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. All right. All right. For the past couple of weeks, we have been doing some heavy hitting on doctrinal, scriptural kind of things. And as much as I love those, I don't want you to feel like, oh man, this is all we're ever going to talk about it on a podcast about being alive and free. I mean, it sounds like so much work that constantly hounded me looking at these things. So, let's talk about work today, shall we? Let's talk about work and laziness and trying to alleviate you of all of this hard work that you have to do in your life. Are you down with that? Can you think we can do that in 25-ish minutes or so? Let's see what we can do. [01:09.3]
See you grew up believing in work, right? How many of you, when you're listening to this have had somebody be like, no, if you work hard, you'll be successful. Have you heard that growing up? Or you have to like, you know, grin and bear it or no pain, no gain and this whole idea of work as a virtue. My hunches that started in the industrial revolution, to be honest, it's not that over time, people haven't told you that you need to do what's needed and whatnot. But if you look at the world today, if everybody were as productive and as hardworking as we kind of try to push them to be with all the productivity hacks and all the everything going on, we wouldn't have a planet to live on. The rate at which the productive people are destroying the planet is only being stopped by the lazy people on the planet. If we really look at it, the reason we have air to breathe, it's probably because half of the planet is exceptionally lazy, lazy. We have them to thank for the fact that we still have a planet to live on, otherwise, we would have destroyed things a long time ago. [02:11.9]
Somewhere along the way we developed as a Western culture, not an Eastern culture. Eastern culture understood times and seasons, even in, in the Bible, it's there, right? There's a time to everything under heaven that's in Qoheleth, which is Ecclesiastes, right. There is a time to everything. Things have seasons, they grow and then they wane and then they grow and then they wane and so on. And there's a harvest time and there's a planting time and everything was in harmony with this sort of like up and down and swings with the seasons. And then what happens is humans took hold of nature. We developed the ability with it, starting with the Renaissance and, and then the enlightenment and the sort of exaltation of mankind over the idea that there is some higher thing in charge. And so, the illumination of the human spirit and the human mind and the development of that. And then of course, the widespread use of caffeine, which started to hijack men's and women's minds and enable them to stay up longer and started to spur all kinds of creative endeavors and a sort of manic productivity. [03:17.8]
The French revolution folks started in a coffee house. Have I told you this? It started in a coffee house, that's right. 1789, 14th of July coffee house, everybody gathers and then they go. If the coffee house hadn't been around the coffee houses, were the places where news was spread, where ideas were formed, where all this stuff was happening, people could go way long into the night. And then we have like electricity that's created and all of these different things. Before the advent of coffee, there was no a minute hand on a clock, there was just the, our hand. And then we have minute hands, but not the advent of coffee it's been around for a long time, but before it's wide mainstream use. Then we have minute hand and then we have a second hand. And now we're measuring things in hundreds and thousands of a second for all of these different things, because humans are being that minutely conscious of how much they need to be producing every single minute. This all comes in this industrial push, where we leave the control of nature, where nature sort of had us bound in certain rhythm. [04:21.1]
And now we're able to set our own course, our own destiny, where we are dominating nature and nature isn't dominating us. Hence, we've been destroying nature because we decided that we're smarter than it. We've done that with a wildlife restrictions and stuff and had to learn our lessons. We've done it with forest fires and then had to learn our lessons. We've done it with so many things where mankind decided we're going to take charge of the way the natural world works and we're going to do it better than the way it's designed. So far, that's been quite a rocky road for us. So here we are in this place now in the 21st century where we just take for granted that everybody has hard work as a virtue, that hasn't been the case for all of human history. There are still tribes down in South America where, when they're not hunting or gathering, they're just sitting, still doing nothing. There's no push for hard work. There's no push for productivity. There's just when it's time to do something, we go do it. When it's not time, we just chill. We just sit. We be. We share time together. [05:17.9]
Many other cultures that are more established long-standing cultures have this reverence for time off and time spent with family and stuff. But in America, we've just sort of like on steroids, we've put hard work and productivity on steroids. So, you and I grew up in an environment that is already biased and skewed toward believing that you have to be working hard and if you're not, you're hardly working. That you have to be working hard and if you're not, you're not earning your keep. That you have to be working hard and if you're not, then you're being lazy. Or you're taking the easy way out or you're taking advantage of other people. No wonder it's hard for people who like strike it, big, strike it, rich, you know, or they're doing some great work online or something like that. They create an app or something and they're making a lot of money and they're feeling great about it, but then they also feel guilty because they're like riding off the backs of the working folk kind of stuff. No wonder if you do something and it succeeds really easily, there's still some paying of guilt because, well, it wasn't a lot of hard work. [06:19.7]
