ļ»æHello, Angie Chaplain. Welcome to the Peripeteia Podcast. And what I should say is welcome back because in full transparency, we've already recorded an episode, uh, that has gone missing. So we are back again to do this again. Second time even better. Exactly. I'm so glad to have you here. Thank you. I am even more glad to be here this time.
Not that I wasn't last time, but you know, second time it's, it's thrilling to be talking with you. Yeah. Second round. It's kind of cool because I know more about your story this time than I did last time and there was a lot of pieces about it that I didn't know, so I didn't touch on. And this time we can, plus you have some new.
Exciting things happening that we will, um, also get to. So Universe always works in our favor and glad to be back again. Thank you. Can we start, will you share a little bit about your personal journey, um, into leadership and what Pivotal moment shaped your path? Sure. My introduction to leadership academically really started when I went to graduate school in the mid two thousands, and I was a working professional.
I was a human resources director at the time for a statewide nonprofit here in Iowa. And had the fortune of working for a very visionary CEO and about that time, so again, 25 ish years ago, um, we were seeing a leadership deficit within the nonprofit sector where some of the generation that was retiring was lacking bench strength to kind of step up and replace.
Those individuals in leadership positions, and she saw this and challenged me to create a leadership academy. At the time, I had no idea what she was talking about, but I had learned to just smile and nod and assume that somehow I would figure out what the heck she was talking about. And then shortly thereafter came the graduate school opportunity.
And the very first class in this two year, um, curriculum was the Leadership Challenge by Jim Ks and Barry Posner. And I had never heard of the book, just like most graduate school textbook. 'cause it's like, oh, I have to do the reading and all this. And literally now that I have a wonderful relationship with the authors, I will tell them that they had me at page one.
And without getting into the content, um, from that page one, it really introduced me to the realities that leadership is both facts and feelings. And up until that po, up until that point, I had really operated under. The assumption, and perhaps by the examples of others that who you were as a leader was very different from who you were in life, right?
Mm-hmm. When you were leading at work, you were strong, you were assertive in some capacities, you didn't have feelings. It was just, you know, all business all the time. And the wonderful thing about the Leadership Challenge is that it not only made it okay to express feelings, it literally became the textbook for how I would lead myself out of near Deadly Health Crises.
Um, later on in life. I didn't know that at the time, but there was a reason. That it resonated with me and the five practices that are the premise of the book literally became a roadmap for how I lead my life today. Wow, that's so powerful. So I hear you back in the day. I mean, don't bring your problems to work.
Leave your home at home. Right? Leave them at the door. Is the sort of philosophy that that was, you're saying leadership is both facts and feelings? That's very interesting to me because I would challenge it, not that I believe this, but what I was taught or what it was, is that leadership is position.
Exactly, and that is one of the key fundamentals of, of the framework of the five practices, is that leaders exist at every level of an organization. That it is not by position. It is not. By title. Mm-hmm. It is not by who occupies the top box on an organizational chart. Mm-hmm. It's not the person with the longest title or the corner office.
That leadership is available to anyone with the courage to accept it. And so there's an accountability piece that's built into it as well. That yes, we have this opportunity, we have this invitation to lead and some choose. To take advantage of it and learn from it and implement it. Um, and some choose not to, and both approaches are okay as long as it's the individual making the right choice for the right reasons.
Yeah. Okay. So you're talking about not only like leadership, the C-Suite in a corporate environment, but what you're really talking about, and what I wanna know more about is your personal journey and leadership evolution in the way of what, I know you call self-empowered leadership, correct? Yes. So that's a different thing than I have the highest, um.
Position on this. Yeah. Right. So what does self-empowered leadership mean to you? To me it means accepting both the responsibility and the invitation to lead. Right. And that means I accept the need to do my inner journey because if we are. Seeking to be the best person in a traditional leadership capacity, whether that's leading our family, leading a community, leading a volunteer group, leading a sports team, leading in all the ways leading the Iowa Hawkeyes.
We all know. Yeah, exactly. Leading, leading in, and really a universal context. Mm-hmm. It's a choice and there's an inner journey. Mm-hmm. We have to know how to lead ourselves before we can effectively.
