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, folks. We are here now for Episode, what episode are we on - 8. Holy cow, man. We are trucking. Alright. Today, we gotta talk about the freedom formula. We'll talk a little bit more about my own personal story with addiction and then we'll move into - look, one of the things I had to figure out, early one, was how am I going to know that I'm free. This bothered me so long because I would go long stretches as an addict, where I'd go long stretches where it wasn’t problem. [0:01:01.0] The behavior wasn’t a problem, not the stuff underlying, but the behavior wasn’t a problem. Meaning, oh yeah, I was coping with my life in other ways, like video games and YouTube and Facebook and whatnot. I just wasn’t looking at pornography. And so because the pornography was gone, I'm like, "Oh, sweet. I hope it's gone." And a lot of times, I would have these spiritual experiences where, especially early on, I would like pray to God and have this tremendous emotional kind of cathartic moment and a come to Jesus moment, so to speak. And I'd feel clean and clear, and you know, obviously, I look at those kinds of experiences a little differently now and recognize what they are, but at the time, that to me was like, "Okay. Cool! I'm good." And then I'd go for a long stretch of time, and I'd be fine - sometimes 8 months, 9 months, a year, sometimes only a month or two, you know, it just depended. And then back into it - bingeing for hours at a time, going at it every day, sometimes multiple times a day for weeks, you know, whatever it was. [0:02:00.9] And so, I was sitting there like one of these times like I just want to know that I'm clear. I just want to know that I'm free. And how can I know? And how can I help everyone that I work with know, without a doubt, I'm good, so that they don’t have that nibbling little worry in the back of the head, because the problem was - I found, for me, was - if I'm worrying about it, then that also causes stress, which starts to poison my body and now my body has something to cope with and what is the most efficient way to cope with stress in a pinch? (Gasp) Pornography, Bob. And the sad part about pornography is - it's not like food where you have to ingest it. It's already in my brain, so like, I could just fantasize about it without actually having to look at porn - that's a whole different ball of wax. So, here I am, and I'm trying to figure out how can I know that I'm free. Now for me, I developed the internal way of knowing first, and then there was an external way I developed later after I realized everything that had happened. [0:03:02.0] We call this the freedom formula, and we basically help each client like understand two different ways of knowing that they're really clean and clear, so that whether they're talking with a bishop or an ecclesiastical leader, whether they're there in front of their wife, their conscious isn't constantly pricking them with this like, "Oh, I hope it's gone, folks. I'll just, you know, pray and cross my fingers," you know, that kind of thing. We don't want that. We want you to be like able to step up, without anything to hide in your life, because there's nothing to hide. Because when you can step up and stand in a room when you have nothing to hide, you literally become one of the most powerful people in any room. People look to you for advice, even without realizing they're doing it. People are intimidated by you, not because you're trying to intimidate them, but because they want to be that powerful, but they're so afraid of being uncovered. And that comes in stages. It didn't happen all at once for me. It came in stages, for sure, to be able to just be that, like to be done that way.
