Curt Storring 0:00

Welcome to the Dad Work Podcast. My name is Curt Storring, your host and the founder of dad work. We are joined today by Zach Blakeney in this episode, which is called unplugging dads from the matrix. We go deep today talking about the three tiers of the matrix according to Zack, how our ego separates us from other people, and it influences how we interact with others, how you begin to disconnect from fear and the matrix as a dad, why it's crucial for dads to be able to distinguish between perception and reality, that need to be able to talk about our problems with others in our healing journey. Why it's crucial to avoid constantly blaming ourselves and instead, practice forgiving ourselves for all of our flaws, and why it's important to express your shame, love and remorse, while also taking responsibility for everything. Zach Blakeney is a consciousness and freedom coach who unplugged ambitious entrepreneurs and leaders from the matrix of fear, anxiety, addiction and inadequacy to be more fuel more create more and earn more his red pill method blend science based methodology with consciousness truths that create limitless beliefs heal self sabotage and creates lasting freedom. I'm gonna drop Zacks links in the show notes at Dad.Work slash podcast, but you can find him online red pill method.com/unplug Or take the red pill.io/unplugged. He's also got a couple of free offers. One is take the red pill.io/quiz the other is invincible.clubs/authenticity again, you can find all of that in the show notes Dad.Work slash podcast. I hope you enjoyed this episode, guys. And again, if you are enjoying the downward podcast, two things, first of all, follow me on Instagram, I am very active there. That's where I'm posting most of the content these days to help you become a better man, husband and father, dadwork.curt is the Instagram handle. And please do me a favor. If you've got five seconds, can you leave us a quick rating on Apple or Spotify. And if you've got 30 seconds and your life hasn't been impacted by the downward podcast, would you please leave us a review on Apple. This is one of the best ways for this to get in the ears of more men and fathers who need it. And guys, not to toot my own horn here. This is not me, I am just so sure that this work is going to change the world. And I want to live in a world with more men who are doing this. So please give us a rating and review it to share the word with other men who need it. So we can all live in a world full of men doing this work so that our kids can live in a better world. Anyway, that's it. We're jumping into this episode with Zach Blakeney. Enjoy.

All right, dads, we are back for another episode of The dad work Podcast. I'm here with Zach Blakeney. And man, I gotta say, your tagline on Instagram is like the best one I've ever heard it is unplugging ambitious men from the matrix. And this rule like this resonates so hard for me. Because I think that everything that's going on today, man, we are just being sucked into things that don't matter, and that are not even real. So I want to start this conversation by just going like, dude, could you break this down for us? Because I think it's incredibly important for guys to just get a sense of like, why this is what you do?

Zach Blakeney 3:00

Yeah, so let's talk about what I call the three levels of the matrix. So the first level we have the narrative, the narrative is what we are born into, right? So and the narrative is changing, right? With generations. And just as we evolve as a, as a community. So with that, we have the narrative, this is going to be what you were told, as a child, and even all the way until you become a young adult, life should be or what life is, right. So you're told, for instance, you know, we're in America, there's the American Dream, the American dream, go to school, get good grades, go to college, get a degree, graduate, get a job, find a wife, get married, have kids, wait, I guess until retirement, you know, live it, listen to the rest of the time. It's a retirement right? Inside of that narrative. There's also all these different things that we're told, right that we shouldn't be doing with ourselves. So if we just start with grades, for instance, and I look at the grade system, it's very funny to me, because we are in a school system, where we're tested on our aptitude of what we're learning, and then we get a grade for it. And we get conditioned, that this is going to be the way that success happens for us through our life. It's how we learn all the way through college happens the same way you're getting grades in degrees, then you get into adulthood and you get a job and you're not tested on really anything when it comes to taking a test. You're actually tested on your behaviors and your performance. So what I think is really funny is that if we go all the way back to grid and before grade school and we go into preschool what kind of system were they on? Typically they were on a gold star system and the gold star system was all behavior based territory with another kid gold star right to contribute in class gold star show up on time we're come out of recess on time and everything else gold sorry. So behavior base, but then for what reason we should tend to this other way in which we're learning, but we're not actually learning if you guys are y'all like me, it was like, Oh, I have a test okay night before, you know, memorize, memorize, memorize, go make the test, I don't remember what I learned was Oh, go on to the next thing I need to memorize, right? So we have that, then we also have the teachers that are contributing to our own conditioning. Not all teachers are great, not all teachers are bad, some teachers are middle of the road, it is what it is. But you're gonna get different messages coming from different ones secondary teacher might be different, the third grade teacher, fourth grade teacher, different fifth grade teacher all with different personalities, views on perspective on life. And they're giving you their view on life in a time in which literally, we are taking in so much information from Tom, you're 07, you're actually in something called fadeaways. Right? Your brain is taking in three times the information, everything that you're observing, and everything that your subconscious is observing. So it's an incredible thing to think about that literally, we're being fed different information as we're going up, it can be very confusing, then we have our parents, and with this, our parents were not prepared for what the world is today. They brought us up in the way that they experienced the world. So we're talking about the internet, especially my generation, I'm 35. So like, there was no internet when I was like five, and then there was the internet. And there was Robin internet. And there, there were smartphones. And now there's everything you could ever imagine. Right? Which my parents were not prepared for getting me ready for this, I have no idea. So then we look at the narrative and eating in any other ways, like religion, right? So if you look at the religious narrative, and if you are a follower of Western religion was just a Christianity, you're told that there's a heaven, there's a health, right, and that if you want to be able to live and get to heaven, you need to accept Jesus as your Savior. And you need to do all these different things, right, which we're fed inside of this. Now, what a lot of people don't realize on the religious aspect is, is that most people hold a pattern of guilt, from the way in which religion is taught. And it's a very interesting thing to think about. And this is something I'm just bringing up, in a sense, because when I was going when I was young, and I was in the Catholic religion, I was told, when you sin, you ask for forgiveness. And then God will forgive you or for us, we go to a priest, and the priest has the power to absolve my guilt. What, okay, they've missed a really crucial step in between there, when you make a mistake, learn the lesson from the mistake. So then you can actually forgive yourself through the process. Because once we become an adult, that's what we're told, it's all about lessons, learn your lesson, learned lesson learned lesson. But again, we're not conditioned to even understand how to look for a lesson and experience, we're just either victimized by it. Or if we don't get victimized by it, we feel like oh, this is great, and everything's great. And all we're all good here. So and then we look at the other half of this and this sense of when we become an adult. And then we're sitting here and we've told how life is going to be and then we become an adult, we're not ready for our finances, like how to manage finances, school doesn't do that for us, we're not really ready of how I have a relationship with a woman or a man, if you're a woman, right? We only see what we learned from our parents. So now we talked about generational curses inside of this right of like, just what we observe is what we think a relationship is, well, my parents relationship, I love them, they stayed together, while me and my me and my sister all the way through college. But the love was not there, the physical touch was not there. So I observed something in relationship with like, not even really understand how to express love.

