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In this episode of "A Changed Mind" our host David Bayer, shares three powerful tools that transformed his approach to personal growth. He discusses the importance of downregulating the nervous system, addressing limiting beliefs, and developing a spiritual practice. David emphasizes the need to recognize untrue thoughts, connect with the body, and cultivate a relationship with a higher power. He shares personal anecdotes from his journey, including experiences with various self-help methods and spiritual practices.

The episode offers practical insights for listeners seeking to overcome feelings of being stuck in their personal development journey and achieve greater peace, clarity, and intentional creation in their lives.

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POWERFUL LIVING EXPERIENCE

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What We Explored This Episode

5:07 Exploring different spiritual philosophies

21:22 Untrue thoughts create negative emotions

33:34 Developing a spiritual practice

39:39 Community and fellowship in personal growth

Memorable Quotes

""Personal growth is about downregulating the nervous system. It's learning how to more consistently operate from the parasympathetic expression instead of the sympathetic fight, flight, or freeze response."

"Anytime you're entangled with a thought or limiting belief that doesn't feel good, what we found 100% of the time was that thought wasn't true. This changed the game for us."

"The mind is speed. The heart and the body are slow. The mind is a tool for working with information that already exists. The heart and body are tools for accessing new information."

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POWERFUL LIVING EXPERIENCE

And so I spent like 10 years going down this rabbit trail. And it's not that there weren't incremental improvements in my mind there were, but there was still a lot of, like, unprocessed belief systems and programs that I didn't know how to get rid of. And I think that personal growth. And again, you tell me if you relate to this experience or not. But personal growth is, like, so vast and so expansive. Like, you can get into things like muscle testing and somatic release and how the body keeps score and epigenetic expression and processing trauma. And it's like there's so many directions that you can go in, and there's so many teachers out there that that can become a new addiction. And so for me, personal growth was becoming an addiction. And I had to step back and be like, okay, hold on a minute, Dave, you're not broken. There's something that you want. You want more peace. You want more clarity, you want greater understanding, and most importantly, you want more integration. I wanted to be able to embody what I was learning. I didn't want to just understand how to achieve peace. I wanted to experience peace. It was a big difference. I didn't want to just understand that I could attract more money and prosperity and abundance into my life. I wanted more money and prosperity and abundance in my life. So the three distinctions that I'm going to share with you are going to start to structure out this conversation in a way that I believe is going to give you more access to your next level of growth. Wherever you are right now, you might be at the David awakening, the Buddha within stage, where you're just starting to read the books. You might be at the David Abraham Hicks stage, where you're going to the events and you're getting into vibration and law of Attraction. You might be studying consciousness theory. You might be, you know, somebody who's even a teacher of somatic work or trauma healing. But, you know, there's a gap right now between everything that you know and everything that you're experiencing. And so I'm going to share these three really potent distinctions with you. And the first one is really understanding what personal growth is and defining it in a way that makes it accessible for us. I look at personal growth today, and it's changed over time. I look at personal growth or mindset at its core as downregulating the nervous system. So it's really about learning how to more consistently operate from the parasympathetic expression of your nervous system, which is rest and relaxation, instead of the sympathetic expression of our nervous system, which is the fight, flight, or freeze. And as human beings, as a species, our tendency is to operate from sympathetic from fight, flight, or freeze. And it's super functional. It's allowed us to survive and we're constantly thinking about survival. We're having fear based thoughts, we're very vigilant, we're watching for any threats. But those threats don't exist anymore like they used to. Those threats existed at a very fundamental level, like at a basic needs level. Like you might be eaten by an animal or attacked or killed by another tribe at any moment. We were just living in survival all the time, just like the animals out there in the natural. But that's not our reality anymore.

