Bryan Goodwin: This week, we're having Bob Gardner. He is a a man who has
changed how I look at what I do in my life. This is a guy who
is
making waves, changing things up in in so many ways. He is he changes
how people look
at their body, chain look at how their physiology
is actually
a root of a lot of their pain, and wanna help
wanna share this out
and let y'all see what Bob Gardner's about and what he's what he's been up to. And we're gonna be talking about several interesting topics, and we're gonna be doing that this week on episode two sixty nine of The Relaxed Male. This is The Relaxed Male,
a show that comes to you each week helping men to remove the nice guy from their life so they can actually live their life on their terms.
Join the host certified coach, Brian Goodwin, as he helps men step out of their heads and become free from the thoughts that bind them.
Hey, man. Hello, and welcome to the relaxed mental. Today, we have got a
a a bit of a change up. It's no longer gonna be just me today. I've got a a,
guest here who is somebody I have
looked to and listened to for knowledge for for quite a while. This is I've got Bob Gardner. He the
was, on the site, the the freedom specialist to and so I don't know if he likes to call himself the freedom specialist quite so much, but
but at the same time,
he has helped many men who have been fighting with
any type
of what a lot of people call addiction. If you've listened to any of the shows that I've done, you know, I'd
addiction is is just a word that we use
as a means to holding,
when we we have an uncontrolled
coping mechanism.
And but he is,
Bob's way of of looking at a problem and
examining how we have limited ourselves
in
in life in general and have kinda kept ourselves into put into a prison
has
helped change
many people's lives.
He started out helping
men with,
with with porn addiction. And from porn addiction, he has progressed to just helping men and women around
to
not
resist so much life as itself, but actually lean into it and see how much how beautiful life can actually be when you
stop
worrying
so much about
the things that really don't matter as much.
And so today, we got,
like I said, we got Bob. And, Bob, how are you doing today?
Bob Gardner: I feel absolutely spectacular.
Maybe I'm a little hungry. But beyond that, I feel
Bryan Goodwin: Caught you at lunchtime.
So
but so okay. So we've got one of the big things that really,
opened up for
opened my eyes up to,
to
how you look at things, and we'll start in with, just with your book itself with,
Built for Freedom.
And that was a
you've got a a set of 10,
10 adventures
that, 10 different chapters that were
just,
mind mind blowing in
more specifically out the
aspect of how much power our mind actually has. You told the story of the one guy who
was
cancer ridden until they told him that, hey. You don't we've got this this,
this this medicine that fixes stuff and
the, fixes
your cancer and then they found and so they they gave it to him and he got better. And then all of a sudden, they were like, oh, he'd heard that, yeah, this medicine's not working, and so he gets it back even worse.
And
where
when it comes to
power of the mind and and things like that, where does how do
how do we
as the as
a typical moral man, how can we tap into that? Is there is there kind of a way you'd be able to explain that so that we can how do we tap into
using our mind
in, in a better way? So
Bob Gardner: So let's rephrase the question because I think some sometimes when we when we phrase a question, sometimes with the way we phrase a question, we lose some possibilities. So right? Right. So we ask the question, how do we tap into the power of the mind? We're already assuming with the question that we haven't tapped into it. Oh, good point. Okay. And and that's all and and not intentionally. I mean, it wasn't malicious by you or anything, but the we do we make these kind of verbal mistakes all the time that limit
already
the possibilities that are with us. Right. So I say, how do I tap into the power of the mind? I am obviously
already filtered out all the ways that I'm already tapping into it.
So
every person that's listening right now is tapping into the power of their mind to create experiences for themselves, both internal and sometimes out in the world,
that they're already doing on a daily basis. When somebody somebody pulls in front of you in traffic and you have an automatic reaction that is
maybe not nice.
Right.
You did that. Like, you trained your mind to do that automatically to produce these kinds of experiences.
When you have tapped into the power of and that what that is, that's the same thing as the as mister Wright with the Krebiozien affair and the cancer and everything else. That's the exact same mechanism.
He had this
training in his mind,
but everything he had read about that particular wonder drug that was like, oh my gosh. This is going to cure my cancer. And he had trained it so well that just having something in the outside world that triggered the I've got the medicine now Right. Made his mind go ahead and start to produce a completely diff like, it melted these grapefruit sized cancer tumors.
Like, I think he the I think the doctor said, like, ice on a hot stove or something like that. It was just something like that. Yeah. So fat. Within a couple of days, these huge I mean, they were draining liters of fluid from his lungs and whatnot on the daily. And then, like, within a couple days, he's able to just get up and walk out of the hospital, and he's doing great and wonderful.
And that's because what had entertained his mind
trained his body to automatically respond to some kind of outside stimulus.
So in the book, I go through a bunch where I'm talking about what entertains you, trains you. And this is where I think the rubber hits the road for your average person. Because if we say, well, how do I tap into the power of the mind? It's it almost feels like we're asking to be a mentalist or an illusionist or some elite healer or somebody else out there. But the reality is all they did was train themselves over a long period of time
to be able to do something. And so if we back off, we go, how did they train themselves? Well, the first thing we wanna start with is the what we entertain ourselves with. And if you entertain yourself with a bunch of people out there that are talking politics and how the world's falling apart, then you're gonna start reacting to the world automatically as if the world is falling apart. If you entertain yourself with, I don't know, Tony Robbins motivational speeches, whatnot, then you're gonna react to a lot of challenges very, very differently. I'm not saying all of that is is gonna pay off in the long run, but the entertainment is the place that I would start personally. That's where I did start as I go, well,
instead of I I think Einstein put it this way. Well, I mean, people have quoted Einstein a lot of times, but, essentially,
you can't solve a problem at the level of thinking you were at when you created it.
And most people read that statement to mean, and that which may be what he actually meant,
that that, like, well, I created this tangible problem in the outside world because of the way I was thinking, and so then I created this problem. But I read that statement and I go,
what is out in the tangible world is just something out in the tangible world. Right. Me seeing it as a problem is the level of thinking that I that created the problem.
And so, if I have to step back and go,
instead of focusing on life as if it's a problem, instead of focusing on everything else as if it's a problem, what if I just started focusing on the things that start to move my life in a positive direction each given moment? What if I entertain myself in such a way with certain things that move my life in a direction that I wanted to go? Then I'm not dealing with problems.
Might obstacles show up? Sure. But if I keep my eyes on the prize, if I keep my eyes focused in the direction I wanna go, then I continue to just create solutions
naturally as a byproduct and not,
not like, well, gosh. I got a problem I gotta solve now. Right. Because you don't see problems.
What you see is the end goal, and you adapt as you want as you're on the Okay. Okay. So
Bryan Goodwin: so where does this
this
sense of
where we that we limit ourselves?
How do where does that
where do you think that come comes from? Is that just the natural thing,
order of things where
man always
is putting a cap on what our potential is, or is it
or is there something
something else, something that we were able to do,
where we can
start showing our kids that, hey. You can actually
be, you know, you can actually be this this wonder being, so to speak. Where
Bob Gardner: Yeah. I mean, I don't I don't I mean, I I think there is a limitation to what humans are capable of outside of the influence of God and life. Right? Because we we don't heal ourselves. Like Right.
Like, we're we're not the ones dividing cells and digesting food and and making sure our heart's beating and whatnot. Like, we we like to pretend that big. But, really, we are on in one sense, we are helpless little beings. Yes. But somehow, we're on the back of a giant,
and that giant is so profound. Right. And so the limitation comes from this resistance to what the giant is doing.
Bryan Goodwin: Okay. Okay.
Bob Gardner: Because it's got better plans for us than we could ever possibly imagine, it feels like. And my hypothesis from the beginning was that what if what if there was a question. You know? What if life, just bare,
is better
than anything humans could ever dream up, and we just,
like,
didn't see it? We we missed the boat, and so we we missed all that stuff. And so I, I started,
I start looking at that stuff, and I go, okay. Cool. There is a limitation that humans have, but then the where does it come from that we limit ourselves? The question I think
I mean, if we had both of us grown up in some rando society in the South Pacific Mhmm. Where
the people around us never
spoke in a way that that referred to some sense of limitation of what's possible Right.
Then the pros the probability of us developing that type of mindset would have been much, much smaller.
Okay. But because we're we're around a whole society
whose entire, like, bend is, well, you're only human,
like, as if that's a problem. Right. You know? And, oh, life is hard, and, everybody nobody's perfect, and everybody messes up, And that's not okay, and that's not okay. And everybody partaking of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, mostly the evil part saying that's bad, that's bad, that's bad, that's bad.
Then we we we grow up in learning just by osmosis because we didn't we weren't born believing that we were limited in any way, shape, or form.