I grew up and academics came really easily to me and I remember beating myself up about it because it felt like I didn't really work that hard for it. Everybody around you has touted hard work and productivity as a virtue. You want to know how pervasive this is. Think about this. When you are sent home with tasks to do from school, extra exercises, what was it called? Home Work. They could have called it home practice. No, no Home Work. When you were at school and you were learning, it was called School Work. When you go out to mow the lawn or to weed the garden, what are you doing? Oh, it's Yard Work. Oh, now it gets juicy. When I go make a painting, what's it called? It's an Art Work. And there are Works of literature and Works of music. And the collected works of poets everywhere around us. My hunches, since the industrial revolution work has become a virtue. Why somewhere propaganda made it seem that way, for sure. [07:31.7]
In some cases, it's true, if you don't do what is needed, then you won't get the results from it. But I already talked about that in the Not-So-Secret Secret of Success episode, right. If you just do what's needed in the time that's needed, then you'll get the results you want. So that's different than this whole idea of work. Well, let me ask you this question. What exactly is work? I mean, you've been stressed out about it, right? Oh, I got to go to work. Is that exactly a happy thought for at least for most of you? Is that something that you're like, yay I get to go to work or is it, does it feel like it's a job? It's a chore. It's something heavy. You got to do your work before you can play that kind of thing. Have you noticed even the word has a kind of heaviness to it? Well, what is work? Guess what? If you look around the world, it doesn't exist. It's not a real thing. [08:22.7]
I know your brain might be frying right now, but you're used to me making these kinds of outlandishly ridiculous claims. So, what do I mean by that? Well, you can't go down to the store and buy some work. Hey, can I get a pack of work, I'm I'm, I'm fresh out. You can't, you can't take it on a date. Well, where are you going tonight? Well, I'm going out to dinner with work. No, you can't take it on a date. You can take activities on a date. You can do some things during dinner, but work itself is not a thing. It's a label that is placed on a whole bunch of different activities, depending on what it is that you're doing. We say I'm going to work. What does that even mean? Well, in physics, the word work refers to the amount of energy that is expended or exchanged in doing a particular activity. So, it's not a thing. It's like an inch. You don't go by inches. It's just a way to measure stuff. So, when you're going to work, what you're saying is I'm going to go expend some energy. Well, you can expend some energy dancing and playing and rolling around in the garden and laughing. You can expend energy, digesting food and eating. You can expend energy, writing an email. You can expend energy talking to somebody, recording a podcast. There's loads of different ways to expend energy. [09:39.2]
And why is it that some of them suddenly get labeled as work and others don't? It's just because of your relationship with it. You're used to calling it that and as a result of it, you continue to think of it that way. But all that's happening is an expenditure of energy. What's really going on in the world. If there is no such thing as work, there's not a single person on the planet who has ever done a day of work in their life. Did you hear me? Not a single person on the planet has ever done a day of work in their life. Isn't that cool? What would happen if you approached your job that way? What would happen if you approached, maybe work you're doing toward recovery from addiction, that way? What would happen if you approach what is needed in order to shift away from anxiety or depression that way? What if, instead of calling it, wow, that sounds like a lot of work, what if, instead of calling it that, what if you just called it what it is? Hey, I got to go write an email. Hey, I'm going to go do this breathing thing. Hey, I'm going to go outside and I'm just going to play some basketball for a little bit. No, I'm going to the gym to work out. Are you so real? Honestly, that's not even real. What are we talking about? I'm just going to go waste some energy. I'll be back because it's good for me. [10:48.1]
This comes from a massively misguided perception of life. It comes from a massively misguided perception of what it takes to really enhance life. Yes, certain activities will improve and enhance the quality of life, but wait, why not just call them those activities? Hey, I'm going to eat some celery instead of, oh, I need to eat healthy. You know, I need to go work out. And yeah, I'm going to go play around with some weights because I really enjoy it. I'm going to go do some body weight exercises. I'm going to go like do some pull-ups on the, on the bar. I'm going to go do this, that and the other. As soon as you start calling it a workout, what are you doing? You're playing into an idea of virtue. If you work out, it means something more about you than that. You did that activity, doesn't it? Oh, that lazy man. He never does his work, right? He doesn't work that long. He doesn't work enough. He's not working for what he's paid. All that stuff, this comes from virtue signaling. [11:42.8]
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. [12:10.8]