So, how can I know? Well, the internal method first. [0:04:00.4] And I share this on a video on my website - oooh, I don’t have the link - but I'll get it, and I'll, you know, we'll, maybe if there's like a show notes version we can post it below somewhere, and put it in the show notes. But, so here I was, I had gone through all of these processes. The processes I'm going to describe are what are in the freedom formula in terms of knowing externally. But I'd gone through all these processes - some of them were just simple - some of them were a little more involved - and at the other side, I felt literally like a new man. Like all the fear left. I remember sitting in my office, beforehand, and I was trying to build a business and so when I wasn’t out at work running my martial arts school, I was at home like trying to like figure out how to advertise and do - like I was doing healing work at the time, biodynamic craniosyncral therapy, some Qigong healing, some other types of things. I'd learned a lot over the years. And I had some private students and stuff, so in between those times, you know working from home, I was working nonstop. [0:05:00.9] And every time my wife would like leave home in the afternoon, I'd see her out the window, I'd hear the door close, I'd see her out the window walk to the car and pull out. And my brain would be like, "Now's your chance, Bob." And the computer is in the corner and we used to have a filter on it, but I got so sick of filters because like they just make a man feel broken. I mean, yeah, they cultivate your environment, but it's one thing to put yourself in a padded room and it's another thing to like choose to be in a padded room. One is I'm in a padded room because if they let me out, I'm going to destroy everything. The other is oh, I like how comfortable this padded room is; I'm going to come in here and like do some work. Period. So creating your environment is super powerful. Filters, to just so that you don’t run into stuff - very, very powerful. I have a spam call filter on my phone, an app that I got the other day, that is amazing because it literally answers the phone for me, and like it redirects the call, answers the phone for me, and like answers them in like Samuel Jackson's voice or the voice I recorded was like some Southern lady with lots of cats, and wastes the spam caller's time so that they're not busy spamming everybody else. [0:06:05.6] So, that's a filter, and I like it because it gives me an environment where I don’t have to just, well, okay, spam came in, ignore it. It's not like the spam calls are ruining my day. They're just one more distraction. That's powerful. But she would leave home, and I would be there and there would be a wrestle in my mind, and even though I wasn’t looking at porn, even though I wasn’t going to the behavior, my whole body was like, "Come on, Bob. Just a peek. Just a bite, as they say in like Finding Nemo. Right? When Brucie is trying to just get a little nibble of fish - yes, I have little children. Youngest is 3, oldest is 13, so we have everything from Disney movies to Avengers and Spiderman and stuff in between. Avatar The Last Airbender, that's a family favorite. So, she leaves home and I'm in this wrestle. "Just a bite, Bob. Just a bite." And I'm trying to focus. [0:07:02.1] I got to write some things. I got to do some stuff. And I just can't focus. Like it's really hard. So I'm trying to focus on work and this root issue that I have is creating so much mayhem in my system that there's a literal body urge that's like, dude, we're under poison here. We're under attack. If you don’t do something, something's going to blow. And so the bodily urge to go look at pornography is huge, and I just, it's a hard time to focus. So if you don’t think that your addiction is affecting your work life, you're wrong, and if you think you're good at compartmentalizing, you're wrong - because if you're carrying it with you all the time, it doesn’t matter where you go; it's always with you. It might be louder or softer depending on what you're doing, but it's still there. That's why you have got to find it and handle it, so that it doesn’t create a different behavior that you don’t want later on in life, even if you've chained down the first one. So there I was, fighting it. I was like, I don’t want this. So I go through all these processes and I remember like I finished, then the next week, my wife left home and there was none of it. The fight was gone. [0:08:00.1] The urge was gone. The temptation was gone. The desire was gone. I had learned to delete all of the images from my head. I had learned to disarm the triggers, like literally, "Oh, that's a trigger for me." People own their triggers. It's not a trigger. It's just an event. It's just something happening. I'm the one that decides it's a trigger, and I learned how to undecide that. I created a skill set for it. It's powerful. I called them delete buttons. And so I've done all that stuff and on the other side of it, it's like, I didn't know what to do with my life at first because I was just afraid. Like I wasn’t battling anything. I didn't have to suit up for battle every day. I was just so good, and I loved it, but I didn't know what that meant because I'd never had quite an experience like that before. You know, you go to a bishop or somebody and you do confession, and it feels really good the first time you get it off your chest. It's like a weight, you know, you've had so much poison and you finally vomit up all the poison. Of course, you feel better, but that doesn’t mean you figured out how to not get sick again, and it doesn’t mean you have the skills to handle stuff, like it doesn't mean that at all. [0:09:01.2] You've still got a weak constitution or whatever else, and that's why people going back and confessing to bishops. So, I didn't know what to do with this and I didn't want to get my hopes up. So a week goes by, two weeks go by, I'm driving home from Arizona State University, I'm on the freeway, the US-60. I'm getting off at Gilbert Road, which is, I think