We weren't born, like, having some sense of self in general that was somehow separate from the life that was in us, that we developed that because the people around us developed that. Developed that. And so if we're looking at at an origin, I would I mean, yeah, we might have had some traumatic events somewhere along the way. Some people have had more, some people have had fewer that definitely accelerate that process, but everybody is going through the process
of starting to separate themselves as some limited individual
independent of the rest of of creation and the rest of their life just because we've been around people who've done it. And these are good, well meaning people that just they talk that way.
And so we go, oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. That's how it is. And we just we might resist it. We might rebel as a teenager.
Bryan Goodwin: Right. Yeah.
Bob Gardner: Somewhere deep inside, we have this, like, nugget of belief that we're trying to fight. So if we're fighting it, we still believe it. Right. Okay. Okay. So if
Bryan Goodwin: so that's a a lot like,
oh, you talked also talked about, the the group of people who are
they speak strictly in compass rose
language. So instead of go over to your left, they'd they'd mention, you know, it's to your North, and it's
to your South, and they have that internal
internal
compass that is
incredibly,
you know, precise because they can
no matter where they,
where they go, they're always being told, yeah, we've got,
we're facing you know, we know what direction we're facing, and they can actually navigate the seas without having all the the fancy,
Bob Gardner: Yeah. I mean, there's some level of training, I'm sure, that they would have to tune in. I mean, humans
our bodies do pick up where where magnetic north is, where where like, our bodies do pick it up, but, I mean, that wasn't like dinner table conversation. Right. Yeah.
Hey. Have you noticed the magnetic poles are a little shifty today? Shifty? They're
they're off, Bob. You're easy. Oh, god. That must be yeah. That was that's not part of our conversation. Indigestion. That's what coming from me. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
And and and I think part of that is that
I I mean, since the industrial revolution, the world has gotten louder.
Yes. You know, louder machines, more machines, a lot more comfort, and and the the food has gotten
more in your face, and we're we're focused more on flavor. And so everything in our sensory perception is so loud that, like, how would we know to pay attention to these little subtler cues? Right.
Yeah.
Okay.
Bryan Goodwin: So, yeah, that's
being able to
and you're saying, like, the world getting louder. I mean, that's definitely
an aspect that, back when I first was getting into, coaching, that was,
the whole the three day effect that people talked about. I've been wanting to try to get was that was kinda my start off on folk on helping guys out was
getting them to
not so much do a digital detox, but let them experience the the whole three day effect of getting them out and, like, you know, hang out and do a do a weeks long camping trip over in the Grand Tetons. And
and with that where there's no cell signal whatsoever, and they're
those within the third day, their brain usually has done a
not a not a reset, but has slowed down enough
that all of a sudden, they start seeing details that they would have never noticed before because they're able to
their mind is able to actually breathe and able to
to have the
the thoughts and and
the
the extra bandwidth
to be able to
process
a lot of what is going on in life that, a lot of men struggle with these days because a lot of them are
doing things like what you and me are doing, where we're, you know,
trying to do a business and and and focusing in on it. But at the same time,
you've got everything else around us that is actually yelling at us and telling us, hey. We I need your attention. Need your attention. Need your attention. You're like, oh, no. I don't wanna give those attention yet. I'm I wanna get to get over here.
And it it seems to a lot of times, guys will
that's where I think a lot of the numbing comes from is because
our
we have the thoughts of I'm being stretched too thin. And those thoughts,
or at least in my
in my philosophy of life, we
we are
creatures of thought. We, you know, our thought creates an emotion, emotion creates an action, and action creates the result. And so, invariably, our thoughts create our results. And so
that's where
Bob Gardner: that. I I would say
from all of the study this is what I work with people with is before thought, what happens?
Bryan Goodwin: There's something that's going on in that Yeah. There's circumstance. The circumstance of our that that's happening.
Bob Gardner: Circumstance in the thought is an automatic response. We would call it an instinct or a reflex that happens. It's just an automatic response biologically, mechanically, and whatnot to the environment.
That puts the body into a space that then the thoughts the brain reacts to with thought. Right. Okay. Prior thought is that. And so a lot of people argue and and and there's some real validity to it that we're creatures of thought because that's what we're consciously aware of. But,
what I've found to be exceptionally powerful is, like, what if we could what if we change the building blocks that our brain is making thoughts out of? So if you have, like, a set of Legos and it's, you know, the Hogwarts Castle with Voldemort in the in the basement line. Perfect. So you're in a basilisk and stuff. Then that's what you build thoughts. That's what you build with those with those building blocks. But if we shift it over to, like, Bob the Builder Right.
You can't build Voldemort's castle with with Bob the Builder stuff very easily. Right. Yeah.
And the so the building blocks of thoughts then become the thing that's where I've made such a special study just in my own life. It's like, I'm
it's really hard to fight a thought with a thought because you you still end up in the world of thought. Okay. The most difficult thing that our modern world has created is a situation where we confuse our thoughts about reality with reality itself.
Bryan Goodwin: Okay. So let's dive into that just a little bit more because
so the like, the building blocks of of before,
I guess, you'd almost call it prethought.
How do you,
I mean, how do you examine what those
what those building blocks are? And how do you if you wanted to start trying to make a change in yourself
and start having
a different
different result
out of, say, you know,
you have
a boredom.
Look, we'll kinda
dip our toe into the,
into the into the addiction side of it too because a lot of times, guys dive into
their addiction because they're just bored. They have what for whatever reason, they have this this
aversion to boredom.
Bob Gardner: And And and and I to to be fair, in my own experience, you know, you know, that many year eighteen plus years, like, dealing with pornography addiction in a big way into drugs and whatnot, many, many of the forays in that arena were not always thought generated. Like, the thoughts came later. I was already in Oh, yeah. In the process of it. Yeah. Or and that's that's where I started going. Like, this is happening way before the thought process is happening, so that's why I have to start looking at it. So the question that I would ask people is, like, okay. Cool. You're bored.
How do you know you're bored?
Bryan Goodwin: Because I'm finding something to do. I'm trying to find something that is
Bob Gardner: Okay. Cool. Alright. So you catch the fact that you're bored because you catch yourself acting on a behavior. Yeah. Alright.
Cool. Have you ever done, like like, let's say you're opening the fridge every ten minutes looking for more food?
Bryan Goodwin: Absolutely.
Yeah.
Bob Gardner: K. So I go to the fridge, but I've also gone to the fridge not out of boredom. Right? Mhmm.
Okay. So how do I know that this time is different than the other time?
Bryan Goodwin: Because I may have just eaten,
you know, two hours ago or, you know, three hours ago. So I've eaten here recently or even if supper well, if supper's coming up real quick, then that's you know, it might be
the
Bob Gardner: Pretty sure that that's not how your brain determines Oh, I'm sure it's not either.
Right? That's like an after the fact. Well, now let's see. It might be a how would your brain know that you're bored? And and, basically, boredom is a label that your brain is sort of consciously putting on a series of
experiences, sensations. Like, it's having a certain sensation in the system. Yeah. We're not getting enough dopamine, serotonin, or something in there. So, it's Yeah. There it is. Let's let's ring the boredom bell. So Yeah. And so it's like, well, I know what to do with this. I recognize this as boredom and therefore.
And so I I go, okay. Cool. How do you know you're bored? How do you know you're anxious? How do you know you're tempted? How do you know you're lustful? How do you know you're any of the things. Right. Like, what it lets you know that you're lust you're lusting? And there's always a physiological component. There's always a you can point to parts of your body that are like, well, my breath is slow and my like, I'm well, if I'm lusting, you know, my eyes are, like, super hyper focused, but my body's pulling back, but I'm also super aware of these other things. Mhmm. And,
you know, until I'm, like, breathing kinda shallow. I'm sort of, like I feel this chemical flush inside my head. Like, that would be lust. Okay. Cool. What would happen if you change that physiological state? Could you keep lusting?
Like, if I start just oh, okay. Cool. Start doing jumping jacks.
Is it it's easy to lust after somebody while you're doing jumping jacks. It's harder. Yeah. I was gonna say no. That wouldn't that that wouldn't work very well because Yeah. You would have to train yourself to lust while doing jumping jacks to be able to do it. Right? Okay. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Right? So it's not saying it's impossible,
but it's just that our assist we've learned by accident
how to enact certain emotions and certain behaviors and certain tendencies
on in automatic response to stimulus. Pretty woman walks by, body goes, hello. Nice. They never they never wait back.
But the body lights up. Right. That's great. There's nothing you have to do, but then how do we respond to that light up? Now I grew up in a really deeply, like,
strict religious environment where that was seen as so bad that the first reaction my body had was to shame myself for being, like, a horrible person and a pervert.
