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. [00:27.6]
Bob: Hi, welcome back to the Alive and Free Podcast. Today, I'm going to give you a glimpse into some of the things that we have, people like a tiny glimpse, some of the things we have our clients do, and we're coming to some of our retreats. Now I'm doing this because I think it's important when you're considering a life change or when you want transformation to happen in your life, or when you want things to be better to consider like really what you're asking for, most people don't really like take a step back and look at this. They think, Oh, well, when I'm asking for this, what I'm asking for is this beautiful transformation to happen. But what they don't realize is that there's a lot that comes with it, a lot that comes with it. So, I'm going to tell you a little bit about some of the events and then about a friend of mine, a story with them. And just to kind of give you a sense of some of the things that can happen as you're going through this, but just recognize this from the beginning. [01:25.2]
When you're asking for something, a transformation in your life, just recognize that your whole life is balanced in a certain way. All the good that you're experiencing is balancing out all the bad that you're experiencing, so to speak. And that's of course your judgments of what's good and bad. Not that those are universal. So, when you're trying to cut out the bad, what you're doing is unbalancing your life. And a lot of people they go in and they're thinking, no, no, no, i I could just get rid of this one thing, everything will be perfect. But they don't realize that they're unbalancing their life and that for their life to find a new equilibrium, they're also going to lose in some sense, touch with even the good stuff that they've had in the past. They kind of have to say goodbye to the old balance, not just to the old bat, if that makes sense. And it's the same way with everything you're trying to change. For instance, if you're trying to change money, you're going to have like your habits with money and budgeting and all the other stuff. If you want to get rid of certain things, certain bad habits with money, you're also going to start to have to shift certain other things along the way. And that's going to affect and ripple out into various areas of your life and not just money areas. [02:28.1]
When you start saying no to certain purchases, for instance, like, okay, I'm not going to purchase this anymore. Well, that means you have to unsubscribe from certain lists. And that means that you're starting to give yourself permission to say no to other things. And that means maybe you're also saying no to similar things with friends’ circles. And that might mean also that now you have more time on your hands and now you're going to make different time decisions. And that might also mean there's a lot of things that it can mean. So, when the guys come to us for our events and when the girls come to us for our events, the ladies’ events, and we have a couple’s event coming up this year, which super exciting, because it's going to be a totally different experience that is going to skyrocket people out of their pants, it’s going to be amazing. Not in a bad way. Don't think like that. Gosh, get your mind out of the gutter, skyrocket people out of this world, whatever you want to say, right. It's going to really bring their relationships to a whole different possibility. And when we have them come, part of their preparation work is that we're having them kind of think through their life in various ways, look at patterns of behavior that they've carried to kind of write through some of their history and look at ways that those patterns of behavior have carried through different thought processes. They've had ways they've thought about themselves. And then we also have them like write a sort of goodbye letter to that old person who that was. The good, the bad, the ugly, every part of it right. [03:47.9]
Now, there's a lot of people out there that would have you write a letter like this. We do it in our own particular way, which is a lot of fun. And you know, there's a lot of elements to it that are really powerful, but when they come and we finally have them get rid of it and we have them destroy the letter, we have them do it in a, in a campfire at the end of the process, after they've been through a lot of like other stuff with it. And at the end of the process, they get to put it away on a campfire. And this is the very beginning of the retreat, right. This is the very beginning. We want to start them off on the right foot. We do a lot of things to make sure that they're hitting the ground running so that by the time that we've even started, they're already experiencing some shifts. And we haven't put the thing in the fire and we tell them, look, do you realize what you're asking for when you want this person, this old version of you to disappear? It means that every part of that person's life, you are willing to say goodbye to. That maybe this is a new negotiation for the future. That what you discover inside yourself, the kinds of desires you have, the kinds of dreams you have, the kinds of ways you want to live might not fit that old person's life they might, but they might not. And that some of the things that you thought were bedrock to you before might suddenly become questionable. [05:03.3]
And that doesn't mean that you have to get rid of religious beliefs or practices. And it doesn't mean that you have to get rid of bedrock, things like that. But we're talking about your day-to-day existence, gets to radically change. That also means that you don't get a pickup, the old story of who you were in order to get comfort, or in order to get accolades or praise for all the kinds of beautiful things you did, cause that's not you anymore, that's somebody else. That when you're setting down your old story, you no longer get to be praised for it. And I share a lot of the things that have happened in my life, over this podcast and with clients and stuff, because it's an attempt to help them. And I used to get a lot of praise for all that. I still do get a lot of praise for all the things that I've gone through. But to me it feels like it's a totally different person that did those things. It doesn't feel like it's part of me. It feels like, wow, the person that did those no longer exists on the planet. And I don't think like that person. And I don't feel like that person because everything I do is around becoming freedom. [06:06.4]
