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: Welcome back to the “Alive and Free Podcast.” Today we're going to talk about Depression’s demise, you know, in the United States alone, depression is one of these rampantly growing things that are being diagnosed along with anxiety and panic disorders and all kinds of other stuff and depression doesn't just exist in clinical circles. There are people that experienced mild forms of depression all over the place, and we've accepted it as a fact of life. The people who have it clinically have been told that it's some kind of disease or mental disorder that they have, and that they're going to have to learn to manage it and cope with it and that's just going to be a fact of life for them. And many of them are on medications to help with their depression. [01:13.3]
Then there are the other side type of people that aren't in the clinical realm and they're experiencing depression and certain types of things in life. When certain events happen or things don't go their way and their expectations aren't met or their needs, the needs that they think that they have aren't met and so on and so forth and they experienced various forms of depression. But yet, even though this is a rampant thing in the United States, most of the time it's talked about as if this is a fact of life and not just something that humans have made of their lives. And I want you today to consider the possibility that depression is something we are making and it is easily rectified and something that you do not have to live with for the rest of your life. And I know there's a lot of people that say, I don't want to get people's hopes up, and I don't want to tell people that depression you can just get rid of, because I don't want them to be disappointed in that later and then have more depression because they're depressed. [02:10.4]
And I get that reasoning and if I didn't have the understanding that I do have now, and if I didn't have a capacity to teach people how to manage their own internal chemistry in a way that makes depression go away on their own without needing to rely on people or drugs or events or circumstances and stuff, then I certainly would believe them. And I certainly would be talking like them. I certainly would be wondering, running around telling people, no, no, don't let anyone tell you that it's possible to get rid of depression because they're just getting your hopes up. It's a scam, it's snake oil, they're just trying to get the money off of you. They're literally just taking advantage of you and they're doing things to try and comfort you, but they don't know what they're talking about. And I hear that type of language from a lot of people. They say, you know, happiness, it's really hard to be happy all the time. Are you serious? I would say to them, are you serious? You're telling me that when you're happy, you're experiencing that as difficult. None of them will answer yes to that question. [03:09.7]
No, not at all. In fact, when you're happy, life is easy. It doesn't even matter if you have to clean the toilets and you're happy, no big deal. When you're happy, there's not a problem. And I think I told you some time ago, months ago about my experience with this, where I was desperately ever since a kid I'd wanted to do super powers, you know, like shoot lightning out of my fingertips. I know that that's a thing, whatever. And like laser beams out of my eyes and fly like Superman and do all kinds of amazing things. I wanted to do miracles like Jesus, I, they were my heroes. And, and to me, being able to do those things was the key to happiness. It meant that I was, I was invincible. It meant that nobody could get to me anymore. It meant that I was protected. It meant that I was safe. And so I, I fostered these, these ideas for most of my life. I still think they're really cool. And I am not averse to the idea of being able to do them. And I'm still studying things about them. [04:03.6]
And yet at the time, that was my ticket to happiness. And that was my ticket to freedom and safety because I'd moved around so much as a kid, I didn't have very many friends. This would guarantee that I would have friends cause people would love me because of my abilities. Can you see how faulty that thinking is? Yes, you can because you know, anybody can, who's not inside of it, but when you're inside of it, it just seems to make so much sense, right? If I'm Superman, everyone will love me. And yet I, one day I was sitting there and I was thinking about Superman and particularly the new movies about Superman, how he's this angst-ridden and in fact, all the superheroes are now psychologically angst-ridden dark heroes that are struggling in their life and it's their burden and their duty to go save other people and to give up all of their life and all of identity for this cause and this mission and everyone expects it of them. And yet they're miserable and they have all this ability and all these powers and all these skills in the world and yet they are not happy people, they are miserable people. [05:04.6]
And I remember sitting on the couch thinking—Wow, I could have all the abilities in the world. I could walk on all the water. I could fly. I could run at super speeds. I could disappear and reappear in other places. And if I'm not happy, I would just be a miserable person and none of that would solve anything. And at that point in time, all of my focus in my life went to fine, if I never do any superpowers in my life, which I'm still working for, by the way. What I care about is I want to be happy. I really want to be happy. And that's when I started focusing on learning how to manage happiness from the inside instead of always having to rely on my circumstances and on people around me and on my bank account and on the opportunities I had and achievements I was doing in order to, in order to be happy. [05:58.8]
