Matt Gardiner is a passionate and empathetic Recovery Coach & Life Coach who has helped numerous people get out of their 'stuck stories' and move towards the life of their dreams. He focuses on changing the language & words, and the stories you've been attaching to the events in your life. Better words + better breathing = better life. Matt's vision of Recovery includes an active and healthy lifestyle, that also includes planning for some very deliberate, relaxing downtime for self-care and healing. Matt is also a gifted musician and Sound Therapist, which compliments his work as a Coach. 'Beyond Recovery' is a podcast hosted by Matt, where guests come on to share their journeys to, and through, recovery.
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You can learn more about what Matt offers and connect with him here: https://www.recoveryroadmap.me. Follow me on Instagram @alexmcrobs and check out my offerings in yoga, meditation and coaching at http://themindfullifepractice.com/.
Transcript
Alex: Hi friend this is Alex McRobbs founder of the Mindful Life Practice and you're listening to the Sober Yoga Girl podcast. I'm a Canadian who moved across the world to the Middle East at age 23 and I never went back. I got sober in 2019 and I now live full-time in Bali, Indonesia. I've made it my mission to help other women around the world stop drinking, start yoga and change their lives through my online sober girls yoga Community. You're not alone and a sober life can be fun and fulfilling, let me show you how.
[Music]
Alex: Hello hello everyone welcome back to another episode of sober yoga girl. I am really excited to have Matt Gardner with me here today on the show and Matt is another Canadian but he's on the other side of Canada and he is a life coach and a recovery coach and also a sound therapist and so I'm really excited to hear more about his story and how he got to where he is today and and the work he does now so welcome Matt how are you doing?
Matt: I'm great Alex thank you so much for having me on your show been looking forward to this for a while we had a little back and forth going on Instagram as far as getting this set up so I'm super pumped we're gonna do a little show swap as well I can't wait to have you on my podcast as well so thank you so much for having me today.
Alex: Yeah, thanks for being here. So you are just over three years sober right our sober dates are really close i remember yours is april 9th and mine is april 13th of 2019 right
Matt: I know love that, eh. So cool yeah yeah within a few days yeah so exactly just just past my uh my three year in april actually my personal thank you my personal best a few days ago so like July 11th was my uh previous personal best of whatever I think it was like a thousand 188 days so I just passed that so I had 2012 to 2015 and then had a relapse that led to you know some other things after that so. Yeah feels pretty good I had that marked on my calendar as like this goal from when I first started this this current sobriety journey that I'm on this stint and uh I felt so you know felt so far away but it was like a you know the stretch goal and now i've surpassed it and I'm just feeling great about it so.
Alex: yeah that's amazing congratulations that's huge.
Matt: Thank you!
Alex: So, I was wondering if you could share a little bit about your life before um kind of leading up to your sober journey the the first stint that you had and then this one now.
Matt: yeah absolutely so you know I always go back to like my earliest memories of alcohol would be so my dad was a drinker, a big drinker and my uncle Paul so that's my mom's brother and whenever they got together um you know. It would be for me it was like five-year-old Matt hears them get together in the other room and all of a sudden the volumes going up on everything they're you know it sounded it was intriguing to me though it was very curious to me it was um you know like what is going on over there so you know they start not yelling at each other but the the increased volume and voice the music is getting turned up. They're laughing a lot I'm going what's going on over there so I'd walk in there and and of course they would do the uh matt come over here come over you gotta try this and then hand me a beer and you know I do like the little sip and bitter beer face and they would laugh and and I was just but still. It definitely got my head as far as. Uh it got my curiosity up about okay something is about what they're doing over there and that beverage and you know so it's uh that stuck with me for sure um you know fast forward a few years a few years later um I remember just being downstairs in my basement and you know being a child using my imagination playing house like setting up a fort and everything down there were some cardboard boxes and different things that I had down there and I remember putting together what I called like the liquor cabinet I had these little bottles and I'm like okay there's like my my I don't know if I knew what whiskey was. But I'm like hey this is my my liquor cabinet over here and you know when I'm like for a seven or eight year old kid that seems a little bit you know unusual looking back on it I'm like how would I even known about that you know so those are like the the those key memories from from early on and um you know I generally had a like a sheltered upbringing like my mom was a stay-at-home mom so um you know and it's smaller town like. I grew up in Prince George, British Columbia. So about 70 000 people very blue collar uh we grew up in kind of a suburb of Prince George so very very uh good great place to grow up you know there's a wilderness literally like I'd hop the fence and I'd be like in the river valley down to the fraser river so just beautiful and so really good place to grow up but um you know uh my parents ended up getting divorced when I was 13. So, I was going into high school so high school in Prince George though there's no middle school so grade 8 to twelve and so just everything going on at home my world at that point had just completely imploded uh. It was revealed that my dad was like a daily uh marijuana user marijuana smoker and I was drinking more than what I was led to believe he was and um um but you know so that's going on at my home life. I'm starting high school. It's like the land of the giants from my perspective you know these full-grown men with mustaches and beards they're six feet tall I hadn't hit my growth spurt yet so I was a really shy small kid it's kind of stunned look on my face showing up because I'm not really sure where I where my life stands at this point. um having a hard time with things and and that was a you know prime target for bullying right this kind of stunned kid that's not saying anything to anybody that's really small. So I ended up you know getting some uh you know get taking my lumps and getting some hazing there in grade eight for sure and like in mid high school um I started I hit my growth spurt you know, I joined a band I started expressing myself through music which was huge and that's what I'll like just pause it quickly to say a huge part of my story has been uh finding music and being able to express myself in a more abstract and safe way um but you know getting into the the band thing uh you know. You start me and the guys that I was playing with started reading all the rock biography books right so you know. Led zeppelin all these bands that are just living the crazy rock and roll lifestyle and that's appealing to us at the time right we're like 16 years old. I like that sounds cool. Trash in a hotel room getting drunk let's you know so that's how it ended up that's why I got into um the band uh. very quickly became a reason or uh an enhancement then became uh using alcohol uh so my brother I have uh one older brother he's two years older than me. So him and his friends would start booting for us you know he'd be 18 or 19 at the time I'm 16 is kind of when I started