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.
(00:35): So you may recall a while ago in the episode called don't want it. I told you about my, one of my encounters with Vladimir and me asking him, you know, how, how can I get to be a master at this martial arts stuff to do the kinds of things that he could do to be able to perceive and move and manipulate bodies in such a way that it looks effortless, the way that he was just taking apart, his attackers and his answer to me of course, was don't want it, you know, don't put your heart in it, just go and do your work in class and then go home and live your life. And here I thought he was gonna have me go and jump into their north sea and swim with sharks and all the other good stuff. But no, his answer was actually, don't try, quit, quit that.
(01:19): Now this is, I wanna revisit this topic because I think there's some deeper dimensions to it that are worth exploring almost every single one of us, at least in the west is we've grown up in a society that's highly individualistic. And a lot of what we're trying to do is to become something that is unique and to become special in some way, shape or form. And in our attempts to become special, to become something that is praiseworthy or worth money or worth love or worth affection, we are actually trying to be something other than what we are. We're trying to learn a new skill and identifying ourselves with that skill. We're trying to go through different achievements. It could be more information. It could be new relationships. There are so many different ways that we go about seeking to transform ourselves, to become something that is special.
(02:11): And what's ironic about that entire endeavor is that every time you're trying to be something other than what you are, the only thing that you can base that on is something you've read or learned from elsewhere, which means in a sense, you are trying to be like someone else, which means you are actually trying to be less special than you already are. I want you to pay attention to this very closely. Every human being on the planet has a fingerprint. That is U is as unique to them as anything else on the planet. There is no, there are no two fingerprints alike. There are no two immune systems alike. There are no two bodies alike, even in minute levels. Yes, identical twins, but they're not identical, identical. And even in those twins, the personalities of those twins, the way they interact, those are different as well.
(02:58): There is no way to be more special than to be exactly what it is that you are. In other words, to give up, trying to make the changes happen and to allow them to happen last week while I rambled possibly a bit, I did talk a little bit about flowers and seeds and, and the fact that all of us are in some way, shape or form one of those. And the only thing that's gonna allow us to bloom is just taking care of the building blocks. Right. But what is it that grows a flower? I mean, you might know how to make sure that it has the right soil and environment and stuff, but what is it that makes that flower grow? That's something within the flower. That's not anything that you or I do. If the seeds are dud, the seeds are du, it just doesn't grow.
(03:45): And there's nothing that you or I do to make that happen. If it isn't a dud, then it grows if it has the right environment and that's it. And I would submit to you that the same thing is true for you and me. So a Reese, certainly I had a chance to go get my my brain scanned. I'm always out like exploring things and always trying to find better, more practical, simpler ways of helping myself and anyone who I'm coaching operating with in physical spaces or teaching or anything like that find better and more practical and simpler and more direct ways of experiencing what life has to offer and experiencing the freedom and the glory of what life is really. And so I had a chance recently to go and get my brain scanned. And I was looking at these brain scans and I'm looking at the wave patterns and the paral lobes and the temporal lobes and the frontal lobes.
(04:41): And they're giving me these scores and, and I'm, you know, my emotional health is very, very balanced, you know? And I'm like, yeah, no surprise. Right? I'm starting to feel really good about myself news flash. There should be some sense of foreboding here starting to feel really, really good about myself. And then they came back with my stress response and my stress response was like a 60 out of a hundred. And that seemed odd to me cuz I'm like, well, I don't really experience stress all that much. Like I'm not. Or if I does come, it's dissipated really quickly. And so we're looking at all these things and he is like, these look like these are patterns that have shown up because you've learned ways to, to navigate what has been coming up for you, what your body's response to stress is. And so there may be some underlying things that are there.
(05:31): And what you've learned is how do, how do I sail with a ship that has a one broken AAR or, you know, the mass is a little shorter than it needs to be. And you've figured out really beautiful, remarkable, amazing ways to sail with it that might even outperform people that have a more normal ship, so to speak. But you've found ways to do that. I didn't like this idea, the idea that I was somehow messed up or broken, you know, and that I just found ways of doing this. Of course, we're all interpreting brain data. What do we really know that it actually means we don't everybody in the room is guessing for sure. And so then he told me that the people they had gone to to try and determine what would be the healthiest and most balanced state were people like monks and meditators and people that have been at it their whole life.