Many times that that's, that's a paradigm shift. For a lot of people that, oh, you know, I, I'm fine. I'm fine. And their ecosystem is what's telling them. They're fine, they're fine. But through the leadership challenge, especially the work with self-empowered, we start to see leadership as an ecosystem and as an ecosystem.
It means that everyone has an opportunity to give and receive on an equal level. Yeah. And what we know now is, um, leaders aren't necessarily just the people that have it all together. Leaders have had their own struggles, and the more vulnerable they can be about that, the more they can raise up the people around them.
Right? Yeah. Yeah. And you and I are both fans of Brene Brown and there's a lot of, of the courage building and the bravery and, you know, the, the model around really that you can have fear. And be courageous that sometimes bravery is disguised as fear and vice versa. It's really that, that vulnerability that I think Brene's work made it okay to talk about and okay for leaders to, to kind of feel their way through some of that awkward.
Stuff when it comes to, you know, like you said, keeping the home at home and, and mm-hmm. Just bringing the work stuff to work. Mm-hmm. Um, and, and there's some evolution that needs to take place there on an inner level as well as an outer level when it comes to leadership. To be our whole selves. Right. I would say too, regarding, um, courage and, and bravery, if it didn't scare you, it wasn't that brave.
It's not really brave to do something that doesn't scare you at all. So, um, it should push you a little. That is what exactly, what gives you your bravery is to do something that does scare you. Exactly. So if leadership is accepting the invitation and accepting the responsibility. In your life, when did you recognize the invitation?
Was it when you were asked to, to start this project and look into leadership? That was your invitation. It's, it's come, it's, it's interesting because it's come in different ways and I, after I graduated from grad, from graduate school, I was invited by Seton Hall to return as a faculty member. So that was one invitation that I said yes to.
Um, and that, that really instilled in me this. This eagerness to keep learning and to keep growing. So within the leadership challenge curriculum, you have, there's, there's training pathways, much like other programs or models where you become a facilitator and then you get certified and then you continue to advance through levels of certification.
And I started that process of adding to my own. Library of learning experiences with the authors and with the leadership challenge community. And, um, ultimately achieved the highest level of certified master. So I've got now 20 some years of working exclusive, not, not exclusively working primarily with the leadership challenge because there's other work that I, that I do, that I bring in.
Um, so the, the invitations kind of happened along the way. There was a 10 year period where that stopped, where that stalled, and that was what I refer to as my dark decade. And in 2010, I faced multiple crises that I did not know how to deal with. Even as I was learning about leaders having facts and feelings, I wasn't learning how to deal with those feelings.
So it was cool to have 'em, but when I was growing up, you know, families didn't talk about emotions or how, what to do and got big feelings and how to deal with them. And so I was, I had lost the job at the nonprofit that I loved dearly, um, because of a, a transition, um, at the CEO level. So there was that my marriage, um, was, was facing difficulties.
That was number two. Number three was the death of a close friend. And so that perfect storm really collided and. Not having healthy coping skills led me to do what seemed to be the norm, and that was use alcohol to start numbing and escaping. Mm-hmm. And that led to a rapidly downhill spiraling. Crisis of, um, multiple hospitalizations.
Um, spending time in intensive care, a suicide attempt, health crises that required just a lot of medical intervention. And from that start in 2010 to 2020 was really when not only did I lose sight of leadership, I lost sight of myself. The fifth and final hospitalization in 2020 finally allowed me to have a glimpse of where I had suppressed all of those leadership skills and studies and understanding, and that was really the rebirth of self-empowered leadership.
This time, not leading in a traditional sense, but leading myself. Further away from unhealthy and life-threatening toxic behaviors. Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry for your dark decade. And um, that's a long time to be in the dark, to feel like you're in a dark hole and you had multiple things going wrong and working against you, and sadness and grief of a lot of things.
It sounds like during that time was alcohol. Were you a regular drinker before this and then it just increased or had it always kind of been there? Where were you before? No, it really wasn't there. I, I would say I was a normal, I really, I did not drink in high school. I didn't drink, I. At all until I entered college.
