Diane Bell [00:00:01]:
Hello, gorgeous soul. I'm Diane Bell and this is the Aim from the Heart podcast, your weekly dose of tips, techniques, strategies and inspiration to help you live a life beyond your wildest dreams. If you're ready to use the art of intentional manifestation to create more freedom, more joy, more abundance and more bliss in your life, you are in the right place. S grab a cup of tea, pull up a chair and let's have some fun. I am so glad you're here today. Let's do this.
Speaker B [00:00:32]:
How are you, beautiful friend? I hope you are doing well. So I am coming to you. I'm actually recording this on Thursday the 2 November. And if you follow me on the web, on the social medias, you will know that this is a special week for me. It's my birth week, so I have been celebrating all week and I've shared a little bit about this. But I want to go into this topic with you, this topic of celebration and what it means and why it actually matters that we do celebrate. I'm just going to give you a heads up before I go on. It's really stormy here right now.
Speaker B [00:01:12]:
I'm recording this in my little study here in Sitches, Spain, and we are getting beat up by the wind. So if you hear some funny sounds, it's probably that just a heads up. Okay, let's go on. So for me, for many years, I did not celebrate my birthday. I was kind of, oh, it's just another day, whatever, one year older, whatever. I don't even want to pay attention to that. And I kind of took that attitude to a lot of things in my life. In general, it was sort of like, this is good, but I'm not all the way there, so I'm not going to celebrate until I get all the way there.
Speaker B [00:01:45]:
Like, okay, I did that well, but not that well. I could have been better. And I really didn't understand why it matters to celebrate so much and what that actually means. Now, cut to five years ago. And five years ago is a moment that I really think my life changed. And it changed because I decided it was going to change. And let me take you back to where I was five years ago. I was on the eve of my 46th birthday and we had moved to Denver, Colorado, and I had a one year old baby.
Speaker B [00:02:23]:
And I also had my son, my other son, who was six, seven years old and six years old. And at this point, my husband was working full time. It was the first time since we had been together that he had a normal job, quote unquote. When I first met Chris, my husband, he was working in the film industry. He would work on movies, his camera assistant, military tech, advice, all this so he'd be off on set. This was great. While we were without children, he would go off to work on a movie for three months. I would go and visit him.
Speaker B [00:02:55]:
It'd be fun. But when we had kids, we realized that this wasn't the kind of life that we wanted to live. And so we moved to Denver, and he had now got a regular job actually working for the city of Denver. So he was out to work all day, and I was at home, like being with the kids. I was like a stay at home mom, basically. And that wasn't a problem to me. What was a problem was I just felt so out of sorts with myself in so many different ways. I'd made a lot of what I felt to be bad decisions in my life, and I wasn't happy with where I was.
Speaker B [00:03:29]:
I'd been chronically underearning for so long, and despite the fact that every New year I would say, this is the year I'm going to sort out my money situation. This is the year I'm going to change my financial situation, I never did. And every year would end up being the same with me. Chronically under, earning yet again. When I didn't have kids, that didn't seem to bother me so much. I was a bohemian. I was a free spirit. I'm an artist.
Speaker B [00:03:51]:
I don't care about money. But suddenly it wasn't feeling so great. I felt constrained. I felt constricted, like I couldn't give my kids the life that I wanted to give them. And I wasn't living the life that I wanted to live either. I felt trapped. Now, beyond that, I also had this habit of drinking wine every evening. And basically, it's like so many moms, we go, Moms, it's wine o'clock.
Speaker B [00:04:15]:
It's 05:00, it's wine o'clock. Let's crack open the bottle of Chardonnay. You've been with the baby all day. You've been holding down the fort. You've dropped the kid off at school, picked them up. You've done all your mom duties. Now please, can I have a glass of wine while I make dinner? And that's totally what I did most evenings of the week. And usually I would end up doing some sort of bargaining with myself.
Speaker B [00:04:34]:
If you had one glasses, one glass was a big deal. But then one glass would always be, can I have another? That tasted so felt so good. Can I just have two? Can I just have two? And so I'd usually have two. And then I started saying, okay, well, maybe not drink every night. Let's try and have two nights off. But on those days, suddenly I'd just be like, oh, it's been a hard day. Give me the glass of water. Who cares? And I would joke with my husband.