These are all indications of untrue thoughts, misinterpretations of the present moment. It's pretty powerful, right? Anytime you're thinking something that doesn't feel good, it's not true. And so if you know that now, you can start to explore the thinking and go like, okay, well let me explore like how might this not be true? Or what is the opposite of this? Because if this isn't true, then the opposite of this must be true. And how is the opposite of this idea or thought that I'm having actually true? And you can start to this is our process. This is actually the decision matrix. So spoiler alert. But you can still go check it out and download the whole thing on my website@davidbear.com or go even deeper on my book if you want to pick it up off of Amazon. But this is the process of seeing your unintelligent thinking is unintelligent. And this is what we found to be the fastest way to actually transform your belief systems. And so you might say, but Dave, it's true that I lost my job. So how can you say that me saying to myself I lost my job and moving to a primal state is not true? And what I'm suggesting is it's not the thought that you lost your job that's moving you into a primal normal state. That's a fact. You lost your job. It's the meaning you're giving the experience of the job loss. I'm not going to be able to pay my bills. Well, in a universe of possibility with a loving infinite intelligence that's always working for you as long as you allow it, other ways and resources will show up for you to pay your bills. But if you're chanting or incanting or affirming this belief which isn't in alignment with the loving resourcefulness of the field itself or of God, then you're going to be entangling with a dissonant vibration and feeling that is a negative emotion in your body. So this is the process again, just taking us back through it. Number one, this is a game of a downregulation of the nervous system. Number two, what is up regulating it? It's our thoughts. What type of thoughts are up regulating our nervous system? Untrue thoughts. What's the fastest way to transform an untrue thought? Well, see, that untrue thought is untrue. How do you do that? Well, you have to know that anytime that you're thinking something that doesn't feel good, it's not true. And now you can start to explain, explore the thing. So second thing, and I mentioned this before, the habit of thought becomes a habit of emotion. And so now we have to work with the body. And so you have to have a practice for getting into your body and calming the body. And this is a recent practice for me because a lot of my work has been at a psychological or intellectual level. Like, I don't know about you, but for me, sometimes I feel like I'm living in the space above my head. It's like I'm walking on the street and a lot of times I'm not even paying attention to what I'm seeing or I'm walking through my house and I'M not even present to the experience of like me going through my home. I'm up in this like mental space. And if you live in that mental space, it's a real disconnection from the body. And we can't work with the body to retrain the body's habit of emotion if we're not connected to it. Many, many, many, many people, especially in western society, are completely disconnected from their body. And again, I think that's another reason why the body is energy deficient, why we experience inflammation and autoimmune and chronic health chall because the body is not being experienced with the soul. The soul is living up in this mental plane. And so the body begins to deteriorate and respond accordingly with dis ease or disease. And at the same time, because of stressful thoughts or unintelligent thinking that move us into a primal state, we're conditioning the body for operating from fight or flight. And it's not designed to do that. I read some statistic, I don't remember what it is. I mean, you can go find out from some expert on Diary of a CEO, But I, I heard some experts say something like, your body's not meant to be fight or flight for like more than 14 seconds at a time. But most of us are living in fight or flight like all day long. In fact, if you think about it like, just come up with a number for yourself right now. If you were to add up all the time that you are feeling stress or anxious or worried, or comparing yourself to other people or feeling like you're not as far along as you should be, you could type this in the comment box. If you're joining on YouTube, just come up with this number. If you're listening on the audio platforms for yourself, comparing yourself to other people in indecision, procrastination, beating yourself up, judging yourself, judging other people, thinking that someone else shouldn't have done something or they should have done something, or at any time entangled with that negative inner critic in your head. How many hours a day on average do you think you spend in a primal state? Like, if it's true that we're only Just think about that number, what's the number? You got it. It's a number. For me, it was like all my waking hours before I got into recovery. And when I got stuck in personal growth, it was still something like half my time, like eight hours a day. That's not good for the body. It's not good for anything that you're wanting to create. So this is really cool though, because now we can look at as root cause. You're wanting to make more money, you're wanting to have better relationship, you're wanting to have more peace. You want to be more spiritual, connected, you want to grow your business. Really at the root cause level, it's this amount of time that we spend in a primal state. And what we're saying is you can get out of a primal state by looking at your thinking and seeing your unintelligent thinking is unintelligent. That's a practice. And then number two, we need to start working with the body. Because what we've been entertaining in the mind is inhabiting in the body. And so I've developed a practice recently of just slowing things down. Because the problem is not anything that's showing up in my life. The problem is not that a marketing campaign doesn't go well. The problem is not that I have an argument with Carol. The problem is not that I don't have time to get all the things that I planned on getting done because I now have a two year old who I adore and I allocate some of my daily time to him. You know, the problem is not some of the health challenges that I've been having. Those things aren't the problem. The problem is the speed of the mind. It's the speed that those things trigger. Do you get me? Like, just check in with yourself for a minute. Like, for most of us, we become so overdeveloped mentally. And the mind is speed. The heart and the body are slow. The mind is actually a tool for working with information that already exists. The heart and the body are the tool for accessing information that is new. And so we want to use both. But the mind has become so overdeveloped and we're living