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. [00:27.9]
Bob: And welcome back to another episode of the live and free podcast. You know today I'm going to help you not get duped anymore with everything that's been going on in the world recently with pandemics and viruses and and conspiracy theories and pundits and economists and everybody making their projections, it's really easy to get overwhelmed by data and I'm going to share with you something today that's going to help radically change how you look at information that's coming and give you the ability to be more free of its effects. Because let's be honest, you and I both every day we're scrolling through Facebook or on our news feed or Instagram or all these other places and there's advertisements there and there's marketers there that are trying and with good intention for sure to better your life, but they're doing it in a way that shows you only a piece of the puzzle. [01:22.8]
And that doesn't always work in your favor even though they're trying to do something beneficial for you, at least a lot of them are. And so what I want to share with you is something that happened with me many, many moons ago, back when I was, you know, in college and share with you a way of looking at information that will help you be free from the effects that it's going to have on your emotions so that you can make clearer and clear decisions and run less of a risk of being duped or conned or make a buying decision that's maybe not the best, but it's not just buying decisions. We're talking about research decisions about maybe religion and beliefs that you have. We're talking about decisions about relationships and partners that you might have. We're talking about decisions about parenting that you might make based on information that's coming in. [02:08.8]
We're talking about decisions about political ideas. Any decision that you have to make, it's really easy. And I know, cause I was a champion chameleon, I'd get swayed one side and then another side all the time. So it's really easy to get a bunch of new information come at you that feels so true because of the way it was presented. And then you go in, you make a decision off of it only to later have some regrets. And would you like to keep having regrets? I wouldn't! So here we go, let's dive in. All right, here's the scoop. Back when I was a sophomore in college, a sophomore, maybe I was a junior in college, I w I was really young in my college career and I took six years to go through college. So all of you who did it in four kudos! Congratulations! [02:53.8]
I spent those six years on a dance ensemble touring around the country and Europe and other parts of the world. I was I was doing artwork on the side, that was what I was studying at the time and I was having every other opportunity I could have. So I spent a long time in college and didn't, didn't do it quickly. Anyway, so early on in my college career, my roommate comes in, he's like, Hey, there's this great class that I want that I want to grab now. I was going to Brigham Young university, this is obviously a university that is run by the Mormon church now that they're being adamant that they're calling it the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, either way that you know it by. And so I was attending there at Brigham Young University and there was this class called learning and teaching in the latter days. And it was, it was set up to be a class that was meant to try and recreate this really highly advanced learning environment that supposedly happened in the early days of, of the Mormon Church history. Okay, called the school of the prophets, if any of you are aware of that. [03:52.3]
And so this teacher, a guy by the name of Dylan Inoue was an elder or sort of Japanese fellow that had studied all kinds of learning psychology, had studied the school of the prophets things for a while, had studied under a guy by the name of Gong, Walter Gong, I think, who's an incredible innovator, when it came to education. And the first few iterations of this class they had focused on speed reading, speed reading, because the more information you can take in then the more information you have to draw from to make your conclusions. Well, they emphasize speed reading, but when we got in, this was the first time that they said, you know what? We're going to switch gears here. I highly recommend you learn speed reading, but what we're really going to do is we're going to teach you how to listen to whatever is being presented to you in a way that gives you complete freedom to see what's really going on. And they expanded this thing called the fourfold. Now I'm going to let you know what that is. So if you are listening to this on the road, try and make some mental notes, if you have a piece of paper you're going to watch, jot one to jot down what these four fold things are cause these four things are going to help you look at information really, really differently. [04:57.9]
So our, the class was set up where every week we had one book to read and these books ranged from a huge variety of topics. They ranged from like literary criticism too, like dark matter and physics and the birth of the universe to evolution, to psychological studies to any like a whole bunch of different things that we pulled in and interpersonal relationship stuff and, and counseling and, and so he grabbed a wide array of topics. We brought them in, we read all these books and every week, and I'll be honest, I did not pick up speed reading. So I read as much as I could every week of these books and skimmed as much as I could have the rest in the middle of my other program classes, I still haven't learned speed reading; so there's that. Anyway, and then the following week we would be, we would get the book. Then the following week we'd show up to class and there would be a lecturer on that topic and our job was to listen to the lecturer in such a way that we could capture as much as possible of what they were saying right there in the moment and not forget any of it. [06:02.7]