Speaker B [00:04:59]:
He would come home from work and he'd be like, how are you doing? I'm like, oh, babe, just get me the Chardonnay on tap. And he would laugh and get me a bottle of wine. And I would be like, Yay, thank you. And this was me five years ago. And I was also, at that point in my life, really starting to think, I want to change. I want to build a business that gives me financial freedom that actually I've never known before. I want to change my mindset around money. I'm willing to see things differently.
Speaker B [00:05:28]:
I'm willing to do things differently. Well, all that summer, as I was like, easing into this, I'm going to change my life, and I was starting to listen to all the podcasts and it was really like, I'm going to do some reading books and books that I never would have read before. Books like Thinking Grow Rich and The Science of Getting Rich. I mean, books that previously in my life, I would have been like, there is no way I'm reading that. What is wrong with people that read books with titles like that? But I was reading them all now through this. I was getting this little voice in my head, in my heart, saying, dan, if you really want to create the life of your dreams, you're going to have to stop drinking. Trust me, this was a voice that I did not want to hear. I was like, what? I'm not stopping drinking alcohol.
Speaker B [00:06:15]:
I love my glass of Chardonnay in the evening. Come on. Like, I don't drink that much. I'm not an excessive drinker. And let me tell you, at other points in my life, I had been an excessive drinker. I know what that looks like. I'm like, actually, my drinking is really under control now, so just leave me alone. Let me have my glass of Chardonnay.
Speaker B [00:06:31]:
But that voice kept coming to me, that voice saying, if you really are serious about creating your life of your dreams, you're going to have to stop drinking. Well, this came to a head five years ago on my birthday. So it was my 46th birthday, and that night on my 46th birthday, we went out for dinner with some friends and I drank some wine. And because it was my birthday, I was like, I'm just going to drink all the wine. And I did. I stayed up really late with some of the friends. And it wasn't that it was a bad night. It was a great night and it was super fun and all that kind of thing.
Speaker B [00:07:09]:
But I woke up the next morning feeling terrible. I woke up the day after my 46th birthday with this hangover. And I felt so out of integrity with myself. I felt so disappointed in myself. I felt quite ashamed of myself. It just did not feel good. It wasn't just a headache. It wasn't just that feeling of brain fog.
Speaker B [00:07:28]:
It was also just this feeling of, this is not how I want to live my life. I don't want to stay up till 02:00 in the morning singing stupid songs with people. I want to live a life of meaning. I want to live a life of purpose. I want to live a life where I really show up, where I live to my potential. And I knew then that I had to honor this voice that I'd been hearing all summer. From the moment I had decided I was going to change my life, I'd been hearing this voice saying, diane, you got to stop. So that day, five years ago, the day after my birthday, sorry, I'm getting tearful about this, I decided to stop drinking.
Speaker B [00:08:12]:
I said to my husband, I'm going to stop just for three months, but could just stop for three months and I'll see what I think after that. So I'm not saying that I'm going to stop forever. I'm just going to stop for three months and I'm going to see how I do. So I stopped, and I did what I do when I really want to change something. I threw everything at it. I started to read all the podcasts. I was listening to subliminal hypnoses every night to stop drinking. I just did everything.
Speaker B [00:08:41]:
I was like, I'm not going to drink. I'm not going to be tempted. Not doing this. I'm done. And it was fine. And what kind of surprised me was that actually, very quickly, I didn't miss it at all. And very quickly I started to feel better. And then at Christmas time, because obviously this is exactly five years ago, so it was this time of year, three months straddled the Christmas and New Year period, which was scary to me because it was like, what is Christmas without champagne? What is New Year without champagne? And to add fuel to that fire, we were actually going on a family holiday to Mexico.
Speaker B [00:09:13]:
I was like, what is a holiday in Mexico without a margarita? But I decided to find out what that was and I held to it and I didn't have a margarita and I didn't drink any champagne on New Year's Eve. And it was actually on New Year's Eve, we were down in a little town called Mahawan. This is down way south of Cancun. Beautiful place, beautiful water. And remember, we were eating pizza on the beach and there was a rainbow out over the sea. It was so beautiful. And I said to my husband, I don't think I'm going to drink this year. Think I'm going to stick with this.