Unknown Speaker 8:40

So that's a big wrap, kind of so to speak. I mean, we can go even deeper in the financial system, and like all the different ways in which we're being controlled by our society. And we can look at this and this is happening in Canada and the United States, the whole thing with COVID was a big control mechanism, right to put fear being the weapon of the narrative is here. And through that process, trying to control our behavior to act in a way that they want us to act, rather than what we can express authentically in ourselves and become actually the powerful creator of our experience rather than a slave in our experience. So that's step one. Now step two, level two of the matrix is your mind. Now we're talking about the mind talking about the ego. The ego is if we look at just the characteristics of the ego, so you if you won't be able to identify this inside of your mind, the ego is of a separative nature, and also inclusive. The ego uses fear in your mind as a weapon to control your behavior. The ego has a hierarchical perspective on life. Either they're better than me, and I can't be like them or I'm better than you stay away from me. So when we think about that, and how that's happening inside of your mind, in honor not only separates you from others, but it's Split your mind. Because on the other end, you have this other voice inside of you. And this other voice seems to come from the heart space, I believe it's the Creator inside of all of us, called the Holy Spirit, call your intuition, your voice. That is completely opposite. Its characteristic is love, courage, going after what you want in life, being able to create a beautiful life for yourself, right? being compassionate towards others forgiving others before they even act before you even actually have the apology, being able to forgive them for what they've done. That's what that voice is speaking to you. So you have the duality these two voices Well, again, what is the narrative do the narrative is bumping on that ego the entire time, enhancing the ego, so now you feel imprisoned by your own mind. And then we get to the body. And the body is a living library. Meaning that your subconscious mind and or your body is constantly recording everything that you're doing, with no emotional filter, or whether you like what you're doing doesn't care. It just says this is what you're doing. So now we'll take the narrative, programming the mind and then the mind program and the body to create, again, a program and the subconscious mind basically being a predictor for your present behavior. Oh, this is what the things you've been doing. Let's just talk about like some limitations. I experienced. Oh, you're watching porn. Okay, you keep watching porn, okay, I'm going to create a trigger in your body so that you watch porn today. Right? CREATE TRIGGER your body to watch for today. Right? Not knowing really what's happening in the result of that, and we can get into that. But what happened to me in that experience, right? Oh, you like scrolling on your phone every single day. Okay, this must be what you like doing. So let me give you a trigger. When you feel emotionally distressed to start picking up your phone and throwing your phone. Again, you might not like it. And you'll know that you don't like it. Because there's this uncomfortable feeling of shame and guilt inadequacy and your gut while you're doing this thing, but you keep doing it. But you've literally programmed yourself to do this. And these three levels are all blocking what is actually real life, the reality of the fact, which is that your spirit, your consciousness, God within you, Holy Spirit, whatever it is, that you want to say, is real. And is the only thing that is real. So to be able to get to that tool to understand that, to be able to become the powerful creator of your experience, you have to unplug from these levels, to be able to really see the freewill that you have to create whatever life you want to create.