I work out means now I get a chance to pat myself on the back on top of all the other stuff. Why don't you just pat yourself on the back all day long? Why do you have to think of yourself negatively until you've done this thing called work? Because guess what? If you actually show up to do the things you're calling work in a really positive state, feeling wonderful about yourself and joyful to be alive. All of the activities will take less effort to do. They will accomplish, you'll accomplish them with more creativity, more intuition, more ease. They will require less work from you because they won't be working the first place and your life will be better. Everything will work out better. Oh, see, look, oh, no, everything works out. We've got it all over the language. This comes just from being raised in an arena that has built up this idea of work as one, a real thing, which it isn't. And two something that you have to do, which is why some people will go and things aren't “working out.” But they'll be like, man, you've been working really hard though, as if wasting energy on things that aren't producing is some sort of virtue. [13:18.0]
We'll often pat ourselves on the back for having worked really hard when all that we're really after is accomplishing the thing we're after. And so, time and time again, work as snuck into our lives as this insidious little idea that we've all believed is real, but it's not actually a real thing. I had a client a while ago who would talk about work, you know, and he was really stressed out about the things he was doing. Now, he creates music mixes and other beats and other types of things. And so, he's doing like a bunch of different activities associated with it in order to build his brand, build his business, stuff and whatnot, but he would always get stressed out and he would always be judging himself about how good he did at work and whether he accomplished his goals and all that other jazz. And as a result, as a result, he was starting to use addictive, compulsive behaviors, coping mechanisms, and other kinds of things. He was getting depressed and down on himself a lot and anxious and couldn't sleep very well. And all these other things, because he was stressing in this one way. So, I had him just break it down. I asked you, I asked him, so what is it that you actually do? Like, he's like, well, no, I just do some work. And I'm like, well, but what is it, do you do? [14:27.0]
And he finally was like, well, I'll spend some time refining what I'm offering people. And then sometimes I'll do some market research, which is going and looking up certain, certain things and he described though. Or if I have a big project I'm working on, I'll do a little bit on that project. Or I'll maybe spend some time updating business targets. He gave a list of things. And I say, cool, what if instead of saying, oh, I went and I did a bunch of, I did some good work today. What if you said, okay, cool, I refined my offer a little bit. I did some market research. I made a couple of steps toward this big project I'm working on. And I updated some business targets. What if you just called it what it was? And he thought for a, and he's like, wow, that feels really different because it didn't feel like a big daunting task anymore. I need to build my business. No, you just need to do these simple things. A lot of people make a big deal out of what they're doing, because it feels like then it's hard work. Most of what you and I do in the day is not hard work. First off work doesn't exist. Second, how can you have it be hard if it doesn't even exist? [15:25.1]
Hard is your relationship to the activity. Wow, that was really hard. Guess what? News flash, everything is hard until it isn't. Meaning when you suck at something, it takes more effort than when you don't suck at something. That's just normal. So, it's not the activity that is hard, it is your skill with it, that's it. And that's the skill, isn't hard, it's just, it takes this much energy or this much effort to do it. And if I keep practicing, it'll take class. And if I learned different ways of doing it, it'll take less. So, it's not the thing that is hard, nor is it work. It's just an activity. And how you experienced activity, is largely dependent on the way you think about it. If you're going to call it work, and if you're going to call it hard work, you may get to pat yourself on the back, but you also will suffer from the thought processes you had that created hardship for yourself and work for yourself. Do you really want to do that for yourself the rest of your life? Do you really want to go to work all the rest of your life? Do you want to be a workhorse? Do you want to wake up and think about work and doing work and having work and resolving problems at work and all this other stuff all the time? Do you want your life to revolve around it, I would suggest if the answer is no to quit working and instead just recognize you do activities all day long, most of them are not that taxing. And some of those activities you get paid for, and those activities are total freebies and that's it. [16:49.4]