in this speed. And then of course, life doesn't support the downregulation of our nervous system or the slowing or the descending back down into the body because everything's so fast. Like a lot of these podcasts, people listen to it like 1.5 times speed or 2 times speed, and that's fine, but it's speed. I communicate with my team through a walkie talkie WhatsApp tool called Voxer. And I listen to it on two times or three times speed. Everything is fast. Like, think about just as you're flipping through Instagram and you're looking at shorts, things are fast. And so there's the speed that's taking place and there's an opportunity to get into a practice to support your psychological practice of a body practice. And so my practice is I notice the speed and it's cool because. Because I can. It's so simple for me now I either notice that I moved into a primal state, meaning I don't feel good, or I noticed the speed and it's really one and the same thing because the speed doesn't feel good either. And so I stop whatever I'm doing and I put my hand on my chest over my heart. This is really important because what we're trying to do is bring our presence back down into the body out of the mental space. We're trying to downregulate the nervous system. We're also trying to activate the energetic centers of our body, in the middle of which is the heart center or the heart chakra. And this is where intuition comes through. This is where inspiration comes through. This is where you actually decide to do things that seem completely unrelated to the outcomes that you're trying to produce, but they lead you to coincidences and synchronicities that end up producing the outcome. Like you look backwards and you're like, that's the craziest shit. Because I was able to produce this result, but not through my plan, but through this like God's plan or divine plan or universe plan that has unfolded that's coming through this energetic center of your heart. That's where the information's coming through. So I put my hand on my heart and I'm able to close my eyes and actually feel the energy there. And it's a warmth. And you can do this after the episode. You can do it with me now. But it only takes a second to put your hand over your heart. Withdraw your senses from the external world by closing your eyes. Bring your awareness and your attention to your heart center and feel that energy. And notice that that energy is just a subtle warmth because again, the heart and the body are warm, the mind is cold, the mind is like a machine. And so this is a great practice to engage in to support this root cause practice of downregulating your nervous system. Yes, we're doing the psychological work and we're seeing our unintelligent thinking is unintelligent. But we're also doing the body work. And what's great about this practice, even if you think that the heart chakra is a bunch of woo woo, and this idea that I'm sharing with you, that information and intuition come through the body and the heart, not the mind at the mind uses the information that comes through and processes it so that it can be practically applied in our third dimensional manifested reality. You're like, okay, that's all a bunch of bs. Okay, fine. But just fundamentally, by engaging in this practice for a minute or two, you're doing a nervous system habit break. Because if you don't do this, you're going to keep doing what you've normally done, which is the speed. If you don't do this, you're going to continue to engage in the upregulated nervous system and it'll maintain its upregulation until some other point in time, probably when you just get burned out and you go to sleep. But this is a habit break. And so as you break the habit of the upregulated nervous system you have, it inclines your nervous system to downregulate more frequently and more easily because that's what this in practice is around personal growth. So just at a fundamental level, it's basic physiology tells us that this is an effective practice for working with the body. And then the third practice that I would piece together into this lens through which you're going to access your next level of personal growth and really integrate every. Everything that you've been learning is a spiritual practice. So we've got a psychological practice, we've got a in the mind, we've got an emotional practice, in the body, and we've got a spiritual practice. And the spiritual practice is actually, I would almost look at it as not mind or body, but kind of everywhere, external and internal. It's like more of a practice of essence. And this is a practice and why I talked about in other episodes where a personal relationship with your higher power is so important because in order to relax the system, whether you're taking the psychological or emotional approach, I think it's fundamental to believe that there is a power greater than you that is working on an ongoing basis that has infinite resources and infinite possibilities supporting you towards your greatest growth, your greatest prosperity and your greatest evolution. Like if you don't believe that, if you don't believe that there's a loving intelligence supporting you personally and paying attention to you, I think it's very difficult to let go psychologically or emotionally. It wouldn't make sense. But that's the difference between the primal nervous system, an ancient man, and a powerful state of being and an evolved human being. An evolved human being is a spiritual human being because it's allowed spirit to take hold in every aspect of that organism's life. And so what does that mean? Well, in my 12 step recovery, we had A serenity prayer that we would say at the end of almost every meeting, which was, God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the, the difference. So this is the idea of surrender or letting go and letting God. Well, you can't let go and let God if there is no God. And I believe a personal relationship with God is important. I also believe that a personal relationship with Christ is important. That's something I've been exploring in my own life. But at least start off with a relationship with a higher power, whatever that is for you. That's what allows pretty much anybody who gets into 12 step recovery to start building a relationship with the God of their own understanding is because there doesn't have to be any initially, any requirements, requirements on it could be nature, could be the universe, whatever it is for you, could be the field, could be love, could be intelligence, could be God, Jesus, Allah. Again, I think the further you go into this more religious conversation, there are advantages to the Christ path and loving path of devotion, of right Christianity. I think it gives you access to even more tools in the Savior of Christ. But I don't feel like I'm an expert to talk on that yet because that's part of my own personal journey. I do have a couple of other episodes where I talk about why a personal relationship, relationship with a