Curt Storring 12:30

Man, okay, thank you for that. That's intense. And I love it. So, so the unplugging, I want to just dive a little bit into this before we go through because I've got like four or five things, maybe six things that you mentioned before this, we were chatting we should dive into. But I want to get more into how we Okay, let's just say I'm listen to this. I'm like, oh shit, I'm in this. I'm real. And I'm kind of scared. It's being in the fear aspect. How do I start to unplug? And I'm sure that is sort of the work you do. So I don't want to, like, you know, reveal trade secrets, if you will. But what might be the first steps along this journey? Is it mindfulness? Is it something else? What does it look like to start to unplug?

Unknown Speaker 13:08

So we have to start with the individual mind and how the mind is perceiving reality. Right? So this is a very interesting thing to think about is that perception and knowledge are two different things. But we confuse perception for knowledge all the time. And this is what I mean by perception is something like this, let's let's use a scenario. You see somebody else that is doing something that's working for them. Let's just say they're an entrepreneur, and they're just killing it in their business. And you are in the same industry, and you're not. We you see what they're doing, you see how successful they are? And they say, man, look at all those things he's doing but like, I don't think that would work for me. That's not gonna work for me. Okay, you just confused perception with knowledge. If you haven't had the experience, how would you know whether it works for you or not? You've just sat in your chair and looked at somebody else's judged it is not for you. And then what's going to do you got to keep sitting in your chair, feeling confused and not knowing how to act. We do this in relationships a lot. We have this really beautiful baby like, couple of weeks, right? I'm dating somebody, maybe there's a really strong like, energetic pool with this person, then we start creating perceptions are like who this person is my soulmate. Or man, this person, I think I'm gonna be this person forever. But then the reality of the fact is that this person does you wrong. And you say, Nope, we're gonna be together forever. She's my soulmate. It's okay. They do wrong again. No, we're gonna be forever it's okay. And then the things that they're doing to you become worse and worse and worse and worse. You still are stuck on this perception that they're the one for you, even though your experience is showing you that you're not so you prolong your pain inside of a relationship just because you have a misperception. And again, you've confused perception for knowledge. Knowledge only comes through one thing, experience. See Oh, Only thing that it comes through. So until we can start to understand where the story is, in my mind that are perceptions that I've actually made connections to, that we need to disconnect. Good example of this is that, and this is what the mind will do, I can take this journal, I'm holding up in my phone and holding up, these are two separate things, I can create a story between these two things that seems very real to me. In the entrepreneur space, when I'm coaching entrepreneurs, they like to put their inadequacy and making money together. No inadequacy is a feeling making money is a thing, you can feel inadequate and still make money. I work with a lot of guys that have made a lot of money, and still just don't feel worthy of their life. And then I've worked with guys who don't feel worthy of making money and can't make money because they're detangled inside of this whole thing. And it's just a self perpetuating cycle. So again, the matrix creating these narratives summer ours that we experienced through our life, but most of them are everybody else's perceptions on what we should do, and how things are. And they create these neural pathways of connection that we have to go into and disconnect and then reorient them with the truth, what I call an absolute truth, which is something that cannot be argued. So this is the way essentially inside of this. And this is this when we go into reprogramming now basically on down, we're downloading a new software, and you've been on a hardware program. And this is the transition point where you start to actually change and unlock the Spirit inside of you to become the greater

Curt Storring 16:36

man. Okay, can we talk a little bit about your journey through this to get a little bit more of like a concrete, look at what this might be like, because just from experience, this is really hard. This is cruciate really hard because it is so well designed program for whatever the matrix is, you're talking about it to keep us this way. And it's very difficult to be able to find the tools to go in there and to be mindful of which is perception, which is knowledge, and what's going to serve us and who we truly are not who we're programmed to be or who we believe to be based on perceptions. So is there something in your story that can sort of show what it looks like to be like, oh, man, like I had this realization, and then I went down this path. And like, this is why I know this to be true. So that the guys listening can be like, Oh, okay, what are my perceptions? What is reality? Like? Are there tools? Or is it just like, You got to bring your own mind, which is again, in the matrix? To this, I feel like there has to be something to do in a sense, or somewhere to someone how to be, is that?

