You're listening to the “REI Marketing Nerds” podcast, the leading resource for real estate investors who want to dominate their market online. Dan Barrett is the founder of AdWords Nerds, a high-tech digital agency, focusing exclusively on helping real estate investors like you get more leads and deals online, outsmart your competition, and live a freer, more awesome life. And, now, your host, Dan Barrett.
(00:04): 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've 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. And welcome back to the alive and free podcast. Today. I want to take you on a little journey, exploring the nature of the cause of all of our emotions and all of our feelings and all of our behaviors that come from those things and so on and so forth. And we're gonna start by running all the way back to Ohio. The year is 1993, and I am sitting there in page manner outside of Dayton, Ohio, outside of Wright Patterson air air base, where my family lived for a period of time while my father was stationed there going to the air force Institute of technology for a master's degree, that was back just before the internet was fully sort of online or functional. So he was doing some of the preliminary work and studying some of the preliminary work around the internet. And I would geek out in his office while he would kind of play little in encryption games with the black chamber stuff from world war II and send messages back and forth across this, this magical thing called the internet that would allow people to communicate without their computers actually being touching in this wireless way and so on and so forth.
(01:42): Well, at that point in time, well, I was, you know, 13 years old, 12, 13 years old, and I'm living there and out in front of, we lived in a little like town homey, kind of complex and out in front of our house was a playground. So I was out there swinging on the swings, jumping around, jumping off the swings, playing on the playground and my little sister, Heidi, who has probably never listened to this podcast. And if she does might be mortified anyway, she wanted to show me something cool. She had, she had figured out how to do our front porch, had a railing. So meaning it had a little banister and a couple of vertical poles to hold the little banister up. And she had figured out how to flip herself over the banister and have her head go between the rails and then come out the other side and a flip she's like, Hey, Bob, watch this. So I look over just in time to see my sister stick her head between the rails flip all the way off the, off the top of it and have her feet land on the ground. The problem though was she couldn't get her head out from in between the rails anymore. Her ears had closed shut on the way through, and then they'd flapped back open, and then she lay there half on the ground stuck. So at that point in time freaking out, I ran to help her as I vaguely recall. And she could probably corroborate this story. She went, I went inside and grabbed the butter, cuz I think I had seen that on TV somewhere or or a comic strip somewhere. I thought I'll just grease her up. And so I started putting butter in her hair and all these different things to try and help her get her head through because I lacked the capacity to help.
(03:15): I didn't actually have an understanding of what was going on. Finally, my dad came home, saw the situation and while trying to stifle his laughter just slightly pulled the bars apart. Got my sister's head out from, in between him and all was well as ridiculous as this situation is. And I haven't thought of it for a long time. I wanted to kind of bring it up because most of us live in a self-made prison here. My sister, through curiosity, through playfulness, through unintended, like consequences had accidentally trapped herself in a prison of her own making. She had explored something and taken a few actions that had brought her there. And then once she got there started flipping out and freaking out her emotions changed. Everything else changed because of a decision that she had made previously. Well recently, a good friend of mine who has been, she'd been through all kinds of stuff in her life, in her, in her marriage situation with her health and had been through a long, long haul of trying to figure some things out has finally came out of the situation and in, so doing her husband didn't know what to do with her.
(04:22): He didn't, he had been the strong one for all this time. He had been the one that, that took care of everyone, the one that had all the answers and everything else. And then when she got to a place where she was happy and healthy and strong and didn't need him for her happiness and was instead happy to be with him because why not? Wouldn't this be amazing. He didn't know how to deal with that. And so he started being frustrated by the situation and started reacting in these really bizarre ways that that might look like someone having a massive psychotic breakdown or someone who was possessed by a demon or, or this, that, or the other. And so she came to me for some understanding, like not knowing what was going on, not understanding why all of a sudden this husband who had been supportive and all this time was suddenly going off the rails. And so I sat her down and talked to her. And one of the things that I mentioned, I, I think is beneficial for you guys to understand if you look at animals in the wild, a cornered tiger looks very different in the face and in the, and the characteristics and quality and even the energy coming off of them then does a tiger that's on the hunt. And that looks very different than a tiger is playful. And the difference in all of those states is their wellbeing on the inside. Or we could say they're chemical and emotional and their mechanical state, how much muscle tension they have or don't have what their posture is like. And so on and so forth. All of that came from somewhere a tiger cornered. There's nothing wrong with the tiger sitting in a corner. There, there are tigers that are in a sense cornered in the cage, but there's in the zoo, but there's some sense in a tiger, that's really cornered that they're under threat or that something is threatening their way of life, their health, their happiness or something else.