Now I'll tell you that process maybe in another podcast and I'll lay that out for you how to capture the information in such a way because to be honest, like when somebody's talking to you, it's really easy to lose anywhere from 40 to 60 even 80% of the information unless you really know how to listen to some of the key ways this has set up and it's built along the fourfold, but I'll show you more so that you don't lose information. And if you want a really good memory, that also allows for a certain amount of freedom, freedom to connect ideas for you, freedom to see patterns that you wouldn't normally see. And this is one of the main ways that I finally found my way out of addiction because I was able to find it and cross-connect ideas that I had bangling around in my brain cause I developed a little bit of memory. Okay. [06:46.5]
But when we don't want to be duped by something, what's more important to understand is the structure of how this stuff is captured, right? And then I can go into detail at another time. Here's the thing, most people even me, like you're listening to me right now and you're listening and most people are listening to like what's the main idea that he's trying to put across? Now the main idea is one very important thing to understand. Most people don't refine this further, but the main idea is one very, very important thing to understand because if you don't know what the main idea of what they were saying, then you're not going to grab anything that they're saying anyway and you're just going to be swayed by you know, an anecdotal story that they told and you'll feel really good about it and you won't really know what it was that they were trying to say, what the main points they were trying to say. [07:30.4]
So you're listening to me right now and you're trying to grab the main point. If you caught it at the beginning, the main point is that I'm going to teach you how to capture or listen in a very, very particular way. Now the second piece to that is supporting evidence. Now most people will look, listen for a main idea. Some of those people will listen for supporting evidence, meaning like here's his main stream of thought. This is the main idea is putting on and here's the evidence he put up to back this. And if you have that level of awareness, that level of clarity, what happens is that you you end up being able to like sift through and see if the evidence really supports the idea that they're sharing. It's really easy to get sucked into rhetoric and semantics and definitions and really flowery language. And I know sometimes I use flowery language and miss the idea that someone will give evidence for something that doesn't actually support it. [08:29.4]
So if you have the ability to listen to what somebody's saying and then turn around and see if the evidence that they gave to support it really actually supports that in a really logical, clear way or a demonstrable way because not everything happens by logic, you know, flip the light switch, it goes on. Cool. Let me go check it and you can flip the light switch and see if it goes on. And if it does, cool. But the final two pieces of the fourfold, so piece three is the main idea and piece four, they are the supporting evidence. And I gave those first because those are the ones you are more aware of. So if you're on your paper writing notes, you're going to do like a quadrant system. You'll draw a line down the middle and you'll draw a line down the across the side. And just to give you these categories on the bottom part of that quadrant on the left side is main ideas. Now if I have several main ideas going through this, then you're going to write those down. And then on the right hand side you're going to write down what the supporting evidence is, right? [09:30.2]
So on a general piece of paper, I always divided it into when I was taking notes, the left side being here's the main idea and the right side and if I could hear it, cause sometimes they don't say it, so you have to deduce what their main point is in a given moment. Put that on the left and then on the right hand side I would start listing out the evidences or stories or arguments they were making to support that idea and sometimes I'd have to go back and edit. So my note taking papers would look very, very different than most people's note taking papers. But the first two are the key ones. Now pause. If you were taking notes on this right now, you would have main ideas. One, there are two missing, like if you were to deduce this into notes, there are two missing things that people are not looking for that are making it so that they get duped, right? Supporting evidence of this one, I gave an anecdote of my story going into this class and how I learned from this person Dylan Inoue a method of taking notes or listening that would allow me to be able to find those two things. [10:41.5]
Second bit of evidence supporting this, is that most people are aware of two other ones, right? This could also be a main idea, but it's a minor point, right? Most people are aware of two other ones, main ideas and a supporting evidence and if you can support those, you can check them. So that would be one evidence, right? If you can actually see what their supporting evidence, you can check it. If you can't see what their supporting evidence is, then there's no way to check it and see if it's actually valid. So that's a simple example of taking notes in this way.