I wanted happiness to come from the inside, no matter else, no matter what else was going on. And that's what we want to talk about today because depression is one form of misery, right? So is anxiety, so is trauma, so is sadness, so is so many other things. And when you can't control it, it is debilitating. When you can control it, when you're like, look, I'm I'm feeling, I want to feel depressed right now you can, and people do this, we've mentioned this before. They go to movies to feel sad sometimes. They want to cry movie, or they want to go to a movie to laugh, or they want to go to a movie to be terrorized and fearful. We pay for entertainment. We pay for people to have us, help us with our emotional states and to feel these different emotions. It's an adventure when you can control it. It's just an accident when somebody else is in control of it. [06:43.7]
So what is depression then? Depression is a state of being, it shows up in your body, in your posture. It shows up in your breathing patterns. It shows up in your tension patterns in your body, both the ones that are obvious and the ones that are not so obvious and under layers of tension patterns, and those pull on connective tissue and they strain organs. It shows up in how you sit. It shows up in how you walk. It shows up in how much energy you have in the day. It shows up in the kinds of thoughts you have. It shows up in your relationships. It shows up in your environment and the kinds of things you own, the kinds of clothes you wear. Depression shows up everywhere. And most often people trying to solve it are trying to solve it from the outside end. They're trying to say, look, I'm depressed when this happens. So I, if I fix this, I will stop being depressed. But do you notice what they really want? Is the depression gone? It's not necessarily that they care that much about what's going on. [07:41.6]
A big, for instance, here is in the business world. There's a lot of people I've talked to that run businesses that really don't care about money, they don't, they love helping people, they're out there to serve. And money doesn't really form this big thing in their mind, but they've learned. And like I did, and I'm not saying this, this is not an indictment on anyone else, either like money. When people ask me for like, what's your revenue goal at business coaches and stuff? I never have one because I don't think in terms of money. And that's not, I'm not just calling that a virtue. I'm just saying like, it's not, that's not the way I think maybe accountants and financial people think that way, maybe other people do. And I'm not saying it's bad either. It's just not how I think. And yet not having money has formed such misery in my life in a sense where I've blamed it on that. That what has happened is I've gone around thinking and I've done this many, many years, cause I was on food stamps for a while. We went through bankruptcy at a certain point in time. And I went around trying to find people who could teach me how to make money, because I thought that making money and having money in my bank account would then solve all of my misery problems. [08:46.7]
The same thing when I was stuck in addiction, you know, I'm sitting there in behaviors that I can't control. And I thought, if I solve this, then I'll be happy. How many of you have done this and realize that that isn't happiness. How many of you bought things and realized that wasn't happiness either, but you thought it would make you happy. How many of you have kids who have complained and been miserable because their siblings got something more than they did. And they're like, how come he gets more? And they think if they get more food or more dessert, or if they get the same kind of toy that somehow they'll be happy and yet it doesn't produce happiness. Or if it does, it's just a temporary excitement and then it goes away. How many of you have been like me? Where Christmas morning, you're super excited, you get your present and then, you know, you see everybody else's presents and then pretty soon like it wears off and it's not all that exciting. Maybe I'm the only one on the planet that was like that. But Christmas was not the most exciting time for me unless I got the best present or the most, it just wasn't because I was looking at outside things to solve my internal depression. [09:45.8]
And no wonder I went to suicidal tendencies, no wonder. No wonder, I wanted to end my life so many times because I was trying to fix the outside in order to fix the inside. And don't get me wrong, you can get yourself comfortable and it can make your life, you could be content and satisfied and you can fix relationships. You know, you can get a new one, but too many people bring their old self into a new relationship and so then the new one gets spoiled. And then people go in these cycles from one thing to the next, to the next. And then there's the ones that are on medications. And what happens with medications is it radically alters in a sense your personality sometimes and it's in control of you. You have other chemicals running through your body controlling what you're able to feel and experience. [10:31.2]
And I just did a basically an hour long interview with two of my team members and clients that we will put on thefreedomspecialist.com/depression for you guys to go see if you want an exclusive interview on that. You just put your name and email in, and we'll send you a link to the video where you can go in and you can look at, you know, an exclusive interview on what it's like to go through the depressive cycle. Mine and Tucker's one of our coaches, Brad, one of our coaches, what they experienced with a psychologist and psychiatrist, what they experienced through medications and how deep it went, how long it went, what I experienced in my own life without being able to use medications or even recognizing that those were possibilities. There's a wide array of experience there with regard to depression. And you'll, you can get a good sense of what people are going through in that regard. And all of that, all of that is 100% reversible. And that's what I want to focus the last half of this podcast on. You are not a victim to depression. It is not a condition or state of being that you have to deal with for the rest of your life. Here's what's really going on. [11:34.9]
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. [12:03.6]