drinking experimenting with drinking so in around that timeline and um and started smoking weed a lot too at the time and I liked the escapism of uh of of marijuana. I was using that a lot more than I was with drinking but very quickly drinking overtook uh smoking weed and um yeah. Even at my place of employment, I started the one job that I had for like 23 years. I got hired when I was 16 years old and I remember feeling so I was like wow this is real life interesting. For example, I would show up and if there was a sick call and like um the assistant bakery manager would call me in. He's like hey there's somebody sick can you come in and cover that shift up like yeah for sure, I'll be right there so I'd leave um after high school and go up there and work a shift and as they came in the guy would like tuck AA joint in my front pocket right there on the sales floor just like like discreetly right? But still like put it right in my front he's like thanks for doing that. That's for afterwards thanks for coming in tonight. I was like holy shit like this is real life. I didn't realize this is how the world worked right so that's my vision of adulthood is like using substances. I was like man how the veil has been lifted i see what reality is now right you know and uh and you know all the people I was working with like this is you know mid to late 90s so it's kind of still a wild west right so like on christmas eve there's like a bottle of whiskey in the the freezer and the cooler right and it's just a regular thing and then partying with uh you know with these adults you know these guys that are anywhere from 25 to 40 years old and I'm like 18 17 years old and I'm just like oh this is this is awesome. This is, I feel so adult right so there's these like collapse distinctions that would that would occur between like mature and drinking right like I was associating drinking with things that really didn't belong associated with it which I learned much much later but so that was kind of like my my initiation into it and you know playing playing music as soon as we were getting into pubs you know. Fast forward a couple years later after I got out of high school and was playing um playing in bars and such it was like the one job where they encourage you to drink on the job like before you start you're the entertainment for the evening they're paying you yeah. They're like here, drink up, have a few beers and like okay interesting so to me that's you know one at the time it was wonderful. I'm like this is great I am a rock star right so yeah you know I got out of prince george as soon as I could um you know nothing against prince george like I say it was a great place to grow up. But um you know, I just wanted to get to a bigger center. so I moved to Calgary for a year and then ended up in Edmonton which is where I currently am and Edmonton's about 1.3-1.4 million people now. So you know coming from a place that's 70 000 people it's so much bigger there's just more people, more venues, better schools. That's where I wanted. I just wanted to get to a place where I could grow and expand and um and you know learn more about myself right? So yeah so that's where we went and we did the band thing and um in alberta I found the culture between alberta especially at the time like early 2000s was very much a drinking culture versus smoking weed so bc is very still very uh heavy on like uh on on marijuana usage and it's known for that right so me coming over that's where it really shifted into uh to me becoming like a daily drinker as opposed to before I would be like a daily smoker. And maybe on weekends yeah so anyway so that's what I took that um you know alcohol helps me come out of my shell mentality into bigger city living and um yeah. It was it was I did that for a while um you know very much got into the band i was playing in a couple bands everything was going good my life was leveling up. I was getting promoted at work. I bought a house with my girlfriend at the time at age 23 uh right before the big house boom in 2008 so in edmonton it was like super cheap housing and then within a year it had doubled and hasn't really come back back since doubled or tripled even since then so that was really cool but then we broke up um within about a year. So there was a lot of you know um obviously money tied into the house. I got to stay in the house which was great um but yeah there was some I was man it's like looking back on it all the things that happened to me when I was younger. I thought was just like was the end so like after I broke up with her I'm like ah that's it like i'll never find another you know a partner that'll understand me like she did. And you know things of that nature. Everything I felt was so hard and I was having such a hard time processing my emotions and what I would do is just numb them and I thought the alcohol was doing the opposite. I thought it was helping me get the feelings out and then I would write a song about it and in reality it was just making me a mess. I was having just a tough time that's about as close as I've been to being depressed in my life. I think was at that time just very confused. I was getting very frustrated with how I was showing up and presenting myself. I didn't feel like I was expressing myself uh the way I wanted to. I felt like there was some kind of governor or fear that was holding me back from being my true self not realizing that it was it probably had a lot to do with the amount of alcohol I was ingesting and um you know. And yet in the background things keep leveling up and the universe is giving me these awesome opportunities and uh and I just couldn't get my shit together right and it's um you know. So I ended up getting with um getting together with my current uh fiancee darcy and so we were just a big party couple right? So that's uh that was how we were known and that's that was sort of our identity and and that was great for me and that kicked me out of that stint of depression and loneliness that I had after um after breaking up with Amanda and um yeah. I remember it was about a year year and a half into us being together where uh we had this uh went out to jasper which is a beautiful mountain town here in Alberta and uh. I ended up giving myself uh like acute pancreatitis from just like binge drinking uh that whole weekend and luckily we got back to town. By the time the symptoms started showing up because man it was terrifying. It was very very painful and uh I really wish I could say that was my you know my rock bottom moment or my it really should have been um but it really wasn't uh. So I remember spending three days in the hospital uh they didn't know what it was so it was like I almost left. Because uh the lady was fairly dismissive of me and looking back on it. I can't blame her uh when I went to the emergency room and she was just like I explained what was going on she was just looked me in the eye and she's like do you really need to be here today and I was like whoa like I'm like in the worst pain I've ever felt yes. I need to be here and I was in the waiting room for about two or three hours and there's so many times I was like ah you know what just whatever I'll just go home and sleep this off and I'm so glad I didn't and yeah. They finally got me in and it was about four hours of doing all these tests before they could give me any kind of like pain management because you don't know what's going on and they finally figured that out and then gave me some some morphine or whatever it was to to manage my pain ended up being three iv bags uh to rehydrate me and three days in the hospital just staring up at the ceiling just going you know what I've learned my lesson thank you so much. Like this is what I needed. I will never drink again. This is a second chance. I'm 27 at the time so within 24 hours of being out of the hospital, I have a beer in my hand at home and Darcy's looking at me going kind of like what are you doing? and then meanwhile