It's time to rip the cover off what really works to ditch addiction, depression, anger, anxiety, and all other kinds of human suffering. No, not sobriety. We're talking the "F Word" here - Freedom. We'll share, straight from the trenches, what we have learned from leaving our own addictions behind, and coaching hundreds of others to do the same, and since it's such a heavy topic, we might as well have a good time while we're at it.
Bob: Alright guys, welcome back to the Alive and Free podcast. Last week, I promised you that we were going to talk about your number one priority today. We were going to talk about the choice and commitment to joy but I'm calling an audible on that; we're going to do that a little bit later because it goes in connection with the addiction myth which we will be talking about in a few weeks. So today, I wanted to call an audible and talk about something that has actually come to the forefront here recently but that deceptionally powerful. Whether or not the body that you have or that I have is a problem or possibility. [0:01:04.7]
See most of the time when you're dealing with addiction, when you're dealing with life, this comes up all the time. We talk about the desires of the flesh. We talk about age and ailments and all kinds of stuff and we have this negative view of the body as if while we are young it's this amazing thing but when we get older it's a problem and when you're inside addiction it's even worse and there are all of these diseases and other stuff and neuro-chemicals and all this stuff like the body is this massive hurdle. I want to you to just consider the possibility today that what if we are all wrong about that? What if the body is actually your greatest tool in personal growth and spiritual development that you could ever possibly gotten on the planet? Better than any coach, better than any program, better than anything if you know how to use it. So here's the deal. I'm going to share a couple of stories. A couple of years ago I was sitting talking to a guy that I really, really admire and respect. He's been around a long time, closely connected to our family. [0:02:04.8]
We were sitting there talking on the couch. I was in Mesa, Arizona at the time. He leans over to me because he sat down on the couch like {Ahh} and then nonchalantly looks over like this is 100% died in the wool, tried and true fact, nothing you can do about it, he looks over at me and goes, "Bob, don't ever get old, man." I said, "What? What do you mean?" He said, "When you get old, your body falls apart and things stop working and all this stuff starts to happen." I had a little bit of a conversation with him where I challenged that concept somewhat but I want to challenge it a little bit further. Here's what was going on in my mind. What are you talking about? Body falling apart is one problem. Getting older, meaning just being on the planet for more time is a different thing entirely. And to say that getting older equals body falling apart that seems to be leap in logical reasoning. [0:03:02.3]
In fact, I have an article on my computer saved, folks, from 1933, I think it's in October of 1933 in the New York Times where a man by the name of Li Ching-Yuen makes the headlines. Now here is a guy in China dies, reported age to the authorities is 197 years old. The Chinese authorities are going, this is not right, somebody did some really poor calculations. 197, that's not possible. So they send out two different investigative parties to try and get to the bottom of it hoping that the consensus between them that we will start to get to the facts. So off they go. They charge down and they chase down this guy's relatives, his former relations, his friends, his documents and records, everything they can figure and they dig it up and they come back with the results. "Dear Chinese Government, You are right. This man was not 197 years old. By all of our records in reckoning he is actually 256 years old at the time of his death." [0:04:03.6]
Now the age is not the only unique thing about this fellow, he was over seven feet tall, somewhat of a giant of sorts not the largest giant in the world but somewhat of a giant. For some reason, people have this thought that the bigger you are, you don't live as long and stuff like that. Wrong. This man had 17 wives over the course of his life and some rather large number of children. The only way to live that long is to be celibate, Bob. Wrong. He has spent the first 100 years of his life as an herbalist gathering herbs in the mountains. Yes, he avoided cities at times and did meditative practices. You can look them up. There are books about him on Amazon.com. Li Ching-Yuen and he has Eight Brocades and other meditative practices which I've studied over the years and stuff like that. [0:05:00.6]
