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're going to kind of shift gears and go from coping to creating a few weeks ago, well, maybe a little over a month ago, we talked about going from coping to conscious. And now we're talking about moving from coping to all the way to creating. And we're going to look at basically three different ways to look at emotion that's going on and then what to do like an and how each one can possibly create for you or a possibility for you, right. And so, we're going to talk about a lot of different things associated with that and buckle up and let's look at it for a good ride. Okay. So, most people, when they're talking about coping to creating, just think about it, you're going through your day, the first thing that you and I grow up believing is emotions happen. Like I got angry, it happened to me. And I would say, raise your hand, but you might be driving like, does this happen to you, where it feels like the emotion just sort of takes over? [01:30.3]
That my friends is the experience of a victim. The emotion is something that's outside of you. That's like this external thing floating around the void that somehow attacks. And it's like an evil spirit or a demon that takes over. And you have to remember that language over time has changed to describe different things in different ways. And it's highly possible that at the time of Jesus, the notion of an evil spirit may simply have been the spirit of contention or the spirit of sadness or the spirit of depression, which they might call it that in some cases there were those very names, but they're literally just describing somebody who's being contentious or somebody who's being sad or somebody who's being depressed, except that the common thought process might've been that these come from outside of you, they're not created by you. [02:18.2]
And so, in that space, recognizing that that's the case, a lot of people that end up doing things to try and protect themselves from these invaders, right? These, these invaders have other feelings, feelings like lust feelings like anger and hatred and, and irritation and frustration and all the things. And then they, they set up their environment and their relationships in a way that will protect them from having those things burst upon them as if they come from the outside. And if you look around your environment, you look around your own life and even around your own thought processes, I bet you can find things that you're doing that are protective measures, launched counter measures, according to Sean Connery, right? That they're protective measures, they are things that are meant to prevent you from having to deal with the emotional repercussions of circumstances. Now that doesn't mean that it's bad to like filter your internet. Sometimes, yeah, I don't want to deal with a bunch of smart maybe. It doesn't mean that it's bad to put your finances in order so that you're not stressed about finances later. That doesn't mean that those are necessarily bad things. Those are things that are needed in order to accomplish things in the world. We talked about success a little while ago, and if you want to experience certain things, you have to do the actions that will make those happen to the extent that you can and putting your books in order filtering the internet. If you, if that's, if that's something that feels really important to you and will lead you to where you want to go, those are great. And so, there's nothing absolutely wrong with them. But what we're talking about here is the emotional component of it. That if I have no money, I can't be happy that if I have less to show up, there's nothing I can do about it and pretty much it's going to take over and it's just a matter of time. [04:02.8]
There are many men who feel this way when it comes to pornographic feeling like, like lustful sexual energy that shows up in their system and they don't realize what's going on as a result, they're doing things intelligently to try and eliminate circumstances in their environment that can bring those up. Is that wise, I would say that's very wise. And to the extent that you can do it, you do it. You have to remember that I had a martial arts instructor sometime ago, who, you know, he was at the knife. He asked people, you know, what do you do to protect yourself? If someone pulls a knife on you? And the answer is almost always run. The macho people in the group, like have a little knowing nod or wink and they're like, oh, I would do this technique or this one. But almost everybody also knows that the, the expected answer is to run. [04:48.0]
So, my instructor, Martin Wheeler, at the time it, when he was doing this, I think there's a video of him on YouTube talking about this. But he had somebody in the room like literally grab, like, he's like, cool. Who’s here a good runner. They're like me that they pick one guy. And so, then he grabs a training knife and he goes, okay, run. And so, the guy stutters for a second, then it heads off and within three strides, Martin had slashed him a few times with the training knife. And he's like, do you see the problem here? The problem is that no matter how much you want it to be the case running is not always the solution. So, you better learn to deal with a knife because if you can deal with the knife, then if you can't run, you deal with it. And then if you can run, you do. But if you don't know how to deal with the knife, if you don't know how to handle what's there, then as soon as running is not an option, you're toast. And think about all the places where running isn't an option. [05:38.8]