So, cause when you become freedom, when you become joy, then it comes with you everywhere. You don't have to sit there and practice it. You are it right. If God is loved and he doesn't have to sit there and practice love, he is love. That's it. And by the same token, freedom, happiness, and whatnot and that takes a totally different approach to getting rid of addiction, to getting rid of mental illness, to getting rid of physical pains and physical ailments and stuff. It means learning how your mind and body work and starting to create a life that is a life of freedom. And in that life, the other thing just goes away by itself. You're no longer fighting it or winning. So, we tell them, you don't get to use your story to say, you overcame this, or you, you beat this, or you're a survivor of this. Cause that still identifies you with the old story. It doesn't matter whether you won or not. If you won, that means it's part of you. If it simply doesn't exist anymore, it's no longer a part of you. And so, as they're putting these things in the fire and they're watching it burn and they're watching the smoke come up from it, and they're watching all the words that they've written disintegrate and turn into Ash and crumble down into the fire pit, and we're having them do this. We're letting them know that at least for that weekend, they're not allowed to sit there and use their story unless it's helping them deal with this present moment. [07:20.5]
See, cause what's happened to, you can be useful if it's helping you shift what's happening right now in the moment. But too many people are trying to solve their past. Guess what? Your past doesn't exist anymore. One of the guys at our recent retreat, you know, he's in his fifties, he had a really rough childhood and his mom and abused him in all kinds of grosse ways. And, and he grew up just having all kinds of issues, right? And so, at one point in time, he was so mad in the middle of the, of the retreat and he's like, he just wanted to hit something and whatnot. So, we went outside and we put some rocks on the ground and I had him throw stumps at the rocks. I couldn't break them, but he was smashing these things. I was impressed. And at a certain point, he sat down and he'll probably hear this episode and I honor the guy greatly for everything he did. He's he was just so tired, and at a certain point I was looking at him and I was watching this stone thing. And I was like, see, look there it is, that stump is your story up. You picked it up again. Oh, there you go. You're throwing it at the rock. Oh, look, you broke the rock with your story. That's the older you go picking it up again. And I wasn't trying to tease him or taunt him, but just watching him take the futility of this over and over and over and over again, pick up the stump, throw it down, pick up the stump, throw it down, pick up the stump, wipe your brow, get tired of holding it, set it down, pick up the stump, throw it down, all this stuff. Untill finally, like he was just tired and needed a break. And I was like, here, come sit down. And he sat on top of the stump and I was like, see, this is something else you could do with your story. And he sat there and we were talking a little bit and he's like, so basically, you're telling me that it's just basically done. And I looked at him and I said, look, it's been done for decades. You're the one that keeps picking it up. And I know that that is not the most glamorous way of handling things. That it feels so much better to feel like you've conquered something or you've overcome something or you've resolved something or you've healed something. But the reality is the only thing you're trying to heal is the thing you're doing to yourself. That if you would stop injuring yourself, you wouldn't need healing. [09:23.7]
If you would stop picking up your old story, then you wouldn't need to heal your old story. But the problem is, this was with me, it was the most humiliating thing for me to like no longer win and to no longer know and everything. To no longer be the one that, that beat it all in my own mind, and to just simply admit that all that time I had had been a waste, but not to have it mean anything about me, but I had gotten my identity wrapped up in that. I was the guy who had done that. I'm the guy who this has happened to. And so out of setting it down, came all of the existential trauma or like drama, all the worry and concern around, Oh no, but who am I, if I'm not this? Well, you didn't know who you were anyway. You just thought you did. And who you are is something that is, unfathomably more than any person could possibly enumerate. [10:18.3]
And when you and I stopped picking up our stories and throwing them at rocks, maybe just maybe we'll get to discover the glory of what we really, really truly are underneath it. So do you realize what you're asking for when you're asking for change, you're actually asking for permission not to win, not to overcome, but literally to stop beating yourself up with your own past, with your own story, with your own thought processes, with your own emotions, you're asking to change the very way that you approach life. Not everybody's up for that. And in a Western society, particular that we would rather have a pill. Give me a six-week program that does the trick. I want to go to a hypnotist that just suppresses the behavior. I've seen this happen. It's beautiful, it's amazing. But guess what, if you haven't handled, what's underneath the behavior, if you hasn't handled, what's the root kind of underlying causes of it, then all you're going to end up with as a whack-a-mole game. You may have changed the behavior, but you didn't change anything else. And so that other thing just gets to express in a different way and maybe that different way isn't as taboo, but it is just as much as compulsive and this time possibly harder to detect, which may mean it may take you a lot longer to finally be free of it. When your life is falling apart, that is beautiful because that is the moment where you can see all the crap and get a chance to really make a change. But when you're asking for change, recognize what you're asking for. [11:46.2]