If you or someone you know is looking to drop the F-bomb of “Freedom” in their life, whether that's from past trauma, depression, anxiety, addiction, or any other host of emotional and personal struggles, but they just don't know how or wants some help doing it. Head on over to thefreedomspecialist.com/feelbetternow and check out some of the things we've got in store for you or book a call so we can look at your unique situation and get you the help that you're looking for. [11:42.2]
Now let's go address what the first two are. The first two are the ones that are behind the scenes, they're hidden in the background, they aren't explicitly stated sometimes. Sometimes they are, for instance, I'll give, I'll get to one of them in a second, but they aren't explicitly stated. And the first two are Purpose and Values. So number two, we're going backwards, right? Number two would be the purpose. Meaning what is the intended purpose? What is the final outcome that the person is trying to get out of doing this? For instance, in general conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, they have a bunch of people get up and they're giving talks, right? So this is the apostles of that church getting up and they're giving talks every six months to people and their stated purpose within a given talk, their general purpose might be to inspire people to pay tightly. [12:40.3]
It might be to build their faith in Joseph Smith. It might be something else. Now in a political convention or a political rally where a president Trump is getting up and he's giving a speech that's like a state of the union speech, right? Or he's giving a speech with regard to its coronavirus. What is his final outcome or final purpose? You have to listen to deduce it. Most people won't say, and to be honest, most people don't have a clearly defined purpose. Hint, hint: if you're going to teach somebody something, define your purpose first because when you do that, what happens is now you can make better decisions about what to put in it. So if you're going to give a presentation at a business meeting, what is the final outcome that you want and then you can test every piece of material against that. Will this help that final outcome? [13:33.1]
You'll be a better writer, a better speaker, a better communicator all around. This is what marketers do. Marketers are like, look, my purpose is to get a person to join my email list or to sell to buy my course or to get on the phone a phone with me and some of you have gotten on a phone with me and that's my purpose, right? And so everything I'm putting in there is driving toward that purpose and anything that detracts from that purpose necessarily, I edit, right? This is where you and I get duped cause people often edit out things that aren't super helpful. One of the reasons I put screenshots of case studies on my website, on my, on our case studies page is because then you can see, Hey look, that was an actual email that came. Yes, I'll blur out their names or personal data and information that I don't want to reveal just to protect that person's identity and stuff. [14:23.4]
But you see a screenshot so you can say, okay; this was actually an email that was sent. This was actually, you know, a Voxer message that was sent or a text message that was sent and it's not just a, Oh yeah, this person just typed up some testimonials and edited out what they wanted to edit out, cause sometimes people edit out some serious things, both in doctrinal discussions, people edit out stuff. And like in church, in political discussions, in scientific discussion, everywhere people edit things if it doesn't serve their purpose. Its natural, it's human nature and it doesn't make it bad or good. You and I both know that you've had a moment where you've had to confront your significant other and they've asked you a question and you've conveniently edited your response. So that the only things that they needed to know or were going to be helpful were revealed. [15:11.1]
So that's an important thing to note. Look through everything I've written. Sometimes the purpose is I just want to share and so that's going to be harder to determine, but sometimes the purpose is, yeah, I want, I want you to get on the phone, or sometimes it's, look, I would really like to show you how powerful this amazing course that I put together is like our Choose your Own Emotion Course. If you haven't gotten it yet, go to Libertate, thefreedomspecialist.com/feelbetternow. Literally right now it is, it's a really cheap way we've put together to help people finally get ahold of their emotions without needing to invest in a big coaching program and a lot of work, especially since a lot of people don't need huge amounts of coaching sometimes, or they're not dealing with an addiction or a depression or something major, they're just, they just want a little bit of help. [15:57.5]
And so if you haven't done that, go do that. Right? But if I'm writing that the stuff on that webpage, obviously my purpose is to drive you somewhere, and so that is important for you to know so that you can understand, okay, yeah, he's sharing this because he wants me to see the value in this and that'll help you piece through stuff. Now maybe that hurts my sales of that course. Sure. Maybe. Maybe it does. Maybe it doesn't. Maybe it helps you see that I'm actually being real on that page. Any number of things, right,? But it's, it's good to note. Once you know a person's purpose, it's easy to see through their main points and their main ideas. What have they left out of their main points? What did they left out of their supporting evidence and it'll help you see through the mist and the glamour and and the spell of words we talked about a couple of weeks ago. [16:43.4]
The spell of words that they've woven that is kind of pushing you in a certain direction to do what they want to do. When you can see that that's their purpose, you automatically get a little bit more power. Hint, hint, pro tip: What is your purpose for talking yourself into and out of things? What is your purpose for having angry explosions on people? What are you trying to accomplish? When you can discover what it is that you're trying to accomplish and how all of your emotional outbursts and all of your maybe compulsive behaviors and all of your habits and all of your celebrations are driving you towards something and you can discover what purpose you're actually after. Man, that's going to give you some power in your life. [17:23.1]
