The True Path To Freedom

0:07Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. I'm your host Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so that you never miss another podcast episode. And if you love this podcast, do me a favor, go on to however you listen to us, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, whatever it might be, give us a rating and review. The more positive rating and reviews that you give us, the more that those platforms actually show this podcast to people who have never listened to it before, which allows this podcast to grow and to expand. So if you would pay it forward by doing that, I would greatly, greatly appreciate it.

0:38Today, we're gonna be talking about your freedom. We're going to be talking about your true path to freedom. And what do I mean by freedom? Well, I personally believe, I've been coaching people now for 17 years, I personally believe that what we are all searching for in this world is freedom. We're searching for freedom from having to do what other people tell us to do. We're searching for freedom to be able to do what it is that we want, when we want, with who we want. We want financial freedom. We want spiritual freedom. We want emotional freedom. And also what we really, really want is to be free from our minds, to be free from the chatter that doesn't stop inside of our minds, to be free from the feelings of guilt and shame, to be free from the fears that we have that are holding us back so that we can ultimately just build the life that we want.

1:28As a human, as an animal, really what you want is just to be free. Like if you see a two-year-old, two-year-olds do not like to be restricted in any sort of way. If you see an animal, animals do not like to be caged up. And if you take a dog and put it inside of a cage, they don't want to stay inside of that cage. Every living being wants to be free in some sort of way. And this journey that we're on, this path of life that we're on, is we're all on a journey of self-realization to find out who we truly are. And more than anything else, not even to really find out who we truly are, but is to rediscover who we truly are.

2:02Because we came into this world, you came into this world knowing who you are. You were. Like as a baby, you were your truest self. As a two-year-old, you were your truest self. And at some point in time, we all lost it along the way. You lost your true self along the way because you were told what to do, because you had to fit in with what society told you to do. You had to fit in with what your parents wanted you to do. You had to stop acting a certain way, which was true to yourself, and start acting the way that you wanted your family and your parents wanted you to act. So we were all kind of conditioned to be someone that we're not truly, and that's not who we were born as.

2:39And so really what it's about is this path of rediscovering who we are, because somehow we lost ourselves. And in that losing of ourselves, we pick up a lot of fears from our parents, from society, from people that we surround ourselves with. We pick up a lot of guilt. We pick up a lot of insecurity. We pick up a lot of embarrassment. We lose ourselves in some sort of way. And we think that those things are the problems. But what's really crazy about it is that the fear, the guilt, the shame, the embarrassment, all of that is not actually the problem. They're actually the solution. The hell do I mean by that?

3:16Let's talk about it real quick. I want you to imagine a river, right? If you've ever seen a really serene, beautiful, flowing river, it's just like, if you've ever seen a river that's really serene, it's like glass, right? It's like you could see the reflection of the sky in it and the trees in it, right? And you see this really serene river in front of you. Just imagine this in your mind's eye, right? That is basically like your river. I always talk about how I believe, and the example I always give, the metaphor I always give, is that we all have a path in life. And all of our paths are completely different.

3:52And it's basically like you have this river, this serene river, this perfect, beautiful river. And your job is to find it. It is your river. It is your path in life to jump in it and to go with the flow of your purpose, of the reason why you're here. I always talk about that. It's basically like your life path, who you are, what you're here to do. No one can enter this river. No one can find this river, but you, this is your river. And imagine that it's a perfectly calm streaming river. And then eventually you go down and 20 minutes after you're inside the river, you come up to some rocks, right?

4:28What happens when you have rocks inside of a river? Not big, huge rocks are just completely blocking it, but you have some rocks that are kind of poking out of the water. What happens? It starts to get a little bit crazier, right? It obstructs the flow of the water. It makes the water really rough and it actually makes the water start to be a little bit crazier. If you've ever jumped into a river that's really calm, it's very easy to swim. But if you've ever jumped in a river with rapids, it's not easy to swim. And so it's the exact same way where you start to think of your life as this river.

4:57The river is your true self. The river is your path in life, the thing that you're supposed to be doing here. The rocks that end up being put in there are the rocks that you've accumulated over your lifetime. The fear of people worrying about you, the fear of failure, the fear of other people and what they're going to say, the fear of being judged, the fear of being successful. The fear of not being good enough, smart enough, pretty enough, whatever it might be. And we've taken these rocks and unconsciously taken them and put them into our river. It's the fear. It's the worry, the insecurity, the guilt, the shame.

5:35And you've built it. But what happens is we unconsciously build it. So what was this beautiful streaming river is now a shit show is basically what it comes into, right? Like some people have little tiny rocks and some people, your mind and your path in life has become like whitewater rapids. It's just crazy in there. And so we like to look away from the rocks. We like, the path of self-development is realizing that you realize that there's some things that you want to improve on. You start to see those rocks. And so you look at those rocks and you're like, well, damn, that looks pretty scary.