Exit 284 or something like that or 184; I can't remember anymore, or maybe it's just 84. Anyway… I got off and I'm about to like stop at the light and as I'm looking over my shoulder, I change lanes, I look back, and this - I don't know how to describe it other than a voice – Neale Donald Walsch who wrote the books, Conversation With God, described his experience as, it was like a voice that rattled, like that went through every cell in his body, but it wasn't audible. And so he called it like a voiceless voice, and I think that's probably the best description I've heard for this. It rattled through my whole system, and I just felt this confirmation that said, "Bob, you're not an addict anymore. [0:10:06.3] Don’t ever introduce yourself as one again." And I go deeper into that in some of the videos that I put up, but that was an experience I had, the inner knowing. "Well, let me check. I am an addict?" And I could just reach it and go, "No, I'm not." "Am I addicted? No, I'm not." And that was the first thing - that was the first level of freedom that I ever had in my entire life - to know that I was free. After just such a short time, just a little bit of work, and all of a sudden, like I'm free. And now people around me are going, "What? Bob! You know that pride goeth before the fall. You're not allowed to declare that you're free. You can't do that because then you're going to get complacent and then you're going to do whatever." And I was like, "I don't know what to tell you. Like, I'm free. That's just the way it goes. It's how it is." Is it arrogant to call a rock a rock? Is it arrogant for a free man to call himself a free man, if that is indeed the truth, the case, the fact? [0:11:01.4] It's not. If it's true, why are we lying about it? "Oh, because I'm afraid it'll come back." Well fear is the problem. So, I'm free and I'm experiencing fear at the moment. Hold on a second - can you be free if you're afraid? No, you can't. Because you're a victim and you're in bondage to your fear. That's not ultimate freedom. If you're afraid of going back to addiction, if you're worried about it, that's not ultimate freedom. If you're worried about other people going back, you're not free yourself. Maybe you're not an addict in the, you know, the common sense of the word, but you're suffering on the inside. So there I was, and I was free.
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.
[0:12:09.0] Now, how on the outside can a person know that they're free? This is what where we're going to dive into the freedom formula. Are you ready?
I've spent a lot of time working on this in my nerd mind, like mathematics. Right? And I've reformulated it a bunch of times. In fact, my business partner and I were just on the phone this morning, kind of testing it and saying, "Look, can we really describe the four things that need to happen, for a person to be free, not just from porn, but from anything. Can we really - because we work with a lot of people with different situations - can we really describe the four things that they need in a really simply mathematical form?" And the first edition, the first rendition that I made like a couple of years ago was turbo minus dam plus ngs equals lc which is turbo, which is the root issue minus everything hold it in place plus a new guidance system is lasting change. [0:13:02.4] Well, I'm going to give you the revised version, okay? Like version 3.0, okay, all in parentheses. (TxSxM)c=PF permanent freedom. T is the root issue; we call it Mr. Turbo; the underlying real big one, yes, that is an acronym, yes it is a goofy acronym. Yes, we try to make recovery and freedom a game and not just some heavy topic, "Okay, I got to go addiction recovery - oh my god." Well, what if it were fun? For crying out loud! Let's have a good time with it. So, have you found and resolved the root issue? This is all in multiplication, right? Except the power of C is an exponent. So if you've found and resolved the root issue, if you haven't, then permanent freedom is a zero. [0:14:00.6] It zeroes everything out. It's not there. And we have seen this over and over and over again. They get levels of freedom, but permanent freedom is scary and they're not totally 100% free because they're either fighting it or worried about it or fearful of it, or they have to constantly be busy to distract themselves from it. They're not totally free. And what do I mean by free, again? Free is the freedom to be yourself and that is enough. That being you is what protects you. Being what - if you want to say it this way - what God made you to be is the thing that protects you.
So first, find and resolve the root issue. In other words, the big lie that you believe that you are that's making you behave and think differently than who you really are - that thing that we talked about in the Mind Episode. I keep referring to that one. It was a good one. There was a lot of good, juicy stuff in there. That was Episode 5, if you're looking for it, guys, I think. So, T - you got to find and resolve the root issue. If you haven't, it zeroes out everything.
Second, S - skills. [0:15:01.0] If you do not have the skills to live in a world that is saturated by pornography or food or alcohol or drugs or anything else, if you can't be in certain environments without it triggering you, if you can't do stuff like that, then you're not totally 100% free or permanently free. The degree to which you have skills is a multiplier. It is. You've got one skill? Multiply it by one. You've got two skills? Multiply it by two. You've got three skills? Multiply it by three. We train our clients in nine skills because they're awesome. Nine different skills. The three core ones and some subsidiary ones and stuff that they really get a good hang of and a mastery of, just so that they can use them to their strengths. Why so many? Because we want to make sure that you get to be you, which is the next piece. So, if you find and resolve the root issue, T, that's a one; you did it. One times, if you have skills, how every many skills you have, boom; you did it.