And even in college, I was, I would say at that time a normal drinker. Mm-hmm. Um, not, you know, not all the time, only on the weekend, I mean, just your regular college student. And it really wasn't until probably my mid to late forties that just as a part of normal socializing, I'd have a glass of wine or you know, a beer here and there.
But it did not become problematic until it wasn't just a glass of wine or a beer. It was bottles of wine by myself, cases of beer, by myself. Hard. I all it, it just, it, it, it was a snowball. It was not really part of your life, but then during tough times, that escalated pretty quickly. Yes. Escalating it became your only coping mechanism, it sounds like.
Did. What were your coping mecca mechanisms prior to that? Prior to that, I was active physically. I had, I was a runner. Um, I did, I did destination marathons as a charity athlete. Um, so I, I had healthy outlets, right? Mm-hmm. And, and yet when life gets in the way, and we're a busy professional and a busy mom, and we're, we're not managing our emotions, you know, all that.
It just festers and it seems like, you know, I don't wanna do, I don't have the energy, I don't wanna do the healthy things. I am just gonna pretend it doesn't exist and just numb away these feelings because I don't know what to do with them anyway. Mm. Mm-hmm. Do you remember w. What you would say to yourself at that time, like, like I don't wanna feel this, like I'm not supposed to feel this, like, get over it.
Or, the biggest emotion that I identify with or can pull out of those times was self hatred. Was this loathing for who I had become. And there, there was that cognitive dissonance, right, where I, I knew, I knew what a leader was. I taught people what leaders mm-hmm. Were. I taught these things. And so rooted in that was then of course the shame and the guilt and you know, when you don't have a high self-esteem to begin with, all those things just, you know.
Right. Fuel to the fire and it just becomes this, this hatred for who I thought I was. Yeah. And, and not knowing what to do about that. So you feel a little bit like a fraud, a little like an imposter. This is what I'm teaching, or this is what I'm learning. This is what, this is what I believe in, what I should be doing, but this is what I'm actually doing.
So there's that. Um, cognitive dissonance. And then also you lost your job. That's probably all your fault. You're losing your marriage. That's probably all your fault. Right. Right. So a lot of blame there and a lot of shame. Yes. And I mean, alcohol is so fast and resourceful to numb, ignore stuff down. I mean, I always think, like, I always wanna say, well that was clever that you found that because it, it's pretty resourceful.
It it, it works before it doesn't, it works real fast. Real temporary and overall it's gonna bring you down. And it sounds like you already had some men mental health challenges perhaps. Yes. This exasperated that as we know that alcohol does, if you're feeling anxious and depressed, you're gonna feel a whole lot more of that when you pour alcohol on it.
Right, right. And, and in hindsight, of course, and mental health treatment and, and seeking brain health, you know, there, yes. There still is a stigma to this day around those things. We're making progress and certainly, you know, in, in the mid two thousands, late two thousands, that just wasn't. You know, around 20 10, 20 15, we just didn't, we weren't really talking about things like that.
I did, I, when I would go through like a medical episode, um, the first was acute pancreatitis, which I was told, um. Actually I was led to, I, I did not know, and this is again, just me maybe blacking and blanking it out. I did not know that. Acute blocking and blacking out. Yeah, both. Yeah. I did not know that that literally acute pancreatitis was caused by alcohol.
I mean, I shouldn't, I mean, cognitively, right? You would think, well, duh, but of course I didn't wanna know that. So I just thought, oh, you know, I am, I'm in the hospital for acute pancreatitis. It wasn't either, it wasn't made clear to me, or I chose not to understand how alcohol was the cause of the acute pancreatitis.
So that was kind of when the medical situations would start and, and then, then I would think, well, of course I'm drinking too much wine. It's the wine, it's not me, it's the wine. And so then you switch to a different substance and, and you know, then I drink beer and the blood sodium levels in, in my blood would just bottom out.
That would cause hospitalization. So then I'm like, well, beer's the problem, not me. It's the beer. So then I'd switched to hard liquor and I mean, it was just this same story over and over and over and, and yet I. Chose not to identify the pattern. And so I would have medical doctor appointments, you know, follow up from hospitalizations and I would lie, I would say, oh no, I stopped drinking once.