One, the door is behind the guy with the knife, probably not a good option. Two, he has a buddy that you didn't see, who's going to come up behind you and grab you and place. Three you're down on all force and you don't even see the guy with the knife coming. Four, you have somebody you need to stay in and even though you could run, they can't, or they need your protection and you better stick around. Five, there are obstacles in the way. Six, you suck at running and they're faster. Seven, they have a good throwing arm that you don't know about. Eight, they also have another weapon that you're not familiar with. Nine, they got to you before you had a chance to do anything. Ten, you froze because you were afraid. Can you see the problem? There are lots and lots of variables that come to, I don't know how to deal with a knife. So, when it comes, I'll just run. That's cute. That's a beautiful story. And when it works, it's great. But I don't know how many people attack with a knife out in the open plains, where there's plenty of options to run. Most of the time, it's very vicious, it's behind a counter and a gas station. It's on the front door. People don't see the knife when it's coming. It comes out of nowhere, it's multiple, there's all kinds of stuff that goes on. [06:48.9]
Emotions are the same, pornography is the same. It's just a knife. And one of the reasons that at our retreats, I have, I take people through training drills and processes with real knives, it's so that they teach their body how to handle that level of fear. Because even though they don't think that's the case, your body responds the same way to anything you're afraid of, responds the same way. And so, when you can start to see, oh, cool, I'm afraid of this, this feels dangerous. And you can train your body to handle danger differently, it will start to naturally handle emotions differently. If you haven't come to a retreat, if you have come and you want some more training come back, that you cannot do too much of this in order to make your body instinctively and automatically handle things differently. And we talked about martial arts last time. So that's the victim mentality and the issue with the victim mentality of the mentality of it comes out of the blue and I don't have any control over it is that you can't avoid all the circumstances that it comes in. [07:49.6]
So, then we move to conscious, like we did last time where we recognize, okay, well this is happening in my body, but all it is, is a sensation in my body. And I can do things to change that I can breathe, I can move and I can develop different processes to dissipate this feeling so, it doesn't build up over time. And that's like in martial arts, where you go and learn a bunch of techniques and you learn all these other things and whatnot, and even though nobody's really gonna like attack you in the way that you practiced in class and whatnot, at least it trains your body to be in movement and to handle it differently than if you were just sitting there deer in the headlights, Oh my gosh, this happened, let it run over me. [08:26.0]
So, this, this is a shift, right? Automatically you feel more capable. And that means you can drive through the areas of town that are a little more risky, risky, or iffy and there's a different level of ability. You're not necessarily courting danger, but you recognize that if it shows up, I know that I'm not just going to freeze. And I think that's a definite step in toward a level of freedom. A level of total freedom. And recognizing that, even though I can't control all situations, though, if some come up that are gnarly, I know that I'll be able to handle it. Even if it takes me an hour to kind of get over some things, I want to be able to handle it. Now, how do we go from conscious technique-oriented stuff to literal creation, right? [09:14.3]
Think about it. The first one is we have this idea that emotions, something happens to you. It's a result of something. And people talk about this in psychology as saying, you have a thought, and then the result comes like the emotion comes. So, it's the result of your thoughts and so they run around trying to fix the thoughts. Well, that's great. That's wonderful. And that is one way to try and like prevent it at its source. So, I get rid of those root issues and stuff and we do that for sure. It still treats it as like, this is like a big thing that's on the outside that needs to be taken care of. The second level consciousness is like an attempt to use and take the energy of that emotion and use it to get something right? So, an attempt to gain something. Some people look at emotion like anger in a purely teleological sense. So one is that it's a result. The second one is teleological meaning the, I, the only times I get angry is because I'm trying to accomplish something, which means every emotion that you experience, and this is broadly born out in the books, the courage to be disliked, the courage to be happy, Adlerian psychology. [10:17.1]
