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: Welcome back to the Alive and Free podcast today, this week. This is Episode - I think we're on Episode 5 now. We're going to talk about the mind, whether it is really just a mess or whether it's magic, and whether or not it can be both and what you can do to turn it around.
Crazy experience I had a while ago - my little sister called me up and she was just frustrated with her kids, you know, raising teenagers, and all of you who have teenagers would know what that's like. My oldest son is 13, so he's just barely beginning teenage years. [0:01:00.7] I think it's a pretty amazing experience, so I'm not having the same level of frustration right now, but maybe that'll change; we don’t know. Considering that my emotions are my responsibility, if I'm that good, maybe it won't ever change, and I'll just get to have a good relationship with my son. That's what we're after, folks - freedom. Freedom to have teenagers and not be affected by them or addictions and to be able to let them go and be free of those too. Alright so, she calls me up. She's frustrated, and I'm starting to tell her about this idea that I've discovered. It's not an idea. What I have discovered, literally, in my own life, that I'm really responsible for my emotions. That if I say someone broke my heart, what I mean is I had an expectation for them. They didn't do it. Reality showed up differently, and instead of embracing reality and working with that, I had an emotion about it, and I broke my own heart because of what they did. It doesn’t mean they didn’t do what they did, but I'm the one that broke my own heart. If I say I'm frustrated, that means I had an expectation about the way reality was supposed to go, and I created a story about it and it was a beautiful story. [0:02:04.5] There were all these fantastical creatures and fairies and unicorns and whatever else, and turns out, that it was just horses and horse poop in front of me on the road. And the distance between reality and my story, that gap, is the size of your suffering. Now, some people… oh, my gosh! I've heard so many bad stories about people with porn addiction, that they're like it's always going to get worse, it never gets better. They can never get over it. It takes them years and it's always going to be painful for the wife, and I've heard all these stories. So I'm fine, because it's not part of my reality. But the minute my husband, I don’t have a husband, but I'm just, this is an example. The minute my husband says, "Hey, I've been struggling with pornography," that's what's reality. Maybe he's looked at it a few times and he doesn’t want it in his life anymore, but he can't figure out how to stop. It might not be that severe but maybe it's super severe. Whatever it is. [0:03:00.1] Reality is what it is. The facts are what they are. So her expectation is I never live my life this way. I don’t have anything to do with it. We have this beautiful, wonderful marriage that is more or less like a Disneyland thing, and we live happily ever after and there are probably fireworks and beautiful ball gowns and stuff somewhere in there. And then reality shows up different and there's the day-to-day grind and then all of a sudden, the pornography thing enters the picture and already the gap between reality and that story is enough to cause pain. And it's real. The actions and the behaviors are really happening. And the wife didn’t do them. What she did was have an expectation and you know, her response to what's really there, she can do whatever she wants to do - whether she wants to leave, whether she wants to stay, how they want to negotiate the relationship, that's a really tricky endeavor either way. But if she has in her mind the story that's worse than the reality that shows up because of all of the preprogramming, everybody telling her that way, then the size of suffering is going to be twice as bad because they have an expectation of negative now that this reality has shown up. [0:04:04.9] And so now, it's twice as bad because it's even worse than my fantasy, like it's that much further away from my fantasy.
So, I'm on the phone with my sister. She has, you know, hopes and expectations of how the kids are going to behave. They don’t behave. I'm telling her about how we're responsible for our emotions. And she's like, "What do you mean I'm responsible for it?" I was like, well what frustrates you? And she says, you know, "My kids." And I'm like, great - so, like, do they frustrate you all the time? "Well, no." Well, what it is that they do that frustrates you? Well they do this, that and the other. Does when they do this, that, and the other always frustrate you? "Well, no. Sometimes it does." Well, what's the difference? "I don't know. Sometimes I don’t care." Huh, interesting, but they're the ones that are frustrating you? "Well, yeah! Duh! They're the ones doing it!' Hmmph, okay, cool. If you were unconscious, would it frustrate you? "Well, no. I wouldn’t be conscious of it." Right - so clearly your consciousness has something to do with the frustration. That you wouldn't be experiencing frustration if you weren’t aware or conscious of something. [0:05:05.4] And what is it that you are conscious of, and so on and so forth went the discussion. And it was a great discussion and I don't know if she agrees with me or not, but it doesn’t really matter. What I've found works really well. She's an amazing lady and is doing awesome stuff with her kids, so.