(06:12): Fortunately, they weren't looking to your average American or some publication from the, a medical association to determine what was the case. Not that they're bad people, but they're studying people, people who are diseased and ironically what you name your association is very indicative of where all of your focus and attention's gonna be the center for disease control is a center that has to look for diseases to control them, which means their activities are gonna be around creating more and more diagnoses for diseases and then creating more and more processes for controlling them. Whereas a center for health and abundance, what are they looking for? Their, their mentality is gonna be focused in an entirely different direction, right? American medical association. Well, okay. These are people that are gonna be focusing predominantly on medical practices and not on other holistic possible practices. Not because they're malicious, but that's just the name of the association.
(07:06): So anything that's okay. In medicine, that's where they'll focus. Wow. That was a side trip back to the main event folks. Okay. So we're looking at my brain wave and what they noted, what, what that my protal lobes are on high meaning they're, they're, they're a little more active than, than would be normal and the paral lobes in the brain. Just so you know, if you look at your skull, there's, there's kind of like a Ridge right down the center of the top of the skull. And on either side of that center are the protal bones of the brain. So the varietal lobes are kind of underneath, are kind of high and off to the sides. And the frontal bone is up toward the front. And that's where your prefrontal Cortes is your higher reasoning centers and your thought processes and things of that nature.
(07:49): And the parietal bones are on the side and the bridal lobes are there and they deal with a lot of sense information. So he asks me, he's like, so are you really sensitive to like grips of people or noises or anything like that? And I was like, no, I mean, I've trained myself to want more information that way. So I'm sitting there looking at it, going, wow, this is good. This is maybe an indicator that I'm like special here. Then we look at the occipital lobe and it's going, whackadoodle like the right hemisphere of the occipital lobe is going nuts. So, and the left one is not going nuts. So, and that's where visual information is handled and well, okay. So if I spent 18 years looking at porn, maybe there was some stuff there and they're looking at frequencies and some of the lower, what they would call subconscious or less present frequencies are kind of a little bit out of balance.
(08:34): And they're like, maybe these are older things and I'm looking at them. And I felt this sudden in fear as we were going through this, cuz what I was gonna do is just sit down in the chair. And then I was gonna, they found a way to reinterpret or like represent tho those brainwave patterns back to the brain, by turning 'em into certain sound. And then when one, when the brain hit a certain frequency, it would play that note back to the brain. So pretty soon the brain recognizes, oh yeah, this is the activity I'm doing. And then because it's doing that, it's like looking in a mirror, right? So if you look in the mirror and suddenly you see there's a mustard stain down the bottom half of your shirt, you'd be like, oh, hang on a second. Let me go fix that. You know, if you've gotten dressed in the dark and you you're great, but then you walk out and you realize there's a booger hanging outta your nose and there your hair's all disheveled and stuff.
(09:20): You'd be like, hold on a second. I gotta go fix this. Only being able to see what you're actually doing, what we would call awareness, which is what we work with in a number of different areas with our clients. Just, just seeing, just being a witness to what's happening automatically starts changing things cuz you just naturally start to operate differently. And so your brain does the same thing. And so I was faced with this like, oh no, well, if my brain starts listening to itself and it starts changing, what if all of these gifts that I've developed over time? What if all these skill sets fall apart? What if that means that I'm just a human being and I'm not special anymore. And I literally had something of an emotional, like semi meltdown, meaning like you gimme five minutes to sit there and like mourn the possible passing of these skillsets and to realize how much I had become identified with the things I do instead of the being that I am.
(10:19): If you look at your life, all the things you do, all the events in your life, every ounce of it, there are just experiences that you've had. You, were you before you learned to eat without with a spoon and a fork before you, you learned to walk before you got married before you had kids, before you developed a faith in anything before any of that stuff, you were you. And so to say that the events in your life make you, who you are says that you weren't you before you, those events happened, you must have been somebody else. And to say that those skills that you learned make you who you are. Yes. We tend to talk about people like the plumber, meaning the guy who does the plumbing, or we talk about the electrician in terms of what they do, not in terms of the being they are. And as a result, we get identified with that. What your worth in the world in the marketplace is a career has to do with, well, what you do and what are the thoughts you have and what knowledge have you acquired and what skills have you developed and all of those things. And if those went away in a very real sense, most of us would freak out. But what we are essentially is a memorized set of patterns, who we think we are is this memorized set of patterns that we then defend to the life. I found myself trying to defend the unbalance in the brainwaves for a few minutes as if it were a virtue. And I have seen people defend their diagnoses and defend their pathologies, defend addiction, defend depression, defend all of these things. Not that they're wonderful things to experience. I don't think any of them feel like, well, yeah, I would've chosen this, but they defend it. Because as soon as you take that away, who are they they've built their life on this now, who am I,
(12:11): If you or someone you know, is looking to drop the FBO 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 want some help doing it. Head on over to the freedom specialist.com/feel better now and check out some of the things we've got into door for you or book a call. So we can look at your unique situation and get you the help that you're looking for. When you look at this especially happens around addiction circles. When I start talking with people and I start pointing out, not just this cool semantic thing, that there's no such thing as a thing called addiction, it's not a bacterium. It's not a virus. It's not an actual disease and people get flippant about it. But when I start pointing out the actual research over a century of a research, pointing out the notion that addiction is a theory at best, and that the idea of calling a disease is a theory. It's a model of addiction and it's the poor model at that. And it doesn't account for all the things, for instance. Okay, cool. Well, some of the biggest factors in determining whether somebody will have an addiction are what's their marital status. What is their education level? What is their socioeconomic class and their economic abilities?