(06:06): And because that sense is inside of a tiger it's chemistry begins to match that assessment of the situation. It's their assessment of the situation that precedes it. A baby tiger wouldn't necessarily have that same scenario. And granted, some of these assessments are instinctive. They're non they're, clearly nonverbal, cuz they're not humans using words. So they're, they're instinctive in a way, but they're still an assessment of the situation. If the tiger had been a hundred percent asleep and unconscious, it wouldn't have assessed the situation that way. So something in the, in the Tiger's consciousness makes it believe that it is under threat in some way. And as a result, it starts the chemistry on the inside starts to lash out adrenaline spikes or whatever else goes on chemically inside of a tiger it's then it becomes more aggressive. It starts bearing its teeth. The eyes focus in a different way. They glare in a different way. Growls and rumbles and info sounds like start to show up. And all of these different things start to happen inside of a tiger in response to its internal chemistry, which is in response to its assessment of the situation. And we could say both on a conscious and unconscious level. Now I've talked at length on this podcast about how your chemical situation on the inside is something that is very, very directly linked to, to your emotional state. So much so that a lot of people think, oh, these mental health issues, whatever this isn't, you can't get over 'em with the body, but people are doing it all the time. They take medications, which is a physical substance to change the chemistry and the body in order to change their emotional state. And so anybody arguing that doing body-based practices, won't help with mental health.
(07:44): Doesn't understand that the body and the mind are inextricably length. The body is the mind, right? It's an expression of all that's going on in the mind. Everything that happens in your mind is manifesting in the body in one way, shape or form. And so when we take the body and we retrain it and we shift its state, then the mind gets a reverberation back and an invitation to change as well. And then when the mind changes, then that starts to reinforce a new cycle, which is partly why in some sort of incredible wisdom, the word for repentance means to change your mind or your way of thinking. And ironically, the word noose or mind is also one that's related to your breath. In other words, they, these ancients or whoever was talking about this, maybe not all of them, maybe just a few wise people from the past, but they directly understood the link between breathing and wellbeing and your mind and your thoughts. Think about it when you're stressed, how do you breathe? How do you sit? How do you pay? How does your body feel like these are all indications of the same thing? Okay. So there is a direct link between the, in your system and your mental and emotional wellbeing. There's a, there's a 100% direct link, which is also why there's a lot of research around diet and how your gut microbiome notice that 90% of the serotonin in your body is produced in your gut. So when that's doing well, all of a sudden you feel a lot better and when it's not doing well, well you've had a stomach ache before. How good are you emotionally when you have a stomach ache, not so good. So this is something we've explored at length. And a lot of the things that I teach people and I show people how to do is how to manage their chemistry from the inside.
(09:28): Instead of from the outside now, how, what are the ways that people manage their chemistry from the outside? It's not just prescription drugs or ear legal drugs or pills or pornography or things like that. They manage their chemistry in so many ways. Getting sunlight changes your chemistry, going on a walk, changes your chemistry going and meeting with other people, getting a hug, changes, chemistry, talking to somebody, chem changes, chemistry, watching a television show going for a drive, getting angry, screaming, yelling, going for a run. Like all of these different things are ways that people from the outside are trying to change their chemistry on the inside their experience of life. And what I'm showing people are simple ways to do that a little bit more effectively with as little outside input as possible. We're still breathing. We're still moving. And sometimes we have to address thought and whatnot, but we're, we're moving the locus of where the solution is from somewhere out there beneath the pale Moonlight to somewhere in here all day long in the daylight,
(10:34): 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 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. But then the question arises. Well, why did the chemistry change in the first place? Now I've also spoken at length about root causes, but I wanna simplify this here because each person has a different set of thought processes about how they are and who they are and what they deserve and where they are in life. And everybody's is different because it's been learned over time. It's simply a survival strategy for life, a way of making sense of the outside situation so that you can navigate it. And just because it's, you've successfully navigated it, meaning you survived doesn't mean that's necessarily the best or healthiest way to make sense of it or that that's the best that human human life has to offer that you have to somehow content yourself with life is hard or life is miserable, or life is a test or an affliction or a trial.
(11:55): And when you come out, the other side of it, that's where the goodies is. No everything about biology seems to indicate the opposite that however, this system was designed, whether you wanna say God designed it this way, or the universe designed it this way in some other grant intelligence or that it was by accident, either way, every indication we have is that the way that this human system is designed is that it's designed to run on joy and happiness. And then when that's the fuel that when that's the wellbeing, other possibilities for human life begin to show up automatically and grief and pain go away and all of these different things start to happen. So what is this source? Then if we can talk about root issues in a really general way, let's talk about it from the perspective of the tiger. If I don't get out of this situation, I'm going to die.