And to some extent, it's really good. We used to ask people, well, what's the payoff for you being depressed. And they'd be like, what? The payoff. I hate it. Right? But how much sympathy do you get? How many things do you not have to do because you're stuck with your depression? How many events do you not have to attend? How many jobs do not have to take, how much work do you get to avoid because you're depressed and you're dealing with depression? How many kids do not have to answer? How much sleep do you get to have because you're dealing with depression? This is not a very nice way to talk to a person because it forces them to confront the possibility that they're using their own emotions in order to escape things and that they want those emotions, even though on the outside, they don't. And I think the, the, the same scenario with depression and anxiety is a little bit different than that, but it has been very powerful to just ask yourself, what am I getting out of this? Cause seeking a payoff, we are seeking a payoff. If you're angry, it's because you want to feel better. And you're trying to move the situation to be something you feel better in. It's true. You're getting angry to motivate yourself to move. You're getting stressed because that's the thing that will help you get the actions done in order to finally get the result that you want. It's just that you haven't learned to motivate yourself in other ways. So, it's not wrong to say that you're motivating yourself by emotion or you're using the emotion to get something. But now we're using it from like a conscious use of it. [11:34.9]
I had a coach one time who was in a mastermind and he used to brag saying he was the most self-aware person that he knew. And I don't even know what that means when we're talking about the idea of self, but it is true that he mapped everything, his sleep quality, how often he burned out in business, what his general tendencies were during the day, which supplements like everything from nutrient, he mapped everything. He tracked everything. And he treated everything in his life like little levers that he could push our pole in order to do things with. You can clean your house really well when you're angry, we've talked about this. So, he would use those things. I know I'm going to be burned out here and that means I'm going to set these things up so that when I get to burn out, I can do this. But can you also see that the downside of that is that you're no longer seeking to change the underlying pattern. You're still allowing and accepting that you're going to run in cycles your whole life, which means you go nowhere. You're just running in circles and running in circles and running in circles, same terrain, different clothing, and that's all that's happened. [12:38.1]
And so, he used to brag that he was the most self-aware person he knew because he knew exactly when he was going to be down. When he was going to be up, what sleep to take, what time, all these other things, what rituals he needed in place, how he was going to feel at certain days. Very, very incredible. And he was able to use that to his advantage. Now I would tell you like, that's, multi-millionaire like if that's a measure of success for you, like a very clear thinker, great salesman, you know, like he was a really good guy in, in certain respects. And yet underlying was a total acceptance of I'm just going to be living in these patterns forever. And so why change them? And that's where I was listening there in the room with this guy going, like, what do you mean? Why change them? Like, don't you want to experience something different, but in his case, he didn't. So, he had moved from being a victim to his circumstances, to seeing the ways that his circumstances could help him. [13:35.4]
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. [14:04.4]
Then we move to the third level, the level of creation. So, we went from victim or coping with the result, with something that attacks from the outside to conscious using what's there and dissipating it or doing other things with it. And in order to better your life, now we move to creation. Now, what do I mean by seeing your emotions as a creation? There was a guy that I had a client we had a while ago and he went through a programs and he was with us for a few months, came to what came to our very first retreat that we had run. And loads of things were shifting in his life and whatnot. And then we didn't hear from him for a long time. And he went into a deep bout of depression because he was dealing with some things, he never brought up with us necessarily, and was struggling financially and all these other things with his purpose in life and whatnot. And he got to a point where he attempted suicide. He attempted suicide and somebody intervened and he wakes up in the hospital. Someone had saved his life and he's in this place where he's really, really down. And then it suddenly occurred to him, this realization that if he looks around and he looks at his life, never once had he ever witnessed it, someone was coming to save him. He had always from the time that he was younger, believed that he needed saving, because he'd been coddled, because he had been, you know, helped with certain things, because people had taught him that he needed to be saved. And that, that was just the nature of human existence. And so, he had internalized that in his own way. And now he looked around and he realized that no one at all was coming to save him. [15:44.5]