(13:30): Where do they live? Those are the things that start to determine. There are not a person who's gonna be addicted. Tell me which genes in the DNA code do you have to turn on and off to make somebody married or not married? Because I tell you, I know a bunch of single guys that would love to know how to turn on a woman that way and be like, just tell me what to do to alter the genetic code so that I can turn her onto marriage. It's it's not there's there's no, it's not a disease in that sense. It's a theory. And then when I start telling them like, look, the, we have to look at the basic building blocks, how this thing was built and that includes thoughts and emotions and behaviors for sure. But it also includes all of the more fundamental things from which those came. As soon as I, I start telling them this, as soon as I start sharing with them, that this concept that is the only way they've made sense of addiction to date of their behavior, to date, isn't real. They feel duped. They feel like a fool. They feel like they've been scammed. They feel like idiots and they feel like fraud. And then they start defending addiction and I've had doctors do it. I've had 12 step people do it. I've had religious people do it. Non-Religious people do it. I've had family members do it all over the place. People want to defend this label because it's the only way they've been able to make sense of their life. And it's an identity. And in 12 step programs, I mean, they say, I am an addict in therapy sessions. You know, they, they get diagnosed with a disorder of some sort and pornography addiction is not a diagnosis, so don't go that way.
(15:06): And in fact, there isn't a diagnosis for addiction anymore. They're called substance abuse orders and other types of disorders, but they aren't called addictions anymore, except they're classed as addictive disorders or something like that in the DSM. But that's just one example of how we become identified with something that makes us special. Think about it. We want special treatment because we have depression or we're sad or we're sick. And I don't mean that in a malicious way, please don't take it that way. I, there have been plenty of times in my life where, because I'm sad. I want my wife to notice me and I want her to just do something nice for me, I'm expecting some special treatment because of how I feel. I want to be treated special because if I'm treated just like, you know, another human being that isn't more special than that, then whatever happened, right? So I've had many, many moments where that has happened. And if I'm not being treated special, then what do I do? Well, I start either coping with that. I start being negative about it. I've done that. I spent years doing that all because I didn't realize I was trying to be special. Right? I wanted to be special. I wanted to be something set apart from everybody else. And that's dangerous. One, you and I already are special. There is not a single person on the planet that could ever be you, that could ever be as brilliant as you could be in the way that you could be it that could ever be as glorious in life as the way you could be in the way that could be. It. Your expression of life is unique to you. It is the most special thing on the planet, just like everybody else is.
(16:42): But the minute that you're trying to be special, that you are exaggerating cases or you're adding labels and concepts to it in order to make a definition in your head, that you are special, the more that you're trying to manipulate your environment to make you special or change your clothes to make you stand out in a crowd or in all of that stuff. And I'm not saying any of those activities in their own right are negative doing it because you want to do it. That's one thing but doing it because you want to stand out because you want to be special because you're looking to find fulfillment in some way to find your own value. As soon as that starts to happen, you're actually becoming less special than you ever were. Because now you're imitating ideas in the public consciousness about being special. And you're becoming more like everybody else who does the same thing. It's just like fads and trends and all that other stuff. At first, the early adopters feel great, cuz they're special. And then everybody's doing it. Then the early adopters move on to the next thing. And then everybody follows along and nobody's simply being themselves or paying attention to their life and what they themselves need. So today I just wanna step back and offer you an invitation to stop, trying to be special and to just start discovering what actually is already special about you, that you could never do anything to change, to start nourishing that seed a little bit differently. Now, what is it, how does this relate to the idea of not wanting it? Me wanting to be a superhero and Marshall arts? Yes. I enjoyed martial arts for a lot. Right. I, I love it. It's fun. It's a cool kind of movement for me.