You know, I got out of the hospital, I stopped that. Was it true? And, and I, you know, at no point during those days did I share how much I was drinking because of the shame and, and all the things. And, you know, even an OI had an OWI in April of 2019. Um, thank God nobody was injured. Um, it totaled my car. I spent most of an evening in jail, and yet that was not the final rock bottom.
Wow. It seems to me like you thought if you could just manage this correctly, like alcohol wasn't really a problem. It was kind of like you weren't managing it appropriately, and once you figured out the right formula, I. That would be okay. Versus like letting it go. Yeah. Yeah. Because what we see on TV and, and you know, social media, I wasn't active on social media.
It wasn't quite the fervor that it was mm-hmm. These days. But, you know, my perception was that everybody else can manage their drinking. This was probably your fault. You just figure this out. Yeah. I just, I'm just not doing it right or I'm not drinking the right stuff. I, and you know. It was, it, it just, there was never enough, I could never drink enough to get rid of what I needed to process through.
Um, yeah, and that's, yeah, the, the mental health, it wasn't until after I got sober this time in 2020 February of 2020, that talking with my psychiatrist, he was able to very clearly. Connect the dots for me that mm-hmm. You know, mental health exacerbated the alcohol use disorder, which exacerbated them. So it, it, it again was just this cycle over and over.
Yeah. Yeah. And you were not alone. Um, checking that you just drink socially, probably about three drinks a week to your doctor. Every single person listening to this podcast. Has done that. Sure. Um, what was your support system during that time? Did you have one? You're mom. That was very interesting. Yeah.
What's going on February, 2020? I get out of the hospital for the final time and I, I knew I was gonna do something differently. That it, it was made clear to me in the hospital that how close I was to not being around anymore. And that the next time, um, there was absolutely zero guarantees. And that kind of, I don't know, a wake up call per se or messaging I needed to hear at that time.
And so I entered an intensive outpatient program, an IOP. I had lost my job, um, because of performance related issues due to alcohol use disorder, and so I was all in, I was doing nine hours of in-person therapy and group counseling, and a lot of the messaging and the trainings and the lessons were grounded in the 12 steps.
And there were other modalities that now I know are connected to like dialectical behavioral therapy and, and things that kind of were interwoven, but it, it was, it was probably the majority of it was oriented toward 12 steps. And it didn't, it didn't feel right, but I knew it, I needed something. Right. So.
I, I, I did the work. I, I did the showed up, did the homework, did the classes, all the things. 40 days later is when covid shut everything down and the in-person I. Treatment. The IOP was just paused because like most, how do you replicate an in-person treatment in recovery? How do you do that, you know, without the in-person component.
And so I'm like, well, isn't this interesting? Obviously, I'm, I am isolated. As the world is isolated, shut down. Um, I'm by myself living alone. No job I. Striving like hell to stay sober. What tools do I have? What methods, what can I tap into? And I remembered the leadership challenge and I remembered the practices, and I remembered how empowered I felt when I was leading a life of my own design and part of what.
The leadership challenge experience is, is a values activity that gets very up close and personal. We've got a deck of cards and you sort through prioritization, and then it comes down to, here are your values, now what? What are you going to do about these? And so as I looked at those five cards representing my values, it became crystal clear that I needed to.
Engage in behaviors consistent with my values, and that would allow me to lead myself further away from alcohol. And that's been five years, five and ish years, and it's been my method of self-empowered leadership ever since. Wow. So you quit drinking for the last time. It wasn't, um, it was hard fought for that last time, right?
Yeah. Could happen at any time. But you waited for like five hospitalizations. One OWI, you know? Yeah. You quit for the last time and you knew it. You, you were saving your life. Now you knew you really had no other choice. I'm gonna die from this, or I'm gonna stop doing this. Right. Right. So I'm putting all my energy into not doing this, and I've got nine hours of support professionals every single day.