And that was an earth-shattering blow to him. And at the same time, it alleviated such a huge weight because he no longer had to wait to be saved. And he realized the only person that's going to help me out is me. And in that realization, he started looking at what he was creating and then he and I had a conversation after that, where we were digging into what was going on with him and looking at it. And it turned around really quickly for him because what happened was, he realized if I'm going to feel bad, that's me feeling bad. Now, if we were find this a little bit further, like what happened with him eventually was if he went and got a part-time job, he started doing some things, ended up starting his own business a couple of months after that, cause he'd met a few people, found some opportunities, things started working out. He's having this great, amazing turnaround in life and he's never felt happier despite the amount of work he was doing and all the other stuff. Because at the core of it, he realized I am the only one that's here to save me that no one else was going to save him. And that doesn't that doesn't take away from the idea of faith, for those of you that are offended by that possibility. No one's beat, you're not beating your heartbeat. So, when we say you're saving, you were saying where you're taking control of the things that you have the ability to take control of. We're not saying that you're like now taking control over the cosmos or what makes your heartbeat or where healing comes from or anything like that. So don't confuse the two. [17:07.4]
So, when we're seeking here, looking at present moment creation, what is an emotion. An emotion is a chemical, it's a biochemical mechanical experience that you are having in your body, in any given, in any given moment. And it is produced by you. The chemistry of emotion only lasts about 90 seconds in the body, which means that if you're having an ongoing experience, it means you in that moment are creating that feeling. And when I started looking at this and I started looking at myself, I was like, holy snob. I was looking around the room going, where is this emotion coming from? What is making me feel this way? Cause I would say that when I was younger, right, you made me mad. You made me happy. You made me, this made me happy. Or that made me upset. Or that made me frustrated. And now as I'm looking at it, there was no evidence that I had that the that any of my feelings came from anywhere else. My wife wasn't oozing some weird spray of anger on me. There wasn't somebody injecting a needle of frustration or stress into me. Nobody was making me lustful. Now not women. None of that was happening. It was me. It was my interaction with reality, because if I hadn't been awake and conscious those emotions wouldn't have been there. [18:15.2]
My consciousness, my thought process, my interaction with life was the thing, creating those in my body. And I realized, holy snap, I've put my body through a love, every negative emotion I've ever felt, I did to that. Every time I've ever experienced stress, anger, overwhelmed, depression, suicidal thoughts, all of those, all of those came from me from me doing that to myself. It was a low, low is a slap in the face. But then I was like, wait a second. I'm creating this. We, this is coming from inside me. I may not know all the mechanics yet, but if this is coming from inside me, interesting, well, I'm not interested in that. Let me move. And then I would just change directions. And then the emotion stopped dead. And I would go, and instead of trying to create something with the emotion, as a response to it, I have to deal with it. I literally was just like, well, no, I just let it go. And I would just go do something else. And I didn't have to sit there and do with it or break the emotional experience or anything like that. So, I moved that direction. [19:21.2]
This mode of handling emotions is so fast. It takes practice, it's not a way, at least for me, it took practice. It didn't happen overnight. It took some years of practice doing it in a conscious way first. But the realization of where that experience is coming from is the thing that starts to change it. Because when you see that, you're the only one making this happen as much as you may want to hold on to it, ultimately, you're the only one doing it. You're poisoning yourself. So, I want you to think about it this way. If you imagine a field, a field, if people walk along the field in the same direction, over and over again, what happens? You get a trail. And then when it rains, where does the rain go? It ends up going all over the place, but then it runs the path of least resistance, the trails, easiest place for it to run. And so, because the path has been walked over and over again, the rain runs down that way. Now when that happens, people can come in and go, oh no, we have a problem. And as soon as they say, we have a problem and the rain by the way are any life circumstances. So, in your own life, you might walk that trail. I'm having many times you want, but then life circumstances sometimes come and then it's automatic, your emotions go that way or your thoughts go that way because you've already built the trail. So how do we fix this? How do we go from the coping with, oh no, there's a flood quick. Get it out of the trail as best we can to conscious working with it to total creation. [20:37.5]