Unknown Speaker 17:38

Yeah, absolutely. And everybody's gonna have their individual journey, right. So I have a framework, be able to see patterns essentially, is what it is, it's pattern recognition inside of your own life. And then when I can recognize the pattern, then I know where to move into the work. Now, before I go into my story, I want to start with something that can be very beneficial, straight up. Blaming, and complaining, are the two symptoms of victimhood and a victim is enslaved. The victim is in prison, right? So anybody listening, if you could actually just start saying, oh, becoming aware that I'm blaming somebody else, and just reframe to what would happen if I took 100% responsibility for what I'm blaming somebody else for? I keep complaining about this thing. What happened, if I didn't want harbors that responsibility for the thing I'm complaining about? You stop complaining about every single day, you stop blaming people every single day, mine is a tricky thing. The mine projects out what it doesn't want to own and then simultaneously, it conceals it from you, so that you keep carrying it every single day. When you blame somebody else for something, is because you're not willing to own it. You wake up the next day, and you're still blaming them for the same thing, still feeling guilty and inadequate inside of yourself. Now, when you blame them, you feel temporarily better because mine's like, I've taken action, I've done something. But again, you're gonna wake up next day feel the same way. Same way, same way, because all you're doing is deferring responsibility. And the Creator inside of life has 100% responsibility for what they're creating. And if you don't have that you can. So let me go to my story a little bit. So when I was 14, it was 2000. And we had just moved from dial up AOL, internet and to broadband. Broadband was this new world of life. They were filling so much stuff on the internet, but one of those things were video products, and I'm a 14 year old boy. So I was given another computer, a family computer was down in the basement. Again, this is not my parents fault. They didn't know. But I started exploring. And I started exploring things that I wanted to see as a 14 year old boy. Prior to that I was like living there. I don't know if you've ever been at this point, but like there was like Cinemax and then there was like these fuzzies and like as low as 11 year old I'm watching like Cinemax positive like and it was like, Oh, now I really see a movie. So I started watching these things. And I didn't really understand if anything was actually physically wrong with me until I got to about I was 20 or 21. Now, interestingly enough, I'm just just throw it out there. I know I'm not a bad looking at, I've been able to date some pretty good looking women. Now under through high school for whatever reason, I avoided having sex with them. I had opportunities, but I avoided it. I had a fear about it. And I didn't know what that meant. By the time I got into college, I started having experiences with women. And I was having experiences with erectile dysfunction as a 20 or 21 year old, no idea why. So I ended up like against Viagra, Cialis, things like that those things started to help. But on the background, I was still watching porn very consistently, once or twice a day. Sometimes I would lock myself in my room from our roommates and say I was studying and it was an all day extravaganza of just doing this to me. Well, then over time, as I get into my mid 20s, you know, I'm really starting to struggle, like I'm experiencing social anxiety. I'm definitely experiencing performance anxiety, I literally have that map myself into being afraid of being with a woman because of how many times even with Viagra, that I was failing to actually have sex with a woman in the process. And then I ended up getting with my ex wife, when I was about 27. And when I found her, this is what I was talking about earlier, like, sometimes you'll meet somebody that the internet connection is so strong, like, you feel it. That was That was her for me. And I actually didn't watch porn so much, and maybe the first year or so. And I was still using like Viagra and stuff like that, but I was I was, I thought when I got healed, like she healed me, well, then relationship starts to wind down, and then you get into the point, we actually have to do work, that old habit starts creeping in form starts creeping in, I started having moments where I'm not able to perform with her, that traces me down into something else that was like going to make me feel good, I start doing hard drugs, MDMA, cocaine, then I lose myself even more completely. And then at some point, it was a breaking point where my ex wife was like, I can't do this anymore. So the real breaking point was the fact that when I came to the point where I was,

Unknown Speaker 22:10

where I was really talking about important action, and we came out about the whole thing, I went through the process of the healing process, which was 90 days of nothing, like you had to do no sex, no, no dragon off, nothing to start with the reprogramming process. And then I was able to actually have sex with my ex wife. But there was some things that were leftover that were in the program of being an addict. And that was what you do to protect the addiction from everyone else. Because you, as the addict hold a lot of shame, and shame being the key into an addiction. And with that, you'll project out an image of what you want everybody else to see. Well, to uphold that image, you will lie, you will manipulate, you will try and control people away from seeing what this was. So even though I came out about that, I was still lying, manipulating and controlling my ex wife. And that ultimately is why she left because those parts of the programs were still running, even though the behavior was not there anymore. So with all of what I'm saying to you, and to anybody that's listening, is that I probably watched pornography and did the whole cycle 10,000 plus times, and that might be a lowball. I map that behavior into my library, my subconscious that many times. And when I actually got my head up out of my ass, so to speak, and sat in front of myself, and stopped blaming everybody for what I did, and started taking responsibility. Then I started to really become obsessed with understanding neuroplasticity,