And then the world shuts down. Yes. And now you have a choice of, am I gonna save myself or f it? Go back to the thing that I know. That's huge and somehow. You made the choice to keep walking out and that find some of your own tools and go back into that dust off that toolbox that you had started to learn about with this clearly.
Yeah. That had been planted. A seed that had been planted 10 years ago. Okay. So you do the values exercise Yep. Yourself and you recognize I'm gonna start marching to my values and I'm gonna start filling my life with my values. Yep. Um, what did that look like for you? And I'm a little bit curious how.
Parenting is marching alongside some of this being a mom and growing healing. Right, right. Trying to figure out, so in 2020, my oldest son, let's see, my oldest son was in college, my youngest son, um, was graduating high school. So obviously all, all that looked different from what, you know, we thought it would look like and it, it really meant.
Being intentional. That's when I started looking at what are resources that complement sobriety or complement really what I saw as a holistic approach. So I started practicing mindfulness. I started practicing yoga and started kind of identifying what aligns with my energy. What makes me feel stressed?
What makes me feel less stressed? Um, I, I just intentionally knew that despite the separation, the isolation that I needed to move closer to family. And of course I had tried getting sober many, many times before. Right. And so to some degree, I'm not gonna speak for my parents and my kids, but I'm sure they thought, yeah, here she goes again, wonder how long this one's gonna last.
Right? Because that was the pattern of behavior that I exhibited previously. Mm-hmm. Um, but I think then I, I made a decision I was going to move to a different location. It was covid, so nobody was hiring. So that presented a challenge of what do you, what do you do? And, um, started a consulting business at that point.
And I, I, I don't, I don't remember, and I'm not sure that my boys can accurately remember, like, at what point they kind of were like, Hey, maybe, maybe this is like for real now. Mm-hmm. Obviously the more that I started speaking openly about my story and started. Started trying to diminish the stigma around people who struggle with alcohol use disorder and mental health conditions, and try to uplift the normalcy of what one goes through, what one's family goes through, and that.
You know, being open about being in therapy or being in treatment or wanting to explore things other than, um, 12 step models and wanting to be curious and wanting to learn that those were all qualities that I embodied and needed to really do more of, um, to be able to continue to move forward. And so in those early days, it was kind of like, what's one thing I can do today?
To keep me more aligned with my values. Mm-hmm. Grant, I started a gratitude journal and writing down things at night that I was grateful for that, you know, what did I do today that allowed me to demonstrate my value of love? And so again, trying to keep it a living, breathing part of, not just this, you know, esoterical.
Blah blah abstract thing, but really practical. What am I doing today? What do my behaviors demonstrate today that are consistent with my values? Yeah, you're very loud and proud in recovery and that's so necessary and so great. And it seems like you were almost that way from the get go. Like you, you are pretty early on, fairly quickly decided.
I'm out loud about this, right. I'm gonna, yeah. Reducing the stigma is me talking out loud and not everybody feels that way. Yeah. It can take people a long, a longer time or ever to, to get that way. So we need like you with a voice out there. Well, thank you. And really we need people like the communities who uplift.
People who share their stories. Right? And that I, I was 30 days sober when I posted on Facebook that, you know, where I was in my journey. And, and of course I'm like cringing, wondering what I'm gonna see in the comments. And it was just overwhelmingly loving and supportive and encouraging. And not long after that, I decided to post on LinkedIn and friends and, you know, business colleagues are like, oh my God, no.
No, that's, that's like business suicide and I'm thinking, no, because if I'm authentic, then I'm not gonna keep this hidden. Mm-hmm. That only perpetuates the shame and the guilt and the judgment that I'm really trying to advocate against. Totally. So I posted on LinkedIn. I don't even remember what the message was, but it was something related to, you know, leading I, I tied it in with leadership and leading my way away, leading myself away from alcohol.
So it had kind of a more professional tie in with LinkedIn and there it was crickets at first. Which was okay. It wasn't at least, you know what, this is LinkedIn, you shouldn't share your profession. Yeah. Or your personal issues. And then there were others, you and Laura McOwen, I mean, Annie Grace, some of these authors and, and Peggy Cooney.