there's part of her that's also like ah good I'm kind of glad I have the old mat back I didn't want to have to stop drinking either so that's how we proceeded and we did that for a couple years. um say my early 30s uh Darcy and I split for a bit uh we just decided we were going to see other people. Just because we got together so young and you know we just needed to get some things out of our system. Under the guides that we were going to get back together. And uh it ended up being a lot more painful uh of an experience than both of us thought it was going to be and we ended up just uh actually having like a distinct separation like okay this is it and that was like again super challenging for me. Especially the way that it came about it was um it was yeah it was it was not my favorite time shall we say and uh you know right before that right before we actually had the distinct okay we we're not gonna speak to you we didn't end up speaking for about a year and a half but before that I had a um I fall down a set of stairs uh so I got taken to the hospital again. Stitched up and I came home and I had a post-concussion syndrome for about three months after that including that Christmas. I remember the christmas eve I tried to have two beers but because I was still all you know still uh having some issues with my brain and the swelling and all that. I get like a beer or two in and just puke and be like barely able to speak and slurring my speech and it was just really messy and so you know people are in getting worried about me and I'm worried about myself and you know it's just yeah dark time. and then coming out of that is where like as I'm you know the the cobwebs are leaving you know the my brain is healing and um feeling better about everything that's when I thought Darcy and I were gonna get back together. It didn't end up being the case and that's at that point I just put my hand up. I'm like I just I can't continue on like this um. I and it's still in the background leading up to that there was so I just got promoted to a brand new store to open a brand new store as a bakery manager uh. My band just got uh a grant for ten thousand dollars to record a professional album so like meanwhile everything else is just going great but um my personal life in the way that I'm presenting myself is just the opposite and so incredibly frustrating. And so I took five weeks off the first two weeks. I went on this massive bender under the idea that I'm like okay let's get this out of my system and it was you know I'm almost halfway through the five weeks already and I'm going like I can either go move to Vancouver and just go on a big bender and this could be it or I can at least try and get my life together here because there is a lot to live for. There was part of me that was still like no I like come on there's tons to live for and uh so that's where i was and I ended up um calling my friend Brent. Who was a uh he had just gone through NA and AA and we had a falling out over substance abuse of course. And we hadn't talked in about a year and I reached out to him and that was like the olive branch. I'm like Brent can you take me to one of these things like is it you know and he's like of course yeah absolutely. So that was super cool and we got to the parking lot of AA and I was like just the energy of being in the parking lot like looking at people going in I was like like frightened but also kind, I could also feel there's something there's some there's a change in me and I just said to Brent's like you know I'm good I'm cured you know what this was enough for me getting this close i have that like an energetic change in me i'm good and you know it's one of those moments where like if he hadn't done this, I don't I'm not convinced that we'd be having this conversation right now. But he reached over put his hand on my shoulder and said like just smiled and went it's all good man let's go in together and um. Yeah so we went in together and uh. It's funny because he's like this quasi celebrity in there everybody's high fiving them and hugging them and I was like oh this is not what I was expecting and um and we just sat down and like as soon as the uh the one guy started to read just the the opening whatever he'd found in the big book and I decided literally felt like a weight come off my shoulders. It was um and I started yeah I just started like tearing up and I'm like holy shit like this is where I need to be it was like a a profound like 180 like spiritually. It really felt like um in a matter of seconds I was a changed person and um you know. And that that's what basically led me for uh for the next three years three months of uh sobriety was was off of that I continued to go to the meetings but that's specifically that one meeting it has a very special place in you know in my heart and very vividly remember what it did to me and just tapping into that um you know that energy. Which I call is like now as as I've done the self-development I like I recognize it's kind of like a like a yin energy like allowing I've been so busy being like this achiever and out trying to outrun my you know true feelings with like distractions and achievements and to-do lists and crossing things off the to-do list and as soon as I feel lonely i'll pick up my phone. And you know these are things I realize now but at the time I had never experienced anything like that of just like everything's okay like you don't have to you know you don't have to be always achieving and trying to do this thing and being hard on yourself and acting out of like action like sometimes you can just exist. And just be and so it was a profound shift for me and um it just experientially I just learned it I just I was gifted it. I believe spiritually I was just gifted by whoever was looking after me that day and um yeah so the next three years three months was like a huge period of self-development for me uh. There was still a degree that I was hiding specifically I didn't enjoy telling people that I had started going to AA so I was protecting that from from people at work um from only my really close friends knew about it. And even those people were like well you can still have a beer every now and then you weren't that bad because again I was drinking a lot in hiding right? I would do the whole you know if I went to a party I would have a couple beers and then I'd come home and have like 10 beers. Because I'm like okay wicked you know I was just so worried about like not fitting in or making an ass of myself that I would just wait and then when I come home like okay here we go crack my knuckles and just freaking down ten beer or whatever right? So that's kind of my pattern there um. Yeah so you know coming out of that um you know the three years three months it was you know relearning redefining uh you know the first time I went camping I remember very distinctly as well because I used to love I mean I still love camping but I used to love camping in the way that I would have like a flat a beer with me and like as soon as I parked the park the camper van it's like let's do this start just trying to race through the flat of beers as quickly as I could. Having a fire getting rowdy and uh and now it's like I'm just out there and just like by myself and I have my journal and all that and and I'm just sitting there like man this is kind of boring like I'm just and now realizing like it's one of my favorite things to do is to sit out in nature and just allow and exist. And be in nature right but at the time I was like wow this is way different uh when you're not drinking you know and all this and even the music like when we ended up recording that album. That was the first time I had played any note or sing any note of music sober my entire life even when I was 16 I'd like smoke weed before I picked up the guitar. I believed again that was you know collapsed distinctions of like inspiration and creativity and like substances like they go hand in hand I can't do