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: All right, welcome back to the Alive and Free podcast. Today, we get to talk about becoming the director of your own life. The three, four loop that you want to avoid so that you can actually retrain your body to not be filled with stress and anxiety and depression and addiction, and ultimately becoming somebody who is in charge of crafting your own future instead of letting it happen by accident. So, I want to go back into this idea here of becoming the director of your own life. A while ago, somebody asked me about root issues and they're, they're trying to understand how can I, what is going on here? How do I explain what we're doing in a way that makes sense to somebody so that they're like, oh, that's what you're doing when you're talking about getting rid of root issues and releasing things from your body. [01:24.2]
And as I was talking to them about it, it occurred to me, this analogy of becoming a director was very, very useful. See, when you go into watch the show, when you're the spectator of the show and not the director, what happens is you go in and it seems like it all happens at once, right? You show up and the lights dim, and the sound goes on. You don't get a say in which trailers are played. You might get some say in whether or not you pay attention or not. That depends on who you're watching the TV, the movie with, but then the, then, then on comes the show and you have all the visuals, somebody else chose those visuals. So, you don't get to pick the camera angle or anything else like that. You don't get to pick the cuts to scene. You don't get to pick whether it's continuous shot or whether it's multiple different camera angles. You don't get to pick the sound effects. You don't get to pick the script. You don't get to pick the soundtrack that comes with it. You don't get to pick any of the colorations and post-production mastering that's going on. You don't get to pick any of that. All you do is you sit there and you watch it and you do your best to respond to it and get involved with it in whatever way you do. And if the movie is great, it's amazing, and you have a good experience. And if it's not great, well, you kind of suffer through it. Or maybe sometimes you walk out. But I there's very few people I know of who have actually walked out of many movies. Most of the time, we just sit there and deal with it, unless it's a movie that you're watching, you're listening to at home. [02:46.8]
And so when we go through our life this way, it seems like everything's happening all at the same time, right. All of those pieces, all those layers of experience are all happening at once. You're in the movie and the sound is coming at the same time as the, as the visuals and everything. And the same thing in our lives. So, when we're dealing with traumas, we're dealing with memories with we're dealing with our past at all, it feels like all of that stuff happened all at the same time. And when we're dealing with triggers, it feels like it happens all at once. So, people are like, well, why did you act out? And like, I don't know. I was just this, that or the other, right. Why, why did you go look at porn eyes? I was just horny, I don't know. Why did you go and just binge it, eat all those chips? I don't know. I would like, I don't know, maybe I was hungry. I don't know. I don't know because it happened all at once, it's hard for us to see all the different layers of the expense variance that are there. And as a result, it doesn't feel like we have any choice about it happening over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. [03:47.5]
But when you go in to deal with the root issues, well, when we, when people sign up for our programs, for instance, what we're doing is we're giving them essentially editing software so that instead of just putting in a DVD and having to watch it as it's done, they're getting the software to be able to look at all the different layers of what's happened. All the different layers of sound and sound effect and music and different instrumentation, as well as all of the script, we're even giving them the script of the show so that they can start to change and edit it and so on and so forth. So, to the point where they can become the director of a brand-new film. Now, when I was in art school, I never got to see this, but I heard that there was a group of people that decided to take the Disney movies that typically play into these stereotypes of like evil is dark and bad and mysterious and good is light and airy and stuff like that. And they took these Disney shows and they flipped them on their head. So, they took the Lion King and they made scar the lighter lion and they made the hyenas a lighter gray, and they turned all of the coloring in those scenes into a really bright color. And they turned all of the good people into like darker lions and darker colors so that it was confusing to the census because we were so used to seeing evil as dark and good as light, that when it was good was dark and evil was light. It was throwing people off. They did it as an artistic experiment because let's face it when you're in graduate school with artists, I will never claim that what we did as artists was anything existentially significant for the planet. [05:25.3]