And you know, there's just very, there. There were other people that I paid attention to who were like, mm-hmm. Talking and I'm like, there's more than just me, and I am really liking that. Mm-hmm. And I think the more that we speak up, the more that we speak up on behalf of those who might be reluctant. The, but the more that we show that it's okay to speak up.
Yeah. And you don't, you know, we got you back. We're, we're here. You know, you, you don't, you don't need to be afraid. Totally. So yeah, you did it at 30 days on Facebook. I did it at one year. So the people that I'm talking about that a little more hesitant is me. It's me. But that's okay too. I mean, yeah. You know, I, to the contrary, I would never recommend somebody, you know, puts it out there if they're not completely ready.
Yeah. And then LinkedIn was the hardest. That was the last, it's funny, that's the last place I did it. And that was the hardest place to do it. And I think it goes to what we were talking about, like don't bring your personal problems to work or pretend that you're okay and you have it all together for candidates at a job interview.
You know, I have a background in hr, I have a background in sales, also scared they're gonna think I was a drunk this whole time, or you know, right. Like, um, that 'cause we. We can put on a face when we go to work, we can show just part of ourselves. So, or, um, for me, I wanted people to think very highly of me, right?
Worried about what people think and wanting to, to give a perfect image of things. So it was hard to say. I. Um, no, I was struggling with something and now I'm out and I had to, I had been, um, let go from jobs, um, not drinking related, although I'm sure it didn't help me, but even early in my career because companies closed down and stuff, a lot of it had nothing to do with me.
But I carry that rejection, you know, with my self-esteem. That was really, really hard for me and for a high achieving person and perfectionist to feel, um, a rejection like that. That got me, that still gets me. It's, it's still something that I have to continue to work on. So I feel you losing a job, losing a marriage, having all that and then turning around and coming out on the other side, um, is truly incredible.
So writing in the practicing mindfulness. Your core values exercise, um, having a gratitude journal, this is starting to moving closer to family. Did you end up doing that? Yep, I did. I moved closer to family. Um, my oldest son graduated from college. My youngest son started college at the University of Iowa where he, um, it played football and so I moved closer.
I moved to Iowa City so I could be active in that community. Which again was, was a turning point of sorts or kind of a, what am I in for question mark, because I am sober and I'm single, and I'm the mom of a college football player where you are surrounded by a game day environment. That is the opposite of sober.
Yeah. It, it's all things alcohol. And my, my fear was that I was not gonna fit in to the parent crowd because of, you know, I just, because I didn't think I was gonna be fit in. And, and honestly, that's one of the stories I was telling myself. It was not true whatsoever. There's, you know, so little attention.
When you are with and around the right people, there's so little attention paid to whether or not you're drinking or what you are or aren't drinking, that I, I felt included from day one. I didn't feel, I, I didn't feel shunned or shamed or like, oh, you don't drink. Well, you go over there with your AF beer or whatever it was none of that.
It was all very welcoming and, and I'm, I'm truly grateful. For how welcomed I felt because that was a, a, a, a horror story I was telling in my head. Yeah, well, I am imagining the reason that you were is because that's how you would've viewed somebody, because that's how it is for me. It was like people that didn't drink, I used to interrogate.
I was like so curious about what do they do? Who are their friends? Do they, are they in a relationship? Who would like them if they don't drink? I don't get it. Like even on holidays, like, what do you do? What do you, what do you do? Like I was fascinated with it. Like I could not understand it as a drinker.
So you had your own. Thoughts, right? Yep. And, um, that's beautiful. This is not sponsored by the Iowa Hawkeyes, by the way. No. What a beautiful story of inclusion and fitting in, and it doesn't matter. And, um, there's the right people everywhere you go. And for most people it's, it's not a thing. They wanna know you, it doesn't matter what's in your glass.
And that fact that you felt that even in a game day culture, and I'm a big. Big 10 fan and um, I've got kids in college and we love a game day, so, and a tailgate and all that stuff, so I totally get it, but Wow. Yeah. You've been able to even conquer that. This has been a huge turnaround, a very huge turnaround.