one without the other so that's what it was for three years three months. And I ended up being um my uh uh in my my drummer's wedding party i was one of his uh groomsmen and it was like it was a great wedding. It was like about 200 people and um you know being on at the groomsmen table like every drink that's coming over has some kind of alcohol in it even the coffee. I'm like ah at least I can have a coffee there's like kahlua. And I'm like damn it knowing now like looking back on it because I was about three years like a little over three years in three or three months. At that time I can honestly say that I was kind of had my eye on the door of like you know the door I left the door open just a crack and I felt like I could kind of open and kind of peek in there again. So I could have easily just said to everybody hey I'm not drinking and hey which I had done at events before but I didn't that night. In fact I was like kind of trying it on a little bit like. I'd have a shot come to me and instead of just going waving it off. I would do the whole like you know give it to the plant behind me but I was still like I was like getting close like I was you know it's kind of like you know dipping your dipping your toes in the water. So finally by the end of the night it was like midnight I almost made it and finally I just had a shot of tequila and it was like instantaneous like the brain chemistry happening and I was like
hmm
Yeah that kind of feels good actually like I kind of missed that and I ended up getting a corona and I'm having AA conversation with my uh my buddy Greg who's the bass player in the band and it kind of turns into like the whole oh man like I got so much you know like the whole got so much respect for you. And like what a great friendship we've had you know getting into the uh that kind of like the drunk talk right and i had about a half of the Corona. And I finally I was like you know what I think i'm fine with this my sobriety is over and I got this I remember saying that I got this really three uh three frightening words to say in hindsight. Looking back so yeah that's when my ego really came back in and started um rejecting that one side of me. That I'd really developed that like the inside that I'd mentioned it was like no like don't worry about it like I got it. Don't like you know that voice was like what have you done like I can't believe you did this and I was like trust me like I got it. And so as soon as I got home I did all the justification things and all the different like attempts right? So my moderation started by going okay. Well everybody's talking about craft beer. So I'll get craft beer that way i'm supporting local right feel good about myself that way craft beer is like double the price of the beer I used to buy so certainly I won't be you know, buying double the beer like that would be ridiculous which of course I did right away. And then like I don't like warm beer so I'll leave it out in my closet like in the living room and then that way it's kind of like out of sight out of mind and it's warm. So if I decide to have more than the one that I put in the fridge I'm gonna be drinking warm beer. I'm never gonna do that will I? Before you know what I'm drinking like eight warm beers and I'm just like what the hell am I doing how can I not get this so you know? And then fast forward uh you know about a year after that Darcy and I got back together. So Darcy to her credit had sobered up independent of me as well. So I was at about three years sober she was at two years sober. So she was back in my life by this point. She was same thing leveling up. She was getting promoted. Everything was great. We were eyeballing her to move back in and it was just wonderful it had this like you know the million dollar question: would we get along independent of our alcohol? You see answers 100 percent like it's such more nuanced relationship. True love right? It was a such an awesome experience and it was actually me that suggested uh one of the nights that she got promoted uh you know let's should we you know would this would drinking enhance this tonight and she kind of thought about it. I'm like you know what if we drank cider we were never big cider people we have cider like that you know certainly that will will prevent us from having too much. And she's like yeah let's let's let's try it. So we walked over the liquor store did that before you know we're cider people right because of that and um you know. And so then we have a couples uh you know justification so what we're doing is we're going okay well you know no booze in the house because we've had issues with that before so you know only when we go out. And then before you know we're going out five five nights a week like this is really expensive certainly. We can't do this so let's try the house again only on the weekends but we tried every condition every you know anything any like little side deal that you could make with yourself or with each other. We tried and um you know and to zero percent success rate big surprise and uh you know I knew it was catching up with you by this time. I'm like 37 years old right and um you know so uh the the a few days before christmas 2018 my dad passed away suddenly and he had been you know drinking his pretty much since he was like 14 or 16 or whatever it was his dad was a big drinker his dad's dad and mom like their great-grandmother uh great-grandparents were both heavy drinkers irish background you know so it was just it was very much uh in in his family. He died yeah 66 which is incredibly young by today's standards. He had been retired for one year he was a fireman and had a great retirement uh you know ready for himself uh you know 35 years working for the city mass pension all the rest so he he was set up uh but yeah he just he had a hard time with it he took up smoking cigarettes as well you know in in in retirement. And yeah it caught up with them so he he passed away and that was like you know that was one of those times where it's like more instead of tap on the shoulder it was like a smack in the back of the head. And I'm like okay yeah I was just kind of frightened about it too like I remember grabbing my phone and I just needed to get the energy moving because I'm like I wasn't listening to music. I was just kind of stunned and and just feeling in a bad spot and I remember just just saying some stuff to my phone and and just getting some of that stagnant energy moving. And it was really dark like just how how can I let myself get like this you know I'm like this is brutal like how what am I doing with my life. I need help how you know why why was I able to be sober before and now I can't do this and you know. Even like suicidal ideation and just the whole thing and finally after getting that out of my system. I just reached that point of like being so disturbed with my own behavior and then so I just I was able to combine those two things just feeling so disturbed but giving myself like a reason of why you know that was beyond me. And was like it felt like I was very you know excuse me in tune with you know my family and I felt that just having that like acknowledgement and that intention just released everything. And really gave me that one of those 180 uh you know. 180 shifts inside of me. I had that spiritual um you know spiritual awakening I guess or speech spiritual uh you know recalibration we'll call it. And so that's what it was um and since then it's been um you know as we talked about a little over three years now. Three or three months actually surpassed that uh that initial uh that initial three years three months uh a couple days ago actually so at time of recording here and um yeah. That's where I am. I'd love to talk about like what I've been doing since then. But before that I just was a bar of audio there for you for like half an hour so I want to give you a chance to to say anything if you have any follow-up questions thanks for uh thanks for listening.