Speaker B [00:09:48]:
Because I said, you know what? I feel so good and I feel in my power. I feel in integrity. And nothing is really worth giving that up for, like a glass of wine or a glass of champagne or a margarita. What does that do? But being in my power, feeling integrity with myself, it is everything. And the funny thing was that holidays, well, I had the best holiday. I was like, will I even be able to have fun on holiday without a drink? It turns out, yes, you can have shocking amounts of fun on your holiday. Without having a drink. You can wake up every morning feeling fantastic.
Speaker B [00:10:25]:
You can eat all the food. And more than that, what I found when I stopped drinking was I just felt more present, more present to my kids, more present to my husband, more present to my life, more present to my dreams, more present to everything. And so that day, I decided to stop drinking for that year. Well, here we are five years later. Now, I'm sharing this because tomorrow I'm going to be celebrating my birthday. And I celebrate birthdays now because I just believe we should celebrate every chance. Celebration, to me, is just all about expressing gratitude. It's expressing our presence.
Speaker B [00:11:03]:
It's saying, thank you, thank you, thank you for whatever it is. And for me, being alive is a miracle that is worthy of celebration. Sometimes I feel like we should just be celebrating every day we're alive. Look at the sunset. Look at the sunrise. Look at the stars. Look at the sea. Oh, my gosh, look at you.
Speaker B [00:11:21]:
Look at me. Look at my eyes. Look at my nails. I have nails. It's so funny. When babies are born, everyone's always like, look at their tiny nails. Look at your nails. You're a big grown up, and you have nails.
Speaker B [00:11:32]:
You're amazing. Celebration is what allows us to express our gratitude in an outward way. It's such a beautiful thing. And I believe that when we activate that, when we activate that gratitude in motion, gratitude in overflow, that's just one of the keys to actually creating our dream life, because the more that we are in the frequency of gratitude, the more that we are drawing what we want to us. So if instead of being like, oh, there's no point in celebrating, it's not that big of a deal. Like, we got that far, but we didn't get all the way, or it's not a big birthday. It's just like 51. It's not like 50 or 60.
Speaker B [00:12:11]:
If we take that attitude, we are expressing zero gratitude for our lives, for our circumstances, for everything. So I believe one of the keys to actually creating fantastic results in your life is to start celebrating and to celebrate all the little things, not just waiting for big things. Like if you're setting up a business and you launch a product and it doesn't go the way you want, I would still invite you to celebrate. Because you launched it. You got it out there. You learned something. Even if just one person signed up, now you got something to work with. If, for instance, you are a screenwriter every time, if you're in my world, you'll know, I'm like, celebrate every little step.
Speaker B [00:12:56]:
You finish your script, you celebrate. You finish a new draft, you celebrate. Somebody wants to read your script, celebrate. Somebody wants to have a meeting, celebrate. Don't just wait until you get the big prize. Because to be honest, if you're not grateful for what you are receiving now, it's highly unlikely you'll be grateful for what you received then. It's not something we suddenly it's going to be enough. You will receive that big win and you'll still be like, this isn't enough.
Speaker B [00:13:23]:
I need something more. There's no point in celebrating. Yeah, it's kind of good, but it's not that great. Don't be that person. Celebrate. So for me, I'm celebrating my birthday tomorrow and I'm super excited to do that. Tonight I'm actually heading out to a Madonna concert with my sister. I am so excited.
Speaker B [00:13:41]:
My sister has just arrived from England. We've had these tickets, we bought them months and months and months ago. So tonight we're going to go see the Queen herself, Madonna. We're so excited and we're going to celebrate and I love that. Madonna's tour, of course, is called Celebration. And she's celebrating 40 years of being in the music industry. And it feels significant to me because I actually have this memory. And the first time that I really heard Madonna's album and that it lodged into my consciousness her first album I was eleven years old and I was actually at this outdoor water park with water slides and a lazy river and all the things.
Speaker B [00:14:20]:
And I was there with all my friends. And this was in Japan. I lived in Japan from the age of six to the age of eleven and a half, like nearly twelve. And so we were at this water park. This was just before we moved away from Japan. And I was there with all my friends and quite literally it was just like one of the best days of my life. You know that thing when you're about eleven years old and you're at a water park with your friends and the sun is shining and it's so good, and guess what? They have the Madonna album on repeat. And every time Borderline came on, we all cheered and we're just like dancing to it and singing to it.
