybernetics. That's another book that I would suggest. Dr. Maxwell Malt said, you do not have a drinking problem. You have a self-image. And I realized doing this thought, dump this thought audit that wow, I was behaving the way that I was because I believed that was my identity. I believed that was my capability or my, I guess, incapability to do anything else other than drinking. So on the right side of my sheet instead, I'm party girl, Maggie. I said, , and I love your term freedom because that was one of mine. I said, I'm so happy and grateful now that I'm free and healthy. Mm-hmm. , I didn't even say sober because sober in my mind, in my perspective means somebody that wants to drink but is not drinking because they have issues with it. And that wasn't who I wanted to be either. I wanted to be somebody where alcohol was irrelevant. Mm-hmm. , like, I wasn't thinking, I wasn't having to sit around thinking about avoiding it, and I definitely was not thinking about. Romancing my next drink. I wanted it to be, oh, I'm focusing on how many steps I got today. What workouts am I doing today? How many pushups did I get today? What types of clients did I serve today? What kind of fun interactions and relationships did I have? So completely changing that narrative from being obsessed with alcohol. I didn't realize that it was all stemming from just my thoughts and my reactions to what people were doing around me. Somebody does something to make me mad. Oh man, a drink that would really. So it changes your reactions when you start to become aware of your identity and your mind. And then outside of that thought audit, I think it's just so important to set some small and exciting big goals and just start asking yourself every day, how can I move forward with this? I think for a long time, I know I was, and I know a lot of my clients were telling ourselves, well, here's a goal, but I can't do. And the moment you say I can't do something, your mind is gonna again be that scent detecting dog looking for all of the reasons to affirm why you can't do it. But when you simply ask the question of How can I get started on this, for me it was, how can I get started with professional development and nutrition? How can I get started with learning how to create fitness program? Go to work to find these little ways for it. Oh, I could do this, I could do that. So goals, thought, audit, and then health consciousness. So, you know, try to get eight to 10,000 steps a day. If you're outside walking, you're probably not. I guess you're not necessarily totally immune, but you're probably not thinking a lot about heavy drinking. If you are hopefully you're thinking about how that's in, in the past. I think outdoor, getting in nature, walking, tracking your steps every day is such a big aspect for mental health. Keeping yourself in a positive vibration and then working out and eating right, you know, these simple biology. Sleeping well. Working with somebody to help you figure out how to do this is really important too, because you can read all ki all kinds of different information. But it really is what your lifestyle's going to. Help you do. But you know, just having that health consciousness so that you, when you look at alcohol and you think about the hangover and what the toxins are gonna do to your body, you're just like, no, I freaking love my body now. I treat it well every day. And that goes against all of my work that I've been putting in. So again, it creates like this antidote to that behavior. Deb: I like the antidote. Yeah, so it's like really focusing forward, focusing on the solutions, not the problem. And just like, Yeah. Well, I talk a lot about like, just ask better questions. You're so right. Like whatever you give your mind to do, , we'll go to If you keep, if you're focused on why do I have a drinking problem? What's wrong with me? I'm broken. Mm-hmm. , well, you're gonna spin a lot of wheels there, rather than focusing on like, okay, how can I. Live a better life. How can I have fun without drinking? How can I set small goals? How can I move my body today? Maggie: Just, yes, all of that. And even if you don't know the answer right in the moment, that's the magic of your mind. Seek and you shall find. Just leave the question wide open and your mind will find it for you. . But like you said, if you're sitting around thinking, why am I so damaged? Why am I so broken? Why do I need to drink? Why can't I quit? Your mind is actually gonna go to work and give you those answers too. Oh, you're so broken because this happened in your past. You're, you can't quit drinking because you love to drink and you're party girl, Maggie. And so it's gonna do whatever you ask her to do. And that's so important to realize. So I love that we're on the same page there. Deb: So you mentioned Psycho, I mean, what is it? Psycho cyber gen? Wait, Maggie: no, what is that? I know I had to like write it out several times. Okay, so psycho cybernetic. So that's the title of the book by Dr. Maxwell Maltz. Cybernetics is C Y B E R N E. T I C s, and it's a realm of science that was discovered in the Second World War. It's the science of communication and control in animals and some machinery. So what they discovered it in was for heat-seeking missiles. So basically cybernetics is this