(12:50): Bad things will happen. It will not bode well. In other words, there's some sense that has been trained into the instinct over time or through past experience that certain situations will lead to either something really gnarly or death and humans have the same thing from the time that you've been in your mother's womb. You've started to have neurons. Neurons are little brain cells. Now neurons are capable of learning. They're all over your body. And they are very, very capable of learning. There's some 86 billion in the brain on average, on a human brain. Some have more, some have less 16 billion of those are in the neocortex, which is far greater by some 7 billion or so than any other species that we found to date, including the big ones like sperm whales, that exhibit social behaviors and altruistic behaviors and dolphins and things like that, or songbirds that have like incredibly complex communication patterns, still humans outstripped them almost by double.
(13:51): In other words, an incredible amount of neurons in the cerebral cortex. And we'll talk about that in the next episode, a little bit more about brain and how it's all built, but you also have neurons in your gut about as many as a dog's brain. So several hundred million of them, you have 40,000 in your atrial ventricular node in your heart, you have them down your spinal column. There's a lot of neurons all over everywhere. And every single one of 'em seems to learn. There's an intelligence there's intelligence in every cell, even without a neuron, even without a brain plants, without a nervous system, learn and communicate in all kinds of ways, chemically right, and with each other. And so there's an incredible intelligence in the system. And so starting in your mother's womb, the neurons in the cells that were, you were interacting with what your mom and the environments that she was placed in and all of the sensory data that she was picking up, as well as all of the ways that she reacted to that data, her thought processes, her beliefs, her worries, her kindnesses, her fears, all of that stuff, her stuff that your neurons were responding to and getting exposed to, and that kind of stimulus produced a response.
(15:07): Some kids in utero might respond in a way that's rebellious and saying, no, I don't want that others might respond in a total accepting way. And, but in general, you are responding to it and learning what the world is like from the time that you're conceived. And even before the, the egg that it was, you was in your mom's belly, in her mom, your mom's ovary when she was inside of her mom's belly at the last stages of gestation, right? When, so she had eggs in her ovaries when she wasn't even born yet. And those eggs formed a part of who you were. In other words, those passed through your mom's entire life experience and had some level of imprint. And that's what your neurons were responding to. And so as you learn to interact with that and to see and feel, and, and dance with creation in the way that your mom did and your dad, if he was present and then are born and continued to do that, you develop a certain sense of assessments of what life is.
(16:06): You start to see certain things as threats and other things as not threats, certain things as okay. And other things is not okay. Not just consciously, it's not like you're thinking those types of conscious thoughts have to be trained later on. You're not even able to speak in the beginning or recognize sound as such. So it's emotional, it's biological, it's imprinted in that way, and it's not permanent. It's just that it's there. And without anything to give you another experience of something different, it tends to stay there for a long period of time, which is why talking through these issues with talk therapy and other things though, beautiful and a wonderful experience for a lot of people on the planet doesn't ever even come close to handling the entirety and totality of the whole issue, which is why people believe they need to be going to a therapist forever or going to a coach forever, or will always be dealing with a problem or always struggle with depression or anxiety.
(16:55): And that's the common trope through most of the professions that deal with these things is that these things don't go away. We might be able to manage 'em well, but they're there for good. The reason that they think that is because they're not addressing the entirety of the problem, right? If I'm, if I have a plate that's dirty from dinner and I only clean one quarter of it and I don't believe I can clean the rest of it, then I'm just gonna look at that plate. Every time I have dinner, I'd be like, no, Nope. That's just the way it is. You always have a three quarters dirty plate. Oh wait, hold on. I'm allowed to clean up the rest. Hold on. There's another way to get to it. Yeah, there is. And so that's what I'm telling you right now, is that going through a lot of these other processes allows you to access deeper layers of these imprints. Well, these imprints look at the world and they decide what is safe basically, and what isn't safe. They decide who you are and who others are and which ones dangerous and which ones aren't. And to the degree that you run into that danger or the degree that you deviate from, what you deem to be the source of happiness and health and comfort for you to that degree, your behavior is gonna turn from the, the playing tiger. That's goofy and having a good time to the hunting tiger. That's now focused and ready to kill to the panicked tiger. That's lashing out at anything and everything and desperate for its life. And you will see that same thing happen in humans. They lash out because they don't feel safe. You can't create safety in them. Yes. You can adjust the environment so that they go back to what they feel is safe, but you can't create safety in them.