So how does it relate back to this self-empowered leadership in action then, and how does it go to some of the work that you're doing? It's become your. Life's work, right? It really, it really has. And the catalyst for, for where I'm at today is, is really the sad loss of my brother-in-law at the end of January from excessive alcohol use disorder and all of the health consequences that go along with that.
At the end of January, he was, um, in the hospital in an intensive care unit, age 49. Almost five years to the day that I was in a different ICU, same age, and he lost his life and I didn't, and I struggled with why not? Exactly. And, but it wasn't, it was more of a drive. To create more survivors. Mm-hmm. It wasn't a guilt, it was a, it was a curiosity.
I mean, you and I are both naturally curious individuals and it was kind of like, why? Why am I here? What was the secret sauce? Or what, you know, what was why? And also this is preventable. We know this is preventable. Yes, yes. Mm-hmm. So, um, his passing, passing really, really became a spark that I know there needs to be more access to multiple pathways for recovery.
Um, that's what the way onward. Is being developed as it is taking the same five practices from the leadership challenge and what their work is within the self-empowered leadership framework and adding those five practices to the context of recovery. So the Way Onward is a training curriculum for mental health and recovery practitioners.
For them to be able to have a new pathway to be able to help guide individuals in navigating recovery as a personal leadership challenge, and that teaches self-empowered leadership skills that yes, can be helpful in recovery. Yes, can be even more helpful in leading a successful life. And that's, that's the emphasis is how do we embed leadership skills that are practical, that have nothing to do, not that they don't have anything to do with the workplace, but have more to do with who and how am I leading myself?
So that I can lead my family, lead my organization, lead my team, lead everyone around me more effectively. Yeah, especially if I'm struggling with a behavior that is unhealthy. Yeah, I hear you. So that's even more, um, like, we have to talk about this because people are dying from this. We can't pretend it's not happening, you know?
And when I, and I knew that job to talk about it now. Yeah. I, I knew that that alcohol kills people. Mm-hmm. But it wasn't until I started looking at the statistics from SAMHSA that I knew how staggering they were. 383 people every single day in the United States die. From excessive alcohol consumption.
Mm-hmm. 383 people. And if a program, if a curriculum that we are developing can save one person, yeah, I need to be the one to put it out there. And thankfully I have a team of friends helping me do that. Yeah. And, um, addiction affects two thirds of American families. So it's you or somebody, you know. It's all of us.
Yeah. We can't pretend like it's not happening. Yeah. Um, that resonates so much and I will just tell you, getting sober taught me how to do everything. Yes, yes. For me, removing alcohol, ditching the drink that taught me everything I needed to know. So that taught me how to run a business that taught me how to start a business that taught me how to parent.
How to be in a relationship, how to be a friend, how to be a, every, it taught me how to do everything. It, it's not separate from work. My life and my work are not separate. They're the same. And the skills and the tools that I had to learn, um, to not go to my very familiar coping mechanism. The only thing I knew, and I had my first drink at 12, so I didn't wait till 40 or whatever.
Right, right. It had been long ingrained in me. To choose something different over and over again and start to have my own awakening in a, uh, create a new life for myself that was flexing all the muscles that I would need for absolutely everything else. And I know you feel that too. So, t can you tell us a little bit about the way onward, um, share with us what it is, what these principles are, what the Yeah, the five things are five practices.
It's rooted in the five practices of exemplary leadership from the leadership challenge. The first is model the way. Which looks at values and behaviors. The second practice is inspire a shared vision, which really is what is this new life going to look like? What, what are the stories that I'm telling myself?
What are the limiting beliefs that I need to get rid of so that I can see what an alcohol free life is going to look like for me? The third is challenge the process, which there's a lot of that going on when we are establishing new habits, new patterns, new decision making processes, that is one where we are able to accept failure as a learning experience and not let it be a.
A, a complete setback, but let it be a step forward. Um, the fourth is enable others to act. And so it's taking our own empowerment and sharing that outward, and whether that's through building communities or. You know, hosting discussion groups, it, it differs by individual what enabling others to act looks like.