But here is a guy who defies all odds. He got old but his body didn't fall apart. But we make the assumption that just because everyone else – well Bob I know but all my friends when they got older their bodies fell apart – maybe that's just because they don't know how to separate the two and treat their body in a way that helps it. I'm not saying that if you have genetic inheritances and stuff that those aren't variables in the stew but the reality is that's not the case. Your body is not the enemy. Being on the planet longer is not the problem. Not taking care of your body that becomes the issue. Right? By the same token when people dive into addiction, they look at the body and they – especially in religious circles they talk about the carnal lusts and the lusts of the flesh, you need to bridle your passions because for some reason your body is the problem. It is a stumbling block not a stepping stone. It is something that you got here on this planet and you've got to deal with because if you don't deal with this body right here, right now, it's over folks. [0:06:00.3]
100%, it's done. The body is going to lead you done into hell or it's going to lead you down some rabbit hole and you'll never get out of and you're just going to eat, drink, and be merry because tomorrow you're going to die and then the next life it's all over. With that kind of viewpoint of the body, how it's evil and it needs to be covered up and all of these things that we say about it, I'm not saying that it doesn't, I'm just telling you that with the viewpoint that we have of the body what tends to happen is that we miss the great possibility that is inside of it. So people come me and they are like, "I don't know, man, the problem is my body. I just have to bridle my passions and hold it in and resist temptation" and they look at everything in the body as temptation but what if we're looking at it wrong? Oh no, I’m having lustful thoughts, Bob, you mean like your body said you're a guy and your body said hi to a girl? That's normal right? If she doesn't say hi back and that ends the conversation, great. That' was a great conversation. [0:07:00.2]
That's what usually happens but if you're body is still trying to say hi after she is gone, then maybe something else is afoot; something else is going on. The reality is and we talked about this before that the emotions and experiences you're having in your body is its reaction to your mind. It's responding there. So if rather than responding to reality as it is, your body is busy responding to some reality as you're making it up in your head not consciously then we have to assess the reality in your head and that it's not the body's fault at all but the mind. [0:07:35.6]
If you, or someone you know, is looking to drop the F Bomb of Freedom in your life, whether that's from addiction or depression and anxiety or just anything that's making you feel flat out stuck, but you have no clue how to shake it and just want help doing it, head on over to LiberateaMan.com and book a call, where we can look at your unique situation and give you the roadmap you've been missing.
Bob: What if you could look at the body as if it were lights on the dashboard, people? When you go to your car, let's look at this clearly. In fact the more expensive the piece of equipment, the more you have invested into this piece of equipment, the more you tend to take care of it. My dad was fighter pilot. That means when he went out to go fly his airplane, the first thing he did was a walk around of the airplane to make sure all systems were go, all systems were in check. Then he would get in the cockpit and if he's listening to this he's probably going to tell me I got everything wrong but I remember him telling me about this. They are checking all the fluids and everything to make sure that the airplane is not going to fall out of the sky with great threat of eminent death. So they will do the walk around and then they'll sit in the cockpit, they'll fire up the engine, they'll check all the instrument panel, they will check everything else and make sure everything is okay. He told me a couple of time where things weren't okay but he had to get home so he just said a prayer and a blessing on his plane and it worked and it got him home and that's great. [0:09:01.0]
But by enlarge, they are not going to let the plane leave the ground if it's not functional. That's why they have a maintenance crew. Then once they have ascertained it's all functional, off they go, they fire up the engines, they take it off, they taxi to the runway, fire the after burners and off they go. That is a high precision instrument. They take a lot care to make sure it's in great functioning order before they work with it. Now if any of the instrument panels are off, they are not going to sit there and be like, "Oh my gosh, I hate this body." Right? They are going to look at it as an indicator that there is something that they need to go and pay attention to. Now if you have a car, oh we have invested less in car and I'm more used to it and more comfortable with it and so I don't pay attention to it as much. Instead of turning on a car and letting it idle for a little bit and the oil lubricate the entire engine before I just accelerate from zero to 60 on to the freeway, we just turn it on and go. We don't warm up the engine that much which means it can do some damage on the inside. But when we go to our car, how many of us actually do a walk around, check the tires and the tire pressure? [0:10:01.8]