Bryan Goodwin: Okay. Yeah.
Bob Gardner: Right. Those were some of the first thoughts that showed up. Yeah.
That wasn't what generated the thoughts. That was the reaction to what to the to the situation.
And so if I learn to react to
attraction
Mhmm. With a sudden, like, wow. That's an amazing feeling in my body, and I lift my head up to the sky and I praise God or something,
and I just practice that. Oh, man. If that feeling comes and I do this thing, then pretty soon, like, well, it's hard for me to be, like, praising god and calling myself a pervert at the same like, it's really hard. Right.
And so what I'm what I'm doing is, like, bringing myself consciously to the physical aspect that is the precursor to the thought.
So maybe I only catch it when I have a feeling or maybe boredom or tired or fatigued or hangry or whatever else it is. Maybe I only catch it there. But then I go, well, how do I know I'm hangry? Right.
So, like, is my left butt cheek hangry? You know? Like, is this is my elbow
freaking out about the next meal? Like, no. There's only bits of me that are in there. Right.
What have I done in that moment?
I've responded to a negative thought by getting precise about the physical component and bypassing thought altogether. So that's where bite the thoughts. I'm not any of that stuff. Right. So that's where you wanna kinda,
Bryan Goodwin: almost pay attention to what your thoughts
are. So as you're as you're realizing that
you're
entering into the state of of lust or the state of even a state of arousal or state of of
of going into
to start walking towards the, towards the refrigerator
or or what
to be able to have a
a
fourth or not a not forethought, but a,
an idea the last Yeah. Like, it's just understand that you're and pay attention to what you're actually
kinda thinking at that moment and what you're
Bob Gardner: what what is your feeling. I try to bypass the thought as much as possible, and I just be, like, pay attention to the state of your body.
Okay. So, like, sometimes I'll have people set an alarm every half hour. Like, how is your body feeling at this moment?
Most people don't realize they're dehydrated or they're they've been sitting in an uncomfortable position for, like, ten minutes, and they're, like, just trying to bang out this work. I'm like, are you comfortable?
Right.
Because every thought that's coming to you in this moment is coming from that discomfort. So, you know, let's let's stack the deck in your favor. So I I and and this is a personal preference. Right? Some people
love to focus on the thought piece, but what I found is I can chase thoughts around in circles for hours. Right.
But if I just go, like, if I it it doesn't matter if I have a thought. I go, well, what how's my body doing?
And then I go, well because in any given moment, all that's happening is that you are having an experience, and somebody who's having a negative experience just wants to have a different one. Right. Yeah. Absolutely.
You're not really dealing with an addiction.
You're not really dealing with lust or boredom. You're dealing with, I'm uncomfortable,
and I'm uncomfortable.
And, you know, that's how fights start. I'm uncomfortable. You're uncomfortable. Pretty soon, somebody's gonna force you to be a little more uncomfortable than the others. Yeah.
Hopefully, if I make him more uncomfortable, this whole thing will stop, and I'll feel better. You know? Or,
or if I yell at them or if I call them a name or if I if I stick it to them in my little keyboard warrior mode and I and I the last point in it, there's this it's a drive to feel
comfortable. That's that's all it is. And so that simplifies the whole game. Am I,
comfortable? No. I'm not. Well, cool. Well, then let's only deal with what's tangibly real, which is your physical body, not not your imagination.
That's, like, advanced level stuff. We'll get to what your thoughts do once we've handled the foundation of those thoughts. Okay.
And then we go,
let's make this more comfortable. And when is more comfortable, suddenly you're like, well, okay. The situation doesn't feel as bad. The situation hasn't changed. Right.
Bryan Goodwin: You just have not you're not reading the situation through the lens of your own discomfort anymore. So one of the ways you might actually be able to do that is something as easy as just kinda stretching or at least getting yourself
out of the out of whatever
physical state you that you're actually at at that time.
Bob Gardner: Yeah. Yeah. So,
change every or any or every part of your body, and
it'll change your experience. Right? And it's very simple. Somebody listening right now, if you're listening at home and not driving a car, just listen to this podcast hanging upside down off the couch. You will have a different experience
Bryan Goodwin: Okay. Yeah.
Bob Gardner: Very readily. You you your blood's gonna be pushing to your head. You're gonna be looking at the floor going like, you're just gonna have a different experience. Different experience. So with my kids, because they don't grasp all of this sort of intellectual
circumlocutions,
you know, I'm just like, okay. Lay down on the ground and do some snow angels.
You know? And and breathe in while your arms go up and breathe out.
I sound like that. So how do you feel? They're like, this is stupid. I'm like, I know it's stupid. It's awesome. Isn't it?
It it's our smartness that has gotten us into this mess. We have to be able to get out of it. And that has saved so many arguments in my marriage.
Look. You just bend over sometimes.
Like, you're in this really tense thing and just bend over and tie your shoe. You're in a different state. You're in a different position relative to the other person. You've gotten rid of this confrontation. There's so many things that happen.
You know? I shrug my shoulders a bunch. Let me give you an example. Like, I went one time, long time ago, to this therapist's office. K.
He was one of the most renowned therapists in the area where I was at down in Phoenix, Arizona,
for helping people, particularly Christians, deal with,
pornography addiction. So he was very well known. A friend of mine recommended. She's like, he's so good. Like, he's helped me in my marriage and whatnot.
And so she took me there,
and just to meet him, and I thought he was having a class or something. And it turns out it was no. It was a therapy session that she sometimes brings people to.
Awkward.
So there's, like, three of us there, and we introduced ourselves. And then he after a couple minutes, he's like, okay. Can I ask you two to leave the room? So the other two leave so that he can, like, get to know me.
And so he's in the middle of this discussion
asking me, like, what what are you here for? I was like, look. I'm helping people with pornography addiction. I'm always interested in learning, like, what's the best approach to this. Like, I've developed my own ways, but I you know? He's like, so you're a porn addict. And I go,
no.
No. I was one.
And,
which I I I wouldn't even say that anymore, but, like, at the time Yeah. Sort of said. I was I was one, but, like, I'm not anymore. I'm free of it. He's like, no.
You're not free.
I was like,
okay. He's like, well, do you wanna know if you are free? And I was like, sure.
And so he starts asking questions, and they're not bad questions. Like, when was the last time you were happy?
Just before this conversation started. You know? Yeah.
Today. Yeah. When was the last time you filled up for yourself? Today. Like, what do you do if you have a negative emotion? Will I find out where in my body this thing is affecting me, and I release that part of my body from it so that I'm no longer emotional about stuff?
He goes on and on and on. And then at the very end, he's like, well, you're not free, but you're free enough that you won't go back, which I was like, is that cheating? Like, this is like a heads up wind tails you lose intuition. Exactly.
And so then he starts grilling me about happy and this whole time, this is, like, 70 year old. I'm in my thirties at that point.
And he starts grill I'm on the couch. He's in this superior chair, wall behind him, full of all of his certifications,
and
he's, like, grilling me on my particular approach. You you seem really hung up on the body. Why are you so hung up on the body? Well, I came to the planet to get one. I figured I might as well learn how to use it. Use it, bro.
And he's like, well, you know, you know, well, like, well, happiness is defined as something that you achieve. You know, like, it's the it's the design of our existence, what we're going for. I'm like, that's okay. I'm agree with I'm I'm in agreement. He's like, but you only get there by doing certain things. I was like, okay. But what can't like, I know people who are just simply happy. They aren't doing anything in particular. They're happy. He's like, that's
impossible.
I'm like, woah. Look at that. Look at a homeless person. They're I've seen them happy too. Yeah. Like, what do you mean it's impossible? They're doing it. He's like, no. They're not happy. I was like, how do you know?
Like, are you inside their skin living? He's like, well,
he's like, nope. There that's just not possible because you have to follow this certain path in order to get there. And I was like, well, okay. What is happiness to you? And he's like, I can't define that. That would be like trying to ask me the taste of a strawberry. If you've tap I'm tasting one, there's nothing I can do that will help you understand it. I was like, okay. Well, let me describe what what a happiness is to me then. Right. And I describe this effervescent feeling that sits in the background of my existence. It's not my body. Right.
But it
it seeps through my body in a way, and it doesn't matter what it's doing, whether I'm in a debate or whether I'm having a good time with the kids. There's this background sort of radiation
of bubbling goodness to just light. It feels buoyant and lights me up. And that's where he's like, have you ever considered you're wrong? Anyway, this is a big conversation. Have you ever considered you're wrong? Like, yes, all the time. That's why I'm here. You know? Curious to see what's going on. Like, are you speaking by the spirit?