I'm not saying art doesn't have its place. Music doesn't have its place. Poetry doesn't have its place; I think are natural expressions of humanity. But one of the reasons that I just lost favor, like enjoyment of it, one was the amount of pornography that was in it and like my own existential trauma around all that stuff. But the other one was, I was just sitting there looking at all of these people who were pretending that these smears of basically colored dirt that had been wiped onto a bit of cloth with a hairy stick called a pink brush were somehow like significant to the planet when there were people that were homeless. And there were people who, who are struggling and suffering and I couldn't piece those two together. And so, I was just like, I don't, I don't know. I I'm good doing it for enjoyment, but I don't know about pretending that it's something significant in life. I may change my mind in years to come, who knows. But anyway, there was another group that has taken, I've seen a lot more of this. Who've taken like horror films and other films and they've changed the music on them. So instead of this scary theme in the background, it's upbeat and really bright colored. So, someone's walking around the corner, but they're hearing like screen anddd dididd and inddddd and du du du du you know, it's not going to have the same sort of like suspense effect on the human system because the sound is different. And that's because they've messed with the layers of the experience so that what they get on the other side is something totally different. [06:56.7]
Now so in order for you to be able to do that, I want to take you through this 1, 2, 3, 4, a timeline. In other words, 1, 2, 3, 4 layers of an experience so that you can start to piece it apart and give you a little bit of the software that we kind of give our clients so to speak. It's not real software. You're not gonna put it on your computer. This is like brain software upgrade. Okay. And I want to talk to you about getting stuck in the loop in parts three and four, which is where most people get stuck. Okay? So, here's what happens. An event or circumstance changes in the world. There's nothing you can do about those things are changing all the time. Every moment somebody's breathing, which means that the air is changing. Every moment, somebody tutes or there's a cow down field that lets out a moo or a car is driving by, or someone's filling up with gas. Every moment on this planet is something dynamic is happening. There's nothing you and I can do about that. Sometimes we have influence and control over that. Other times we don't, but every moment something's happening, that's layer number one, the raw material of your circumstances. More often than not, we have not a hundred percent say in that. [08:06.6]
The next thing that happens layer number two is that immediately when something changes, so also does your biological physiological response to it. Let me say that again, immediately, when something changes in your, in your environment, your body and your energy system and your chemistry and everything immediately responds to match it. It's a constant dance of the cosmos. You're just a piece of it and it's happening. Now, depending on what the circumstances are and what your chemistry is like before it starts to change, it that'll affect some things, but immediately your body is always responding to what's there. Let me give you a couple of examples. [08:48.5]
At a full moon, a lot of pregnant women, their water breaks. Well, the moon is like the gravitational polar of the tides on the planet. And so, when there's a full moon, often hospitals are flooded. Pardon the pun with, with people, with women, pregnant ladies whose water is broken. And there's a little bit more deliveries at the time of a full moon. At a full moon, people who struggle with things like epilepsy or other kinds of imbalances in the brain tend to have a little more frequency of occurrence or a little more struggles because the pole on the, the water in the system is moving it upward toward the brain. People have known this for a long time, even in India at full moon nights are very, very significant. Supposedly the Buddha was enlightened at the time of a full moon and Adi Yogi, the very first Yogi who turned and started teaching his disciples was also did that on the time of a full moon. And there are some significances in this, in terms of spiritual stuff. [09:46.5]
We don't even have to go that far as soon as the moon changes, so also does your system, okay, cool. Wind blows across your face. And the temperature drops outside. Suddenly your head, the hair on your body prickles up, and you have a response to it. It doesn't matter what the changes in the environment, loud sound, ears, tense up, all these other things. It doesn't matter what the changes in the environment, your body will respond to it immediately, according to what it knows best. Okay. That's layer number two. So, layer one is the raw material of circumstance layer two is your body's trained habitual response to that circumstance. Layer number three is that then your mind looks down at your body, sees all the bits and pieces parts, okay, there's this, this is the body temperature. This is the heart rate. This is the kind of air we're breathing in. This is the body posture. This is wherever we were we're tense. This is where the eyes are looking. This is the kind of visual data we're getting, yada yada. And it pulls all that in and it goes, where have we seen this before? [10:51.1]
So, it starts scanning the database and pulling out its decks of flashcards going, is it this one? Is it this one? Is it this one? And as soon as it does this, and this obviously happens in a very rapid pace. As soon as it does this, suddenly there's an AHA, I know what it is. And then it presents that to the body. So, the mind makes a decision about what is happening based on the body’s response. [11:16.0]
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. [11:45.0]
