This is a guest post by Naomi Veak, who will coach a Sobriety Cohort of the Financial Freedom 1 course in October.
Are you sober, or sober-curious? Thinking about doing Sober October or know someone who is? The next cohort of Financial Freedom 1 is a Sobriety Cohort!
JD Roth, author of the personal finance blog Get Rich Slowly, recently wrote an article to explain his process of removing “net negatives” from his life.
He writes, “My aim is to decrease my depression and anxiety by removing people, things, and experiences that are net negatives and replacing them with people, things, and experiences that are net positives.”
A few months ago, one of those things he decided to remove was alcohol, with a plan to replace it with meditation and mindfulness.
You can read his entire article here.
I was doing a similar experiment with eliminating alcohol and marijuana to see how it changed my life when I enrolled in the Financial Freedom course two years ago.
Little did I know that sobriety, plus the experience I had in the course, would completely alter the trajectory of my life.
During the Financial Freedom course, I reflected on the times in my life when I’d chosen to get drunk and high over instead of other experiences:
When I stopped taking piano lessons in high school because I was often hungover on Saturday mornings.
In college, when I decided to get high on pot instead of attending a once-in-a-lifetime rehearsal with a jazz great.
Working at a ski resort in my 20’s, staying up late to spend all my tips buying drinks for people I barely knew, instead of saving for a place to live after the ski season.
The way I lived paycheck-to-paycheck no matter how much money I made.
And through it all, accepting that I’d be working until I was 80 years old to pay off my student loans.
I had a pivotal moment during the course, when I did an exercise to identify my values. I looked at the list, thinking incredulously: That’s how I should be spending my time? With these values guiding my life?
That’s when the realization washed down my spine like a river of electricity:
I could never drink or smoke pot again. I didn’t want to.
As my behavior changed, I felt my inner and outer identities aligning. I was learning to respect the sacredness of my own precious life. As I kept promises to myself, I began to trust myself. The course gave me both a new mindset and strategy that I put into action. I felt empowered, and I felt happier.
After taking Financial Freedom 1, I saved a six-month emergency fund, paid off my husband’s student loans, and saved a down payment for our new home. I began coaching Womxn’s Cohorts of the course, and now, for the first time, am thrilled to offer a Sobriety Cohort.
A woman with eight years of sobriety who was in one of my previous women’s cohorts says of her experience:
I was finally ready to clean up the wreckage of my finances that was a result of living in a fantasy world while drinking, and in early sobriety. I was ready to face my reality, and shine some light on the one area of my life that I still kept in the dark.
As a result of the course, I got clear on where I was in terms of what was in my bank account and what my money scripts were (what I grew up hearing and believing about money) and what I needed to do to change. I paid off all my debt, I stopped buying useless stuff, I embraced the concept of minimalism, and I’m making progress on my savings goals.
Because I am not spending money on booze, going out, fantastical vacations and material items, I have more money and energy to focus on the things that really do matter.
If you have sober friends, or know someone planning on Sober October, this is their cohort!