(18:37): You that has to be done within themselves. And that's gonna come from seeing things more clearly. So in this, my friend, her relationship with her husband, her husband starts lashing out because all of a sudden his definition of where he can be okay as the provider, as the one that has all the answers as the one that you know, is the source of other people's happiness. When all of a sudden that's not happening and the conversations are having now are different and he's not used to that. And so on and so forth, he's starting to become more and more troubled to the point where from time to time, he's lashing out. He's lashing out. Not because he's a bad person, but only because he's the circumstances have deviated from where he feels like he's safe. And from where he feels like life is fulfilling and where he feels like happiness can live. Now that assessment then creates a chemical change inside the person and chemistry is linked to consciousness. You 7.4, pH is your blood. If it starts to dip even just a little bit, 7.3, five doctors and stuff are concerned because certain functions don't start happening in the body. If it starts to rise too far, same thing. By the time you get to like 7.0 6.9, you're in a coma, you've lost all consciousness. And a lot of your functions have gone down to like barely subsisting. And 6.8 would be death. 8.0 would be death. And so you have a really narrow band in which your blood chemistry is optimal. And if you stay outside of that band for a long time, body parts start to shut down. And then literally you cannot be conscious of your behavior. Your ability to be conscious of it is gone. In other words, your assessment of the situation says, this situation is painful for me.
(20:21): And so something in you wants to check out from it and that poisons the system, and that gets rid of your conscious volitional ability to choose your actions and starts to Rob you of choice and relies only on the animal instinct inside of you in order to survive. And so you end up turning on your loved ones and shouting things at them that you would never in a million years think would come out of your mouth only because well, your chemistry changed and your chemistry changed because of your worldview, your assessment of who you are, who others are and where you are safe. So as we're wrapping up today, I just want you to look back on your life and start asking yourself the question about where you feel safe and where you don't feel safe. The things that irritate you and bother you are reflections of where you've decided life is not okay.
(21:14): And so in some really biological level, some piece of you has decided to check out from that to not wanna be there. And as a result, your chemistry changes. And when your chemistry changes now, your ability to control your behavior starts to go down. And when that happens, actions are taken in the world and those actions then have other consequences. All because you just decided in some way, shape or form, probably because you inherited that worldview, mostly that certain things are not safe are not okay. And then fear entered your life. And when fear entered your life, it began to control you. As I said, last week, what you fear controls you. And as long as you're afraid of it, it will. So look at your fears this week, take a look at all the things that you're nervous around, whether that's public speaking or whether it's pornography, or whether it's drugs and alcohol or food, or losing a loved one or death.
(22:11): If you consider death and remind yourself, wait a second. That means this thing is controlling me. Do I actually know that this is bad? What if that's not something that actually has to control me? What if it's not bad? What if it's not unsafe? What if there's some wisdom that I would have to operate with around this thing, but what if I don't need to be afraid of this anymore? And what if I can build an even greater life out of these circumstances than I ever could have the other way around? What if this is actually a step into a life of more happiness, more health, more wellbeing, start asking yourself those questions. And you might be surprised at what shows up for you and where that leads you in terms of beliefs you have about the world. And then if you would like some help dismantling those and don't know how to do it on your own.
(22:59): Obviously we have programs@thefreedomspecialist.com that you can look into, or I highly recommend coming to our retreats where we really intensively deal with the biological portion of it, really helping with where your muscles are, holding these things and your body chemistry and helping you start to shift them. Even at our last retreat, there was a guy who started out, who'd had an allergy to eggs for a couple years and he loved eggs, but it had just showed up and whatnot. And then the last day he's sitting there eating at egg and he's like, do allergies go away from these things? And I had to tell him, like, when you come back down to basic wellbeing, your body can handle all kinds of stuff when it's doing well. But it can't handle a bunch of things. If it's already under attack, then everything, even if it's good can overwhelm it.
(23:39): And you guys have all seen this in your life when you're under the weather, or when you're STR frustrated or stressed about something, even good music, someone playing really nice music around you. You can turn around and snap at them. Not because nice music is bad or not, because what they're playing is bad, but just because you're already not in a state of wellbeing and the same thing can happen at a chemical level on a biological level. And so his allergy to eggs had vanished in four days. Now that's the first time I've seen that happen, but I'm not surprised, or maybe it's happened many times. And nobody told me before. The point is wellbeing is the issue and your wellbeing, a large component of your wellbeing is your belief about where you are safe in the world and about what's possible for you and what the future holds. And when you start to challenge those assumptions that you've made about the world and really open up the narrow band of existence, that you've created yourself, this little self-made prison of yours evaporates. And so too, do many ailments and many struggles and many behaviors and addictions and so many other things.
(24:41): And that's it for today's alive and free podcast. 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 a great stuff to you. Plus, it's just nice to be nice.
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