Well, most people they go in and this is in all of the psychology industry and everywhere else they go in and they look at this thing and they go, all right, there is an emotion happening. There's a trail here. We need to like grow some grass back. This is not okay. Let's stand here and fix it. So, then we put up caution tape and barriers to keep out signs and stuff. And we set up healthy boundaries, so to speak. And this is very common in counseling and therapy. And I'm not saying that boundaries are good or bad. They're useful sometimes, right. So, we set up boundaries and we don't let people in. And then we, we hire a landscape manager and a construction crew, AKA therapist and counselors and coaches and programs and stuff. And we go in and we go hmm, all right, we need to this soil again, it back. We need to throw on some, some seed. We need to make sure it's, it's got enough sunlight and water, and we're going to watch over and make sure it's good. And then never mind all of the terrain destruction that happens all on the other side, from all the material and machinery, that's there. We do the best that we can, but you pull all those people. And now what happens at the end of it is we have grass back and now this field is now path free. There's no path on it. We feel clean and clear. And guess what? [21:48.3]
We're still in the same place. How many of you are constantly going, man I just want to get back to win. Going back is being in the same place as running in the same circle it's being unconscious, possibly or coping, but it's still staying in the same place. Contrast that with the other scenario, which is okay, we could fix this trail or how about we walk a different direction? So, all of the same effort, the same energy, instead of spending it on landscape crews and all that other stuff. If we just took all that energy and we put it in a new direction, what would happen? Well, it might be harder to walk that way because the trail hasn't been already forged by someone else. So, it might be a little bit more work on the walking, but by the end of it, in one case, the first case we have some new grass and we're, we're still where we started. In the other case, we're in a totally different place and the grass will grow back on its own if you stop walking the trail, so you don't really have to go fix it. Sometimes it's useful. Sometimes it's helpful, but you don't really have to go fix it. [22:53.1]
Now is the walking a little bit more uncomfortable? Of course, it is. Anytime you go to a new place, it's going to be uncomfortable because comfort comes from you knowing what's going on. If you don't know what's going on, because you're experiencing something new, it's going to feel uncomfortable, but discomfort is not badness. Discomfort is just discomfort. That's all it is. That's all it is. Does that make sense? Okay. So here we are in the forest talking about our emotions and I want you to consider the possibility that creation is the ability to simply walk a different direction based on where you want to go in your life. Instead of coping with and fighting every emotion that shows up and feeling like you have to resolve it. Coming out of the addictive behaviors and everything else that I was dealing with, man, I spent a lot of time regrowing grass and dealing with stuff and having cathartic experiences and doing “the work,” because likes to Herald work. I did all this stuff. And in the end, I still felt like I was kind of, I'm like, oh man, I've done so much work. I feel so good, but I'm still in the same place. [23:54.5]
Only when I started going, wow, I'm having an emotion. Cool. I can see that that's coming from me. Interesting. I'm not interested in having that anymore. Not suppressing it. That's different, not fighting it down or shutting it up or trying to hush it, hush out and ignore it. But literally being done with it, giving it it's 90 seconds and then moving on only then did I start to move into a new area of life right. Now here's the kicker. The reason that we have such trouble with this, the reason we have such emotional troubles in the first place is because humans have such a large frontal lobe in the brain. Animals like cats, cats only have a 4% of their brain masses in frontal lobe. Dogs, 7%. So, dogs are dreamers, right. You've caught dogs dreaming. I don't know if cats dream, but dogs definitely are dreamers. They can have a psychological reality that overrides what's there. But when they're awake, that's not the case. Humans, the frontal lobe of the brain has the ability to turn down all the information in the rest of the brain so that you are literally living in a reality that's self-created. 40% of your brain mass, 10 times, that of a cat is in your frontal lobe, 40%. Does that make sense? [25:07.7]
And what we've seen is stressed thinking, meaning you can imagine something in your mind and your body will feel it's true and you can imagine something stressful and your body will create it. And that kind of thinking, literally they've seen it done in experiments where a person starts to think in stressful ways and it turns on gene expression that then creates all of these other things happening in the system to where, to the point where the person can eventually become sick. They can think themselves ill because of the capacity of the human mind to turn off reality in favor of our thoughts. Now it's not because thoughts are bad, that I'm telling you like, maybe we need to turn some things around it's because we haven't learned to think in a way that supports and augments and acts as a garnish to, and an, an enhancement of reality. Instead, we've opted for our own thoughts over reality. And most of our thoughts are negative 90% or so of ruminating thoughts are negative thoughts. And they, because that's just a survival mechanism, you're looking for problems. And so, when your mind starts running thoughts, it's almost always going to start running negative thoughts just because that's the natural order that it's been trained in until it's been trained different, that's probably commonly what it's going to do. So, we're having all of these emotional issues precisely because we're allowing our mind to wander away from what's actually happening into our own mental creation of reality. [26:36.9]