idea that you have an end. And you have an automatic mechanism that's going to guide you to the end goal by measuring how far you deviate from the path, if that makes sense. So if you think about a plane on autopilot, it's got that set goal for the landing point, and as it's traveling in the air, it's going to measure if it goes off of track and it's going to adjust and get it back on the right path. Well, What Dr. Maxwell Maltz discovered is that as humans, we have that in our mind, and our self-image will be our goal. So who we believe we are is going to dictate our actions every day. And the moment we start to deviate from who we think we are. There is something within our nervous system and the attachment to our brain that causes us through some way or another. Usually it's through some sort of conscious thought to correct the pattern and get back on track. So he says this is gonna work as a success mechanism or a failure mechanism, because if you're self-image is, I am , I'm lush, Deb, or I'm party girl, Maggie. The moment you start to act outside of that, in your mind you think this isn't right, and it feels like you're going against your moral compass. Mm-hmm. , you say, this isn't who I am. Or somebody that maybe identifies as having a lot of anxiety. They'll say, oh my gosh. The moment I stop having anxiety, for some reason I remind myself that I should have anxiety. So, Basically psycho cybernetics is this study of your mind and how who you believe you are will begin to operate as your behavior compass. And it's fascinating because the moment you start to identify fully and expect and believe that you are a healthy, fit, goal-oriented person. If you start being lazy, if you start drinking, if you start partying, it feels like you are outside of your moral compass. Why I never was able to stop that behavior. It was because I believed that was who I was, and I had all of these sensors in my body and in my mind that were telling me the moment that I started doing. No, no. You're an alcoholic though. You need to be that person. You need to behave like that person. The moment I started telling myself and believing and instilling in my identity that I'm actually healthy and I don't like alcohol, that is what helped me. And I can be around alcohol. , and I don't want it . So it's just this Total change that it's, it's a flip from within and I really suggest psycho cybernetics. It's something that we cover hand in hand in my mentorship programs too. It's always a big feedback point that they loved learning the psycho cybernetics Deb: literature. Yeah, it's so interesting. It makes sense too. And Yeah, I had never heard of that before, so thank you Maggie: for sharing. Yeah, yeah, of course. Sorry, I went, I can talk. I feel like I could do seminars on these books for days, so I know I just went off on it. Deb: Yeah. . Yeah. So many books. Well, what, what would you like to say to someone who is listening right now and, and maybe they have been struggling with their Maggie: drinking? Yeah, so. First of all, I would like to say to that person that you're not broken, and I want you to stop feeling ashamed and guilty because that's just a behavior that wasn't your essence, that was just a coping mechanism, and you're not your coping mechanism. And if what we talked about in this conversation today made you. I could never do that. Oh my gosh, that's so silly. I've already tried to change my thinking. Then I invite you to read what we discussed today or get in touch to help you believe that this stuff can help you. Because again, it's not always just the thoughts, it's the belief and the expectancy. So if you believe something can work for you, it's going to. and sometimes there's a lot of barriers when you have been drinking for a long time, that cause you not to believe in anything. So I guess that's my tip, is believe in yourself and believe that there's something out there that will help you. Oh, that's Deb: very well said. Thank you. How can someone find you? Maggie: Yeah, thanks. So on Instagram feel free to reach out as well. DM me anytime. It's magnify Maggie. So magnify just like the magnifying glass, magnify Maggie. And then on YouTube I also put content fitness, nutrition mindset lessons up there weekly. And that's the magnify Maggie YouTube channel. So, you know, I encourage you if you can't make it to a meeting, you're not vibing with aa, you don't have necessarily a coach or anybody that's free lessons, go in there and binge them and I guarantee you're gonna be feeling better. And other than that, you know, visit magnify method.com, get some more information, but you can reach out on any social media platform and my team and I will be there for. Oh, that's Deb: fantastic. Well, thank you so much for Maggie. For Maggie . . Thank you so much, Maggie, for coming on the show and sharing. Thank you. Sharing all these books so many of them I hadn't heard of. And just new ideas and new approaches and thinking outside of the box. I really appreciate that. Maggie: Yes. Thank you so much for having us and for everything that you do for your community. I love reading about the holiday group. I love everything that you do to provide just this community for people that, you know, we really need each other. So thank you for everything that you do too.