Speaker B [00:14:54]:
And from that moment, I have to say, I just kind of love Madonna. So I'm celebrating Madonna's 40 years in music. I'm celebrating my own life trajectory from that eleven I can't believe it's, 40 years since then till now. And then I'm going to be celebrating even harder my five year rebirth day, which is the day after my birthday. So the day that I decided to stop drinking alcohol. Now, I just want to say about this alcohol conversation, because some of you might be listening to this and you might be feeling triggered by it. First of all, you might feel defensive. I think when I was drinking, I did not like to hear about people quitting drinking.
Speaker B [00:15:35]:
It always made me feel like uncomfortable. I just want to offer to you, first of all, it's really not about the alcohol. I know for me, the problem was not the alcohol or the amount of alcohol that I was consuming. The problem was my power and my sense of integrity in myself, and I was giving my power away to alcohol. Now, I believe it's 100% possible that you could be somebody who is drinking regularly and still not giving your power away to alcohol. And if you are somebody who drinks alcohol and enjoys it, and you have no sense, that feeling of out of alignment, that's fantastic. I live here in Spain, and we're surrounded by vineyards, and everybody loves to drink wine, and I love it for them. I'm so happy for them.
Speaker B [00:16:24]:
I'm not against alcohol, but I do think that in our society, we need to have more nuanced conversations about alcohol and about its role in our lives. I know. For myself, I very much was influenced by this idea that basically there's two types of people. There are normal drinkers. There are alcoholics. Alcoholics are people who can't control it. Alcoholics are people who are genetically wired to be addicts, and they're people who will end up losing everything because of their addiction to alcohol. And I knew some people like that.
Speaker B [00:17:01]:
Over the course of my drinking years in Scotland, I knew one dear friend who basically drank himself to death. It was awful to witness. And so I felt very like, okay, I'm not like that, even though I did go to one AA meeting out of curiosity. And I was like, I'm not like that, even though AA say, look for the similarities, not the differences. The differences seemed to be so glaring that I was like, I'm not like that. I'm not an alcoholic. And so therefore, I must be a normal drinker. And normal drinkers control their drinking, and it's fine.
Speaker B [00:17:33]:
And that's what I did. But basically, I know for myself that for so many years, it really did feel like I was always negotiating with a terrorist in terms of how I was running my life with alcohol. And what I mean by that is, I feel like my relationship with alcohol was a little bit like being in a relationship with an abusive partner. And I was being gaslit by society into believing that there's nothing wrong with my partner. My partner is a sophisticated, elegant person who loves to show everybody a good time. That's alcohol, right? Sophisticated, elegant, fun, nice, handsome, amazing. Like, how could you possibly have a problem if you have a problem with him? You're the one with the problem. And I feel like that's what society was telling me about alcohol.
Speaker B [00:18:22]:
But the truth was that I knew that actually he didn't treat me that well. If I took my defenses down, I would often wake up feeling awful because I'd spend the evening with him, and he was always wanting more of me. And I don't know. I just have this feeling that a lot of people are actually in that situation with alcohol but won't admit it because admitting it means they have a problem. And I would just like to offer you. If you're listening to this at all, and this is resonating in any way, shape or form, I just want to say to you, you don't have a problem and you are not the problem. Alcohol is the problem. And this is true of many things that we give our power away to.
Speaker B [00:19:04]:
We convince ourselves that actually it's about us and that we're the problem. But many of the things that we will give our power away to, we're not the problem. And when you recognize that, it's very liberating and it's 100% possible to call your power back. So I will be celebrating on Saturday, my rebirth day, my five year rebirth day. I can't believe it's. Five years since I stopped drinking alcohol. And honestly, I would not be sitting where I am right now, in my little office that's getting beat up by that storm outside, looking in the Mediterranean Sea, talking to you, running the business that I do, sharing the courses that I do, living the life that I do. None of this would be possible if I had not made that decision five years ago.