So here we are, we're in this conversation and I'm trying to articulate this thing that I've discovered in my life - that the reality is it doesn’t matter what emotion is happening; it's mine. It's not theirs. And I may think that it's theirs but you cannot pass emotion on to somebody else. I can be angry all I want. I can get into the room and create an environment that would stimulate anger, hopefully, but as much as I try and make them angry and outsource my anger so I don’t have to feel it, I still have it. They might respond in a way that's angry, or if they don’t care, then I'll just get even more angry because it's not working. But your emotion is your own. You cannot pass it on to somebody else. It's your own. [0:06:00.0] It's your own creation. It's a kind of chemistry inside you, your body's reaction to what's going on in your mind, and specifically, what's going in your mind is all of this expectation. So here I was, years ago, coming outside of addiction. I was, it was 2012, I had spent the previous three years actively searching for all kinds of different things that I could do to figure it out - from books and readings and articles and stuff like that. I had talked to Bishops and Ecclesiastical leaders. I had done willpower and praying. I had gone to 12-step programs and I actually facilitated 12-step programs and I talked the whole talk. I had done all of these things. I had gone through weird esoteric approaches, alternative healing things, like you name it - I had like really searched for any kind of solution to get out of pornography, but I couldn’t. 2012 passes. 2013 comes around, and I stopped looking at porn in 2012 because it finally became clear that my wife was not going to stick around if that behavior kept around, and I was afraid of living the rest of my life alone. [0:07:08.3] I was afraid of not being able to see my kids again, and in fact, some of our kids we wouldn't even have and I wouldn’t have the joy of their giggles and laughter right now if it hadn’t been for me just stepping up and choosing a different path. But the problem is, on the inside, all I did from taking pornography from me was like take the pacifier away from the baby. I had a poopy diaper on, life stunk, and I didn't… nothing changed, expect that I wasn’t looking at pornography. So now I was dealing with all my emotions and stuff without a way out. So I went to other kinds of addictions. I went to wasting time on YouTube or wasting time on reading articles and researching things that were completely irrelevant to my life, or I went to spending time like just in conversations with other people so I didn’t have to be alone with myself - different business ventures and starting a business. Like, I was doing all kinds of stuff, manically, because I didn’t have my pacifier anymore, the porn pacifier. [0:08:02.5] And I didn’t know what was going on and everybody around me was telling me that I was going to be stuck like that the rest of my life, that it would always be a fight - it would get better over time and eventually, it'll go away. But "eventually" was not something I could look forward to or count on, and I didn’t want it that way.
So I finally decided, that's it. Like, I don’t want to live like that. It's not like I wanted to kill myself, but I didn’t want to live the life that I could see in front of me. So I just said "Look, God, if you're up there or whoever else is around, I... there's got to be an answer, and I'm just going to go with whatever idea comes into my brain, however smart or dumb it sounds because I'm desperate to not live life this way." Some of the ideas I had were downright dumb. I don’t recommend the trial and error approach because sometimes you can wreck things way worse than if you use a tried and true method, but I didn’t have a tried and true method available to me. If you want one, guys, get on the phone with us; we can help you out. Girls too - it's not just for guys. [0:09:00.1] So here we are and I'm sitting there, dealing with this, and I start going through this process and I just like these ideas started to come and it was piecing together things I'd learned over the years and then some whole new ideas, and I start going through these processes that are just dumping, dumping, dumping, years and years of gunk, from my life. Like all I one fell swoop. And then all of sudden, at the bottom of it, after I'm going through these things, I suddenly realize what was really at the bottom of the whole thing, that I had some idea in my head, a thought, something in the mind, that made me believe that I was literally worthless. That I was defective. That somehow my constitution, the way that I was made, was such that it was… it's not that I couldn't measure up, but that somehow I was made so that I was incapable of even having a chance at measuring up. And I tried to compensate for this. Like, I got… I got amazing grades. I was a valedictorian in my high school, and in my book, that wasn’t that hard, just from where I went to high school. [0:10:01.7] No offense, people, in Island High in Albuquerque, but that was just my take on it and maybe it was arrogant, whatever; that was experience back then. Got great grades in college, got eight years of scholarships for six years of college - yes, I took six years because I wanted to dance on a dance ensemble. I performed on the top dance ensemble in folk dance and we toured around the world for a few years; that's where I met my wife. Like, just, I've done amazing