Okay, last one. Values. Values. That means what are the values, the top values of the person talking? For instance, obviously I value freedom and I value total autonomy, personal, individual that doesn't depend on anything else for a crutch. So if those are my values and then I'm getting up to talk about let's say 12 step programs and I get up to talk about 12 step programs, my purpose in that is going to be informed by my values, which is or or let me do it this way. My purpose in talking about maybe freedom from addiction for instance, or freedom from anxiety and depression is going to be, Hey, I'm going to teach you this and it's going to be informed by, I'm going to teach this to you in a way that promotes freedom, that is not dependent on people, on things, on behaviors, on activities, or anything else that you just become freedom and so you don't have to sit there and work to maintain it because it's just who you are now. [18:21.0]
And so as a result, I'm going to give you a lesson of purpose. My purpose is going to be to teach you about that kind of freedom. My main points may be, Hey look, this is what's needed for that kind of freedom. And some of my supporting evidence might call upon 12 step programs, which tell you, Hey, in order for you to maintain freedom, you have to go be sponsoring other people with this. Or you need to be going to meetings the rest of your life. Now that conflicts with my values. So can you see how, and it doesn't conflict with other people's values. So I'm not saying that's bad. A lot of people get a lot of benefit out of saying, look, I just want a brotherhood I can go to where I feel like I'm a part of it and I know, look, I'm going to have to go there the rest of my life, but this is what keeps me safe. [19:01.5]
Cool. That is not my value. I didn't want that at all. I wanted total freedom. Freedom from past traumas, freedom from negative thought processes and temptations and everything instead of, Oh yeah, I'm going to have to fight it through the rest of my life. That's what I wanted. Those were my values and I admit that fully. So if I'm going to use 12 step programs as a piece of evidence inside of my argument about what freedom really is, it's probably going to be, it's boring. It's probably going to sound negative. Even if I don't, I'm not trying to say it's a bad thing, but from my perspective it's going to sound negative. Anything that depends, Oh where you always have to be connecting with other people all the time. Oh, well you need to work in a certain environment. Oh you, you need to go to these meetings all the time. Oh, you have to pray in a certain way or, or, or live your life in a certain way in order for you to maintain freedom. [19:49.0]
That's just something that I'm naturally not, that's not my value. And so as a result, the purpose of my talk is going to be a little bit, it's going to be influenced by that. And then the main points are going to be influenced by my purpose. And then the supporting evidence is going to be influenced by my main points and my purpose and my values. So if you can see that, here's how you don't get duped. Clearly identify who is talking. Are they a representative of someone else. Because if that's clear, then you need to know who they're representing. What are the values of that person or organization? Why are they saying these things and what purpose does it seem like they either stated or didn't state for their particular presentation or talk or webpage or Facebook post or you know, a neighbor came by and shared something for you. It's as simple as that. You know, they share something with you. Well, what was their purpose in it? You know who's talking. It'll help you stop being so reactive to some people and it'll also help you figure out, okay, cool. So understanding that look, these conspiracy theory videos, and I'm not saying they have bad information at all, but obviously they're looking between the lines and filtering out anything that doesn't support their theory, but they're also filtering in everything that does. [21:00.2]
People that are anti-conspiracy theory, well, they are filtering out everything that supports conspiracy theory or trying to debunk it, and they are filtering in everything that proves that there is no conspiracy, which is why the information on the pandemic around Corona virus and everything else has been so hard to parse through for so many people because you've got a lot of people giving information, but all that information is filtered through the two invisible things that you need to listen to — their values and their purpose. [21:31.6]
Okay, so there are four parts to listen to in any message or information that you're given. One, who's talking and what are their values? Two, what is their purpose in that particular message? And three, what are their main points? And then finally, four what is their supporting evidence? Look, freedom from compulsive behaviors and habits starts with your ability to see things in a really clear way. If you're walking through life with a blindfold, you're going to run into stuff until you develop your ability to perceive differently so that your body can feel proximity and stuff, right? So if you want to develop echolocation then you want to do that. But I also highly recommend taking off the blindfold, right? Cause if you want to be clear on your own purposes and root issues and the things that are going on, your values are influenced by these core issues that are driving stuff. [22:23.1]
And if you want to be able to see clearly through them and then dissolve them in your shelf and be free of trauma and addictions and everything else. I mean think about this stuff that's happened in people's lives where they've been abused or molested or they've had tragic accidents and injuries or they've had people in their family have health issues or there's poverty and money issues or they've had real religious disillusionment or any number of things happening. And that affects how they see the world and how they filter out information. And as a result, what they communicate, what you and I communicate is skewed and affected by it. And so if you're struggling with that or you know someone who's struggling with it and you really want some help, come over to thefreedomspecialist.com start with the choose your own emotion program if you like slash it's thefreedomspecialist.com/feelbetternow. [23:09.6]
Or if you want to just set up a call, you can schedule a call and we can talk through the situation, but hopefully by today you really understood. Yes! If I want a level of freedom to be able to make clear decisions without being influenced over and over again by all these marketing messages and feeling confused and conflicted on the inside because I don't know where the truth is. Start here by learning to listen, not just to the main points and the supporting evidence, but start listening to the purpose for which the message is given and the values of the person talking. Until next time guys. [23:45.4]
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 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. Plus, it's just nice to be nice. [24:05.2]
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