Quote of the day:

“When you believe without knowing you believe that you are damaged at your core, you also believe that you need to hide that damage for anyone to love you. You walk around ashamed of being yourself. You try hard to make up for the way you look, walk, feel. Decisions are agonizing because if you, the person who makes the decision, is damaged, then how can you trust what you decide? You doubt your own impulses so you become masterful at looking outside yourself for comfort. You become an expert at finding experts and programs, at striving and trying hard and then harder to change yourself, but this process only reaffirms what you already believe about yourself -- that your needs and choices cannot be trusted, and left to your own devices you are out of control (p.82-83)”

― Geneen Roth, Women, Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything

My answer to last week's question of the week:

I’m a “C/D” personality type, I overanalyze, then get tired of things taking too long, and charge ahead, sometimes leaving a wake of destruction….or half done things….behind me.

Stories from real life/what I’m doing to create more liberty in my life:

Prepping for Teen Catalyst event

Homestead updates:

Piglets

Wild bunnies

Setting hens with different personalities

News/personal development article highlight/book review:

I’ve deviated from my reading list that I set for myself at the start of the year. I haven’t given up on it, but I’ve inserted a couple other books that struck me. One is called ‘The Purpose Driven Youth Ministry, the other one is the ‘The Case for IBC’.

IBC is the infinite banking concept, the idea of becoming your own banker.I don’t fully understand it, but I’m highly interested and excited about the potential I see in it to build generational wealth, and I’m trying to get someone on the podcast to talk about it.

Social media spotlight/podcast episode recommendation:

Check out the Fireside Freedom Podcast, a collaboration effort with fellow podcasters,a discussion on how to create MORE freedom in your life. 

Also, go listen to A Farmish Kind of Life, episode 205. I had the pleasure of chatting with Amy Dingman all about personalities. It was a fantastic chat.

Main topic:

Don’t allow other people to control you.

Set out to do a thing, and we over analyze it.

We allow other people’s fears to control us

We have a first instinct for the thing but end up listening to the voices inside our head or from other people telling us we can’t do the thing, we don’t have what it takes

Then before we even have a chance to get started and suck at whatever it was, before we have a chance to learn the lesson that getting started would teach us, we get derailed and quit.

If you go back to when you were a child, most likely you LOVED new experiences. 

You LOVED the zoo, and all the crazy looking animals. 

You LOVED going to the beach and picking up all the strange looking creatures and seeing how far out you could swim.

You climbed as high as you could up the tree.

You met and played with new people.

You LOVED trying new food….wait….what? No you didn’t. No kid likes trying new food.

You explored new places and tried new things every chance you got.

The fears you experienced came from the people around you. If your mom or dad was the fearful type, you too became fearful. If they were afraid of you being kidnapped, you too became afraid of every new person you saw.

Another thing that may have made you cautious of trying new things is the fear of failure. School is a HUGE driver of the fear of failure. Everything we do in school is judged by the percentage of failure. You turn in a test paper and it’s marked up with red ink accentuating all your failures. You’re benched from the game because of your failures. You’re forced to try to improve on things you’re not naturally good at, rather than developing your natural talents into something world class. 

“I know you’re among the 99th percentile in writing, but you need to work on your trigonometry.” And this often comes at the expense of writing. Instead of being allowed to learn and better yourself at what you were truly gifted in, you were “taught” that learning is about things you hate. And you were made to hate learning.

Look at yourself currently, and the things you enjoy. Do you like watching videos and reading books about the things you enjoy? That’s learning. Learning doesn’t have to be a chore and a bore. Learning is exciting and fun.

Back to how others control us:

You can see from what we talked about, how the model of learning and living you were given as a child, controls who and what you are today. 

It’s safe inside that box

But that’s a false sense of security

True safety and security lies in becoming your own person, developing your strengths and talents into something sharper than a Patrick Roherman knife.

Again, back to the control issue.

Many of the interactions we have with others come from a place of control. They want something from you, you want something from them. And when you see that, it can drive even more fear into you, making you even MORE afraid to step out and be your own person.

The irony of it is that it’s when you break out of the control, when you quit being the other person’s lackey, that you start to be seen as an equal.

When you start to set those boundaries, others may see that as a threat, because they’ve grown accustomed to you being their bitch. They don’t like when you stand up for yourself. Eventually they come around, and if they don’t, they aren’t the type of person you want in your life anyway, no matter who it is, because they don’t have your best interest in mind. They are only thinking of themselves and want what they want even at YOUR expense.

Soon you start to see how the only method of control is fear.

Fear of failure, fear of not keeping up with the Joneses, fear of your homestead not measuring up, fear of what they might think of you if you say what you really think, fear that you’re not very smart, fear that the RUSSIANS ARE COMING, fear that your house isn’t big enough or nice enough, fear that you’ll get a red check mark next to the answers on your test paper, fear that you won’t get a promotion, fear that your business will fail, fear that your friends will abandon you, fear that the car warranty guy will knock on your door in the middle of the night, fear of losing someone you love, fear of not having a nice vehicle, fear of not measuring up, fear that your podcast will only be listened to by your mother in law, fear fear fear FEAR.

There’s a method to this madness though, FEAR, is what drives people into action. And the main method of communicating fear to adults today is the TV.

Turn off the TV, quit listening to people's opinions unless it is something relevant and someone you trust, and then you still should only half believe it. 

If you look at all the fears we talked about, every single one of those fears is things outside your control. Not one of those things do you have control over. Can some of them happen? Absolutely. But you don’t need to spend you time living in fear of it, living in reactive mode. Your best life will be lived by doing what you love to the best of your ability. Doing what you can where you are with what you have. If you operate inside of what you can control, you will be so much happier, your have have much less fear, and your life will be much better. 

Don’t allow other people to transmit their fear, doubts, and concerns on you. They are focusing on what’s OUTside of their control, while the things INside of their control are falling apart. You need to be different.

Fear and worry is borrowing feelings from future negative expected outcomes.Don’t live in the future negative.

Live in the positive now. Create the life you want, by becoming the person who lives the kind of life you want.

Know who you are, know your purpose, know where you’re headed, kick fear to the curb.

If you have boys aged 13-17, you should check out the Teen Catalyst event. June 24-26.

Support the show, buy yourself a Constructive Liberty shirt so you can rep your favorite podcast.

Question of the day:

How has fear kept you from living the life you want? And what are you going to do to quit living in fear?