things, compensating, nonstop, for this. Now, does everybody who does an amazing thing - are they compensating for something? I don't know. I don't know how you would assess that. You'd just have to talk to them as a person. Some people do amazing things just because, so don’t take that to mean just because you're doing amazing things, you're compensating for something. Most people, my guess is, probably are to some extent, but it might not be that much for a lot of them. So, I compensated. I don't know where the idea came from. I had a beautiful childhood. I wasn’t traumatized. I wasn’t abused. We were in the military, so I moved around a lot. I did feel like a loner, like an outsider and like I didn’t fit in. [0:11:01.0] And I tried to get attention through grades and through excelling in different types of physical activities, but not sports, because I didn’t feel like I fit in on teams. And whenever there was any indication that I'd be cut or wouldn't fit or couldn’t cut it or couldn’t keep with the pack, I would quit or fake an injury. Yeah, I did that with wrestling. I totally pretended to like pull a hamstring and that got me out of both wrestling and track at the same time so that I had an excuse to tell my friends why I couldn’t do it. And so, like that's how I behaved because I believed I was nothing more than a worthless piece of space junk floating around the planet - that you could doll me up and give me all the talents and abilities and beauty and whatever else that you wanted, but in the end, I was just a floating hunk of trash, and no one would ever want to be around me. And they'd all leave because who wants a piece of space junk? Now that's what I believed about myself. Where did I pick that up? I have no idea. I can remember bits and pieces of my life, all the way back to just post birth. [0:12:01.4] I don't know at what point in my life that cemented in, but it became like a fact of life - that's just the way life is; I don’t fit in. I'm not good enough. Whatever. My unique one. It's unique to everybody. Some people's isn't even verbal. Sometimes it's an image. Sometimes it's a feel. Whatever it is. But whatever this root issue is going on inside somebody, it's a thought. It's in your mind, and it's something that you've internalized so deeply that it feels like a fact of life, meaning you would never challenge it or even think to challenge it on your own. Like the sun is rising - fact of life. Okay. Space junk - fact of life. That level. And because you're not thinking of challenging it on your own, your life is being driven by it if that's the thought in your head. Remember, your body, your emotions, your behaviors are all driven by what's going on in your mind. So if your mind has a thought, your thoughts are coming from an identity. An identity is nothing more than an entrenched thought; that's all it is. [0:13:00.3]
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: So, for instance, when you were born, were you born with a toe tag that said your name, "Hey, this one's named Bob Love G." Like that wasn't. That would have been painful for my mom, too. No, instead it was just a sound. My name was just a sound. And it's actually changed over the course of my life. It's just a sound. In the beginning, people made that sound and I didn’t respond because it was just one sound among many. After a while, there was the realization that hey, when I hear this sound, that means like something good is happening. People are going to be paying attention. And then after a while, it became, "Hey, when I hear this sound, that means someone is talking to me." [0:14:02.1] Then after a while, they'd say your name, "Bob," and I would say, "That's me." And so now I think I am this sound. I am not a sound, but I think I am; it's an identity. So now if someone goes, "Bob," oooh, they hurt me. But in reality, all they did was hurt the sound. Or if they go, "Hey, Bob! Hey, Bob!" now, they tickled the sound, but I think they tickled me. I got identified with a sound. It's just a thought, just an idea, but somehow, I thought it was me. Fact of life. And now if anybody ever talks bad about Bob, What About Bob? Those of you who have seen that movie, anyway. If anybody ever talks bad about Bob, I experience emotional stuff because it's a deeply entrenched thought that that is me. For that comes all my other thoughts, "Oh, no! If that's me, I don’t want to be like that, so I've got to do this to hide it and I've got to do this to compensate it, but I do like this part of that, so I'm going to do this to show that off," and so on and so forth. [0:15:06.3] You have thoughts. From the thoughts come feelings - "Oh, that feels icky. Oh, that feels wonderful. Oh, that feels nasty. I don’t like the feeling of nasty." From the emotion comes a behavior to cope with the nasty. Literally, your emotions are more or less chemistry and the ones we call negatives are just poisons in your body. They actually reduce your body's functions, so your behaviors are coping behaviors to this thing. That's it. So we have an identity down at the bottom, some root issue, something you picked up along the way. We're not talking about limiting beliefs. We're not talking about negative emotions being the cause of your addictions. In a way, they are, but there are four levels of freedom. Level 1 is behavior. Level 2 is emotion and maybe we'll go deeper onto this in another episode. Level 3 is thought; those are linked and tied. Level 4 is identity, when you're finally free.