Alex: Thank you so much. I get so much from hearing other people's stories. Because there's just so much like commonalities and so many things that spark and so it benefits me as much as like the guests to shar. So I just want to thank you for for sharing your story and um it just sounds like you've been through like a tremendous amount of of different challenges and roadblocks and like it's taken a lot to get to the point where you are and that's huge to celebrate passing your your personal best and the three years three months that's massive.
Matt: Yeah thank you so much. Yeah and you know what it's like I don't know I have such a different perspective of all the different challenges you know over the years um. Especially when I was younger as I mentioned when I'm in it when I was in it back. Then I just felt like man this is like is life going to get any better or is this how life is always going to be. And you know I felt very bleak at many different times um but honestly I wouldn't trade any of these experiences uh you know there's a great quote and you know I'm bad at remembering the exact quotes but uh something along the lines of you know somebody that has uh been associated or been close to their own death uh has a much more fulfilling life as a result. Because they've been that far into like the darkness that they can really appreciate and I feel that way very much about my own life where I can you know it's not I'm not too far removed from some pretty bar dark times that I can always access. They're still in there and when I meditate and such um like I know where they are and I know I allow them to be there right and and you know I'd love to get into that about part of my healing. And what I'm doing with everything now but that was yeah that's a big big part of it whereas before you know. I spent pretty much my entire adult adulthood and childhood and everything um you know numbing uh distracting, pushing, suppressing um you know. I get those little pangs like saying hey like you got to pay attention to this I'd be like no no no. I'm just going to check my phone now right and that's honestly Alex it's been like probably the last two years. I've been really paying attention to that I my default before was if I felt a little bit of loneliness or something I'd be like I pick up my phone I check my email I pick up my guitar. The guitar is much more uh you know it's much less distracting at least. I'm still sort of tapping into that but um yeah I did a lot of distraction and still to this day I've got to be very you know aware of of when that happens. Because that is very much my default um but yeah getting into um yeah what I'm doing now so I've literally been working that same job. The same time I shouldn't say same job it's like the same company but many many different uh, excuse me many different uh iterations of it. So the one thing with working with with save on foods is I got to meet so many different people. I've been transferred as soon as I got into assistant store manager. It was like six or eight months and you'd get moved to a different store. So I think I went through like eight stores in like four or five years and I'm meeting like each store's got anywhere from like 80 to 120 people. So I'm just I'm really learning how to um you know read people work with people mentor different people um you know. Work through confrontations with different people being a point person you know and and being a destination person. Because people are coming to me if I don't know what what this is. I have to have the resources to be able to find out the answer so it was a great experience for me and I really enjoyed the um yeah the mentoring. Because by that time it's like man this has literally been my life like I've started as a part-time closer in the bakery deli in college heights in prince george to like assistant store manager opening a brand new store here in Edmonton during the third wave of the pandemic in 2020. I was like every point in between I was like it was it was really cool to look back on but at that stage. I was just I was not feeling fulfilled anymore I was feeling, I was putting it in my head I was starting to do the justifications like we talked about with the drinking with the job yeah. I just I ended up taking a six-month sabbatical last year under the guise that I'm like okay, this will give me enough time to do a bunch of these things that I've always wanted to do you know. I'm turning 40 that was last summer so I had my 40th birthday last august so I'm like perfect time to do it. I can identify that this happens a lot of times in people's lives so you get to that stage where it's you know used to be called like a mid-life crisis. But it's kind of like an existential crisis like I was really asking myself like why am I here like? Why have I chosen to be sober like what there's a reason better than what I'm doing right now in my opinion? And there's nothing wrong with do and I want to say that too like I had a great the further. I'm getting removed from my career of 23 years the more grateful I am for it uh. Having said that at the time like that it was just there was a lot of friction with me. So and I was like I just there's something to this. And I remember that morning one of uh my six-month sabbatical I woke up and I had one of these like distinct voices. It's not my inner dialogue like there was some other voice in there. It felt like and it's like you're not going back and I'm like interesting that's I never thought of it like that yet. Especially on morning one I was like that's really strange I wonder where that voice came from you know, and then you know a couple days later I'm just I went on this massive nature walk. And I had this like huge creative outburst and all these ideas. Like I honestly don't even really know where they came from obviously they were somewhere in there inside me. And I was just I had luckily I had my phone with me and I was doing the same like okay and then I'm going to do this and what if I blah blah. And you know just riffing on all these ideas and I felt like this massive outpouring of creativity and of what I could do potentially uh you know for the rest of my life. And be enjoy and enjoy it and um so I started that it was initially it looked like it was a an online course that I started creating about like creativity so the benefits of um you know like music and art therapy right? And tying into a little bit like I was trying to get into like art and music therapy for those with addictions like I had a uh like a lesson just on that so I was kind of at that time sort of testing that out a little bit and trying that on for myself and anyway. So I created I learned how to do video editing there's all these learning curves and I was like kind of in a race against time. Because I wanted to get this course out and hopefully just show myself that I can make some money on it. And then I could just quit the job outright and it didn't quite work out that way. You know looking back on it everything happens as it needs to right? So I ended up going back uh to save on foods um. And it was tough I was pretty emotional about it because I part of me really didn't want to and then part of me is like you know what this is a great way. Oh I fast forwarding a little bit I ended up um getting a my first coaching certification in that leave of absence. I met a guy. I was on his podcast and we ended up just really hitting it off and he told me about uh this uh coaching program called unlifted and it's all about like the language we use and how powerful language can be and just. Just uh changing the your inner dialogue around how powerful that can be with your goal setting your mantras and such and then how to apply that to uh you know with coaching as well. And so it was just amazing that's what gave me that like you know that behind the scenes kind of credibility with myself and just some like structure as far as like being able to be a coach. So I was gonna be like a creativity coach right that was my thing and yeah. So anyways I ended up going back to work uh against you know but I kind of ran out of my resources shall we say I ran out of my money that I had saved away. So it was like