And that hit me hard because, you know, me being Christian,
at that point in time, you know, very, very, very clear on,
like, I want to be able to be in line with God, and Uh-huh. He's poking me right where it hurts. And I was like, yes.
And he are you listening by the spirit? I'm like, yes. He's like, because I'm speaking by the spirit. And then and then he realized he caught himself. I was like, then what? I'm wrong? He's like, well, I don't want to say wrong. It's
just
so this is happening in the foreground, but I'm on the couch, and I feel my body
responding to different things that he's saying. Like, we're about to go Right. For a round. And so, like, my shoulders would tense, and I would do what I call emotional ninjitsu, what I teach my clients. You know what? I, oh, I feel my shoulders. So I pull them up and shrug them, and I'd relax this. I'd feel my breathing catch it, so I'd relax this. So I'm doing, like, two things at once. I'm having this conversation,
and I'm feeling it
grab me in very particular areas of my body. Right. And I'm consciously working to relax him because I'm not interested in a fight, one.
And, like, I came to learn.
I didn't come to, like, argue.
And and and I'm also not interested in feeling that uncomfortable. So I'm busy doing this thing here
while he's busy having this conversation, and he's very smug and very, very confident about it and everything else. And in the end, you know, I leave, and I find out that the lady who's been going to him I was like, so what does he have people do exactly? She's like, well, he doesn't he doesn't go really as deeply as you go by any stretch of the imagination. I'm like, well, how long does it take for people to get results with him? She's like, well, he says they have to be going at least a year.
We've been going for five years. And I'm like, oh, okay. At least a year. He's like, but most people don't go that long. You know? They don't last six to nine months. And so I'm like, well, so why did you have me come?
The whole but what I'm the point of this whole thing is I'm on the surface dealing with this what would be considered a conflict, but on the inside, the secret
to surviving it is like,
I felt fine
because I was handling the physical piece
where the conflict really exists. Okay. Okay.
Like, the only you don't know that you're mad unless your body does some weird squeeze of your organs, and it starts to produce some kind of hormone Right. And your face goes flush and your jaw clenches and your shoulders tighten a little bit and your head cocks to one side and your hands start to go, you don't really know that you're mad unless your body does something, which is why we can put, like,
sedative or, like, whatever the
it's not a sedative. What do you do when you relax the body? The
Just the some kind of system.
Bryan Goodwin: Yeah. Just you're talking about, like, just the the the breathing, the
Bob Gardner: No. No. Like, you can inject, like, a relaxant into a system. Oh, yeah. No. Well, yeah. Yeah. A sedative.
Yeah. And so you could also Give them a sedative.
And but you could also give them, like, when people go in for surgery and they have, like, laughing, they don't go general anesthesia necessarily, but they have, like, some sort of natural Cool. Laughing gas or something. And so something horrible is happening to them, and they're, like, fine
because their body is not producing what it needs to produce for them to have the reaction.
Bryan Goodwin: Right. Okay.
Bob Gardner: And so that's all we're doing. I'm like, look. Chem if chemicals can do it,
and that's me managing my internal state from the outside.
What if I just managed it from the inside? Because the only reason chemicals can do it is because there's something inside me that can produce that on its own. Yeah. And the chemical counterfeit.
So let me just learn to do it from the inside. And that means tension, breathing, posture, movement, relaxation.
Not like, like,
tension, breathing, posture, movement. Yeah. Those are the big ones. And then perception is another one that works, but that's a little bit further down. That's a little, yeah, a little more advanced. So So if you're stuck in a spot where you're bored,
you do 10 push ups. You will not feel the same boredom.
Right. Right. Yeah. You'll You know? I wanna walk outside. You're not gonna feel the same level of boredom. That's why you're getting up to go to the fridge in the first place. Yeah. Anyway, you're trying to change the feeling.
You just don't think you have control over it because we have been taught that feelings and emotions are things that attack us, and that is not true.
They are experiences we produce
and that we don't have to produce at all. Well well put. I like that. Experiences
Bryan Goodwin: that were produced because,
yeah, we're we're often
having those different experiences and depending on how we want to,
to perceive those experiences. I mean, it's
because a
a a circumstance is neither
good nor bad until you apply that thought to it, which
so, I mean, look at,
two friends who go to a go to a movie,
and they watch the exact same movie. One comes out thinking it's the best thing ever ever made. The other one's going, man, that was a bunch of strife. What the hell are you watching here?
And
they watched two different movies? No. Well, technically, actually, they with the way you were kinda looking at it, yeah, they were looking at two watching two separate movies
because of the fact that they
of how they perceived
and how they reacted
to this circumstance that is the movie that they watched.
So so okay. And so
when you,
so, yeah, that's okay. Yeah.
Bob Gardner: The tech
change anything and everything about your body, you you'll start to feel different. This is what this is why people masturbate. This is why people go to porn. Mhmm. They're they're doing this anyway. They're just doing it in a way that isn't helping their life long term. That's all. But it's the same mechanism.
Right? I feel horrible. I'm gonna go
find something pornographic on the Internet to entertain myself. Why? Because it it is forcing my my eyes to focus a different way. It is forcing my breath to go a different way. It's creating a different set of stimulus in my body that I didn't have before.
Now there are some Christian saints from even recent ones, but, like, if you read some of their lives, some of them were so intense when they would be tempted by a bunch of things. Some of them, they just would grab a stick and hit themselves.
Bryan Goodwin: Right.
Bob Gardner: But, like, that's kinda
because a temptation is what? It's it's an experience that is having to be filtered through your body anyway. Right. Yes. Let me change let me change the body.
Bryan Goodwin: Yeah. Okay.
So that's
and as you're as you're kinda saying,
saying that, it was one of the thoughts that was kinda jumping in into my head was
apparently not important because it just drained completely out of my head.
Yeah. Okay. That's always fun.
Bob Gardner: But this state this state where no thought is happening Uh-huh. This this is the magic state.
A lot of us think, like, I I, in the beginning, was trying all of this positive thinking and everything else, but, really, like,
neither you nor I are beating our hearts. We've mentioned this. Neither you nor I are doing the real work of life.
But so what we're doing is adding to it.
We're, like, seasoning it with our thoughts and our fantasies and our emotions and stuff in order to make it something that we can swallow because we somehow think that life isn't good enough. But the moments where the thought stops
just think back to a time, like, when you were, like, really tired and you sort of zoned out.
Uh-huh. Some of you don't really register it. Like, your your eyes aren't even making vision. It's, like, half blurry.
Those are blissful moments.
Bryan Goodwin: Yeah. Technically, I guess you would say that they are very,
blissful. I mean, you
you're not worried about anything at the moment
Yeah. Until all of a sudden your brain kicks in the gear. You're like, oh, crap. How many miles was that? So Exactly.
Bob Gardner: Didn't do exactly. Right?
So it it is an un it is an unconscious or in,
involuntary
form of meditation.
These moments of zone out are just like involuntary meditation moments where your brain gets a chance to relax from the nightmare it's creating for itself and where your body gets a chance to be be to relax from the nightmare the brain is creating.
And and so, like, I I used to I I know a number of people that I've talked with, taught, worked with, were students of mine who used to cut themselves, and
they
uniformly
not interested in killing themselves.
Right. They were like, when I cut myself, it was in that like, all my thoughts stopped. Everything else stopped. And for that one moment, there was only one thing happening, and I could just feel something like,
boom.
You know? And so it was just this moment
that shut off the nightmare.
Right. And it's really what most people are suffering. Like,
life itself is this glorious thing
that's happening,
that's being drowned out by this massive cacophony of thoughts and fantasies and stuff that we were trained to have
in order to survive in society. Our teachers wanted us to think and have good reasons. Our parents has wanted us to have a good reason for why we hit our sibling. Even though we didn't have a reason, we just wanted to do it. Yep.
That was unacceptable.
We needed to go to our room and, like, make up some things, and now we learn to lie and pretend that those lies are true even when they're not true. And then we oh, you what's your five year plan? What's your ten year plan? And what are you thinking about this? What happens if the economy that and here? And now you need to know all the news. And by the way, how many podcasts are you listening to? Yeah. You should you should definitely, like, drown yourself in those. Right.
We're so inundated by all of this mental
activity
that we're not even in touch with the source of our existence.
So what was the Buddha doing? And this isn't a new problem, by the way. Like, even the people in the Buddha's time, twenty five hundred years ago, without the Internet, we're dealing with this. Right. Yeah.
And and he
what did he do? It wasn't
I mean, he spent years doing all of the spiritual practices to do it, and it wasn't any of those.