[0:16:00.8] Then the next one is M - M stands for me, meaning my natural instinctive strengths and gifts. We talked about this in Episode 6, You Are the Way. Natural instinctive strengths, the things that make you tick, if you really understand who you really are and the things that you were born with and the qualities and skills you've developed over time that are great, that are your natural gifts, and you use those as a way, like, and you can modify the skills for those and you use those as a means of aligning your life on the inside and the outside, then it makes it easier because now you have aligned your life to you. You've made a square hole for a square peg and you're no longer trying to cram yourself through a round hole. You're not trying to be somebody else. You'll never, ever be able to be somebody else. So, if you have not understood who you are, to whatever degree you have understood it, only at a level one? Great. Multiply it by one. When you understand who you truly, truly are at the bottom of it, that might be an infinite number, and maybe you're infinite. [0:17:01.7] I can't claim to be at that level. There are things I've discovered about myself that I'm still, that are so sweet and so amazing, but I cannot, I'm not claiming here to be some enlightened being. I'm not Jesus of Nazareth. I'm not the Buddha. I'm not, you know, other people who have been around over the years. I'm not Lao So. I'm not _____ but I've experienced some things. The degree to which you see the real truth about who you are - this isn't a gimmick. It's not a personality test. It's not about, like, oh well, you know, the stars aligned at this point of time when I was born and so therefore…. No. Okay? This is like real truth. If you really understand who you really are, and the deeper you see the truth, the greater the multiplier of freedom. Okay? Especially if you use it. So now you multiply.
The last piece is an exponent. Why is it an exponent? Everything to the power of C. Because C stands for choice. You have to choose it. You have to choose it, not just with your lips, but with your whole soul - your mind, your body, your heart. [0:18:03.9] That's a little harder. I remember like, a little while ago, I was with a coach of mine because I still pay and hire coaches to really help me out in places where I have blind spots. And he took me through an experience and helped me see like some things that I really deeply wanted to do in life. He said, "Well, why don't you choose it?" And I said, "My mind wants to, but body is like ugghhhh." He said, "Well, what would it take for your body to choose it?" And in that moment, at first I wanted to say, "Well, I'd have to know it would all be okay." But then I realized that if I thought back over my life, the things that I just did, the only two requirements were that I was excited about it and really wanted to do it. And the second one was that I didn't think about it and I just went and did it. And as soon as I didn't think about and just went and did it, oh my gosh - massive amazing results. Huge things happened and sometimes it didn't pan out, but I made a memory in the process. And it helped me to see that the choice had to be made in my own unique way. [0:19:01.1] But ultimately, it has to be your whole self, not just your lips saying "I choose it," not just your mind, like yeah, that makes sense, yeah, I'm going to do this. But an inner choosing and for me, that happened in a couple of stages. At first, it was choosing to stop the behavior of pornography because it was, I hit rock bottom, and there was so much pain, and I didn't want to wreck my kids for the rest of my life. I didn't want to sit there and be not present as a father. I didn't want to lose them. My wife was going to leave and she had every right to do it. It was not her fault that I showed up that way, and so I was staring down that pain, and then on top of that pain, like all of the other self-loathing and stuff that was going on. I chose, I chose I'm not going back to porn, and after doing a bunch of work and figuring things out, nowadays, my whole body is like if it becomes, if somebody is like hey, look, there's porn. People send it to me sometimes, or I encounter it, you know, in different places, and like my whole body is like "Why? No. We did so much work to get here. That is not even worth it." [0:20:00.3] And you know, my, Jasmine and I, we see these, we see these anniversary posts on Facebook sometimes where people are, they're like you know, "Oh, I love my honey, we have been through so much, the ups and the downs, the thick and the thin, and if I had to do it all over again, I would." And I hate those posts because for years, I was like, "Ewwww… I don't know. I don’t think I would." And then I remember one night when my wife looked at me and she's like, "I don’t think I would do it. I mean, knowing how painful that was and what I had to go through? I wouldn’t choose to do it again." And I was like, "Thank you. Me neither." That's a choice. I wouldn’t choose it again. That's so powerful and empowering. Have I learned a lot on the way? Yes. Could I have learned that by having a powerful, beautiful life instead of an ugly one? Probably. Anybody who thinks that you have to be miserable in order to learn a lesson just