okay I, you know what this is going to be fine. Because this will be a chance for me to integrate the new me with the old me and we'll see how this goes. I'm like I'm a brand new person now. So maybe this is actually the best thing I can do right now and like within a week or so it was pretty apparent that uh. It was very different world. I found that it was very challenging for me to remain this new person with this new energy. Because I was it's almost like I was going back in time with it and everything with that job like you're I'm you know 23 years in close to it at that point um. So I'm very reactionary right there's people that say that um they'll say something or the nature of retail anybody that's worked retail it is very reactionary by nature, right? there's like okay this person needs to talk to you got to get this done somebody's calling you uh you know a customer complaint to deal with. It's very like fractured shattered work so it's it was very challenging for me to uh integrate this new me. Which is all about like breathing and thinking, taking the time to think about what you're saying and all this and then it's like you're forcing that into this this other uh. This other way of doing things and it wasn't working what I was the best thing I could say for advice for people is like what worked for me is just picking like 10 minutes at a time and go okay for the next 10 minutes I'm not going to use any soft talk words or any like statements of negation. I'm just going to speak in positives and and then just like not let anybody cross that line that's how I'm going to present myself for the next 10 minutes. And I'd be able to do that but for the full day very very challenging. By the end of the day I'd be sarcastic, right? and and participating in gossip and things of this nature and then coming home just going damn it's like why what's going on here um. So yeah, so that's how that part ended I ended up having a great stint. uh one last stand as assistant store manager right before christmas and that was like everything went really well and the store wanted me to stay and I was like yeah you know what if it's like this? I probably could stay for at least a bit but I knew it wasn't going to be long term. It would be six or eight months and then they'd send me somewhere else and I'd be like in the same boat so I said no. And um and I ended up going to a store that's like you know five minutes down the road. And I'd been there before that was actually the store that I had uh opened in my dark days there as a bakery manager where I had the whole fall down the stairs and all that so it felt like I was closing a circle in a sense. So I thought it was cool like to go back there and kind of like you know and um it was very apparent by shift number one. By that time I'd stepped down. I was like a assistant grocery manager and I was like okay so this is the overlap while I build up my coaching business. I'm just going to do this job and by like halfway through the first shift, I'm like no this is not for me you know negation acknowledged and uh what happened is like that the timing of it was I graduated level two and lifted a few weeks into january this past january. So a few months ago and uh mark england who is the uh the head coach is such a like riveting presenter and just the way that he presented the uh the grad call for level two. I got me so jacked and just like I saw my future and I was like as soon as he finished I was like emotional. I just sat there staring at my computer he had already signed off and I was just staring and I'm like I'm gonna quit tomorrow. This is like I this is what I'm going to do, no questions asked. Like I was just 100 sure of it so i typed up my letter of resignation had my back pocket realized by the time I got there I'm like okay no there's still a few things I got to get in line here before I do that. So and then anybody's that's looking at doing becoming an entrepreneur the best advice that I can give for that is make sure that your money is as tight and as your monthly expenses are. As low as you can possibly get them so that's what I did because I had a very tough time with it on my sabbatical you know. I had to go through this whole like money uh story like this money story that I had that I didn't even realize I had so even though I'd saved the money to get me through the sabbatical. I'd been getting paid every friday for over 20 years and when that first friday came even though I was expecting it mentally energetically. It was very strange I looked at my bank statement, I noticed I hadn't been paid. I was just like woof, and I felt it my body I'm like what like what is that that's strange. I wasn't expecting that at all. And for the full six months there I still had quite a few monthly bills to pay and I was just watching my bank account go down down down down. And that's where I had to like stop myself and go, so what is it about money because it's not money per se but what is it that money is representing that I'm having a tough time with. And I identified it was definitely like self-worth like I didn't feel that, I was by not by being out of work even though I was working my butt off on my you know my sabbatical. I wasn't you know, relaxing like I said I was going to. I was working very hard but I wasn't quote unquote you know getting paid for it right so i had this like you know self-worth tied up with being paid and I had a really bad bout of imposter syndrome. Like the whole time I had that sabbatical just like the who do you think you are like what makes you so much better than everybody else that works at save on foods that you can and all this stuff and it was really strange to navigate. So I'm glad that I came across and lifted because we did a lot of work on victim mentality imposter syndrome. And things like that and so anyway so that was kind of like the training wheels for me for this past january. I'm like okay I've already been through all that I can do this like I've already felt what it's felt like to be. So yeah back to the whole entrepreneurial advice is, I knew what it felt like having your my money get you know draining on me. So I did I took what I had for my pension they give you a lump sum and then they give you the majority of it to roll into another rsp. I took some of the lump sum. Paid off uh 12 months worth of uh bills that would normally be monthly bills annually. So I've given myself a full year of breathing room and basically all that I'm paying for right now is like groceries and gas for my vehicle. And I'm not driving too much because I'm working from home so that was big. And yeah just since then Alex had been doing um just it was the first time that I'd finally come out fully about my alcohol use. And that started pretty much right away like as soon as I got out of save on foods. I felt permission to be myself. I always felt like there was work Matt and true like artistmatic we'll call him because I'm the musician and I do like creativity and such. And um they were yeah it was always like two I had like two personas and they immediately just like enveloped or amalgamated or whatever the word would be. As soon as I left there and it was permission that I'm like I don't have to worry about somebody at work finding out about this and yeah and then after that it finally felt like boom okay this is like how I was. Because even when I was on that leave of absence, I still was under the umbrella or under the um you know under the watchful eye of the company really like they were expecting me to come back. I was expecting to go back and so it was just like freedom it was complete freedom and it felt great. And then as a result I was able to um put myself out there as okay this is this is how I am this is my issue that I had before this is what I've worked through. And for and um you know initially I was I wanted to be like the life coach. I wanted to be everything to everybody uh initially my first niche was like people that are like going through what I am like going through. Like a career pivot. Because there's a lot of people doing that too right people that want to bet on themselves like I was going to be like that you know, that kind of coach for people