He sat down
and just sat
and just sat,
and things happened. And, you know, I've been on these, like, ten day
silent
meditation retreats where all you're doing for, like, ten, eleven hours a day is just sitting on a cushion in the dark
Wow. Just
just sitting.
Bryan Goodwin: And it's uncomfortable at first. I was gonna say, I I don't know if I could do that. That would just be one of those of, like, really? I'd have to start singing to myself in my head or something.
Bob Gardner: If our agitation starts to go and then we start to uncover other areas of discomfort that we've been covering over with these distractions, and we're like, I gotta sing to myself. Yeah. And
then when those settle, then other areas of discomfort rise to the surface. But in between those, as each one is resolved,
other things happen. So it was not easy at first. Right. And there were times when my body was screaming to get out of the position, you know, because I'm just sitting there, stuck still for an hour and a half or two hours at a stretch.
And
but
the the senses open up. The body opens up.
Things start to settle. There's a piece that that rises inside that isn't something you could ever
describe or tangible.
All of this stuff happens K. When we just slow down.
And then the script the Christian language, be still Be still. Yeah. Without him, God. You know? It's in the stillness that that happens. And that's not it's not easy for us to be still because we've been trained to be just constantly running. A baby is still.
Even when looking around and interacting with stuff, there's a stillness in them. Right.
No agitation there. But nowadays, we've been taught, you know, you need to have a goal, which means you need to agitate yourself about something and get uncomfortable about not having something because that something is gonna make your life better.
Bryan Goodwin: You just spoke to a big hole in one of my one of my pillars there.
Oh, sorry. No. No. No. No. This is good. This is good because, I mean, I like having
because, I mean, I my
I I ran on four, on four pillars. You had,
men need to be learning because and because to not learn, it when you stop learning is when you start dying.
You wanna be able to have a
strong, healthy body because if you don't, you're not able to protect your family.
The third one is the man's soul,
and that is find a purpose.
You don't have to know what it is right off the bat, but at least be
looking for
a a what your what your calling is, what in our purpose, or however you wanna describe it.
What feeds your soul? What makes you makes your soul happy? And
that's, that's the one you just poke the big old hole in. So
and then the fourth one is
try to have
a community that, that you're with
because Yeah. No man's an island, but at the same time, we have to have
a group of,
a bro a a brotherhood of men is how I like to call it. It's just we're a group of guys, five, six. If you can get 10 together, 10 guys that y'all meet together on a on a regular basis,
beautiful. That's even better because you're everybody's gonna lift each other up
just through the nature of how masculinity
in my in in my opinion, how it works.
Bob Gardner: Okay. So
I went down the I mean, I was in some big masterminds and groups for a long time, and I there was one where we had to go find our sole purpose and figure out what it was. And we did all sorts of assessments. We did all sorts of experiments. We were really looking at various different things that would light you up. What I've found in my experience, which may not be everybody's experience,
is that the as I watched myself and other people was that it was just an endless
run around the track.
So I kinda put that aside. We have a purpose. Like, for me Mhmm. We have a purpose as beings, which is to live fully as what we are Right. Okay. I get that.
And and to love.
And that's it. You know? If god is love and he made us in his likeness and image, then that's our job Right. To love him and to love everybody else. And then the what we do is less important.
And so, like, if if I'm talking about some sort of purpose, a sense of identity, like, that feels critical. And I've definitely been places where I've sort of tried to get rid of that, and that has led to a very empty existence.
Bryan Goodwin: Okay.
Bob Gardner: I think I think on the level of identity, I think that's a very solid observation from my from what I can see. You know? Yeah. But on the level of goals, what I've seen is a lot of people start to believe that they need to have some very concrete, very specific mission on the planet,
and those are some have been some extremely unhappy people.
Bryan Goodwin: I I get that. That and then that I understand because, yeah, we can
if you think that that's the sole part that you have to do, then, yeah, you're gonna you're gonna you're gonna sabotage yourself.
Bob Gardner: Like, we try to micromanage it. We agitate ourselves about what we think that goal is or what it's supposed to be.
And then the degree to which reality differs from our imagination is the degree of our suffering.
Bryan Goodwin: Okay. Okay.
Bob Gardner: Right? So
so I step back and, like, my Vladimir, you know, this Russian ex Russian operative that I've trained with a long time,
I I I hurt my foot at one point in time. I took like, strained a ligament in my my second toe, and it was
it was surprising how much that little tiny thing can affect your whole body.
And,
so I talked to him once, and I was like, okay. Let's talk about healing,
different body parts a little bit. Like, I've got this thing with my toe. I'm sitting on the grass outside.
He looks at me. He goes, does it hurt right now? I go, no.
And he's like,
okay. Well,
why are we talking about it?
And I was like, well, I'm gonna get up, and then it's gonna hurt. And he's like, that's your problem.
In your mind, you're already getting up with an injury.
You need to clean your mind. You have all these plans for the next
day, week, month, year of how things are gonna go, and you don't even know if you're gonna survive the next minute.
And then he looks at me and he goes, it's better to live now.
And now
doesn't mean you don't have a direction you're headed,
but it does mean that getting fixated on the goal
creates a level of suffering that is unnecessary.
You can still walk to the end of a path without being fixated on the end of the path. Yeah. True.
And so, like, a lot of us
work in our life in, like, setting all of these goals and then we get worked up on it. When we agitate ourselves about this thing, we get them, and what happens is we have this moment of relaxation, this moment of relief, like, I did it. And we mistake that for happiness
when really it's just we're not punching ourself in the face anymore. That feels better. That feels a heck of a lot better. Exactly.
And and so, like,
true joy, true happiness
is not dependent on success at anything.
Everything fails.
Like, every business that opens eventually closes. Right. Every human born eventually dies.
Everything fails.
That is if that if success
is required for happiness,
Bryan Goodwin: no one will have it. Well, I don't think that
happiness alone
is
is the key to to happiness
because happiness
come because we have a there was a the, a deal, it's called the fifty fifty principle. Half of our life is just gonna be marvelous and wonderful and, you know, sunshine
and rainbows from unicorns and and and all that. The other half's gonna suck donkey dicks
to just put it as bluntly as possible. It's gonna be horrible. It's gonna be terrible, but you have to have those low points
to be able to get to that that high point. You gotta go through the valley to reach the mountain peak. I don't I don't ascribe to that way thinking. Okay.
Bob Gardner: No. I don't. I I mean, I I I've heard it a lot, and I think it's very helpful. Like, a lot of people really love it and find it very useful. So we don't need to, like, say that it's wrong
to say that, like, it's it's very useful for a lot. A lot. I don't personally ascribe to that because a circumstance is just a circumstance. Right. And so if I say it sucks donkey sucks donkey dicks, which I've never heard that phrase before, That already made the circumstance way better.
And so if I say that it is, then what I've done is is decide
that I am going to experience it as a negative thing, but I don't have to. And the people I've trained with, the people I've researched and studied in my own experience
has shown me time and again
that nothing has to be experienced in a negative way.
Bryan Goodwin: Like, all of it that just through
paying attention to your
your your body in that in whatever
whatever's happening? So and I mean
Bob Gardner: That's how it started for me. It was like I knew that concretely I could pay attention to my body. But, eventually, you know, I I started to learn how to train my my instincts
to respond to things that used to be triggers
Mhmm. Way that
didn't that felt fine. That felt wonderful. That felt great. That felt you know, my wife would roll her eyes. It used to be that every time she rolled her eyes at me, that there was a crisis.
Bryan Goodwin: Right. Oh, no. Oh, no. I've done it again.
Bob Gardner: And but
now, like, if she rolls her eyes, I just, like I have this response where I look at her. I'm like, wow. Something just went through your brain. What what's going on? And, like, there's no
negativity in me. There's no reaction that's like I need to fix something. It's just I noticed something happening and that, and it wasn't personal. Right. So some part of it, I'm no longer training and, like, treating it as personal automatically.
K. And so, you know,
Bryan Goodwin: so there's drop it's for you, it's the element of dropping
any dropping
stuff
that doesn't necessarily have to be personal
Bob Gardner: because Yeah. Dropping yeah. Dropping the meaning I'm attaching to things. Okay.
Bryan Goodwin: Okay. Okay.
Bob Gardner: At least the negative meaning. You know, I'm I'm I'm it's not like I don't put meaning on things. I do do that. Yeah. I'm weird. Can't quite avoid that as humans. You know, we the sun came out. Okay. It's not gonna rain. Like, we do we add meaning to things. Right. I try to hold the meaning I I create with some level of, like, acceptance that every everything I make up about life is wrong Right. At least on some level, if not on every level. Right. Yeah.
And so I I try to hold it with, like, loose fingers. Like, it's useful, but I don't wanna get attached to it. Gotcha. Gotcha.