Now, because of that decision there, it sends a message back the body going like this is what's happening. And now the body responds to the mind. So, the body is somewhere caught between heaven and earth, so, to speak. It's caught between the external world and what's happening and the internal world, and what's happening in your mind, and it's trying to do both at the same time, which is why a person can't lie, lie, which is why a person often can get confused or trips up and stuff because they're trying to live out their inner world while also interacting with the outer world. And if those two don't match up, then a person will trip over themselves, quite readily. Your body doesn't want to lie, it knows what's true and it's responding to that. But then your mind is like, no, no, this is true. And so, it'll say that. And there will be some conflict or some clue in the person that says, Hey, I am saying this and it's not true in reality, but it's true in my head or I want it to be true so that you'll do this other thing. People can read it all over you. It's impossible to lie about what's going on in your life. It is possible to be so preoccupied in your own head that you don't know how to detect when someone is lying or not. [12:57.0]
And so, we're in a situation where step four layer four is your body's reaction to your mind. So, it goes outside environment, body, mind, body. But here's what happens now that we're back to the body again. Now the mind looks at the body again and goes, oh, see, I knew I was right. And so, then it reinforces that experience. So, if your mind sees that something is happening and it goes, oh, this is a good thing. Then all of a sudden you get these feel-good chemicals and you get excited. Now your body didn't get excited because of the environment. It got excited because of what you thought about the environment. Or in other words, it got excited because of what your mind thought about the state your body was in and all of the information it was dealing with. As a result, it sent that information like, oh, we should get excited, something good is going to happen. And then you, you, yourself are the cause of your feel-good chemicals. Nothing in the world makes you happy. You make you happy. Get that through your head. I know I've said it over and over and again, and I'm going to repeat myself because it's important. The more you give credit to something outside of yourself, for what makes you happy, the more powerless you will be in your life. And the more you will be influenced by outside circumstances instead of being the master and director of your own fate. Got it. Okay. [14:13.4]
So here we are. Your mind has created these feel-good chemicals. Now what happens if you see something that your mind goes, oh, no, this is bad. Then it creates, feel bad chemicals. And then when those are in the body, then the mind looks down and go see, look, we're still feeling bad, I was right. And then it reinforces it and reinforces it until you end up with behaviors and other types of things in order to cope with that and get your body out of that negative loop. What I want you to see is the three, four loop is on layers three and four, that if your life is going in loops is because your mind, your stuck in layer three and layer four, interpreting what's happening with your mind and then letting your body believe your mind instead of what's really going on on the outside. And if you want to get out of that constant recurring thought loop, the place to work is in layer number two. So, when you get your editing software, all of a sudden something happens and you're like, oh man, that just made me mad. We go eh, eh. eh, let's go back in and look at it and look at all the layers. You made you mad by interpreting your body's state as negative or bad or not good and needed to be changed. And in such a way you created experiences and chemicals of madness. And everybody's like, no, no, I'm not insane. That's not that kind of madness. Everybody's a little bit insane. It's okay. We call it mad. And you let people get mad. But ultimately, it's an insanity to do that because it is poisoning your body and your system. So, the place to work is layer two. [15:50.4]
So that made you mad. What does that mean? Something happened, layer one, your body immediately adjusted to it based on its habits and training layer two. Loud noise for instance, babies react one way, some people react another way. You hear the sound of a gunshot. Some people duck and cover other people look around. Why is that? It's because of how they've trained themselves to respond to it and the, what they learned based on their environment. Okay. food goes in the mouth. Let's say it's sauerkraut. One person spits it out and another person is like, oh my goodness, this is so good. Same chemical going in, but different responses to the stimulus. Okay. Now, now that that's happened, something happened, your body created, it's a trained response. Then your mind is like that trained response, is madness. We're mad. This is just like that other thing that happened, see nothing ever works out for me. Oh, you see that guy is just taking advantage of me. He's taking advantage of a poor folk. Nah, nah, nah… And then madness comes as a result of all of the interpretations in layer three, then four comes and now you're stuck in the three, four loop. [16:59.4]
So, in order to get out of this, to get the software needed, to be able to isolate the other layers, delete the ones you don't want. Choose the camera angles you want, change the soundtrack so it's upbeat and awesome, change up the coloration, extend one scene, get rid of another one and so on. You need to be able to see that it's just your body that's doing it. That all you're really experiencing is a bodily reaction to your environment and that's it. And you're not actually experiencing madness. That's an interpretation of what you're experiencing. You're not experiencing depression, anger, fear, or any of the other things. Those are words. Those are concepts. Those are interpretations of a bodily experience. And a lot of people get on guys, cause they're like, oh man, he doesn't know how to talk about emotions. No, because you don't need to talk about them with words, you need to understand how your body's acting and the more you're sitting there talking about them, you're in layer three. Sometimes you can use layer three to get back out. Sometimes you need to, but more often than not, the best place to work is layer two. [18:03.7]