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. [12:14.0]
So, this happened a little while ago, a friend of mine who has been through a lot of processes with me, who's been to retreats and stuff. And just recognize that the work that I do with people is very customized. It's in the group work it's one way and one-on-one work it's a different way. And the personal, like the therapeutic physical stuff that I do, all of it is really around helping the body, identify its own strength, discover his strength, and then let go of things. So, I'm not really the one doing any of the healing. I'm not a healer, that is not what I do, but I take people through processes and experiences that help them. Some of them are very, very gentle and subtle. And often some of them are very, very intense and physically demanding and can be very uncomfortable and painful using sticks and sometimes whips and chains and martial arts work and you know, intensive kind of like breathing practices and all kinds of stuff. Like it just sorta depends on what the situation needs and what the person is asking for. [13:17.1]
And so, this person had been through, it has been through a couple of retreats with us, had been had been through some physical work with me and stuff. So, I knew very well, a lot of the different things, the energetic side of things, the very subtle side and everything else. And they came to me one day in the middle of a gathering and they were like, look I'm really afraid to ask this, but what's going on is I have all this emotion up on the inside, and it just feels like it keeps building and building and building, and I don't know how to get it out. And I'm wondering if you would punch me in the chest. Now I've punched a lot of people in the chest in my life. My wife punches me in the chest all the time. Not all the time, a lot of the time, whenever I find there's something stuck and I need a little extra energy, and it's hard for me to get an angle on it, myself. And I have hit a lot of people, very, very hard in many, many different ways, many angles. And what I did with her was the same thing in a very, very, like very specific way, nothing different. And no one has ever had any cracked bones or anything like that in the past. But what was she asking for? Let's take a step back and look at it. This person was asking for a chance for her chest to be broken, open, to release all the pain and struggle that she'd been on the inside, right. She was asking essentially to be for her chest to be broken open. [14:38.1]
So, she was asking, look, I have all this stuff on the inside. I can't get it out on my own. Will you please hit me? I need to let this out. And so, I dropped a couple of hits on the front and on the back and everything else and then I did a chaser hit. Maybe you don't understand what that is, but it's like where you hit one area and then I hit it a second time really quickly, right? I've done this on people that are small frail men, women, kids. They've done it on me, like this is, it's not anything intense, not done out of anger or anything else, but it can, it's like a lot of weight, a hand. And what happened afterwards was like she was in pain for a little while and then ended up going in and seeing a doctor and noticing that there was a crack in her chest plate. And I took a step back and I was like, that has never happened before in all the years I've been doing this and I didn't do it any differently. I'm curious about this and as I thought back on the situation, what I recognized was, Hey, this person was literally asking for their chest to be broken open because they couldn't open it themselves. They were literally asking for their heart to be broken open because they couldn't open their heart themselves. And what physically happened was that that happened. And it put them in a lot of pain where they couldn't take any other actions in their life. They couldn't go about their life in the normal hustle and bustle. And they had to sit back. They had to sit back and actually look at all the pain that they were carrying. And this was a scary thing for them to look at all the pain that they were carrying and all the way that they'd been dealing with different relationships and friendships and the way that they'd put people on pedestals and the way that they hadn't and how they looked at themselves and the way they thought of their purpose in the world and all of those different little things. [16:19.6]
And that had come about as a result of being of asking for the stuff that was in her heart to finally be able to be let out. And so, I sat back and I thought about that and I thought, man, I think it's really important for people to take a step back and realize what they're asking for when they're asking for help. Because often we, we think, Oh no, I just want this one thing changed and we don't realize how much that's going to affect so many other things in our life. And the willingness to be able to look at our life and say, it's been amazing and I am ready to move on, even if all the good in this transforms, is a beautiful place to live, because everything does transform. And the more we cling to things, we're just doing it out of fear. I'm afraid that this will go away. I'm afraid, I'm afraid. And so, I cling to it. Oh, I hope I hope it sticks around, that's just fear talking. It's saying, I don't think the future will be any better than this. Well, that's interesting. Where did you learn that? Again, fear from other people will use their eyes, their ears and not our own. And we trusted those without looking with our own eyes and ears and recognizing that we don't really know what's going to happen. [17:25.2]