Bryan Goodwin: Because, I mean, because one of the things that I've told,
told guys before is that you know? And to a point, I I I see what you're saying because
we like,
not everything that is
perceived as negative is negative. I mean, you and we don't wanna be happy and, yeah, and go lucky all the time.
Because if we're going to our grandmother's funeral, we're not we don't wanna be, you know, yucking it
up. We wanna have get that. Yeah. We wanna have have grief and and and and and sorrow and and sadness and and and and stuff like that. That's because
and,
you know, people like to try to say that sadness is a is kind of a negative emotion, and that's one thing I don't,
espouse too because it's
I think sadness and and grief
is just one of those beautiful emotions humans have as
a means to show their love for somebody who they've lost.
Bob Gardner: And Yeah. I mean, it even in the natural world, when
when an electron changes orbit, changes its relationship to its center of gravity, energy is released.
When a when two molecules that have a chemical bond
are let go, energy is released. Right. When you like, a
atomic fission bomb, a nuclear type of thing, energy is released. So to say that, like, two humans
break the relationship that they currently have because one dies Right. Or something
the idea that there was a lot of energy bound up in that. That gets released in some way. How does the body release it? Grief, sadness. Like, there's nothing wrong with these things. Yep. Alright.
That is mental health. If you if you can be sad, congratulations. You're healthy. If you get if you get if you're stuck in the sad position, well, that's not ideal. Right. And maybe that's something we wanna look at. But, like, if you can be sad, wonderful. If you can be depressed, wonderful. If you can be joyful, wonderful.
What I look at is
there there's a strong problem with the definition of happiness in the world. The leading researcher on happiness named Dan Gilbert, one of the leading ones. Who knows who's the leading one, really? Right. But he runs the, like, hedonic,
science laboratories at, like, Stanford or something like, which is quite quite a name for to the laboratory. We all love it.
And they've done a number of experience. I've read his book, Stumbling on Happiness.
It is disappointing
at worst, but it is a rollicking read, and it's very entertaining. And he's a great speaker. He's got a TED Talk.
Bryan Goodwin: Okay.
Bob Gardner: On you know, where he's, like, looking at all of the common wisdom around happiness and the, like, the typical ones that is like, okay. Get married, have children, you know, make lots of money. And then he goes on to prove that, well, none of those are true Right.
At all.
People that get married have a spike in happiness, then people get divorced have a spike in happiness. Mhmm. People who have children are generally less happy than people who don't. Be self reported. Right? Right.
People who make money, that's great until about 72,000 a year. And then after that, it tapers off. You know? And so
there's, like, this
homespun wisdom about happiness, and he's looking at all of this stuff. And his definition of happiness is,
natural happiness is what you get when you get what you want.
Bryan Goodwin: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Bob Gardner: And aesthetic happiness is what you make inside when you don't get what you want. Meaning, like, no. It's better this way.
And you do this sort of mental gymnastics to try and make yourself feel better about the disappointment around that all of a sudden. Okay. And that that that tracks with with the way most people would talk about happiness. Mhmm. Step back, and you know from my listening to my podcast and stuff, I'm such a word nerd.
I'm like, what is Where does
happy come from? Because it's in the root of the word happy
is inside of the word perhaps.
Mhmm.
Happenstance,
happening,
and happy. They're all from the same root. It means, like, that which is occurring or in the old old, like, in the old cultures there, that which is occurring is something that god has allowed.
Right. And so to be happy, the why on the end is to be full of the thing before.
Absolutely
fulfilled
by anything that's going on, that's happy.
Bryan Goodwin: Okay. Yeah.
Bob Gardner: Very different than, no. I have to get what I want. I have to get what I want.
Yeah. Very, very different. And so I step back and I go, well, what is happiness if I could put it into a biological framework
that our modern, like, science addicted society could, like, latch a hold of?
And
the the one one corollary this is probably not, like, exactly it, but one corollary is the idea of homeostasis,
that there is a balance point
Okay. That the body
wants to be at.
It's a point of stillness. It's the hub of the wheel.
Right? Right. That when the body is in that place, it requires less physical energy to maintain. Right.
It requires,
so no expenditure of energy, and its sensitivity to the world increases because there's not so much noise it has to feel through.
Okay. Internal
note. So when you're in places like this,
what happens is, like, when you get super still in that place where where you're not you're not excited,
you know, you're that's that's pain to the body. Like, it's an expenditure of energy, and so the body creates negativity
inside
to balance it out to bring it back down to its static to its homeostatic point. Okay. Okay.
And so that's why, you know, there's the little, like, you had a great time with your friends and you were laughing for, like, an hour, and then, like, it gets quiet, and then you all feel this weird slump.
Right. You know? Where you're just like, and
you're just kind of, like, fatigued after it. Yeah.
That's the body going, we don't want to be that. We We don't wanna spend that much energy. Too much happy. Too much happy. So We don't we don't want that. What we want is this other place. It's another place inside Okay. Where happiness is. So sex, body experiences sex as an expenditure of energy. It doesn't experience it as pleasant. The mind turns it into a pleasant experience.
But the to the body, it's an expensive energy.
Right. You are ultimately vulnerable. If you got attacked at that point in time, good luck. Good.
Yeah. Not alarm at all. Aware of the outside world. You're breathing heavy. Your only focus is right here, right now. It is the last death throes of your life to take all of what you have and make another life exist because you're about to die. Like, like, sex is not what the body is actually craving in any given moment
for its own well-being, for its own long term happiness and well-being.
And neither are depression and things. So all of these things, they're all super expenditures of energy that are not great. So what the body wants is this place in the middle. Now when you get to this place, what starts to happen is that
your senses open up, and the feeling that you are separate from your environment starts to fade away.
And this sense of oneness
and
total belonging to life arises.
Bryan Goodwin: Okay.
Bob Gardner: Joy
that is nonphysical
and indescribable
starts to run through the system
because you're no longer chasing excitement and stimulus,
but you've, like, shut all that stuff away. You've said, you know what? I don't need to add more to life, and then life can start to enter in this really beautiful way.
So
happiness,
when we're looking at happiness from what I've seen in this sort of just biologically, but then in my own experience,
it's it's in the places where you're there's no there's nothing that's ruffled on the inside.
And then the training is, how do I take that and not have to be, like, in a lotus position in my basement all day long in order to get it? But how can I do it while I'm driving the car? Right. How can I do it while I'm talking to my wife or make or cooking dinner or taking out the trash or or dealing with a big deadline at work? How do I
wear life like a set of clothes instead of a skin tight skin tight suit? So if things can happen to clothes, then I'm not and I'm not fine. Okay. It's just a set of clothing. Right. But when it happens to a skin tight suit, it's like it happened to me. Yeah. It happened to you. Yeah. It's a it's it it binds a lot more. So
Bryan Goodwin: so alright. Well,
I'll guess we'll go ahead and kinda
roll this up a bit.
Did wanna,
first off again, say so thank you so much for for joining here because, I mean, these are
a lot of great,
great information I'm gonna listen whenever I'm going through and editing and stuff.
I'll get to listen to it again and really get, some great,
great notes. But, I mean, you've knocked it out of the park as you always do,
and,
and you've got,
some future endeavors that are coming about. So what where can people,
people be able to find you if they wanna So,
Bob Gardner: if you're interested in reading my book, it's on Amazon, or you can go to builtforfreedom.org
for a digital copy.
And I think it's, like, $10 there. There's a companion course that you can grab after you buy the book,
that shows you some of the techniques that I've the body oriented techniques to in order to be able to do that. No. And then I'm gonna have to get to grab that.
Didn't know about the Yeah. That that companion course, I think if you buy it through the through that particular funnel Mhmm. I mean, it's, like, a hundred and 95 instead of 300. It's normally 300 on my side. So you you you save a hundred bucks by doing it,
that way. And it it's great. It's three weeks long, and I take you bit bit by bit through,
you know, what are some physical practices you can do to start to raise your baseline? What can you do in the moment when you're having a reaction? What do you do to start to dismantle triggers? Like, each week, we take one of those and we start to break it apart Okay. In a step process. So,
that's a great place to start. Builtforfreedom.org.
I do run retreats. Our final retreat that we are running because there's some things we're shifting in terms of how I how I'm helping people. So it's a big group retreat. It's happening at the July, the twenty second through the July 26.
Here in Utah, it's five days where we are running you through a full system clean out Beautiful.
Including no phones.
Bryan Goodwin: Good.
Bob Gardner: And and,
and just all of these, like, physical exercises help clean out ass traumas and and negative thought processes and things that you've been holding for a long time and and all of the sort of discomfort that has been unconscious in the system. That's what we're working on. K. And you can go to the freedomspecialist.com/unshackledUnshackled.