Unknown Speaker 23:44

subconscious remapping, I started getting obsessed with how the body works, again, how the brain works when it comes to it, like projection and understanding this, I started to really want to understand these things logically. And then another part happened for me is that my spirit unlocked and I started to really be very conscious of the duality between the two voices inside of myself. So to bring this all the way into fruition of understanding, well, what did I do to start changing? And this is the hardest thing and the simplest thing and the simplest thing is are always the hardest things. In fact, I tell my guys to do this, they scoff at me and they say that's not going to work. If you do something repetitively over and over and over again, that creates a program, you need to repetitively do the new thing over and over and over again to download the software. So what we use is things I call them fortification statements. They can also be called grounding statements, or Tony Robbins, use the word incantations. What these are is basically once you find the illusions and the misperceptions in your mind, you find the truth. The truth is the fortification statement. Your brain, your body, it will in your ego will create these old patterns of thought Well, now you've done the discovery process to understand what the lesson was you just meet it with the statement. One of the most powerful statements I use during this time was that I was doing the best that I could with the knowledge that I had. That eliminated the regret, eliminate the I was shut up and what I could, and every single time any of that rhetoric start to show up in my mind, I was doing the best I could with the knowledge that I had, I would go on 20 minute walks, and repeat that only. Why? Because on a 20 minute walk, if I repeated it, let's say 500 times, that's 500 times downloading this new thing in so that my old process stopped. And as I was going through this process for about six months, the first month or so i would give it like, you know, in this is just for relational sense, 10% of the time I was acting within my new self 90 was still there, but I kept being consistent. 90 days in 5050, right, four months in is starting to turn six months in, I was maybe 10% of the time having these things happen. But again, I'd done my own inner work inside of myself to understand where I needed to actually ground myself in the truth of who I wanted to be. Another thing that's behind me on my wall here is called the invisible shield. And this is also fortification statements to change the way that you are you start with the mind, because the mind is the thing that controls the body in a sense, and the communication of it. But ultimately, the mind and the body are simply tools for the soul to navigate it in the way that you want to navigate it. And you wouldn't let a hammer tell you what to do, would you because that's ultimately what's happening when you're allowing your ego or triggers of the body to influence your present behavior. So that's a broad look at it. Again, everybody is individualized. And I've there's more than one grounding statement. There's one and more than one fortification statement, it just every single misperception to align them to an absolute truth is that fortification statement. And once my clients learn just a small piece, like if, like if, like I like to do is like, okay, what are the things that you're experiencing right now? Well, ABCDE, cool, let's just focus on a, and then I'm going to give you all the tools inside of A and then B becomes easier to see the illusion and then C becomes easier to see the evolution. And then by then you're actually starting to heal yourself through the process because you're making new neural connections that are aligned with the soul with your authenticity.

Curt Storring 27:26

Man, thank you so much for sharing that. I really appreciate the the deep dive because that's it's not easy for a lot of men to share. And it's so powerful for a lot of men to hear. And I know that when we get personal stories like that it is some of the most impactful things that a guy can hear in what you said about doing the best you could with the knowledge you had. I relate that to parenting a lot of ways. Because when I have done things that I don't like, based on my programming, I was very easily put into the mindset of like, wow, I am an loser. I can't believe I did that I am broken. I'm ruining my children. And it took me a long time to get to the place of forgiveness of self, which was I was doing the best I could. And I didn't know how to do any better. And if I could have done better I would have. But man I was hurting. I didn't have any tools make sense? And then it was like, Man can just forgive that guy. Give him a big hug. Right. So that's, that's so

Unknown Speaker 28:25

that's incredible. Man, I just want to honor you for being able to do that for yourself. Yeah, thank

Curt Storring 28:29

you, man, I appreciate that. This brings, sorry, my getting feedback on that. A little bit of feedback, when Okay, that's all good. I want to dive a little bit into just looking at the topics we're going to cover. And maybe we can, that's a good place to go into healing, generational wounds and curses. We talked about that a bit on this podcast, especially as fathers, if we don't address these things in our lives, then they typically get passed on to the next generation. That's what happens with our fathers, if they're not mindful. And if they're not conscious about doing their work. That's what happens to us. And so a large part of my work is like, Hey, guys, there are things in your life that happened in the past, that made you feel a certain way that the ego that you're talking about, created a defense mechanism to guard against so that you didn't have to feel that initial pain. And every time something even comes close to that this defense mechanism kicks in to save you and protect you. But when you're an adult, it's typically not needed, because you're not in real danger of dying, which is what we think when we're a kid. And so I'm curious to hear your sense of healing, trauma, moving through that working with it, because I love getting new perspectives on this. Because there's always new things for me to put into my toolbox and to help the guys do their own work. So it sounds like it's probably related to a lot of the stuff we're talking about already. But I wonder if this is like a specific piece that there's more to go into.