Depression, I don't know any babies that are born depressed. Now, a lot of them are screaming because well, you know, they just got their skull crushed going through a birth canal and their environment changed. And there's bright lights now that they're dealing with, and now oxygen is going in their lungs, which is causing all kinds of prickles and tingles into experiences. And they're sitting there going like—Huh, this is new...What is this? I'm not sure what to make of this. And they're making guesses about life all the time and trying to come up with ideas about what's going on so that they can survive it. It's every kid does this. And the people who struggle with depression the most are people who in an attempt to make sense of life, they came up with an idea about it that was slightly negative and helped them survive. So they didn't throw the idea out, but it was slightly negative. And as a result that sits in the background unchallenged, and then they come up with more and more of these and they fade into the background of life. At first it's because they're looking for evidence for it. And after a while, they've so memorized that feeling that they don't need evidence for it anymore. [13:09.3]
It's just a fact of life, a way that they're wired. And so they're going through life, looking at us like feeling depressed. What does that mean? It means that thoughts are going through their head unconscious ones that have a certain, let's say chemical and electrical signature. And if we flood your body with a certain chemistry, it will feel really nasty. And there'll be contention patterns that show up in certain areas and certain organs will be affected. This is what happens. So your thoughts and the chemistry created by them, the neurotransmitters are all over the body, right? And there's hormones that are secreted in response to those. And it creates a certain state. And a person who's depressed, just imagine right now, if you're drawing, driving, but if you have a chance and you're listening, I want you to stand up. Then you're not like doing operating heavy machinery or something. I want you to stand up and I want you to stand in the posture of someone who's depressed. [14:02.8]
You notice how easy it is to recognize now, not everybody who struggles with depression stands in this posture all the time. And some people, who stand in this posture, aren't always depressed. So don't take that as the end all be all diagnostic tool. But if you notice, it's really easy to know what people look like, who are depressed. Typically their shoulders are hunched forward in a protective manner. Their heads slightly down and hanging their chest just slightly sunken. Their, their back is slightly slouched. There's a little bit of a, they walk slow, they're heavy on their feet, they typically have stuff to one side or another side. If they're sitting, sometimes their knees are tucked up inside. And basically they're pulling yourself into partial fetal positions in some way. And there's a heaviness about them and a droopiness to the face, right? And to various degrees, people experience this. This is the result of seeing the world a certain way. [14:56.4]
And remember last week, how we talked about exercising great doubt about your vision. I know it seems like the world is out to get you. I know it seems like you're not enough. I know it seems like you'll never measure up. I know it seems like you're weak, or I know it seems like people are don't want to be around you and nobody loves you or that you're unlovable or that nothing ever works out for you or any number of other ways that you may be seeing the world. What if you're wrong? Consider the possibility that you might be wrong because seeing the world that way produces this posture, it produces this chemistry and then actions come out of that. So if you want to change depression, one thing you can do is work from the outside in. What does that mean? You can change your environment. You can change your relationships. You can change your job. You can change your work hours. You can change what you're eating. All of these are powerful for helping you manage your chemistry in some ways. [15:47.4]
For instance, you change your nutrition, you'll be surprised how that helps with your depression. Also, if you change the amount of water you're drinking, so that you're fully hydrated, that you'd be surprised how much, that little bit helps with the energy that you have during the day and depression. You can change your relationships, you know, someone who's spunky and loves to be around you. Like that's wonderful because that can definitely help, but sometimes it can go the opposite direction. You don't want to be around spunky people cause they remind you how unspunky you are. You can change what you own. You can change your wardrobe and you can go buy things and get excited about them. But they don't last long because ultimately still on the inside, you're creating the conditions that you're trying to solve. It's a little bit like a whac-a-mole game, you know, pop one up, Oh, it's a relationship, that's bad. You whack it. And then another one pops up and it's this other thing. And it's a constant game of managing and coping, which is where most of the therapeutic community is around depression. And they don't want to get your hopes up. [16:41.1]
Well, I'm sorry to burst your bubble. Let me get your hopes up here for a second. If you solve the underlying issue by unplugging the whack-a-mole machine, then they don't keep popping up anymore. And that means a couple of things, right? First thing it means solving just like with addiction, right? It means what is the way that you see yourself in the world that is generating this and how can we dissolve this permanently? And I'll say it here permanently. I am not talking about temporary measures. I'm not talking about getting up every day in the morning and reminding yourself that, that thing isn't true. I'm talking about literally having it stopped to be an object of thought in your mind. When you dissolve that your behavior changes, your chemistry changes, all these things change. So you can do that. You can work on that. And when you dissolve that, then there's nothing to cope with. The other thing that you've got to deal with is the habit. [17:34.17]