Now what's beautiful is that recognizing that your mental creation can produce illness, it can also produce health. And if you look at Joe Dispenza and people who've been studying spontaneous remissions from diseases and the power of the mind and creating these possibilities in the body, writing the book like, ‘You are The Placebo’ and stuff like that, it's pretty incredible what you can do with your mind to start to shift what's going on in the body. And there's all kinds of interesting research from the, from the Noetic sciences and other things that are like supporting and exploring what is possible when the mind is really used in a conscious way to create something. Now I'm not going to go into that, but what, what I want to suggest is this for now the, the next step to do in the course of going from coping with your creations to consciously using them, to literally creating something totally new is to know what's actually happening to shut down the frontal lobe thinking and to get in touch with what is present and what is actually happening so that you can clearly discern the difference between what you think is going on and what is actually going on. [27:38.9]
Now, the step to do that is here's a simple one. Set an alarm during the day that asks you to check in and figure out what's actually going on, versus what you're thinking. We have different ways that we do that with our clients, but ultimately that's a simple, easy way to start training your mind, to pay attention to what's actually there inside your body, inside your body sensations, outside of your body and so on and so forth. So hopefully this has been helpful for you in recognizing that here we are, we have this notion of like what an emotion is, and as you define it differently, and as you see that differently, and as you see it for what it is and where it's coming from and how it's operating in your body, your ability to just create something new in your life and to have a choice in how you feel just skyrockets. Now, if you've had some insights from this conversation, I want to warn you something. [28:29.8]
Insights are exceptionally dangerous, because an insight is a really positive experience, it's an AHA moment that you have, right? And what that does is it feeds this positive feedback loop in your, in your body. That makes you feel really good. But the thing is your body got the message, I feel really good sitting here, listening to this. Nothing actually changed. Your body feels good listening to this. So, when you have an insight, it's super dangerous. People want all of their, oh, I had this great takeaway and I had this brilliant moment, I had all of these stuff happened and they want like these insights and these golden nuggets and it's a big thing in the world. And the problem with them is they don't actually produce change; they actually reinforce your present reality and they give you permission to keep living in limitation. The way to change is if you have an insight, great, turn it into an action. Go take action. Don't look for insights. Look for change. Remember a little, a couple of weeks ago when we were talking about the secret and the not so secret, secret to success, which is that the people who achieved anything in the world achieved it because they did the actions that were necessary for them to achieve that thing at that time, right? No amount of thinking about, oh, wow, I get my emotions now it's so much better. No. You need to get up and you need to do something to retrain your mind and body to operate differently, or else you'll continue to operate the same way and then have an AHA moment from time to time and wonder why, why life isn't any different. It's because you haven't taken a new path. You may not fix the old one. You may be just sitting there. You may be trying to fix the old one. That itself isn't necessarily the path. You need to be able to take action in a different direction. [30:15.0]
And so, I'm suggesting this here for you like setting some sort of alarm for yourself. And if you want deeper training on this and deeper help handling all of the bits and pieces of emotion so that eventually it can become a creative process for you. And you were going to go through our, choose your own emotion program, just go to thefreedomspecialist.com/feelbetternow, get signed up, get going. It's only three weeks, it's 20 days, it's like 300 bucks. It's a brilliant program, it has helped hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people radically shift their lives because they're finally given the tools to take the actions necessary to achieve what they want. [30:46.9]
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. [31:05.7]
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