Unknown Speaker 29:51

Yeah, for sure. So let's just talk about, you know, holding on or what is emotional baggage, and I kind of alluded to this and what I was talking about in which one We project something out and we don't own it, we end up carrying it with us. Alright, so this is essentially emotional baggage. Now emotional baggage is going to have a lot of different stories attached to it that are traumatic for us. And I've come to a new realization of like, I feel like the definition of trauma keeps getting broader and broader. But this is the broadest definition. But it also brings me to what I believe to be true, which is trauma is anything, anything that keeps you from expressing and experiencing unconditional love. So if you could see this dividing line of what that is, and you can see, oh, I'm having I'm hitting somebody here, I'm resentful here, I'm holding, regret, hear, all of those things are keeping you from experiencing that. Now, if we dive into that, again, different stories, you know, maybe somebody died young age, maybe it was an abuse, like we can go into more very intense experiences of trauma. But again, just bring it back to that statement. If you're not experiencing unconditional love, there's something blocking you from being able to do that. Ultimately, it's hurting yourself. Because unconditional love is the birthright. This is what we've been given to live inside of this experience. So what happens here is that when we experiencing something traumatic, normally we're going to take on the victim role. Right? So we're either going to say that we're blaming somebody else. But even worse, a lot of times we blame ourselves. And with blaming ourselves, we take on fault. But there's a difference between fault and responsibility that most people don't understand. fault. You can say, Yeah, this was my fault, because I created this. But it's also your responsibility to move forward from this experience in a way that helps you grow. And when we only blame ourselves and fault, we are blocked from seeing how we can grow from the experience. With that a lot of different emotions start to come into play, we feel guilty about what we've done. We feel shameful about what we've done. So in a different way than guilt and shame and guilt as I did a bad thing. Seamus, I am a bad person. But on the emotional spectrum, these are some of the lowest vibrational emotions that we can experience, they're contracting inside of ourselves, which is why hiding is the biggest key to understanding where you need to do your work into. Because if you're hiding something from your wife, if you're hiding something from your kids, if you're hiding something from your friends, it's because you are experiencing guilt and shame around that. And you don't want anybody else to know, because you're afraid of the judgment, I'm afraid that I'm going to be judged as being guilty, I'm afraid, I'm gonna be judged as being a bad person, I'm afraid that I'm gonna lose somebody. There's all these different fears that keep the hiding happening. So when we do that, we don't want to look at it, we act like it doesn't exist, even though we're fighting these battles on the edges of our mind the entire time. And the things that we're battling on the edge of our not our mind are openly calling this causing the self sabotage in our life. It's a very small, little thing, when you think about how you're showing up, you're like, Oh, I'm this way. And this way, I'm really proud of all these things. But there's this little thing that I really don't look at. But that little thing literally is causing all of a self sabotage in your life, like if you'll understand it,

Unknown Speaker 33:04

but again, the fear is what keeps us from doing it. So how do we get out of it, we have to learn how to express it. When we can express our shame, and I mean, express it, I mean, owning it and talking about it, we release it, because we're actually taking something we've been avoiding. And we're bringing it from Senator, which is painful. And this is the thing about human beings, I use this analogy all the time, like most of us are the middle of the ocean, waiting water trying to keep our head above water, we're just doing our best because we're afraid to drown. But if you got your head stuck under the water, or dumped onto the water, you would be forced to learn how to swim. And then you can just get out of the middle of water you swim to shore, but you're afraid to drown, right. So we'd rather you have this little bit of pain the entire time, and hold it over a longer period of time than having an intense amount of pain that we just move through and never have again. But that's the key to not holding on to this. So when we express shame, and we express it to somebody in which we know can receive what we're talking about. And inside of a marriage, a very healthy marriage. Transparency is this. And the ability to communicate is something I call Express and reflect. And if you actually communicate like this, you will never trigger the ego. So what you would do is you would express all your experience, here's my experience. Here are my emotions. This is how it's making me feel. What is your reflection, then you allow for them to accept their experience and how they feel about it, maybe how they feel about your experience, and they ask for reflection. And if you communicate it at this level the entire time, there's no blaming and complaining. And if we blame and complain, we trigger each other's egos and we trigger each other's egos then it just intensifies to anger and division because again, what is the go on separation inside relationship in which you guys should be union. So when we have the courage to be able to express some thing that we're going through, we end up releasing it out of our system. We also if we're expressing it to somebody else who is a non bias and actually loves us, they can help you get out of the misperceptions and the stories, you're telling yourself around this thing, which alleviates it. And then you actually experience something you're looking for better understanding, which leads to more love in your life. shame, guilt, and love are the most powerful transformative emotions on the planet. They're also on the opposite ends of the spectrum. And that's the point. If you're not willing to express your shame, your guilt, you're also not able to experience love in its highest form. Because you're not allowing yourself to be seen. So we would rather just sit in the middle, float around, rather than going forward so we can experience what we're looking for. So here's an example. And this might be something that this I'm sure some Interbike a lot of guys can do this or relate to this. Let's say you've been working a lot. And this is how tricky projection is, by the way, let's say you're working a lot. And your wife has been like, hey, like we'd really like to spend some time together. But you've been working a lot. Could you kind of like make time for me like Yeah, but then you keep working a lot your program, you keep working a lot. So then one day, you poke your head up and you realize what you've been doing. You say hibbett Do you feel like we haven't been spending enough time together? What do you think her response is going to be? Yeah, I've been telling you that the entire time. Like, can we do something about this, please? That's projection, you feel guilty for working too much, and you're not owning your emotion. You're not expressing it? Here's expression. Hey, bud, I feel really guilty that I've been working a lot lately. And I know that you've been wanting to spend time together. And I'm sorry that it's taking this long for me to realize this. But I really do want to spend more time with you. And what do you think about that? Can we figure this out? was her response? Thank you so much for like, oh, in that. And yes, of course, I'd really love to spend time with you, thank you for doing this for me. That foot that tricky. That tricky of a projection. But again, we don't want to own that we feel that way. And men are especially hard at doing this, they're not very good at doing this, we're not going to only you know, take this one little example. And then amplified into things that you really feel a lot of shame about for me for if I would have came out with my ex wives say that. I didn't know that this was a problem I did. But I really didn't understand all the way to I need to tell you something I feel a lot of shame about I don't want to have this happen in my life anymore. I don't want this in my life anymore. But I keep doing it. I don't know how to not do it anymore. And the only thing I can think about is to tell you and I feel guilty. And I feel shameful. I know it's causing a lot of division, because like I just tell you, and the reason why I'm telling you is because I want you to understand me more. And I really want to have a beautiful and united relationship. That's why I'm telling you. I'm addicted to porn, and I need help.