So, there's a beautiful story. I may have told it once before, but I think it bears retelling of Sadhguru who was in a marketplace in India and there was this old guy there who just radiant human being full of life and exuberance and joy and Sadhguru was walking by and saw him and he was like, walks up to him, he's like, what are you doing here? Like, what's a guy like you doing in a marketplace like this and the guys said, selling vegetables, you know, I'm selling vegetables. No, my apologies to any of you who are Indians, I'm not trying to make fun of you. I just think the accent's cool. And as he states it, but no, but like what's a being like you doing in this marketplace. And so, the man told him a story about how he had been stricken down with a massive illness that took him down for months and months. And he was near to the edge of death for a long time. And somewhere in that process, his appreciation for life, his assessment, about what mattered and what didn't matter, who he was, what was real, what wasn't real, all that stuff got called into question. And when he came out the other side, not expecting to, but he got better and he had new life at his hands. He was so joyful and so happy that now he's there at the vegetable market, selling his vegetables and every time silently wishing the person a long illness so that they can find the same kind of joy that he could. [18:43.7]
And Sadhguru’s like, well, don't tell them, you're wishing them a long illness or you won't be in business long. But the point is there wasn't a lesson in the illness there wasn't, it's just that it gave him space to really look at what was real, what mattered most, and to actually build his life consciously instead of by reaction, instead of by how everybody told you, it's supposed to be. And the same thing happened with Adyashanti, who is a Zen teacher and you know, has had his own kind of enlightenment experiences. He used to be a cyclist, a racer, and at one point he got super ill and it challenged his identity around his body and who he thought he was cause he was a cyclist. And it took a while before he no longer looked at himself as a cyclist. And it gave him time to really kind of let go of, of a certain neediness to be doing certain things in order for him to be okay. And when he started getting better, he started cycling again and pretty soon he found himself training as if he were training for a race again. And then he got sick again for a long period of time. So, he couldn't cycle and he couldn't do these things. And finally, like a lot of those pieces left him and it wasn't that the illness was there to teach him a lesson or anything else, some kind of intelligence was operating for sure. And rather than suppress it and try to get better and try to push through the pain and all this stuff, it became an opportunity for him to look at his life and really look and see if what he thought was real was really real. And to ask himself what he wanted to build his life on and to start to be able to build that life consciously instead of by happenstance instead of by accident because, you know, time waits for no man. And so, we just grow up, putting out fires our whole life without ever having the conscious opportunity to start life from scratch again. [20:26.8]
And that's something that I think is a really beautiful thing to consider, is the opportunity to start from scratch. So, when you're looking for change, I would submit that maybe the best change is the one that allows you to start from scratch. And then when you're asking for a transformation in your life, you're asking literally for that, even though you don't realize it. And I think it's important to recognize what you're asking for. And I think it's also okay to be on the inside and go, you know what, I'm not ready for that. That's okay, too. It's all allowed. You can take as much time as you need to come to the point where you're really ready to let go. But the people that have the hardest time changing the people that have the hardest time seeing change happen in their life are the people that aren't willing to let go of the rest of their old life. They only want the bad part gone. They aren't willing to let the entire equilibrium change. And so, they're clinging desperately to the good stuff. And as a result, they're keeping the old bad there and they're blaming everyone else and everything else and every program out there. And for that reason, even though the real cause of it is that their unwillingness to let go and guess what, if you could really be willing to let go of all of it, you probably wouldn't need a program. Yes, they're helpful. Yes, the things people have discovered all over the planet can be exceptionally powerful and yes, they can accelerate things that maybe it would take you a lot longer to figure out, but you probably wouldn't need a program. [21:50.4]
The reason I was able to figure out things with addiction was because I was, I got to a place, people talk about rock bottom. I got to a place where I was desperate enough to let everything go, because it was a new life or death. And in that place, I was willing to try things and do things and let go of things that I otherwise wasn't up until that point. And up until that point was 18 years. So, I spent a lot of time, not willing to let go. And as soon as I was willing, the change happened in a very short amount of time. And yes, there were processes and things I used that were powerful. And yes, I'm happy to help you with those and they are powerful tje things I've discovered, but you might not need them. I'd be happy to help you with them. They might accelerate some things for you, but you might have another way that it happens for you. And that's okay too. But it all comes from recognizing what you're asking for when you're asking for change. And that means you're asking for all of it to be turned upside down. If you really want a real change in your life, you're asking for all of it to be turned upside down, and that, that's important to know. [22:51.8]
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. [23:10.1]
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