Speaker B [00:19:53]:
And I am going to be celebrating that so much. I am so grateful to my past self for having that courage, for having that insight, for having that awareness, for making that decision and seeing it when it wasn't easy initially and holding it and holding it because our society often conspires to keep us out of our power. So I'm going to be celebrating. I hope that you're going to be celebrating yourself and any ways in which you are calling back your power and that you have called back your celebrate it, celebrate every milestone, celebrate everything that you have to be proud of in your life. You're an amazing human being and you deserve every beautiful thing. But we won't achieve them, we won't receive them unless we learn just to be fully present to them and so grateful for them and celebrate. So choose celebration. I just want to share this with you before I wrap this up.
Speaker B [00:21:03]:
Over this week, I have been sharing a whole bunch of different birthday offers and I just had this whole sort of insight and ideas about things that I wanted to share with you. Programs to help you live your best life, to break through your limitations, to step fully into your power. And so today the day you're going to be listening to this Friday, November the third, my birthday. I have the most beautiful offer. Go to Dianebell.com party and if you feel called, you can jump into a program that's going to start on November 3 first. And it's going to last a whole year. It's going to go all the way through next year. So you join now and it starts on December 1, and then we will complete at the end, 2024.
Speaker B [00:21:55]:
And this is called limitless life. And Limitless Life for me, is just what I am all about is how do we let go of our limitations? How do we step fully into our how do we create limitless abundance, limitless freedom, limitless joy, limitless energy? How do we get in alignment so that we just unlock limitlessness in every area of our life? So this is what limitless life is all about. It's going to be a special kind of community with monthly master classes with me, as well as monthly Zooms. Well, they're not technically Zooms because they're going to be hosted in my special community. I'm so excited about this. This is not a Facebook group. This is a special elevated community. We're going to have challenges.
Speaker B [00:22:40]:
There's going to be all kinds of things going on in there to keep you in this energy of expansion. And I want to bring you in here and celebrate you, celebrate your journey to living your best, most limitless life. So if that sounds good to you, go to Dianebell.com party and sign up. I am so excited to do this with you, and I hope that you will join us. So that's what I have today. I better go and get ready to go to the Madonna concert. And if you're listening to this, on November 3, you could check out my Instagram. I'm sure I'll share some pictures.
Speaker B [00:23:15]:
I am so excited to see this. I hope you're doing well. Oh, one last thing. I have one other program coming up too, this month. I've never done anything like this. So it's going to kick off on the new moon of November 13, and it is the Reinvention retreat. And it is inspired by Madonna. It's also inspired by my life in recent times.
Speaker B [00:23:38]:
But what this is five days where you will shed your old skin and boldly step into your new identity of who you know you were born to be. I am so interested in the idea of reinvention. I think people get stuck in identities and stuck in masks and stuck in ways of being that do not serve them, that they have outgrown, but they hold on to it because it's habit, because they're afraid of alienating other people if they actually show their new face. So what I want to do is take you on a five day journey into absolutely identifying what we don't want to take forward with us, shedding it, shifting it, burning it, and then moving forward, imagining who it is that we want to become, who we want to embody, and then stepping into her, stepping into those shoes. This is going to be a really fun one. It's a very internal journey. It's a very introspective journey in many ways. It's very intimate.
Speaker B [00:24:42]:
What you will receive if you sign up for this is every day there will be an audio transmission that you will listen to. There's a beautiful workbook that goes with it for you to honor your journey and take notes and write things out and journal and do the exercises, and you will do all these different things, and at the end, you're going to feel re freaking born. So if you desire to reinvent yourself, if you desire just to kick the old self aside and step into some new shoes, I invite you to join me. Go to Dianebell.com slash Reinvention and you can sign up. All right, my love. Thank you so much for being here. I'm going to go get on my clothes, get my makeup on, and get myself out to that Madonna concert. Thank you for joining me today, though.
Speaker B [00:25:26]:
I love you so much. I'm celebrating you. I'm celebrating eight episodes already of the podcast. I am celebrating being alive for 51 years. I am celebrating so many things, and I am so freaking grateful. I love you so much, and I will see you next week.
Diane Bell [00:25:47]:
Thank you so much for listening to this podcast today. If you enjoyed it, could you do me a favor?
Speaker B [00:25:52]:
Please? Leave it a little review wherever you're.
Diane Bell [00:25:54]:
Listening to it or screenshot it and share it on your social media and tag me so I can see it. I would be so appreciative. Thanks so much. I love you, and I'll see you soon.