Unknown Speaker 37:55

Completely different delivery. She would have said, I knew something has been wrong intuition of women. I knew there's been something wrong with this man. He hasn't been telling me what's wrong with the man. Finally, he's telling me what's wrong. But then through that process, I now have my partner that can be with me to say, Oh, my goodness, thank you for telling me yes to what can we do, instead of her finding out, and her finding out and seeing all the things that you've been watching, which happened to me in pornography, and feeling like she's not good enough for you, feeling like you're not attracted to her feeling as if she's inadequate of the relationship. Because you're hiding it, you're not expressing what your true emotions are around it. That's why if we could just have the courage to express the things that we are not proud of, we don't hold on to it anymore. And so I could wake up the next day and feel a little bit lighter. And then I can get the resources that I need. And then I can move away from it. Like, let's take a zoom out because higher perspective is always tells us wins anybody that's listening right now. What it for the next 30 years of your life, you only felt shame and guilt one total year the entire time and you had 29 years of feeling and belief, clarity, love having all these things you want. Because remember what I said guilt and shame and sound on eradicating them. They're powerful emotions. If you mess up, you're going to feel guilty. Say I feel guilty. I made a mistake. I feel guilty about that. I'm so sorry. Then you don't feel guilty for the next 30 years while you're trying to create something that you want to create. But again, if you've been listening right now, and you literally have been feeling guilty and shameful and inadequate all the way up to this point in your life, because you don't want to admit to somebody else. What is that limiting you from? Because ultimately is limiting you from being exactly the man that you want to be and having the things in your life that you want to have. If you don't feel like you're worthy of them. You're not going to you know, start expressing it. See the change in your life happened very quickly, bro.

Curt Storring 39:54

I just want to put an underline on that last segment, because it could be the most important thing that in The man hears. Like literally, that's how important it is. And it brings to mind the work we do in men's group. Even last night, there was a man said, I'm not even doing anything. I'm just talking and I go, bro, that is the work, you are owning the feelings that you have repressed and not looked at for however many years. And now it feels different. I said, what's different this time? Oh, well, I'm, I know I need to surrender. It's like, yes, exactly. You're surrendering, you're expressing and you're letting that be and man that changes lives. So I just want to like really, really underscore this for guys. This is it. Like this is what worked for me this is what's working inside our men's groups. This was working with your clients. Like this is fundamental. So I man I'm love that treading water, and the dunk in your head under and experiencing the pain. And that's one of the reasons why I think it's important for guys to make hard choices for guys to do hard things so that they get comfortable with their backs up against the wall with their heads dunked under the water going, oh, yeah, I can swim. And how encouraging is that? How life giving is that to be able to do that? And then that dichotomy between the shame and the guilt and love? How could you not want to do this? This is a, this is a call out? I would imagine to a lot of guys, you could not feel this way tomorrow, if you find a safe place to express it. So thank you, man. I'm really, really appreciative of what you just shared. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 41:25

man. Again, it's my honor, I'll tell you one of the thing is that all these little fears that we have, like fear of failure, fear of judgment, through beings, it's all actually something that is wrapped up in something that's bigger, which is the fear that you might actually be the man you say you're going to be. That's what it is. You're afraid, inside of yourself right now that you could actually be loving and caring and successful. And this vision that you see of yourself is like reality, and it's not a dream. You're afraid of that? Because if you weren't, you would just be it. So why aren't you? I can make this very simple. I can put fear and love together and say fear, love, which one do you choose? And most of the time when I put that in front of groups, and guys, they say love and want cool. So why are you choosing fear every day? What you're choosing to be fearful every day, but consciously in front of me, you're telling me this because your program has been so ingrained in you for being fearmonger that you don't even notice that it's fear. But insecurity, inadequacy, and capability. All these are the children of fear. Fear is the origin that creates all of these. So you can start to recognize it as such. And you can really start to create that division inside your mind to understand what you're choosing inside of yourself. When you choose inside of yourself. It's also what you choose to create everything that you have or you don't have in your life right now. What do you feel like it was victimized or whatever else? Now, the truth of the matter is, is you created it? And then can you see the beauty in that statement? Because if you can create suffering for yourself, you can also create beauty for yourself. You just have to have the realization, the awareness that that is true for you.