(18:15): The possibility of me being in some sort of spice scenario and the probability of that moving forward is smaller and smaller. Even the probability of me getting in a fight is smaller and smaller as I age, it's just the case. And so if I'm trying to say, well, I'm preparing myself for this or that. Some of that's taking aside my earliest daydream that I remember I was a teenager, you know, or a young teen or something like that. But I remember many, many daydream where I was dreaming about being the guy. That's this incredible martial artist that SWOS into. I used to dream of it being like a church building on Sundays that got attacked by a terrorist sec, don't ask me what terror act would attack some random church building on a Sunday afternoon where nobody's doing anything but preaching the good word. But anyway, so I would have these daydreams of like this massive group of like 10, 20 guys, all dressed in like ninja black camo military a and I would be in the middle of the pews and I would somehow like flip and jump and swing around and without using any weaponry at all, get them all knocked out and tied up and save the damsel distress. My vision of martial arts was that it would make me special was that it would somehow give me value. And I'll tell you this right now. If you can't see the value in yourself just as you are, if you never changed one wit from now to the end of time, you'll never see it by adding some new gizmo, some whi bang, new capability or some fancy new set of clothes.
(19:50): The key has to be seeing the value of what you are right now. If you never change. And if you're in relationship with somebody that's the same as true for your husband or wife, the, the very same thing is true. If you can't value them for who they are and what they are at this moment, expecting them to change and be something different and expecting that they'll somehow be more attractive to you then you'll never ever, ever see it. The minute you no longer require anyone to change, not you nor your spouse, nor your boyfriend or your girlfriend or your children is the minute you start seeing just how beautiful and glorious every single one of them is including yourself. And in the beginning, when I started creating the program that I've been helping people with for the last several years, right? That was one of the core things that I was after for myself and for other people the words in the Bible that you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free were some guiding words for me.
(20:49): They seem to ring like, yeah, knowing the truth of a situation, whether I like it or not. But knowing that that's the case, like frees me up. I'm no longer fighting and I'm no longer in the dark and now I can move forward. And the one truth that I felt like was most essential is who or what am I, what is if I really catch a glimpse of the real me underneath all the masks and all the labels and all the special abilities and everything else that I collected over time, if I can really collect, catch a glimpse of the real me, then how might that set me free of all the fake me, especially the negative ones that I created. It, the ones that said I was not good enough, or that I would always be an addict or that I would never get any better or that I'm lazy or that I'm undisciplined all of it or that I'm a disappointment or that things never work out for me, all the fake IDs that I'd built when I could finally see through them to the real me, then I get set free of that.
(21:47): So at the end of this, I just want you to take a step back and acknowledge. There is nothing you can do to make yourself more special than you already are. And given that if you're not feeling that way, if you're not able to rejoice in who you are, then what needs to happen is not necessarily adding some new whizbang ability or, or some new achievement or just this one thing, or even getting rid of an addiction though. That's helpful because those can be detrimental to a life for sure, but what's needed is not getting rid of that. Getting rid of an addicted behavior, won't make you more special in your own eyes. You'll find other ways to beat yourself up, finding the value in who you are. That's where the juice of life is seeing what really are underneath. Even just catching a glimpse of it is nuclear. It will explode into your life in a whole different way. And freedom will be the aftermath, which is a much better bomb to drop in your life. And so if that's something you'd like help with, by all means, go to the freedom specialist.com. We have some online programs, or I really recommend the retreats that we run. They are intensive four days and it's like several years of therapy and, and movement practices and body cleansing stuff all at once in a like fun kind of breezy light manner that really gets down to the heart of a lot of things and really sets you up with some really beautiful momentum room. And board is covered. It is a couple thousand dollars just because we're covering transportation and housing and food and paying for the staff and the team and support to be there. So it is a little bit of an investment.
(23:16): And if you need to start with a smaller program just to get some of the building blocks in place, that's totally cool. But if you can make it to one of these retreats, even if you gotta make payments for it or something like that, it is definitely worth it. It changed my life. The stuff that I do there is every thing that I do in my own life. And we've seen almost a thousand people right now take the processes that have been handed that I've figured out and managed to share with people and transform their lives in many ways, some of them small ways, some of them huge ways. And I would love to see you there. And I'd love to help if that's all at all of interest to you, if not take a step back this week and figure out what it is that you're gonna do in order to start seeing the value in who you are right now, if you never changed a bit and that's it for today's alive and free pot cast. If you enjoyed this show and want some more freedom bombs landing in your earbuds, subscribe right now at wherever you get your podcast 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.
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