To check out that retreat. And if you use the code last retreat,
it's 50% off. So instead of 4,200
for five days, it's it's only 2,100. So Yep.
And we cover all your food and housing while you're there, so you wouldn't have to do any of that stuff as well. So is I know you're you're kinda
Bryan Goodwin: re
reconfiguring
stuff, but is
is something that you might be looking at,
being available to do, like, for your if a,
if a if a
a group was to get together
and
and and try to do try to have it kinda like a kinda like a a a private retreat. And would you is that something that you'd be Oh, yeah. Totally open to come in and and run-in a retreat if that's if you got the people together.
Bob Gardner: I know, for instance, the nonprofit we have running,
he wants to try and see if,
if we can set up retreats for for ecclesiastical leaders who don't understand this body piece. And so they're counseling couples and they're counseling people, and they they don't really have the tools to be able to help them with really tangible and very effective I mean, our bodies were created in a very particular way. Right. And it's like I've invented the wheel or, you know, reinvented the wheel or anything. This this is just how the human system works. And when you work with it the way
it's intended even in its fallen state,
oh my goodness. What can come into this,
this little mortal frame is
Bryan Goodwin: absolutely incredible. So, yeah, I'm open to running retreats. You know, we Good. Because I've got, I've got a couple of, of guys who run some,
one runs a a nonprofit themselves,
but,
for veterans, and I I know veterans,
carry a lot of
again, another word that a lot like addiction. I've I have a problem with the word trauma just because it's
there's there's no we didn't unless you lost an arm. I'd yeah. I don't think it's quite so trauma traumatic.
But,
they they carry around a lot of from their experiences and stuff. A lot of a lot of their,
a lot of pent up,
trauma and stuff. And so I'd love to be able something that,
I keep talking to guys about
about you. It's like, you gotta listen to Bob. You gotta listen to Bob. Bob's got some good ideas here. And I've got a few of them that are like, okay. He's I I like what he's doing, and others are going, okay. That's I'm not sure I'm following how he works, but, it's it's a different way of looking, but
but I'd love to be able to get some beds together.
Bob Gardner: It's definitely unconventional. It's definitely not the way, like, it,
it's not the way that the therapy world works. It's not the, like, urine.
I'm gonna cut straight to the chase in a very, very direct way. And so it's not it's not up everybody's alley. I'm not trying to trauma shame anybody, but I am trying to let help them understand that the word trauma is a theory that was produced in the early nineteen nineteen hundreds. It did not exist before then. Right. It was just an attempt to try and explain certain types of reactions, and they don't need an explanation. What what is needed is not an explanation, but a better experience of life. That is simple. Okay.
And but I'm excited also. You know, as my business transitions and I'm I don't need to necessarily maintain a business, I feel like I'll be able to be a little bit more direct and bold in some of the things that I'm doing. So we'll see what happens. Alright. So alright. Well,
Bryan Goodwin: Bob, again, I appreciate you coming on, coming on the show
and letting everybody know
that there are some
better ways to look at life and better ways to look at how we can overcome any type of obstacles we may be coming across. So so with that,
I'll,
Bob Gardner: say thank you again, and, you have a great rest of the day. No. It's my pleasure. And and to everybody who's listened, hopefully, you got something beneficial out of it. I bet you they did. Yeah.
Bryan Goodwin: So So we're good. Alright. Hey. Alright. Now I'll go ahead and
cop right there.
Did the just a couple of off the wall, questions for you. How's,
how's, Vladimir doing? Is he
or is he still
have you talked to him in a while?
Bob Gardner: Yeah. I mean, I I just,
I mean, I was up training with him last August.
You know, we've had a couple sessions since then, you know, like, just one on one stuff. Like, he's
Okay. He's
he's better than his teacher died
Bryan Goodwin: Okay.
Bob Gardner: A couple years ago, and since then, I've watched him slowly transform
into someone
who is becoming more of a a spiritually interested individual. He used to be just a fighter. You know?
Right.
And I'm seeing, like, this other sort of mantle of responsibility
for people's well-being beyond just their,
their physical well-being, Sean. Oh, okay. And and their ability to fight. And even though he teaches fighting skills and he's he's
without peer in that arena, if you ask me,
the most profound things he's ever done for me are
come from his level of perception of things that I'm carrying in my system. He sees
density. He sees heaviness in my body. He sees things going on. He can detect when, like, my mind's running wild,
and these are things that I, you know,
personally
have been training in, so I I'm starting to see how he could see that, but he's just so sensitive that he can walk up,
and it was because of him last August that,
my entire spiritual life completely had a one eighty. And
Bryan Goodwin: Well, I was kinda wondering what's, what's kinda changed here because
you've you've mentioned god a lot more with a little bit more
reverence almost,
almost call it.
Bob Gardner: Yeah. Yeah.
I I had gotten to a point
like, I raised Mormon.
Mhmm. And you're keep this on your podcast too if this is you. Okay. You know what? I don't I don't need to I'm not private about anything, apparently.
But I had gotten to a point where I I couldn't really stomach the way that I hadn't
created God in my head. Right. That's what they were intending, but that's how I ended up doing
it. Because he was this, like, separate being that was always out there and, you know, there were these incorporeal things called justice and whatnot that I had to deal with, and none of it made any sense. And so I had gotten to this point of being
never atheist because I was always in touch with something
Bryan Goodwin: deeply profound inside of everything. You know? Yeah. I knew you were an atheist, but you were very close you were a lot closer to agnostic.
Bob Gardner: Yeah. Very, very agnostic because, admittedly, I don't know. I don't I mean, even now, like, they're I don't know much. Right.
Bryan Goodwin: You know enough to know that you don't know.
Bob Gardner: Yeah. And so I I
so I was, you know, I had some really big experiences last summer,
that that drove me to a place,
and and they were not great experiences.
But they drove me to this place where I was I was almost, like, having this manic laughter happening in the back of my head. And,
like, I'm, like, having a nervous breakdown. I've been working sixteen hours a day trying to make the business work, trying to trying to put food on the table, feeling the stress of that, and life had been sucked dry of any level of joy and meaning and beauty. So I had all the answers, and they still hold. They're still very true. Right. But I had lost all sense of identity and purpose, things like you were talking about. That's what I think you're aiming at when you're talking about goals, like a sense of purpose. I it sounds to me like you're talking more about the sense of identity and what's It could yeah. Okay. I can see see I didn't because and I if I I could probably tweak it to where it was,
Bryan Goodwin: that because the soul is the identity at the same time. Yeah. So Yeah. Yeah. And so I I
Bob Gardner: I just before going, you know, I'd I had this really horrid situation. I'm having all this stuff happen. I go, and over the course of that week, we're doing all this body work. I start feeling much, much better just the same stuff I do. Right? And in the middle of that, he looks at me, and he's like,
you got a lot going on in your head.
And I go,
yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
And,
he he has me tell him about it, and he's like, it's okay, but you gotta clean that out. It's not helping you. So
I look at him, and just if we're out in the field, and I walk up to him. I'm like, okay. How do I clean it out? And he says, this is a good question, but for that, you need to pray.
Bryan Goodwin: Wow. Okay.
Bob Gardner: In a moment,
I had this momentary flash, like, I was one of Jesus' disciples sitting there in somewhere in the in the wilderness of Israel
Mhmm.
And looking at the the Lord
saying,
I I I obviously don't know how to pray then. Like, I probably I've been praying my whole life, but apparently that I don't know how to write. So I looked at Vladimir, and I was like, so how do you pray? And he goes, this is a good question, but I have two run-in class. Go talk to my wife.
So I go and and,
I talk to Valerie, and she hands me a a prayer rope. She teaches me the basic Jesus prayer that the Orthodox Christians do. Okay.
Tells me to do it all, you know, as whenever I can. And so all that week, I just start praying, praying, and I it didn't make sense. Jesus was a historical character in my mind that didn't
you know, maybe he said these things, maybe he didn't. Who knows?
And I was really of the sort of, like, not Christ consciousness stuff that's the new agey stuff, but this sense that, like, all of us are perfect and whatnot. Sin didn't really exist. It's an idea in the in the mind of man. Like, these were ideas that I had, and I had pushed pretty heavily because in my experience,
that seemed to make the most sense of everything. Right.