Because most people have been struggling with depression and been struggling with it for years or decades, which means they're just their body's used to standing a certain way. Their breath is used to breathing a certain way. Their, their thoughts are used to going a certain way. Their associations with certain things are there like triggers, right? And so you've got to dismantle those as well and retrain the nervous system and the emotional reflexes, which, you know, if you want to start with that, go to our page, thefreedomspecialist.com/feelbetternow and check out our, ‘Choose Your Own Emotion Program.’ It'll teach you how to regain control over your mood, over your reactions and over the things that you worry about, your triggers, the things that stress you out or the things that cause depression. Okay? So here we are. And if you retrain those habits, now you're a, you're a master at something else. Right now you are a black belt at living the way life, the way you're living in it doesn't matter if you're struggling with depression or not. If there are problems in your life, guess what you've mastered having those problems. [18:35.2]
You're a black belt at it. You've done the fundamentals year in and year out. You know how to create those problems. And if you want to create a different light for yourself, it means you've got to go master a different techniques. I mean, starting at the basics in a different set of skills, which is why I frequently tell people freedom is a skill, it's not a pill. Even though dissolving some of these main core issues greatly accelerates that, but you still need to develop the skill sets and train in the skill sets so that they become second nature. So that by default you, something happens and you move differently, something happens and you think differently, something happens in your breathe differently. And that takes training, right? It's training. But it's training with the focus on happiness. It's like, Hmm, how can I use this to feel happy? Hmm How can I take this to feel happy? Hmm How can I create more happiness here? And it's not about fighting off depression anymore. You don't have to fight depression. In fact, fighting it acknowledges that it's a real thing in your life and it will always be there as long as you're fighting it. [19:34.1]
As I frequently say, as long as you're fighting something, you're still in the arena with it. And it doesn't matter if you're winning or losing, you're still in the arena with it. Let's leave the arena. And that means focusing on the skillsets that bring happiness and clearing away the obstacles or the core issues that are generating the misery, those two things. Let me just end by giving everyone out there an opportunity to think differently, whether you want to call that giving you hope or not. Depression is not natural to you. You were not born with it. Even if you have chemical imbalances, chemical imbalances are not depression, and you still can learn to move in your system and do things in your system that control those from the inside and not the outside. For the most part, you are not born depressed. You were not born. If it's not original to you, is what I'm saying. And in that case, that means it came later. And if it came later, it's an add on. And if it's an add on, it means you can take it off again. [20:32.5]
Who you really are underneath all this stuff is something so much more glorious and so much more powerful than most of us dare to even dream. And most of us can't even imagine how great that is. And I've only caught glimpses of it myself, but I'll you this much when you're in touch with that deeper reality, happiness is a natural byproduct. It's it's, it comes by nature. It's easy. It happens on its own. Depression is hard. Depression takes effort. Depression takes energy to maintain. It isn't happy. It isn't hard to be happy. It's hard to be depressed. It isn't hard to have a good outlook on life. It's hard to have a negative one and then pretend to have a good one. So what I'm inviting you to do is if you're struggling with depression or, you know, people who are, I know a ways, not the only way on the planet, but I've created a way of helping people get over it. [21:27.6]
And one of the coaches you'll hear, if you go to thefreedom specialist.com/depression, Brad, literally 23 years in depression, 12 years of that on medications, up and down and within a few months, like he was off of medications and he was experiencing more happiness than he didn't even knew how to deal with many, many times all on his own power. And his life is so much more glorious and so much more happy than anything that he had even considered before possible. And he's got more control and more options, and he feels more like himself than he ever has. It's not a, it's not a miracle cure unless you want to consider your human mind and body as a miracle, it's within you already. It's just that nobody around you taught you how to use it. You weren't born in the vicinity of people that taught you, just how amazing your body is and how capable you are of creating happiness anytime you want. That's what this is about. And if you want some help with that, and you've been struggling with it for a while, I invite you to go schedule a call with us, just go to thefreedomspecialist.com/schedule, we can look over what's going on with you. [22:28.0]
We can take a look at your situation and we can look through what we have to offer, some of the programs we have to offer. And if any of that will help you, we can get you started with that. But for goodness sake, don't spend another day in your life defending the position that depression is just something you're going to have to deal with. Just like addiction, that thought process is the only thing, keeping it in place, that and simply not knowing the skills to be able to turn things around. So please don't think that anymore. And if you know people struggling, please send them to us or send them someplace that will give them the capacity to finally walk free so that they can spend the rest of their life living it instead of trying to avoid depression. [23:07.04]
And that's it for todays “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. [23:26.4]
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