6:10And then you look away from the rocks and you start talking to yourself about, well, what I should probably do is I should probably like read some more books. Like I should keep reading. You know, I should probably start going to the gym. That's what I should start doing. I should probably work on myself a little bit more. And what I'll do is I will start to journal more. I'm not saying that reading and journaling and working out are bad things. Those are all definitely parts of the process. But the part of the process that is the most important is now that you've become aware of the rocks is the removal of the rocks.

6:45But what we like to do is we notice, and this is almost everybody that I've found in their new journey of self-development. We notice the things about ourselves that we need to remove. And instead of going, yep, I'm going to work on those things, we go, but what else is there? There's got to be something else. Why? Because we know subconsciously that working on those things, that fear, that guilt, that shame, the traumas that are holding you back from what happened to you when you were younger, that is not going to be easy. It's not going to be fun. And to be brutally honest, it's actually probably going to suck a lot, right?

7:18And so we're like, let's focus on something else. I need to read another book versus actually working on ourselves deeply. And so the first step of this whole process of personal growth, spiritual growth, emotional growth, all of this is to acknowledge and also confront those barriers, to acknowledge that the rocks are there and to acknowledge that what was a perfectly serene, stream has now become whitewater rapids because of rocks that we unconsciously place there. And now that we are conscious of them, we need to find them and we need to start removing them and not to identify with them, but just seeing them as they are.

7:59One of the things that tends to happen is we start to see the anger, that anger boulder that's in the water right there. And we go, yeah, but that's just me. That's just part of my personality. That's just part of who I am. No, it's not. That's something that you have built up. It is not like you weren't born an angry, resentful baby. When was the last time we saw a resentful baby? They don't exist. That's something that you've built up in yourself. And if you built up in yourself, you can also destroy from yourself and let go of. And so really what it comes down to is seeing them and identifying as they actually are and seeing them not as the problem, but the path.

8:38If you've ever heard like the obstacle is the way, the way to your greatest self is by going to that obstacle and removing it, working through it. Why am I angry? Why am I resentful? Why am I fearful? Why do I guilt and shame myself all the time? And seeing those as the path to your greater self, not the actually going, I'm going to work around this. You don't work around the boulders if you're trying to make the water serene. You remove it. It's not looking somewhere else. And looking away from the river doesn't remove the rocks. So we can't identify with them. We've got to see them and say, okay, my truest self is the thing that exists with the removal of these rocks.

9:23It's not like you need to remove these rocks and then identify yourself because when you remove the rocks, you find and rediscover your truest self. It's not in the avoidance of them, but the removal of the blockages. And it goes back to one of my favorite phrases with personal and spiritual development, which is the cave that you're afraid to enter holds the treasure that you seek. Yeah, you're going to have to go back and start to relive and think about maybe some childhood traumas, some events that weren't the best for you. You're going to have to work through them now. Because I always say it this way, if you had trauma that happened to you at nine years old.

9:58Like for instance, my parents divorced when I was nine. I had trauma that happened from my father being an alcoholic and trauma from nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 years old. My father passed away when I was 15 from liver failure, from being an alcoholic. I can look at those and I can say, okay, this trauma happened when I was nine years old. I'm going to avoid it. Or I can say, okay, I locked this into my brain, this trauma that happened as a nine-year-old. Now I'm 37 years old now. Hopefully, I'm a little bit smarter and wiser 28 years later at 37 years old than I am at nine. And so I'm locked into this memory, this trauma as a nine-year-old still in my brain, but I can go back as a much more, much wiser and much more emotionally intelligent, intellectually intelligent adult and go and relive those memories to start to work through them, to reprocess them and reprouting them inside of my mind, but then also inside my nervous system as well.

10:56It's not always easy. And in fact, it fucking sucks most of the time. But if you want to find your truest self, if you want to remove these, you have to go and do it. And so the first step of all of this is just admitting your problems. It's like, you know, the first step to the 12-step program in AA and for alcoholics or any drug addicts is to admit that you have a problem. So the first thing is to go, yeah, I do have fear. I do have this fear. I do have guilt. I do have shame. I do have a lot of anger inside of me. Admitting that you have all of those things. I do talk a lot of shit to myself.

11:30You admit all of those things and realize that all of those things are the things that are in the way to your greatest self. And so what you need to do is work through them to then find your true self. Your greatest self is your true self. Because if we were to take a river and we see this river and it's whitewater rapids, and we're going to be able to go in and actually take a crane and pull up each individual rock, get the boulders out, guess what happens to that water? It's calmer. It's more peaceful. I don't know about you guys, but I would like to be more calm and more peaceful. Wouldn't you?