higher power is important and what I think the role of Jesus is, at least in my life at this point. But this third pillar of a spiritual approach to downregulating the nervous system requires that you believe that you're taken care of, requires that you believe that even though you can't see it, help is on the way, solutions are on the way. That allows you to believe that when you're fighting a battle that you have not been able to win, that you can stand down because it's the Lord's battle to fight. And if you're willing to engage in that which is called faith, then miracles begin to occur in your life. And so this is important. Einstein said the most important decision you make is whether you live in a friendly or hostile universe. So he's having the same conversation that we're having without putting a label on it, like God or Spirit or Jesus. But it's very important to have this third pillar, the spiritual pillar, and this practice of faith. And so this practice of faith, I think reaches people in a lot of different ways. I think it's a byproduct of the psychological and emotional practices that we're speaking about. Because what I found was that as I started to clean up my mind and as I started to operate more within my body and have a living presence from my body, what I naturally found in this new space that was created was the beginnings of a spiritual relationship and a relationship with the God of my own understanding. And so, again, you can achieve this through meditation. I have an episode on what I call communion journaling where I wake up in the morning and I write to my divine Father and I express my gratitudes and I share my desires and I pray for other people. And I think fellowship is a really important part of this because spirituality is a thing that you can do on your own. Personal growth is a thing that you can do on your own. But my experience is it's not a do it yourself project. There's anything that I've ever wanted to get good at, I had to hang out and be around other people who are focused on getting good at it at the same time. So I think that's another thing that can be very, very helpful is that we tend to do personal growth on our own. But that's one of the reasons why I created this community. It's one of the reasons why we do our annual event, which, by the way, is coming up in March here, if you want to check it out. Powerfullivingexperience.com Would love to have you in the community with a thousand other people. But the communal practices are very, very important. And so if you don't have a spiritual practice, but you want a spiritual practice, the beautiful thing is that you can actually ask spirit to guide you in your practice. Because there's this adage in scripture which is ask and we shall receive. And so if you have clarity based on this conversation that you want to have a more spiritual based life and be in spiritual community and be in spiritual practice, just ask. That's actually how my writing practice came to me. I just decided that I wanted to have a deeper personal relationship with the God of my own understanding. And through a series of meditation and breath practices, I got really clear that if I wake up in the morning and I start journaling, that that relationship will be there waiting for me. And sure enough, it was. Again, you can check out my episode on my communal journaling practice if that's something you're interested in hearing more about. But this is the lens through which I'm operating my personal development program. For me right now, it's next level from where I was in the books and the events and feeling like I was broken. I don't feel like I'm broken anymore. That doesn't mean that I'm not challenged. But I understand the game. I know the rules of the game. I know how to get on the court. And that the game that I'm playing is a downregulation of my nervous system. It's an evolution of who I that there are three areas that I can play this game. I can play the game in my mind and play the psychological, take the psychological approach. I can play the game in my body and take the emotional approach. And I can play the game everywhere and take the spiritual approach. And to me, just being aware of this and practicing it as much as I can and as best as I can, being willing to do it imperfectly and forgetting and getting stuck and getting unstuck, that's part of the practice. Like every time you forget and then you remember, you're strengthening your remember remembering muscle. Every time you get stuck and you get unstuck, you're getting better at getting unstuck. And so I don't think the objective is to like never be in a primal state again or never suffer again. It's just to be in the practice as best as we can. And to me, this is a living meditation. So I have a meditation practice where I close my eyes and I do a variety of different meditations, but this is a living meditation. This is like taking my spiritual practice on the road with me every single day in my business, in my relationship, in my health, in my finances. That's the beautiful thing about life is it just it presents so much contrast and contracted experiences that we don't expect. But that affords us an opportunity to really develop mastery around what matters most, which is who we're becoming. So I hope you love this episode as much as I love sharing it with you and you've got some takeaways. This might be a go. Listen to it again because there are some writer downers in there. But it was a lot of information. And as I mentioned before, we've got our live event coming up. You can check that out. There's a link in the show notes. You can jump on over to davidbear.com grab my free ebook, get on our newsletter. You can hover over to Amazon, grab my book, go Deeper with me through a changed mind. And if you're listening on the audio platforms, do me a favor. If you love this episode, number one, share it with someone. Number two, subscribe. And number three, leave me a rating and review and Same Thing on YouTube. Leave me a comment, Leave me a question. Share with me a little bit about your journey. I want to know this is a thing that we're doing together and subscribe if you haven't yet. And I love you very much. Thank you for the opportunity. It's an honor and a blessing to have spent these 50 minutes with you here today and I will see you in the next episode. Hey, it's David. One more thing. If you want to go even deeper on everything we've talked about on today's episode, don't forget to jump over to www.DavidBear.com. you can find the link in the show notes and subscribe to our newsletter. A couple of times a week. I'm going to be sending you the latest episodes that we've released, along with additional free trainings. You'll get immediate access to my free Mind Hack ebook and go even deeper into all the tools, the technology, the frameworks that have helped tens of thousands of people establish a changed mind. Don't forget to jump on over to the site and I will see you in the next episode.