[0:16:00.0] So here I am, I go through these processes and for the first time in my life, I no longer think that I am a piece of space junk. It's not that I am trying to convince myself with some declarations or affirmations every day that I am strong and I am powerful - no, I got rid of the idea in my mind. And then what was cooler was the thing that it was burying started to show up, all by itself. I didn’t have to make up a new identity. I got to discover that I was far greater than I ever imagined, on the inside. Not by hammering it in and pretending to be someone new. Not by trying to replace the thought, but by simply solving it and seeing the bigger truth. So there I was, I went through that process, and what I discovered on the other side was when my mind changed, addiction went away. Like all by itself. Really fast. [0:17:01.2] And the urge was gone. I wasn’t afraid of computers anymore. I had already learned how to delete the images from my mind, so I didn’t have to worry about that. Like all kinds of stuff disappeared for me. Addiction vanished, literally by itself. Do you know how long it took? 20 hours of work. That's it. I was unemployed at the time, so I did it over the course of about four days, and on the other side it all went away. Now there were skills that I had been practicing and learning over the previous few years. There was some other stuff that had gone into the mix that needed to happen, but ultimately, four days. Beforehand, my addiction was there. I was still suffering and fighting urges all the time. Afterwards, it was gone. And I wasn’t fighting urges all the time. Just because my mind changed. Now, in religious circles, in religious circles, repentance is a word that we often use. [0:18:00.1] And when I grew up people said, "Hey, if you want to repent, what you have to do is feel bad about stuff, and then you gotta go tell them you're sorry, and you got to ask God for forgiveness, you gotta make amends. Like these are the stages." But if you look at the Greek word for repentance, metanoia, it literally means to change your mind. And you know, it's linked to ideas of breath and spirit as well, but we'll just start with the mind - to change your way of thinking. So how fast is it possible to repent? Could it be possible to repent at the speed of thought, and really, is all the extraneous stuff we do, isn't it just more an ability to give yourself permission to finally change the way that you think about reality? If I go to an Ecclesiastical leader, like a pastor or a bishop, or I go to confession, isn't that a way for me to feel like, "Okay, I did what was necessary, now I can let this go. I followed all the rules about it, so now I can let this go." [0:19:00.5] So that I can change my thought about myself, and that's a dependence on outside mechanisms and on other people in order for you to give yourself permission to finally let it go and discover the truth about who you really are on the inside, instead of the grand lie that you somehow picked up along the way in your life that is teaching you that you are less than who you really are. And so you're busy trying to be someone other than who you are so you can measure up to an idea that is a lie, instead of discovering that maybe when God called creation "good" in the beginning, he wasn’t making up stories. Maybe it really was good. Consider that.
So what we're talking about - is the mind mess or magic? The mess was that what I had in my mind created a whole bunch of behaviors and 18 years of addiction, and shoplifting and ill treatment of people and procrastination and poor judgment in financial affairs and all kinds of stuff. But… when I finally took charge and realized that what's in my mind is something that I have a choice in, and that I actually developed processes to be able to change things at a deep level, the magic is addiction went away by itself, and happiness showed up by itself. [0:20:10.5] I didn’t have to be fighting for happiness. I was just sitting there one day, and all of sudden it just burst upon me. And it was the most glorious thing I've ever tasted, to have this abiding happiness inside me, no matter what is happening on the outside. The mind is a grand possibility, like your body. It is magical, if you know the way to actually get inside and use it to create that magic inside of your life. So today, as we're wrapping up this body, mind thing, we have talked about for the last couple of weeks, I want you to just sit there and consider - how much is your mind actually messing things up for you? And all the things you complain about - isn't a complaint just an idea you made up in your mind? [0:21:00.7] Isn't a problem just something that you called a problem? What if it's not a problem? I'm going to invite you to ask yourself this one liberating question that I love: What if I'm wrong about everything? What if I'm wrong about my limitations? What if everyone else is too? What if there's a simpler, faster, easier way? That's what we found at the Freedom Specialists at Liberate A Man. That's what we found to help people out of addiction. It's because I was willing to go there, and we discovered a way that's repeatable, fast, all that other stuff. But it started with the mind. It started with challenging all the things I thought were true, to discover that the truth is something far, far grander.
So that's a wrap for today. We'll talk to you guys next week as we discuss the idea that you are the way, and what it means to have a program of recovery that is geared toward you, personally, and that focuses on your natural strengths so that all you need to be free is to just be you. [0:22:01.4]
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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