And so to say,
lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner, was contrary to everything in in my living experience
in terms of what made sense. So I was
but I was in a a place that I didn't wanna be anymore. Right. I was like,
well, let me just treat it like a technology. I'm sincere in asking. I don't understand the words, but I'm gonna ask. I'm just gonna be sincere about it. And over the course of that week and the next week and the next week as I'm praying and I'm reading a book that they recommended
Mhmm. That was like reading my own life history through somebody else's eyes, like the same guy, like, looking at the civil mind method, looking going to India, following all these things. He's having but he's having experiences with this orthodox saint,
Saint Paisios.
And
every time I would read those chapters, something would, like, light up inside me. So I was like, well, let me go check out the church. And then the night before I go check out the church,
this
just earth shattering cocoon of it's like looking at a pane of glass. You know? You can see the glass, but you also can't see it. You know?
So this kind of light just envelops my whole being
for, you know, like, ten, fifteen feet around me. And
it sits there for hours, and I'm just filled with a kind of love and a kind of
joy
that I I hadn't felt in a long time, if if really ever. It wasn't the same as the sort of, like, bliss that I felt in these yogic experiences that felt a little more centered in the head. It was coming from my heart. So
Bryan Goodwin: was was it closer to, like, you were talking about when the time when you were on the roof of your house?
Bob Gardner: Yes. But even that felt a little bit more Oh, okay. Okay. I see what you're saying. Closer to the time when I was on the toilet and I left,
and I was in, like, emotional tears, and I was like, I don't know God. And then I had that experience, but that I relegated to being some impersonal energy of life and that Sadhguru was the purveyor of it. So now I'm looking back going, that was God.
I just didn't even recognize it. So I was like, I don't know anything about God, and then he came. Right.
Filled me with this something that has never left since then. Beautiful.
I gave everybody else credit for it and chased them around the planet thinking that they were gonna do the thing. And so to be able to step back and feel this, but then deeper and stronger and from places in my heart that I didn't even know I didn't know about. Right. And
then the next day, I went to the liturgy, and the same thing happened again. And for months,
every time, in small ways and bigger ways, like, the same kinds of things happening. And I just knew, like, okay. Obviously,
I don't understand any of this stuff. Like, it doesn't it doesn't
and now it makes more sense. But at the time, it was totally contrary to stuff that
who I was, who I'd made myself to be in the public. What what were they gonna think of me?
Who obviously got it wrong? You know? So there's this conflict, but deep inside, this this well
of peace
that was growing.
And
I just I was like, okay. Well, this is it. So, you know, I'm in preparation for baptism,
and
I'm studying and praying, and and it is
my my priest was like, I'm so glad you found Jesus. He's gonna ruin your whole life.
And I think it's true. Yeah. And I'm only tasting the iceberg, but this is one of the reasons this was actually the main driving force be between me behind me going, you know what? I need to shut down my business as I have been running it
because I can no longer be a teacher
when I am just a student.
Like, I the stuff I've learned is great, but that's rung one on a ladder.
And now I'm moving to a different I can't be turning around teaching people stuff.
And so Okay. Like, this is a totally different area of life that I feel like I need to open. And, yes, it's also financially
responsible. Yeah.
Bryan Goodwin: Right.
Bob Gardner: But and so that's helpful too. And Yeah. But along with it came
came the other, you know, other job opportune I mean, other employment or financial,
Bryan Goodwin: Ability,
opportunities.
Bob Gardner: You know? So, like,
all around the same time, everything's being shaken up, but, also, I'm finding other other means of income. And so K.
Been taken care of. And Good. Good.
I I just yeah. So it has been a huge shift for me. I'm still getting comfortable with using the word god Yeah. Because I feel that word does not never encompassed what I was feeling before and now
even
less
because there's so much more to God than I ever imagined. Yeah. And
Bryan Goodwin: Well, it's, it's it's it's awesome that you are on this particular adventure.
I think you will
yeah. I think he's it's gonna wreck what your what you've perceived your life to be
for for such a an amazing
direction that is
gonna be hair raising at times. And
just
then on the other side, it's just gonna be, okay. Cool. Cool. Alright. I don't know how we did that, but, you know, thank you, Lord, for that one. That was awesome.
So no. It's, that is cool that that's happened. But the other person the other question that I had for you that was just kind of an after deal is how's Lee?
Bob Gardner: Lee is doing, I mean, he's trying to,
process the the
oh, gosh. Okay. We're here doing this build for freedom nonprofit, and now the nonprofit is turning. And so there's there's processing with that, but he's also
only ever been somebody who
who's interested in serving God in the highest way Right. And throwing his life into something with it. So there's definitely the it'll be uncertainty that he's like,
oh, I don't know how to deal with it at times, and
and, but we're both in that place. And, I mean, I I don't know. I'm I'm fairly calm about it. Or I guess I should say God's making me calm about it. I don't I don't I don't have any, like it's uncertain. Okay. Let's just wait. It's okay. Gotta.
My wife's having a harder time with it. Oh, is she?
Bryan Goodwin: Really? Yeah.
Bob Gardner: Yeah. We got a lot of things changing right now in the like, our oldest just went to college, and she's Oh, yeah. Back in school, and so there's a lot of stuff going on. Yeah.
Lee is,
we may still do the podcast.
I'm just trying to like, I'm I'm not quite sure what the next moves are. I do need to write this next book.
Bryan Goodwin: Another one coming.
Good.
Bob Gardner: I've started writing it before,
thinking it would be like an a continuation of the first one, which it will be, but, like, a continuation of teaching people all the secrets. And now I feel like what I need to expose
is just my journey from the Himalayas, which is where that one ended, forward
and as an adventure, as a full on, like, this is just a hair raising adventure that will have some cool stuff in it, but,
because what I've done in the last few years is insane.
Bryan Goodwin: And I don't even know half of it because, I mean, I'm just I just always caught what was on, was on the podcast and and a few blog posts. So
Bob Gardner: And so, like like, the the depth of the disillusionment
up there, the the return
back, and,
and so, like,
and then this whole other adventure because I just feel like it's it's a natural evolution from where I was. I think Right. Because I've always been seeking the truth. It was natural that I would come to the end of a road
of a sort of scientific reductionist with materialist sort of view Uh-huh. Not fully, but, like,
almost. Mhmm.
And then discover that, yeah, there's God. And so, like, to bring it back full circle with this entire turnaround
and what prayer has done, and I feel like it's, one, would be a helpful thing for me to process it, but, two,
anybody who's read my stuff, I feel like it's a service
to help them see, like yeah. Yeah. And this also leads off a cliff if you aren't open to changing.
Bryan Goodwin: So well, that's that's awesome. But anyhow, when you get a chance, when you're talking to,
to Vladimir and and,
and Lee both, let them know they've got a fan that's never met them before, never talked to them once, but shoot, they're
just hearing you talk about him, they're almost family to me. So it's like, yay. There's Vladimir. He's got to get to get an update on Vladimir. Oh, there's Lee. Get to hear Lee. I've just I I I of course, I've not ever actually seen what Lee looks like, but I picture him to be like this ten foot tall, just wall of a man.
Just according to his voice. Not ten feet tall, but he's basically a wall of a man. Oh, heck. I just hear the voice, and I'm just like, oh, golly. This is this is a big guy that's gone through a lot, and he is just better for
afterwards. So
Bob Gardner: He lives we turned our third car garage into a a separate apartment, and so he lives there. So Oh, okay. Okay. So you get to see him just about every day then. Yeah. Yeah. So I'll I'll let him know. Alright.
Bryan Goodwin: So well, I will go ahead and let you go and enjoy the rest of your, your rest of your Saturday. Go grab some date because Yeah.
Bob Gardner: Yeah. So, anyhow, Bob And if you have things that we tell you want us to talk about on a on a podcast so we get back around, I know you you asked a couple questions before. But if you do have something, like, how this would be great, you know, that that's not that expensive to host a podcast. So, I mean, that's something we we'll need. I would I would love to be able to yeah. If you if you need help on
Bryan Goodwin: on on the podcast in any way, point, point over to me. That's just it's a this is just my my favorite passion and a little hobby thing that I like to do. It's like, let's play with the audio. Let's help people get out there. I mean,
I'm playing around with, Adam Curry's,
is playing with his,
with his original baby since he's one of the one he's him and Dave Weiner started off and created the podcasting,
podcast themselves. And now he him and a guy named Dave Jones, they were actually adding
namespace stuff to,
to the the podcast. And so now you can start getting, like, value for value,
elements added into it and
and and just a lot of little
little neat items like, doing all going being able to go live and streaming the live to, podcast apps
is is one of the things that he does. So it's I'm I'm playing around with it right now, and it's it's a it's pretty cool little little, bit of technology that he's creating. So Cool. That's cool. So Alright, man. Well, you have a beautiful day. Thank you so much for your time. The same. We will catch you next time.
Sounds good. Bye bye. See you. Bye.