that want to get into their own business. Or just bet on themselves basically because there's such a cool energy like that underdog energy so that is initially what I started um but I found that even that was a little bit too vague and hard to explain. I ended up going through a business mentoring program that they said you know when you're unknown which at this point I am for the most part uh find like as specific a niche as you can. And then it's like okay you're you're only going to appeal to like five percent of people but the five percent that you appeal to will you will very much appeal to. Because they're gonna be like oh wow like you are 100 speaking my language right now. So that's what I've gone and I went through like you know I tried on a few different hats. So I and it came full circle back to just what my half of life experience in you know and that's the sobriety coaching recovery coaching. And so that's what I did, I went full bore into it. As soon as I identified that it was April 1st. I remember I launched the podcast Beyond Recovery and I started getting into like the Reddit and Facebook and Instagram uh. Sobriety communities and networking and and uh and getting into um you know people's. I just networking that way right and um yeah and then just everything that I've learned with like sound therapy and like the uh the coaching style. I have the story work style of coaching and uh breath work and things of that nature just they do so wonderfully complement each other in this field of like sobriety and recovery. And man it feels great to um to just be myself with it and come out with with it and um it's given me myself uh you know a whole other layer of accountability too because now it's like there's no going back like before when I was talking that 2012 sobriety stint. I think there was part of me that was hiding it under the guise that one day I could come back out and try it on again. And I did and it didn't work so with this now it's like it's very much okay. I'm out with this this is like my identity and uh man it's got some good weight to it too like good weight. It's not like you know pressure weight like it's got some substance to it right? So and that's kind of how that take out the kind of that's how it feels now is it's um you know I mentioned it on a few different podcasts. And I'm actually curious to see what you think of it too. Just the word authentic, because it gets it thrown out quite a bit like be your authentic you know. Be yeah say your truth and be your authentic self. And I was like I was always like I know what that word means. But like I don't know how it applies to me. And you know like people keep saying this, are they actually being authentic like there's some nuances to it right? And changes depending on on the person to person so I started asking people like what's authentic to you and and getting some really crazy good answers but very different answers as well and what I've developed as far as what authenticity is to me is. uh it's kind of like an energetic thing like I view it as like if I'm speaking authentically to you. uh it's just like something like straight from my heart and it's a straight line like directly to you there's no it doesn't get caught on anything. Um like a persona or an ego if it does get caught on like my ego or persona. It'll get fragmented, it'll get scattered, it'll… there'll be some distortion that comes off of it. Because there you know there might be some like an agenda there might be um you know who knows I might be trying to impress you you know different things. And then as a result my message is is not is no longer authentic so that's kind of energetically how I view it and a mentor of mine had also mentioned that um a really good way of saying he's like I don't know how to verbalize it exactly. But I know what kind of circumstances uh you need to be able to be authentic I was like oh tell me he's like you need to feel safe. Like you need to feel that's why like the rooms are so important, like getting in there and realizing you don't need a persona, you don't need your ego, you can be yourself and that safety creates the ability to be authentic. It's uh initially that the work was I viewed it to be very challenging to come to terms with some of these uh unresolved feelings you know. Gets all of a sudden get like strange and emotional. Like I um I remember a couple weeks ago I was just making breakfast and I just started tearing up. I got this like sense of loneliness and I actually allowed it instead of like hold on let's turn on the tv there's something on that tv but grab my phone or whatever it is. And I allowed it and I just started like just tearing up and I'm like just for a bit, I'm like interesting then went back to making breakfast. So just allowing those things to come up and just dissolve. And um you know the meditation has been huge like the whole getting back to like the yin energy. Like getting into um yoga even yoga uh meditation breathwork uh so that's a big difference from the first time. I had the sobriety stint where I had this like I still had this feeling like I was missing that reckless night on the town. Let's do this blow off some energy and I never found a way to resolve that. And I thought just you know doing more of the yang energy of just like the more achiever stuff that was eventually going to satiate that whole. Like feeling inside me or I'm like, maybe I need to join a martial art or something like that which is you know. I'm sure that would that would have helped as well. But I'm finding this time, it's like the opposite energy the yin energy is actually you know resolving that the tension that I had inside of me. Which is like strange because it's like the opposite energy right? I kept thinking I just had to keep pressing and keep doing more and then eventually that would just leave right or I would be like okay, I'm satisfied now when in fact it was the exact opposite energy of. Like taking some time to breathe and taking some time to journal and you know meditate and you know the yin yoga where you're in a position for like three minutes and like you have to be with your thoughts for a while. Things go so much smoother, I feel way more balanced and um that would have been definitely would have been the advice to and it's funny I knew that. like I did know that but it was like I didn't have time quote unquote to you know sit there and meditate uh for like 20 minutes or half an hour. And it was like I had a game-changing meditation early early in my like right after I quit save on foods because I'm like okay I'm going to do this. I'm going to actually do this meditation thing and i used to do like 10-15 minutes at a time but I would do an hour at a time and finally this one time it finally clicked for me. It was 35 minutes of I had a blindfold on because otherwise my eyes start you know I'm very distractionary with my eyes. So I nope put the blindfold on and I'm laying there in bed and it was like probably half an hour of um my brain going like what are you doing? Like there's this to do, like you still have this like you you just quit your job. Like you can't just afford to just sit here like get up. And then finally I had like that eckhart tolle moment like I was aware of his books and I loved it. But I didn't quite know what he didn't. I'd never experienced it right? What he talked about being like the witness. And I finally had that moment about 35 minutes in where I was able to pull myself back and be like okay who is that who is that voice that's saying that and I was actually able to like observe the voice. And then it was kind of funny. I'm like okay well that you can keep saying that that's all good and I'm just gonna stay here. And then it was actually quite humorous for me and then after that I was like okay I get this now. But it you know it took me um you know that amount of time and and uh having the thing is like as soon as you experience it. And you have like a you know you can read it all you want until you actually experience until I experienced it I um it was just kind of one of those things I'm like oh one day I'll get into meditation and now I have and it's like man what a game changer it's been.
