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. We're on Episode 10, rocking our way through some killer concepts and some ideas that I've discovered along the way. Make sure you subscribe, share it with your friends. If any of this has helped you, share it all over the place - on Facebook and everything else. The key here is to help other people become alive and free, in whatever way we can do it. And obviously, if you need help with that, you can always reach out to us and we'll help you out with that.
[0:01:04.0] So today, we're going to talk about taking the leap, and what that means exactly. So, a few years ago, my family and I, we went to Hawaii. My wife's grandmother lives there on Oahu, and so we went to go visit. It was like her 90-some-odd birthday, 91st birthday or more; I can't remember, or maybe it was just her 90th birthday. And so we went there and we had this big family shindig and while we were there, of course we took the kids everywhere, and I highly recommend not taking six children on a flight like that with several layovers and all that other good jazz. That was a zoo. So we get there and there's a couple of days where - like one beautiful thing about my wife is that when we're doing vacations, she doesn’t schedule in every minute so it's like work, you know. Like there's times it's just downtime, where you're just chilling. So we had some downtime and she was planning on going to a different place. I think she was going to go to Marukai, the Asian Market down there, and I, you know, wasn’t in the mood, didn't really want to go. [0:02:01.0] And I have wanted to go skydiving for a long time. And we were looking up, and I think it was on like Groupon or something, there was some coupon to go skydiving for like 125 bucks or 150 bucks or something, just off the coast. And I was like, "Well, sweet." So we took advantage of it. We arranged everything. They dropped me off at the hotel in the morning and I spent several hours going out, drive into the field, sitting there waiting for my turn to go up in the plane, to go out and everything else. So, they of course briefed me on safety. We strap into the parachute. The plane comes. I go in and this girl comes into the plane. She was going to do a hop and pop. I have no idea what a hop and pop is. And so I was like, "Okay, cool." And she obviously looks like qualified and she doesn’t have another human being that's strapped to her back like I did, and so he's sitting behind me. He's got his, like, altimeter on his wrist and he's showing me, you know, and he's all prepped and ready and he's told me about everything that's going to happen, and you know, I already paid for it, so I got to go. [0:03:02.5] And so I'm in there. I'm in the plane. I'm not super nervous, you know, kind of the nervousness and excitement that you just get from like, "Oh, something's going to happen." Not like super nervous. So the plane starts steeply climbing after we get up and we're circling around, and we're in the middle of these steep climbs and I see one of the guys in the plane nod his head and then the girl, who was going to do a hop and pop, crouches over toward the door. The plane is not level, folks. It's literally at an angle. The door opens. You got the wind coming in. And you've got them talking to each other in some kind of weird bird code - I don't know what they're saying - and so then she closes the door and while we're in this steep turning climb, she just jumps out the window, pulls the parachute right away. And I'm like, "Oh, crap! I'm next." Because I was like closest to the door, and my heart starts hammering in my chest, and I'm like, yeeh, because I can look down and I can still see people. [0:04:03.3] I think we're going to like 12,000 feet, folks. I can still see people, and I can see cars and they do not look 12,000 feet away. And so, I'm starting to freak out a little bit. My legs are starting to go numb, and I was like, "Okay. Are we next?" And I didn't say it, obviously, loud enough for my guy, so I start scooting forward and he like taps me and he points to his wrist and shows the altimeter; it's 4000 feet. And I was like, "Okay. So how high are we going?" And I kind of say it kind of loud, and he says, "We're going to go up to 12." And I was like, "Cool." And we ended up going up to like 14.4 or 15,000 feet, and then, okay, now… now they get all the people ready. Some of them had hired a cameraman; I didn't want to hire a cameraman. I didn't want one. Anyway… so, they hire a cameraman, they go down. Finally, I get ready and I go to… these are people like hanging off the edge of an airplane at 15,000 feet, like, yeah, I'll just get outside on the wing, and I'll wait for you guys to jump and I'll jump with you, by a propeller. [0:05:06.1] Holy cow, guys. I was like, this is normal for them; okay, cool. So I get up and he's like, "Okay." He taught me in the beginning, we're just going to go 1, 2, 3. So I get up right up to the edge, and everything in my body is screaming at me, "Don't do it! Don't do it! Don’t do it! What are you - an idiot?" But we go, "1, 2," and I had already committed, so I just took the leap. And guess what? As soon as we jump out, he rolls, the instructor that's attached to me, rolls me on my back so I can see the plane disappearing in the distance and I can't even see the ground. And then he rolls over the other way and he tells me to spread my hands, and I'm looking down at the ground, just kind of having a good time, and ehhhh, it was fine. No big deal. But I was still kind of like, okay, I'm just handling things. He was like, "You can look up and look around." Don't ever do this, guys. That's my suggestion. I looked up, like I was looking across the clouds. [0:06:02.0] Don’t get me wrong, the view was amazing, but if you're going through clouds with your nose pointed that direction, it's like sucking water up into your nose. Water vapor aka clouds still stings, folks. Holy cow. So there I am, just floating, you know, the clothing is flapping, falling down, he's going to talk to me more once we get stable, pulls the chute. Total silence. And then at that point, you know, he gives me a chance to play around with some of the rings. We do some spins. We fly around a little bit. He takes the reins as we go down. Landing is easy. No. Big. Deal. Taking the leap.
