INTRODUCING HAPPYMIND_HAPPYU

The host, Megan Stanley, introduces her podcast, Happy Mind, Happy You, where she discusses everyday life issues and empowers women. She shares her own experience of transforming her life and emphasizes the importance of being happy inside. Megan talks about her struggles with alcohol and how getting sober helped her heal internally. She encourages listeners to quit drinking to improve their well-being. Megan also mentions the support she received from friends and the recovery community. She plans to use the podcast to share advice, tips, and interviews to inspire and empower women. She invites listeners to share the podcast with others and engage with her on social media. Hi everyone and welcome to Happy Mind, Happy You. My name is Megan Stanley and I am your host, Wowsers, so welcome. I'm really buzzing to basically eventually launch this podcast. This is the first episode and I guess I just want to get started with thanking everybody for joining me here and really looking forward to your feedback and having you guys as part of the show. Now, a little bit about me and why I decided to launch this podcast. I really wanted to create a place where I can be real and raw and we can have chat about everyday life issues, covering subjects that are really close to my heart. Over the last 16 months my life has changed dramatically and I feel like I'd like to be the voice and have a way to help navigate other people through that by empowering other women to be able to empower themselves. A little bit about me, so I'm Megan, I'm 36 years old, I live in Hertford, I've got two girls, Georgia who is 8 and Beth and May who is 3. I recently got married to one of the coolest and loving human beings that I know, Mr Gary Stanley. I have the pleasure of being a step mum to Niamh and Jude and we've got a cockapoo doggy called Monty Boy. Both myself and Gary are in recovery and if not all of it, what I've learnt over the last 16 months I've learnt from my recovery work. So I want to make sure I don't blur any lines here and to be really clear, I'm not a therapist and I'm not a guru in any specialised area, I am me with my own experience and my own life tools that have helped me so far to create the life that I've fallen in love with today. So what's the secret formula to being completely happy? 100% of that is an inside job. I believe that when you're happy inside, your head or your heart and both, I call that the connection of the soul and the head and the heart together and they're aligned. I believe that everything else externally will slowly begin to fall into place. Now sometimes that's slower than we want and eventually I believe that what is meant for you will come as long as you remain in a happy and loving place. Now my experience with the internal stuff versus the external stuff is I guess a little bit to do with my past. I was in an old relationship, I had a big house, we used to go on nice holidays, big cars, a social media account that I guess was glorified as the wonderful family that we had everything externally etc. etc. However, I was, as an individual, I was unhappy inside. I was broken, I was lost, I was lonely and I was in a lot of fear around how I would ever get out of all of that stuff. So all of what there was, was never going to be enough for me because internally I just wasn't happy. So how do we become happy inside? It's not like there's a plaster that we can put on or a bandage or you know, we can fix it. It's a lot more deeper and for me this was connecting with myself again and having that self-love and self-respect. That was my biggest part of my journey was the internal healing process that I had to embark on. So when I look back at my life 16 months ago, if somebody had, you know, I've completely neglected me and if you'd asked me then, Megan do you love yourself? My answer would definitely have been no. And, you know, I didn't love me at all. I didn't love me one little bit. I thought I was disgusting, vile, unlovable, ugly, a drunk, I was moody. You know, I just, all of the horrible negative things I thought about myself, they was just there for everyone to see if you'd have asked me. Now, some of those thoughts had actually nearly taken me to losing my own life on many an occasion over my lifetime, thank God, without any success. But to be absolutely no priority to myself or even for my two little children, I knew if I carried on in that way, I would be dead. I did hate myself enough to die. How tragic is that? So where did I start? I got sober and I started attending AA meetings. I knew that I had to have a clear head. I knew I couldn't stay free from drinking alcohol on my own. I tried so many times. Without working this program, I just knew it wasn't going to be possible. So I, because I used to drink to escape from everything, how I used to feel. I'd done it all my life. I'd done it with boys, with men, with drink, with drugs, with exercise, with food, you know, anything, shopping to make