Alex: That's so amazing and it's so incredible to think like how you got to that point. And there's so many things that I can relate to in this part of your journey. Like I've also left my job and that um that like letting go of the familiar. And being able to kind of trust in um you know, trust that you're following your purpose and and you're on the right path and um and then just being able to let go of that whole idea of. Like I can so relate to you know, I can't afford to be taking a break right now. I have to be like working all the time. But it's in those moments of break where you usually get the most insight.
Matt: 100% yeah I'm definitely finding that like the best exactly the best um the most ah-ha moments. I have like don't get me wrong I get some when I'm out you know when I'm out you know doing something and just kind of pounding away and grinding away. You're gonna make incremental improvements and you know you can't teach experience. So you gotta for me I choose to you know immerse myself in an activity until I get through the learning curve. So there's something to be said for that but as far as absolutely to your point like as far as like problem solving or just that intangible. You know things like life advice um absolutely you can't you can't find that anywhere else other than you know. Um, I find that I get that a lot from like a good night's sleep. So yeah it's uh yeah it's it's those moments like the meditation and sleep that that they give you like the more of the intangible whereas like the yang energy. I think is more for the tangible like the skill acquisition and all that right but the challenging thing for me that i've i'm i'm practicing every day is definitely getting the balance between the two the two energies right yeah yeah.
Alex: So it's been so amazing to hear your story and I'm just wondering if you had any wisdom or advice for someone who's starting out their sober journey what would you say?
Matt: Oh yeah yeah always like this question good good good question to to end off so the main thing for me as my part of the story and the advice I would give to anybody that's this anywhere in there in the recovery. But especially starting off would be um you know stay connected right? There's there's a great Ted Talk video that has I don't think it's the title but you can google it it'll come up it's a big part of the ted talk and it's the it's something along the lines of like the opposite of addiction is not recovery it's connection right yes yes yeah exactly. So as soon as, I saw that like the like I googled it, I was googling like Ted Talks and that one came up and I read that I was like whoa that is like that's crazy and then I watched the Ted doc and I was like man game changer. So that was huge for me and then after that is like okay I totally understand that. And that's like a huge part of my story if you remember that the whole AA meeting and that's what it is. It's like it's um you know I tried so hard and so many times to do it by myself because I'm like you know in shame. Or like a height I wanted to do it in hiding discreetly right uh because you really don't have to. Like it's in fact it's I highly encourage that you uh that you find a connection and there's many different layers whatever you're comfortable with because uh you know there's like online communities we talked about Instagram, Facebook even Reddit. If you're not comfortable putting pictures of yourself out reddit has an amazing sobriety community um you know. And of course in person it's very easy to find uh meetings AA meetings or support group meetings and man they make all the difference in the world. And um it just shows uh for me uh I always like using this story so like when I got into um AA meetings initially I didn't share. I was always nervous about sharing. And when I would share out of the group contacts with a one-on-one. If somebody said hey what's your story I'd be very like careful like kind of hey oh yeah and I was like you know like whispering it right. And um and and being shameful and feeling like fearful but putting it out and then oftentimes it would be greeted with the person uh across me be like oh that's nothing that was like my wednesday morning you know and then I would just like have this moment of like permission to have that shame turn into like laughter and it would just like what a beautiful way to like resolve yourself of all this shame that like oh man like you know I've been holding on to for years. And then somebody across from me he's like ah I wouldn't worry too much about. That it's like you know I did that every day you know and it's just like man it's it's it's what a release and that's what you get from from um you know connecting with places like this and yeah it's just recovery people are amazing like when you have a conversation with somebody that has had like you were talking about the similar experiences. There's a lot of overlap but then there's a lot of change and nuance to everybody's story too right? It's uh man it's just if it totally feels like again that's safety that ability to be yourself and the things that I dare say I mean for me especially the things that I always wanted that I thought alcohol was providing me is being provided by the recovery community. right? So you're pretty able to be myself me being able to speak my truth love myself be loved unconditionally, right? Uh is found in that so it's just it's such a yeah that would be my number one piece of advice stay connected um and don't just try and do it with the white knuckle thing. It's great to have willpower white knuckling is you know it's it's a good thing to have in your tool kit if you can if you can do the um you know, if you can have the discipline and all that but oh very very challenging to do by yourself and with discipline alone. And it's just so much funner with it's like an adventure, it feels like a journey when you're doing it with a bunch of people too right so that would be my piece of advice for sure.
Alex: Oh amazing well Matt thank you. I want to thank you so much for coming on the show. Your story's so inspiring and I know that anyone who listens to it will take different wisdom from it and learn a lot. So I really appreciate you sharing your story with our community.
Matt: Yeah well thank you so much thanks to all your listeners and thanks to you Alex for having me on. I very much enjoy the conversation. Thank you.
Alex: You're welcome and um I will put the links in the podcast description to all of Matt's information to his social links and his show so that if anyone's listening and wants to reach out you can connect with him as well.
Matt: Absolutely, that sounds great and definitely looking forward to having you on my show so any of uh listeners of your show uh that will be coming soon and we'll uh we'll definitely uh provide you with those links when they come out too amazing awesome all right take care thank you.
Alex: Hi friend thank you so much for listening to this episode of sober yoga girl podcast this community wouldn't exist without you here so thank you it would be massively helpful if you could subscribe leave a review and share this podcast so it can reach more people if we haven't met yet in real life please come get your one week free trial of the sober girls yoga membership and see what we're all about sending you love and light wherever you are in the world.
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