Day 297- Are you asleep in your own life?
📖Daily Reading
Ephesians 5-6
Join me on my morning walk as we rise and shine together by walking through the Bible daily and learn a practical applicable coaching nugget from the ultimate life coach - our creator (whatever that means to you). No judgement zone here, all are welcome, we are all on a spiritual journey because we are after all spiritual beings having a human experience.
📝 Reflection
Ephesians 5: 14-18
“for the light makes everything visible. This is why it is said, “Awake, O sleeper, rise up from the dead, and Christ will give you light.” So be careful how you live. Don’t live like fools, but like those who are wise. Make the most of every opportunity in these evil days. Don’t act thoughtlessly, but understand what the Lord wants you to do. Don’t be drunk with wine, because that will ruin your life. Instead, be filled with the Holy Spirit,”
Ok, this topic hits close to home for me. Part of my personal journey is falling asleep to myself in my own life. I did exactly what he warns us about in these verses. I used wine to help me relax, cope, celebrate it became the one stop shop for all my emotions or lack of them. Wine makes us feel good at least one drink does. But we are flirting with foolishness if we allow it to become too frequent of a habit.
Not only is alcohol addictive but our brains are very powerful. The power of habit once it is in place is very hard to break. With alcohol we have a double whammy. Our brain begins to link things when especially when there are heightened emotions while we are doing things that it interprets as making us feel better, helping us cope, providing a distraction, helping etc..
So when Paul says be careful how you live, and not to live like fools, this is why. You are the sum of your habits, good or bad, wise or foolish. So choose carefully. But many of us are not taught this, and we learn the hard way by finding ourselves in the clutches of our habits. It is hard work and doubly hard if it also involves an addictive substance.
Interestingly alcohol is treated differently. It is the one drug that is not only acceptable to take but it is encouraged. It is also the one drug that people are deemed to be the problem vs. the drug. We are told that you are either ‘normal’ or you have a problem. Usually having a problem is defined as becoming dependent to the point that you are no longer functional. So with alcohol in particular many of us are not only asleep to this truth but we are told lies. We are marketed to and intentionally misled, even many doctors don’t understand the truth and there for are not educated about it either.
Luckily things are starting to change. Many are realizing that the emperor has no clothes and that the alcohol industry has gone intentionally and aggressively after women especially. Even being a mom these days is evidently is so intolerable now that we need ‘mommy’ juice and ‘rose´ all day’ to cope with the hardships. I fell for it hook line and sinker. It was fun until it wasn’t. I woke up luckily before ‘my house was on fire’. I decided to get #soberforthehealthofit.
I hope to help others wake up as well. I realized that also for me that my turning to wine was only a symptom of larger issues like co-dependency and extreme people pleasing which is also very common and how many women are raised to be ‘good girls’. The church just reinforces this unhealthy way of being. The thing about waking up though is that many of us then realize the hard work ahead of us that it takes to change and sustain and maintain the change. So then we try to go back to sleep. Once you are awake to your house being on fire, you can’t go back in and fall asleep, you can’t unknow that your house is on fire.
Thus for many begins the pain known as cognitive dissonance or a divided heart. Now your particular bad habit or foolishness may not be wine, but if you are human you probably have something you are struggling with that you know is not good for you. Or maybe you have always lived on auto pilot and haven’t thought or cared about the long term consequences of your habits and hangups. Ignorance is bliss, enjoy it while it lasts, jk. I wish I had understood the truth about what alcohol does to the body and what the alcohol industry is intentionally doing. I feel like I was robbed of making an informed decision.
While all of this is true I am also very grateful for my journey, with out foolishness I wouldn’t understand wisdom and I wouldn’t be where I am not with the research and learning that I have done on health and the human mind. I would not be where I am with my willingness to work hard, be brutally honest and self aware. I would not be a coach with a whole amazing new adventure unfolding.
✍🏼Daily Journal Prompt
What might be possible for you if you are courageous enough to wake up to what is possible for you in your life?
📖Tomorrows Reading
Phillipians 1
Coaching Opportunity
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