me feel better, but never just be enough on my own. So, you know, drinking drugs was my biggest battle and choosing the wrong men. But just sitting with me, it was very, very uncomfortable. I just didn't like myself enough. But every time I used to have time free from drinking, I would always drink again. And actually my consequences got worse. Towards the end of my drinking, I was drinking out of coffee cups at home in my kitchen, thinking, well, if nobody knows, it doesn't matter. But the guilt and the shame would feel like the next day, and then do it again, and then be like, no, I'm not going to have a drink until at least one o'clock, and then I'm scratching around by 12, trying to wonder why I cannot have a drink. It's just, it's insane. It was madness. And I, do you know what? I was sick and tired of saying I'm sick and tired of living like this, and not actually doing anything about it. I was sick and tired of my own voice talking to me in my head time. Oh, God. Oh, God. I was sick and tired of that voice, and I needed to take some action. So my overall biggest advice to anyone who is unhappy and is drinking too much, try to quit the booze for a bit. You'll notice the change inside of you. The more time you get free from the toxins of alcohol, the better you start to feel anyway. I've got so many amazing friends around me. I have got quite a tight circle, but I've got some beautiful friends all over. And actually, some of them are sober, and some of them do like to actually go out and have a few glasses of wine when we go out, and that's absolutely cool. Their couple of glasses stops at one or two. If my drinking was like that, I would probably carry on. But 90% of the time, I would be that one who was always drunk, I was always the one who was sick the next day, always the one who was probably sick on a night out. I'm not present the next day for my kids. I'm moody. I just feel crap. The list goes on and on and on. Anyway, recovery taught me a lot about forgiving that old me and then reconnecting with myself through love and letting go of the past, etc. A lot of the methods that I use at the moment for me, they are recovery-based. All of the best self-help books that you will ever read are all come back in some form or another to the 12 steps of recovery. That is just a fact. I have documented over the last 16 months really openly, really honestly via my social media, like my personal one, just my highs and my lows. And I feel like I've been really honest along the way. And I've told my side of the story. I'm a bit blown away really when I think back on it and I look back on it, the amount of love and support I've had from people by being raw and vulnerable. People that I've never even met. It's incredible. I guess the podcast for me is my way of saying to anybody out there, come on, you can do this. I've been emotionally broken and on the floor and now I am absolutely living my best life. I promise you. And to find that strength, I want to help anyone to find that strength. I want to help empower any other women. Maybe you've already been there and you've already been inspired and you're on a journey and you're vibing really, really high and you've come through something incredible as well and you just want to remain amongst high-vibing women. Well, this is where we're going to hang out. All those women that want to vibe high and just be normal and be real, this is for us. I want to welcome anyone, whatever your thoughts, wherever you are on your journey, to self-help and your happiness. What I plan to do next with this podcast, well, I want to make it somewhere where we can just switch on for 10, 15 minutes, have a little listen, just boost our vibes. I live very much on a day-to-day basis where I live in the positivity of life. I just do. I just find that that works for me and I love sharing that with everybody else wherever I can. I will offer... That doesn't mean I don't have bad days, by the way, because I still do, but I navigate my way out of bad days through positive thinking. I will offer suggestions, tips. There will be interviews. I'm going to share my experiences around things. I'm going to help with sharing my stories and hopefully create a place where we can inspire each other to become a happy version of you. So, what I want you guys to do for me, please, is share this with your girlfriends. If you've got female family members, share it with them. Have anything that you want to come back to me and talk to me about. Drop me any ideas for the next episode or any future content. If you'd love to be someone that I interview or you want to jump on and share your story a little bit, please drop me a message. Our Instagram is happymind__happyyou. Follow me on there. Just drop me a message. I'd love to hear from you. And we can make this a place where we can help other women to feel empowered. Thank you so much for tuning in and listening today. I'm sending you all lots and lots of happy vibes. Peace and love. Bye, everyone.