How many of us check see if the lights work or if there is any extra damages on it or any leaking or anything that amiss? Most of the time, I don't. I just head out to the car, get in, and go. I do pay attention to the tires now to a certain extent because I've have had enough experience with them to say okay well I'm going start paying attention to these. I don't pay attention to them as much as would probably be wise and I turn it on and I check the gauges. Sometimes, I don't check the gauges until I'm already down the road but look they have various lights on the dashboard; the door is ajar, the air bag is on, maintenance required, check engine light, there's like the back hatch is open, there is the oil is low, the gas is low, the lights are on, that's a thing... there is a bunch of different indicators on there; how far you've gone – all kinds of stuff in the car and if any one of those lights is one, you don't sit there, "Man, I hate this car." [0:11:00.5]
Some people maybe do but most of us look at it, "Oh okay, there is something I need to pay attention to, something that is going on under the hood that I wasn't aware of; that was happening without me seeing it but fortunately I have this light here that's telling me and the instrument panel on the dashboard give you a way to confidently work with your car knowing that it's not just going to go kaput on you all at once because you're going to have early advance warning signs. What if your body is the car that your mind is driving and the mind is the engine under the hood that you are driving? You're driving the car, the mind is the engine under the hood, and your body is the car, itself. The instrument panel, the vehicle which you get to experience this life now if the light goes on, I'm having an emotion, Bob. Oh I'm having a lustful thought, Bob. Oh, I'm having like a really down day, Bob. Bob, I'm having this addictive behavior going on and the car is going haywire. Chances are the car isn't just going to veer left suddenly unless something went on under the hood. [0:12:02.6]
It's not the car's fault that it's just suddenly veering left. It's not Herbie although those were really good movies. You guys watch those? Herbie Rides Again, I love those movies. We actually bought them and had our kids watch them a number of years back. Funny movies. Anyway, the car is not Herbie. It doesn't have a mind of its own. It seems like it sometimes but you're in the driver seat. So unless you're the one steering the wheel left maybe something is caught in the steering mechanism, maybe there is something going on under the hood in another place and if you see a behavior that you don't like whether it's addiction, whether it's self-sabotage, whether it's laziness, or procrastination, whatever it is. If you catch an emotion that you don’t like: depression, anxiety. If you're having suicidal thoughts, if you're just sad, if you're bored, people are like, "Bob, boredom is not a bad emotion, it's just boredom." Cool. Do you want to stay bored for the rest of your life? Well, no. Great so obviously there's some part of you that doesn't think that is beneficial. [0:13:01.0]
Because if you were happy and I asked you if you want to stay happy for the rest of your life, you would be like yeah so clearly boredom isn't on your top 10 list of the ways I'd like to experience life. We could dig into boredom at another time but for now the emotion itself is an indicator, the behavior is an indicator, the thought is an indicator that something is going on under the hood that maybe you didn't see happen. Now if the car is veering left, and you remember driving over a squirrel maybe you're going to have some sense of it but not and it just starts doing it, you're going to have to go and investigate. Sometime you have to take it to a mechanic – oh no because they know more about how to drive these cars than you do, enter the world of coaching, right? It's not to say that you couldn't figure it out. You couldn't get on YouTube, you couldn't look it all up but you know your level of expertise is what it is and what if there was somebody else that was really good at it and you could just – you know could I get your help and shortcut this process because I don't want to be working on this car for the next 10 years and I got a business meeting to get to. So on and so forth. Right? [0:14:00.9]