Before I made the decision, it was an exciting idea. I really wanted to do it. Right on the edge, everything in me wanted to stop. Everything in me wanted to turn around and go back because it said, "This isn't wise. You're going to die. This is not going to work. [0:07:01.3] I've never been in here before. You're going to be that one guy who it doesn’t work for." And everything in me wanted to stop. But because I had put things in place to make me go through with the decision I had already made, I leapt. And what I got on the other side was an amazing experience with a little bit of stinging nose, and a wonderful thrill. And it was so great that I was able to skydive over a tropical island instead of just like barren desert in Phoenix, Arizona, where I was living at the time. It was an amazing experience. And it just showed me some things. But I want you guys to think about that. There are so many things that we, that I see, myself and other people, we step up to it and we say, "I want this in my life." We say, "I'm going to do whatever it takes. I'm committing to this. I'm going to go." And then we go and we get right to the edge and we talk ourselves out of it because it's too expensive and I'm not sure if I'm going to make something else work because my wife won't like it if I do it or my friends won't like me if I do it, because I don’t have enough time and I really can't fit it into my schedule, because of all the different reasons - oh, it's probably not going to work anyway; I'll probably die. [0:08:09.8] Everything in our system shows up, and says, "Don’t do it, don't do it, don’t do it." And so we back off and we don’t take the leap and what happens is we miss the experience on the other side, and then, "Oh, maybe I'll do it later. Oh, maybe I'll do it later. Oh, maybe I'll do it later." And we don’t do it. It's the fear of the unknown. Why would you fear the unknown? Because, well right now, I know how to handle my life. The variables are minimal and I know that I'll be able to survive. But if you introduce something new, I might die. This goes as much as nutritional supplements as it does for skydiving. It goes as much for an addiction recovery program as it does for skydiving. It goes for as much as like a new business coaching thing as it does for skydiving. It is everywhere in your life. Small things and huge things. [0:09:00.4] When you encounter the unknown, suddenly, everything in you says, "I might die. My reputation might die. People might hate me. My marriage might die. My finances might die. My bank account might die. My, gee, I don't know, my puppy might die. Like, anything could happen." And this fear of the unknown is equated with the fear of death.
You didn't have that fear when you were a kid. As a baby, you just, everything that showed up, you just dealt with. But somewhere along the line, you and I developed this thing in us that said, "Well, whatever I don’t know might kill me, and priority #1 is survival, and the best thing I can do is I would rather preserve the status quo than risk losing that and not getting something back." Or as the phrase says, "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." Never mind that the bird itself is poisoned, sickly, missing a bunch of feathers and was half eaten by a cat. Honestly. [0:10:00.2] People get on the phone and they're dealing with addiction, and we're sitting there talking to them and they're just like, "Yeah, yeah, I know. But like, yeah, I think I'll do it on my own." They've been doing on their own for like 10 years or 15 years, and they still want to do it on their own. I did this, all the time - "I want to do it on my own." Because why? Because well, what if I step into it and it doesn’t work? Well, then it doesn’t work. It's not like you're in a worse spot than you are now. "But I know, but then I'll feel bad about it because like I'll have wasted time or effort or money or something on trying to make it work and I'll feel bad about it." It's the unknown. The no guarantees. And this is wide-rampant all over the world in the coaching industry and the product industry. I'm sorry; I'm moving a chair here. And all these other industries, there's guarantees, 30-day guarantee, 60-day guarantee - "I'm going to guarantee that this will work or your money back." And we're robbing people of the opportunity of taking the leap. We’re flying them up in an airplane at 15,000 feet, and then we're like putting them in a like parachute kind of like big ole bubble container and then don’t, they can't even feel the wind on their face anymore because they're floating down in an encapsulated bubble. [0:11:09.1] And the flight instructor is attached to the bubble - I don't know. Like we're just literally insulating people from life. Life itself is unknown. I could walk out of here and get hit by a bus or a meteor tomorrow or I could walk out of here and like, I don't know, like make a million bucks or you know, meet a stranger who I, you know, never met before and could become my best friend. Like, there's so much unknown in life, but we run away from it all the time because when we think about it, our thinking says we might die if we embrace something new. So we spend time shielding ourselves, building houses and neighborhoods and making these neighborhoods have covenants and rules so that everything stays kind of the same, and so that I can have life the way that I want it and there's no surprises and I'm good and I'm safe and I never get to go skydiving and have water vapor up my nose. [0:12:01.2] Some of you don’t want that. I get it. But, we're afraid of the unknown.