That practice also has a lot to do with trust, trusting others, because we've built a trust within ourselves. And that goes back to that self-empowerment. The fifth practice is encourage the heart of all the five practices. Encourage the heart is one that not only do we do. Not a good enough job of for encouraging ourselves, but it's definitely an area of improvement for how we continue to cheer others along.
How do we celebrate small wins and not just wait for those major milestones, you know? How do we celebrate at the end of every day that, Hey, you did one thing today that was just right on with your values. You know, how do we incorporate more of those small wins as moments and reasons to celebrate? So those are the five practices and within each of those practices we create within the curriculum learning objectives, and then methodologies for, um, really embedding those into recovery approaches.
So from my perspective, it includes both therapeutic dialogue as well as mindful movement, guided meditations, um, a lot of traditional learning kind of methods, but also some more holistic, um, mindfulness techniques as well. Practical strategies, and then a little woo, it sounds like in the best, in the best way, if someone is stuck in a cycle of self doubt, doubt, or fear.
What is one action that they can take to shift their mindset? I really encourage them to start with their values. There are numerous resources online. Um, Brene Brown has a list of values on her website with some tools. James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits has some resources. So even if you don't have a, the deck of values cards or you know, you just want something to kind of get yourself thinking.
It's identifying your values and then mapping those two behaviors. Sometimes we do the values and then it's like, cool, I've got these values. The most important part is what are you gonna do that keeps you aligned and consistent with your values? And that's where values mapping can come in and thinking about, okay, I have the value of connection.
Am I going to text three friends every day? Am I going to schedule a lunch with a buddy once a month? You know what? What literally does that look like? And then start building your calendar accordingly. Yeah. As a coach, that resonates with some actual accountability, action steps, goals, specific, measurable, relevant.
You got it. All that stuff. Yes. I'm like, yeah, thank you. 'cause it's not enough to just say, oh, these are my values. I value connection, so I sit in my house and watch tv. Yeah, yeah. Yep. Yeah. You have to do something about it. Yep. Um, if you could leave our listeners with just one message about self-empowered leadership, what would that be?
Leadership is an inner journey and we cannot truly relate. Effectively with other people until we learn to regulate within ourselves. Mm-hmm. And that's always what you went to alcohol for anyways, with self-soothing and regulation and saying Right. Because we're not really taught ways to do that. So Yeah.
We can't fully connect with others until we can fully connect with ourself. That's Got it. That's really beautiful. Yeah. Anything else? Wow, there's so much, right? I mean, there's, there's layers upon layers upon layers of our stories, but truly gratitude that I am able to find people like you and, and you know, our community continues to grow and expand as people start identifying places in their lives where they can more effectively lead themselves.
And then that leads them further away from unhealthy behaviors and toward. And authentic and, and, um, designed life based on what they expect of themselves and not necessarily old expectations that they carry from other people. I. Yeah. Well I'm thrilled to be connected with you and it's because you've been loud and proud and I gotta be honest, you are such a bright light, Angie, that it surprises me that you spent a decade in the dark.
Like I just don't see it. I can't see it, but maybe it's like, um, it takes a very dark. Sky for a star to shine so bright, you know, but you are, you have come out very, very bright and I am grateful for the connection. And I'm gonna share everything in the show notes about how people can connect with you.
Um, do you wanna talk about any other exciting projects, initiatives you're working on? How you wanna be connected with, should they go to LinkedIn? Let us know. Houston is, is fantastic. It gives multiple opportunities to see what I'm up to, kind of understand maybe more of my background separate from recovery, but still connected to leadership.
Um, the way onward will be available, um, through. Both mental health predict, uh, mental health and recovery professionals, uh, later probably towards the fall of 2025. Our website will be going live in the summer of 2025, so that will be a place to connect. That will just be the way onward.com. Meanwhile, angie chaplin.com is a great place to see, you know, more of my story.
There's some television news segments on there and other podcasts. Conversations and really questions. Uh, I'm happy to direct people, you know, to coaches who are actively helping individuals like you kind of stay, you know, grounded in their values and, and moving toward what a healthy life looks like for them.
Amazing. Thanks for everything. So nice to speak with you, you, Heather. Thank you.
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