But your body is simply that reflection of what is going on in your mind. That's all it is. Which means it's a grand possibility and a great stepping stone for you to be able to take what is happening in your life, tune into your body and have it tell you what's really going on in your mind. How you feeling today? I'm fine, your mind says I'm fine but you tune into your body and your body is like blahhhh which means consciously you're trying to say I'm fine but really in reality something in your mind is like, "Dude something is off." Your body is telling you that something is off. Likewise you could sit there and be like, "Man, I'm just kind of freaking out or something." But if you tuned into your body, you might find like I have especially recently as I have stepped into new levels of freedom over the last several months than I have ever experienced in my life has been amazing and my mind was so used to freaking out about things that a certain point I was like I don't know something is off and then I sat down and I tuned into my body and I was like wait a second my body is actually fine. On a scale of 1 to 10, I'm sitting at like a 8.5 probably. [0:15:04.2]
It just wants a little more physical work but it feels great. So it's just my mind that's going haywire because it's so used to putting out fires that if it's not putting one out, it's looking for another one to put out or let's create one just so we can put it out but now I don't have to do that anymore. I can just be at ease and happy and I'm myself. But I wouldn't have known that if I hadn't tuned into my body. On top of that, there are ways that you can work with your body to enhance your perception, your ability, your skillsets, you can train your body to do certain things, and your body is a grand possibility for you to experience the depth of human life. The depth of what is possible here as a human being. So instead of sitting here and vilifying your body and hating it for how much weight it is putting on. What if it's putting on weight precisely because it's trying to tell you, "We have more energy here than we know what to do with but we are whole-saving it just for a rainy day just in case. [0:16:00.5]
What if it's putting on weight because it's trying to protect you from something and you have some emotional scars and the body is creating padding because you're just afraid you're going to hurt someone else or someone else is going to hurt you mentally? I have seen that happen many times. "Oh man, I hate it, I have diabetes." What if the problem really is your body reflecting a dysfunction going on in your mind where you can't really savor the sweetness of life? There is a link between the two. That doesn't mean that you didn't inherit a predisposition toward it but whether you can turn a gene on or turn a gene off and it's expression has been widely researched and found to be like...well it's really up for grabs. Spontaneous remissions is a field of study, it's so huge. There is ample evidence to let any human being know that pretty much all that you got to do is decide to live a little bit differently and your body will respond. Why? Because it's a grand possibility. It's giving you the opportunity to live life on your terms. But Bob, I try so much and my body, it just won't respond. It won't do certain things. [0:16:59.8]
Now I don't know, I have never experienced Parkinson's disease, I have never experienced some of these more debilitating things later on in life so I don't know what's possible in that arena. But could it be possible that your body is showing what's really going on in your mind and that all the trying that you're doing is just one part of what's happening and that the real way out is to start to handle all that internal stuff so that your body can express differently. I had martial arts instructor a long time ago who I told him, "Look my shoulders are hunched forward a little bit, I'm so used to hunching them forward and this that and other" and he was pointing it out to me over and over over the course of three days in an intensive workshop then he said why are they hunched forward? I was afraid of getting hit. He said to me, "How about you handle the fear then your shoulder will correct themselves." It was an eye opening moment. So as we wrap up today and we are looking forward to what going to happen next week when I'm going to talk to you about the mind whether it's mess or magic. I want you to start asking yourself the question – what is my body really telling me about what's going on inside? What would happen if I listened to it a little bit more and paid closer attention so that I could catch things earlier on and experience life a little bit differently? I'm here to tell you your body is this amazing possibility. You came to Earth to get it. To qualify as a human being, you have to have a body and have you considered that maybe just maybe it's the greatest piece of technology on the planet. And maybe just maybe, what is possible to experience within the human body hasn't even been scratched – like the surface hasn't been scratched by all human effort up to date. And maybe just maybe, what you thought was your enemy can actually become your greatest friend. [0:18:44.1]
So that's a wrap for today. We'll talk next week, folks.
And that's it for today's Alive and Free podcast. If you enjoyed this show, and want some more freedom bombs landing in your ear buds, subscribe right now at wherever you get your podcast from, and while you're at it, give us a rating and a review. It'll help us keep delivering great stuff to you, plus, it's just nice to be nice.
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