You go to your job and instead of working, what you do is you go help you, your boss out with some issue that he's having, because he wants a little bit of help. And because you helped him, hey he pays you. That's it! As soon as you call it work, you have a different relationship to it because of how you've thought about work your whole life. I invite you to stop working. I invite you to stop stressing. I invite you to stop looking at what you're doing through the day as something big or heavy or hard or anything like that. If you can really just take the time to stop and see what's really happening. The only thing happening is at any given moment, you're doing a certain activity. And most of those activities are not that troublesome. So how to train this? Maybe I would suggest this is something I suggest for our clients. How about you put an alarm on your phone every hour and you just title the alarm. What is actually happening right now? Or what am I actually doing right now? Just something goes off in the background and you check the alarm and it's got that question on. And you're like, oh, what am I actually doing? Well, I'm checking an alarm on my phone. Oh, I'm not doing work. Okay, cool. I'm writing an email. That's all I'm doing. Okay, cool. I am in a meeting with a boss talking to people. Cool. I'm planning. Planning is not that hard. Yes, it is mentally taxing, it does take some effort. It does drain some energy, but it's not, it's not like, you know, building a house out of mud or trying to make a clay oven in the wilderness like I did a while back that took all day and it wasn't hard work. It was just some activities that we did one and then another and another. And at times I got tired and so I took a rest and that was it. [18:31.2]
If you can let your mind release from the concept of work, you never have to work on another day again in your life. So, I'm going to invite you to be less committed, less committed to your concept of how hard everything is. Less committed to your concept, that you're actually doing any work at all. Less committed to this idea that you have to do hard work in order to be worth something, in order to have earned your keep. Less committed to all of these problems you keep creating. Less committed, I'm telling you to do the opposite of what most people would invite you to do, which is be more committed. You know, fix this, do that. I'm asking you to be less committed to the very thing that's causing you misery. That's it. You don't even have to be committed to five feeling joyful if you're just less committed to the things causing you misery. Oh, my goodness. You'd be surprised how happy life becomes. It's just not worth it. It's just not worth it to produce misery anymore. And a lot of the misery people feel, and a lot of the stress they have comes around the concept of work. [19:37.8]
So here we are at the end, we've done a lot of talking. Have you released it a little bit? Have you looked at your work a little bit differently right now? Are you ready to spend the rest of your life never working again? Are you ready to just jump in and play and do the activities? Oh, but Bob God said that man supposed to live by the sweat of his brow. He's he's going to eat his bread all the days of his life. Guess what my friend? Have you ever sweat while playing a sports game? Have you ever sweat while dancing? Have you ever sweat, just cause it was hot outside. Have you? There's so many different ways that you could sweat, not all of them are what you are calling work. And my guess is that if you lived in gleeful, joyfulness, I don't even know if that's a word or a phrase, we'll make it up. But if you just live joyfully, yes, you would sweat. Yes, you would do activities. Yes, so you would do what's needed, but you would do it so well. And so ecstatically that the quality of your life might be on par with what the creator hoped for you. That comes because the human body is designed to run on joy, not on stress and work. [20:49.3]
So, I'm going to invite you to put down your work, right? Come on to me, ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Maybe he's going to give you a rest because he's going to help you see what's really going on so that you stop creating more work for yourself then is absolutely needed. You can still do the exact same activities, carry the same duties out, but you don't have to experience any of them as work ever again. If you can really just see that all that's happening is that at any given moment, you're just doing what you're doing. And it's not that taxing. It's only when you start thinking the common thread of all your misery is when you're thinking. And it's only when you start thinking, thinking about all the extra work you have to do, that you create an experience inside of yourself, of heaviness, of stress, of frustration, of overwhelm, of burnout. Stop. Capture, and seize upon every thought like Paul said, right. Just stop. Just do the activity in front of you. Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof, right? Yes, I know I promised we weren't going to talk about scripture today, but I got to throw those in for those of you that want to defend this idea, that man needs to work hard and all this other stuff. That's not the way the human system is designed. [22:02.5]
So maybe just, maybe you, if you're interpreting the Bible that way, you're not paying attention to the life that was created by the dude or being that is inspiring, the words of the Bible. Maybe just, maybe you're understanding it wrong. And maybe if you shifted your view of things so that you're the workings of life also match your interpretation of what you're reading. You might also see that life is easy, that you can live like Jesus, where your yoke is easy and your burden is really light because you're not creating work for yourself. You're simply doing what's needed, and Jesus did what was needed. And yeah, there was an intense moment at the end, for sure. But the rest of it totally fine. He simply did what was needed. No sense of work, not in his words. And you can live and do the same. So, if you're striving to be Christ-like stop working and start being joyful. And by stop working, I don't mean stop doing what's needed. I mean, do it, but quit making it into work. Rejoice, that's a common enough word in scripture. Enjoy your dang life, cause that's what your body and mind are designed to run on. [23:09.2]
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. [23:27.2]
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