Retraining your body's response to stimulus because if your body responds differently than number three, the thoughts that would come well, it's a different response. So those thoughts that used to come just don't come anymore. It's using a different set of flashcards. And so, retraining your body's response to things that you call stressors, retraining your body's response, to work, to relationships, to people getting mad at you, to driving to food, to heat and sunlight and to cold and to different types of experiences. Retraining that is the key to having freedom happen on autopilot instead of having to constantly be willpowering your way through it or thinking your way through it, which takes a lot of energy. To retrain the body's response requires that you be willing to put your body into uncomfortable situations that mimic those ones with a different type of way of responding to those and by different type of way, responding to it. I mean, having your body literally take a different state than it used to. [19:10.9]
So, for instance, something scares you, if you used to just cower and duck great. The next time that happens, you get yourself into a place where a surprise will happen. You're not sure when it's going to happen, but you train the cower and duck and turn it into a different type of move, so that when it happens the next time your body starts has memorized a new move. This is just like being a white belt. It's some kind of martial art. You go to class the first time you do it, you're loopy. You're, you're lanky. You, you trip on your own two feet. You can't get the right hand in front. You kick your gee snaps weird, or it catches onto your big toe. All the things happen. But as you train the movement, suddenly it becomes second nature and it shows up all by itself in circumstances in life, when you might need it, that's the point of training. And so, in order to do this, you need to take advantage of the body. So, when I told you a couple of weeks about a go about going off on my own and being silent, what I realized in all that little mini beating myself up of, I should be up earlier and I should do this, that and the other. And I, I stopped and I asked myself the question, what if I'm not exactly experiencing frustration with myself? What if all I'm experiencing right now is just a physiological sensation and a response to my environment. What if that's all that's happening? [20:25.8]
And as soon as I started doing that and just saying, what if I'm not actually upset? Or what if I'm not actually depressed? Or what if I'm not actually this? Or what if I'm not actually that, what if all that's happening is my body's responding to an environment. And what if that's all that's happening? And what if that's all that means? And that's not necessarily a bad thing. What do I want to do from here? When I started asking that question, all of the thoughts on layer three and layer four, just evaporated like that. Puffff…Gone. And instead, I was just left with being in the present moment with the fact that my body was in a different space. And knowing that I had the skills to be able to shift that because of how I've trained myself to breathe and move and whatnot, suddenly I didn't have to deal with ruminating thoughts. I didn't have to deal with beating myself up. And I became the director of my next moment experience because I wasn't stuck in a loop inside my head watching the same DVD over and over again. So, the question, the initial part of the software is the question, what if. What if one wrong? We've talked about this before. What if, what I think is happening isn't actually happening? And then what if all that's actually happening, it's just, I'm having a physiological sensation in my body. What if that's all that's happening? What do I want to do from here? [21:40.8]
Simple questions really. And it does take a little bit of training and awareness. And if you would like to learn some of the other skills around this, so that you actually have a say in how to change up your physiological experience and kind of retrain your body to handle emotions differently, you can go to thefreedomspecialist.com/feelbetternow, that's the choose your own emotion course. And that's a really great place to start. Three weeks long and I try to keep it fun and upbeat, but it's, it's a chance for you to day by day, step by step, get someone to step into your life and teach you how to take advantage of being the director of your life instead of being the reactor to what's happened in your mind, because that's just been filled with things over the years. [22:22.9]
If you don't want to keep regurgitating your past and spitting it into your future, the place to stop it is on layer two. The place to stop it is to retrain your physiological, biological response to your environment. It's not to talk about your problems. It's not to regurgitate your problems. It's not to gold, play your limitations. It's not to sit there and spend years and decades and sessions and whatnot. Moaning what's happened to you and be mooning your fate. It's simply about changing your physiological response. And when you do that, your mind now becomes a friend because they will also reinforce the good that you're putting there as well. [23:03.7]
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. [23:21.7]
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