hasn’t figured out how to learn a lesson when you're being positive. That you should cross-stitch on your pillow. Anyway… so there I was, and I made the choice of first to stop and then later on I got so fed up with nobody having an answer about how to be free from all the turmoil inside, that I finally made the choice - I'm going to figure this out, and that was a choice I made. [0:21:09.9] And I continue to make choices in my life to bring me to deeper and deeper levels of freedom. Sometimes that involves hiring someone to help me. Sometimes at great expense. Sometimes it involves going to an event or doing something or accomplishing something. Either way, I have to make the choice. Here's the thing: If you don’t choose out, and what's cool is we can orchestrate the choice; there's a number of ways to orchestrate it so that all parts of you finally get up and choose, if you want it. But if you don’t choose out, then it doesn’t matter if you find the root issue. If the exponent is a zero, then it zeroes out the work you've done. If you don’t choose out, it doesn’t matter if you have the skills. You won't do it. If you don’t choose out, it doesn’t matter how well you understand who you are. You won't do it. The cool thing is, when you get the skills, you have a greater capacity to choose out. When you understand who you really are underneath it all, and not these messed up ideas you have about yourself, you have a greater capacity to choose out. [0:22:03.9] When you understand the root issue and the beauty and truth underneath it that has been hiding all that time and buried, you have a greater capacity to choose out.
So they all work together, and that, if there is anything positive in any of those categories, in all of them, then you start to experience permanent freedom. So what's cool is that's an external way of measuring - have I found and resolved the root issue? Have I developed the skills to be able to live in a world inundated by this stuff and not have it affect me and lead me back? Have I understood who I really am so that, so that, I can live my life and just be me, and that's what protects me, and have I chosen to leave all the other stuff behind by building a life so powerful that there's no room for it anymore? And if you do those, especially that last one, it exponentially improves how much permanent freedom you can really get. [0:23:00.6] Even if it's only a one in every category, still, permanent freedom starts to show. So that's an external measure. The internal measure? Can I just reach inside, feel myself, feel my heart, feel where I'm at, and know? And that's unique to everybody. You have to calibrate that to you and to how you can know and the way that you're going to identify that. So, hopefully this helps.
What we're trying to help you see is, like in addiction, in this whole process, there is a way to know, and it's not well, one day God's going to come down from heaven and declare something to me. Nope. That can happen. But if you have to rely on that, you're a victim to it. And why not get free earlier? What if you could just free earlier and faster and then when that comes, it's just a bonus. It isn't well, it's so many days from addiction. I know people who have been done with addiction for three days, four days, and are totally changed people and have been free since then. [0:24:00.3] And I know people who have been "done with their addiction" for like 20 years and they're still fighting it. Freedom is not a measure of distance from last behavioral problem. Freedom is a measure of whether you've done the work to really shift and become free, so that you know it on the inside, but you can also measure it on the outside, what we like call the freedom formula. So today, just consider that. As you're leaving today, how does this apply to whatever you're dealing with? You may not be dealing with addiction. For you, it may be, you know, business struggles and stuff. Well, have you found and resolved the root issue? Have you developed the skill set? In business, there are skills, so that you can live in that world and not have it affect you. Right? Have you figured out who you are so that you can adapt it to who you are, and have you made the choice? If so, permanent freedom in business. If you're struggling with money stuff, have you understood the root issue? Have you developed the money skills that you need? Then, have you understood how you are and how you operate, so that you can make it seamless and easy? And have you chosen freedom? [0:25:00.6] Chosen to live in a different way? If so, permanent financial freedom. With addiction, have you found the root of all the things that you're struggling with? The freedom formula is there to help you understand what is needed so that you can walk free and instead of always worrying about the monkey on your shoulder, you can actually just go live a powerful life without ever having to worry about it coming back. That's a wrap for today. A little long today. Hopefully, it was powerful for you. We'll talk to you next time.
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 podcasts from, and while you're at it, give us a rating and a review. It'll help us keep delivering great stuff to you, and plus, it's just nice to be nice.
This is ThePodcastFactory.com