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.
Now, let's turn this on its head. For 18 years I was stuck inside of a pornography addiction. Before that, I was video gaming and during that, I was video gaming and was using that to cope with things. I was getting angry at people. I was arguing needlessly. I was wasting time in a variety of areas, procrastinating, all kinds of other stuff. [0:13:01.4] And because I was afraid of the unknown, to a certain extent - I had less fear of that than some people, but not in all areas of life, so I guess it just depends on what area of life we're talking about. Because I was afraid of the unknown, of what it would be like to actually come out and admit that I had a problem, I stayed hidden and because I kept the problem hidden, it festered. And when I finally let the problem out, I only let it out in small doses because I was afraid of people finding out. And then when people found out and I didn't die, then like I was still kind of a little bit - and the people that found out were like my wife and my dad; that was it - and my bishop and you know, I don’t even think I had a close friend, a close friend at one point, like slowly, people found out. It was in a 12-step meeting when I went into a 12-step meeting. But I let things out in doses, and I wasn’t really super real with everything that had happened with me, and because I was afraid people would look at me differently and I would lose friends or people would leave me and I would lose my marriage and I would lose… all of these future stories that I had created, horror stories, that I was afraid of, if this thing happened. [0:14:14.2] Because there's no guarantees. It's totally unknown. And because of that, I kept the story in for a long time, and it festered. I kept the pain in for a long time, and it festered. Afraid of the unknown. Totally afraid, wishing for a better life but my wishing for a better life was based on the life I had. Well, if I had a better life, it would be - let me look at the life I have and let me dress it up a little bit, and that's it. Wishing, wishing, but really afraid of the unknown - completely. And because I was afraid of the unknown, I kept it in. Then it got to a point where I was afraid of the known: "Well, everybody tells me I'm going to be dealing with this for the rest of my life and I don’t want that anymore," and at that point, I was willing to just go. And I cut off things. [0:15:00.6] And I went. Right? I cut off listening to certain people, listening to people who were telling me I was going to be stuck forever, and I just followed what was happening. There was no guarantee. And some of the ideas were really bad. As I mentioned before, I don’t recommend the trial and error approach, if you can avoid it, because - hey, it's a hard road. But I had to do it because I was now afraid of staying in the known. When my fear changed, I went and embraced the unknown. So how do you get yourself to do that?
Well, there's this story about the old Greeks that burned their boats when they went to go attack the Trojans. Captains burned all the boats so that there was no retreat, so none of the Greeks had to fight to get into the city of Troy, and eventually, they did and ransacked the city and all this other stuff. They burned the boats. And as admirable as that is, you can conjure that type of and concoct that type of experience for you, but ultimately what it means is you put something in place that makes it so that when you step to the edge and are ready to take the leap, it keeps you taking the leap, instead of allowing the mess of your mind to keep you back in the mess that it had created. [0:16:08.3] It doesn’t want you to leave the mess; the mess is comfortable. You can have a messy room that's comfortable, but it isn't conducive to certain things. It might actually be conducive to certain bacteria and ill health - who knows. So you put certain things in place. In skydiving, that was the instructor who was just taking me through the paces. This is why people pay coaches, and handsomely too. You know, I've seen coaches, like people hire Tony Robbins for like a couple of million dollars an hour, just for his expertise because he can get them to take the leap that they cannot take, that they don’t know how to take. Right? Same deal. So this is like the same thing. I had a flight instructor that I had paid to be able to get me to just take the leap that I knew I wanted to take, but I didn't know how.