12:05I would like the incessant chatter in my mind to disappear or at least have less of it. Wouldn't you? That's what we're trying to work at here. And so you see these things, but you don't get caught up in them. You don't identify with them. It's like watching a movie. Like if you're watching a really good movie, great plot, great actors, sometimes you can watch a movie and you can get really caught up in it, can't you? You can get caught up in it to the point where you can feel what the actor is feeling, what the character is feeling. If you're watching something that gets really intense, your heart rate will actually rise.

12:40you can actually start to put yourself into that movie even though you're just sitting on your couch. And that same exact thing can happen with us with our emotions where we get really caught up with our thoughts. We get really caught up with our anger. We get really caught up with our fears, with our guilting, with our shame. We get really caught up with our emotions. But really what it is is we're just the person in the theater watching the movie. Your truest self is the person that is in the theater watching the movie. not the person who is in the actual movie. And so when you look at it, you realize that behind all of this, behind all of the things that you're telling yourself, the identities that you have, the fears, the guilt, all of the stories and the fake narratives that you built up, behind all of those is the person that's witnessing.

13:31It is your consciousness that is behind all of it all. It is the calm stream that's who you truly are. And so what you have to do is you have to identify the things that are holding you back, the things that are the boulders, but then you've also got to let go of them. And the letting go of them is a really interesting part. It's an important part because the act of letting go really makes you need to identify what it is that you're reacting over and identify your reactions without attempting to suppress or fix them. What's really interesting is that if you notice yourself get angry, you can then identify, with, identify, oh, I'm getting angry right now.

14:11And then there's two things that you could do. You could either fight the anger and be like, why am I fucking angry again? Like I'm always, I don't want to be an angry person. I don't want to be this way. How am I still this way? And what happens is what, and you can resist that anger. When you resist that anger, that anger persists. What you resist persists. Just remember that. So if I'm like, I don't want to be this way, I'm actually adding more energy to it. I'm adding more. So imagine that my anger that pops up that I'm trying to get rid of, one of the boulders that's in the way, is like a fire.

14:40When I get to a point where I'm starting to resist, resist, resist, that's more energy being thrown into something that is already energetically charged. So it's like a fire and adding fuel, gasoline, on top of the fire. That's not going to help it. That's not going to make it go out quicker. What's one way to let a fire go out? Just let it burn out. And so what happens is sometimes when we get emotionally charged, the best thing is to, not sometimes, most of the time, the best thing it is to do is to just allow it to just pass through your body. Allow it to just do what it's going to do, run its course, let go.

15:14Surrendering to your emotions and then just allowing them to flow through you. Now, five years ago, I'd have been like, that sounds like bullshit. But now that I'm older and I've started to work through these things, what I realized is when I resisted, it persists. If I go, I'm really angry right now. Okay, I'm just going to allow myself to be angry. I'm just going to breathe through it. And what happens is the faster that you can just not identify with it, just allow it to just be, the faster it just burns out. And the less that it'll start to pop up, because I'm throwing less energy, I'm throwing less energy at it, which means that it's not going to keep popping up as much later on down the road.

15:52And then what happens? You let it run its course, you let us run a course. And what you realize after a while is that two, three, four years down the road, you're like, man, I don't really have I've never as much anger as I used to. Yeah, because you just kind of let it burn out a little bit. Right? So don't fight them when they come up. Just allow them to come up and allow them to go because what you resist persists. And then what happens is you're starting to remove these rocks, these emotional barriers. And we allow the water, the innate energy of your life, your consciousness, who you are to just flow freely.

16:23It's your true self coming through. And the process doesn't involve going, well, I need to change the river's course to get around all of these rocks. No, it's not, we need to get, we don't need to just go around the rocks with a brand new course of the river. No, it's about removing the rocks, letting the river flow in its true direction of the life that you're supposed to have. And it's not as easy as it sounds. You know, I always get, whenever I post something on Instagram and I have a reel about something, almost every single one of them, there's someone that says, well, easier said than done.

16:57I'm like, well, no shit. Because when you say something, you just move your lips. doing something actually requires effort and time. So it's not as easy as it sounds. It requires significant work, personal work, but it's really the most important journey you could go on. And it brings you to a state that's much, much more inner peace, brings us closer to the inner peace that we have. And long-term, what it's really gonna lead you to when you start to remove these things and just let them run their course and get smaller and smaller and smaller until basically there are no barriers in front of you, long-term, it's gonna lead you to a lot more fulfilled, balanced and personally and spiritually enriched lives.

17:34So that is the path to true freedom that you're searching for. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, do me a favor right now. Go ahead and share this on your Instagram stories and tag me in it, Rob Dial Jr., R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. I love seeing you guys share this and where you are when you're sharing it and videos of you talking about it. So I always check my Instagram where I'm tagged and stuff and watch what you guys are putting out there. So if you would do that, I would greatly, greatly appreciate it. And with that, I'm going to leave you the same way I leave you every single episode.

18:03Make it your mission to make someone else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.