When we moved to Utah, we moved here last July, the year before my wife and I had been, we had been in Mesa, Arizona - it's a great area. [0:17:01.1] We loved the people, some of the people there that we have met. But our son was getting to junior high age, and we didn't want him to go to the junior high or the high schools because there was a lot of crack cocaine in the high schools and heroin central, all this other stuff. Right? And we just didn't want that environment. My wife kept saying, "We need to move. We need to move." But I wasn’t like on the move. And so finally, I was like, "Fine, let's just decide we're going to move and do it." Now, this, my parents, they love me but I drive them batty. Let's face it. Right? They're just like, "Well, what are you going to do? Do you have a job lined up?" "No." Do you have whatever, but we decided and we told our employment, both of us were teaching at Arizona State University, we're like yeah, we're not going to be here next semester. We were already on for the spring one, the winter/spring kind of semester. So after that, we're done. So we burned the boats. One way or another, we're going to move. I didn't have a job lined up. I still hadn’t gotten my business off the ground. We were still trying to figure things out, but it got to the point where I was like, "Look - we're moving, one way or another. [0:18:00.0] So I got 4-1/2, 5 months to figure it out, and if it doesn’t work out, we'll figure something else out. And we'll just do it." And that doesn’t work for everybody. I'm not saying to be like that. Some people need to plan things out in a different way. But we just had to go. So we made the decision and we put things in place that didn't let us back off, meaning we didn't actually have employment if we stayed. We had already quit. And so we made the leap, and because of that, I was able to focus all my energies on the thing at hand, instead of on all my worries about it, and I made it work, and we made it work in some beautiful ways. And we figured things out and we have helped a lot of people, just because we made the leap and we put some things in place.
When I was ready to hire certain coaches, what I put in place was I already had decided I was going to work with them before I got on the phone call, because I knew they were going to ask me for a price - hey it's going to be 15,000; hey, it's going to be 40,000; hey, it's going to be whatever they asked. I know they're going to put a price on it and I know - I watched them - I felt it - I was like, I know I need this guy's help. [0:19:01.2] I don't know how I know, but I just know that I need this guy's help, and so I decided and I put some things in place beforehand. For me, it was like, "Look, if I get on a call with him, it means like, I'm ready to go." That was, for me, it. So then I don’t have to worry about high-pressure sales because I already know I'm ready, unless something weird happens on the phone call, in which case I'll be like, ehhh, no. That happened to me the other day when I was on a phone call - I was like, ehhhh, no. Something weird happened. But other than that, I've made the decision beforehand, and because I put that in place and I made the decision before I go, it allows me to take the leap, even if it scares me and they drop some number that's going to be like, oh, it's going to be 15 grand for you to continue coaching with us or whatnot. These are people that are amazing in business. They really understand it. They understand things about money and corporations and whatnot that I don’t get. They know how to train teams. Like, I've never done that before. Imagine me just trying to like skydive on my own. I could YouTube it, but jumping out of a plane on my own, I might not actually jump out. And if I did, I might be freaking out and I might have packed the parachute wrong, and I might have done all kinds of other things wrong, and who knows - there's no guarantee when you do it on your own. [0:20:04.9] None. But following a proven process, hiring someone who can help me, there's a guarantee thing. There's more of a guarantee than doing it on my own. So I put things in place to make it happen. And here's the beauty about facing the unknown, guys, and this is why I do it: Because if it's truly unknown, it means you've never experienced it before, and if you're struggling in your life, if you're stuck, if there's something that you're trying to get away from, that's painful, whether it's addiction or anything else, that's something you know and if you want to experience something totally new - freedom - it means the best place to be is where you don’t know because that means something totally new is possible. So today, as you head out and this week, as you're considering things and you're looking at what is known and what is unknown and how you're avoiding risk in certain areas. [0:21:00.1] And I'm not saying don’t be wise - but if you truly desire something in your life, the best place to be is where you don’t know, where there aren't any guarantees, and where you step into something totally new. Alright, guys. Have a good one. We will see you next time.
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