Curt Storring 43:09

Yeah, man, that's so powerful. And things coming up for me is a desire to just sit with this honestly for a second. And also what you said about working too much reminded me of one of the other questions that I wanted to get into, which was about stopping work in such a way that you have like a was like a program almost creating a healthy balance with work life and strategies to leave work and create full presence at home. So again, like I told you the beginning, I was going to jump around, because I really like all these questions. But guys just like feeling to feel into what just happened. But I'm interested because I get asked this all the time. I work from home. So it's, there's less of a commute. Obviously, I go right from work to home. And I've got to make sure I'm breathing, I got to make sure I close out everything in my workday, I gotta make sure there is some thing between work and home. That keeps me from just being like work mode, work mode, work mode and not being present. And I'm very interested to hear what you have to say about creating this because I get asked this all the time.

Unknown Speaker 44:13

It's so simple. I'm like this is all going to be a theme here of how simple this is. Simply when you're done with work. Pull out a journal, write down where you are with your work emotionally. Where do I feel like I'm at how am I feeling about what I've done? Then look at the next day and see what the top three priorities that you will have for the next day of what you need to do. Write them down. Look at the day that you had as well if you need to, in review anything that might be left over. Put that also there and then leave when we are not present at home is because we're thinking about what we should have done during the day and also what we're going to do tomorrow. But you're thinking about so much because you're not grounded in understanding what exactly you need to do. You're confused about If you weren't confused about it, you want to keep thinking about it. Taking 10 minutes to shut your mind down to say, here's how I felt about today, here's some of the things that are left over that I can put in tomorrow. And here are my top three forever, just that simple, will create more presents when you go home, because you're not thinking about you do. And if I can give you like a higher look at this, in a sense, the perspective on this is that impatience is one of the main limitations that we have are impatient. And impatience is what drives us away from doing things as simple as this 10 minutes so you can sleep soundly at night. But you inside of inpatients, prioritize work, work work over self, self, self. And when you do that the entire time, eventually you drain yourself, and you become confused, exhausted, and you feel stuck, feel like you know how to get to where you're trying to get to. So that's a very simple exercise to be able to do so. And if you can just do that every single day goes literally. And then if you want to add something that just is a little bit extra, you could sit down and you can visualize what it would be like the next day in which if you were just showing up in your best self, and just like killing work, you know, you're just showing up in your best self visualize what it'd be like for all these things that you feel some sort of problem about that you can see the clarity and everything is working on exactly the way it was supposed to work out. The mind doesn't know the difference, especially the subconscious mind doesn't know the difference in what you visualize and what actually happens in your life. This is why VR, in a sense can be so powerful for creation of getting practices through my for instance, I was at a there's a VR agency that helps people with public speaking, you put on a VR you get in front of a podium, if it seems like there's 1000s of people, your body will react the same way of being afraid of speaking in front of it and you say your speech. And as you do that repetitively, it makes it so that it's easy to do in real life? Well, if you were just doing this inside your space as well, visualizing the most positive outcome, you're most likely going to have an aligned version to that most positive outcome.

Curt Storring 46:58

Those are fantastic and so easy. And again, it's that can you commit to the 10 minutes, that's all it takes? I am. So I'm looking at all the things I want to talk about. It's like dude, you've covered literally everything. And that makes me go Okay, what else? What else can you share with us? What I almost want to say like what other little things like that? Do you have what things have helped you? What do you sign up? What do you get your clients to do to be more mindful to be more grounded? Are there little, like five minute exercises throughout the day, and I don't want to say hacks. But honestly, like, actually, let me back up for a second. I used what I call crutches. And these were things like, you know, meditation visualizations, learning scripts, to speak empathetically to my children, my wife, and those crutches allowed me to get off the broken leg, which was my internal wounding and my, you know, all the things that in the matrix that I was experiencing. And so, on the one hand, I love crutches, because man, they get you off that pain so you can heal it. On the other hand, I'm very cognizant of the fact that they're just crutches and you got to go deeper than that. So is there any sort of final thing that we want to draw up here before you tell everyone where to find you, that could help the dads along their journey in unplugging from the Matrix?

Unknown Speaker 48:16

Absolutely, it's about pattern interrupts the pattern interrupt. So here's one of my favorite things in the sense of if you're struggling with getting up in the morning, and let's say you would like to have a morning routine, but you can't really get up in the morning. A really easy hack is is to be able to put if you're using your phone for an alarm, put your phone in your closet, lay out your clothes and set the alarm in your closet. You have to get up out of bed, which is step number one, what's hard to do to get up out of bed once you're above the bed, you've overcome the first level of adversity I guess you can say. Now, the reason why I also lay on my clothes is because second level of adversity is now I have to constantly think what I want to put on. I don't know if I do that. I'll just get back into bed up there my clothes, I grab those and then I keep going. And then the third morning hack that I do is I drink about a 16 ounce glass of ice cold water which actually will wake you up faster than coffee in the morning. Because when we sleep for hibernating our body is very high temperature and the duality of drinking the cold water some people like cold showers cold plunges stuff like that. I'm gonna go punch. I'm not a big fan of cold showers. I don't like how it like dribbles so like I'd rather just plunge, but drinking cold water has the same effect. Like do it and literally you'll watch your eyes like go from sleepy to wake up like while you're doing it right there. One of my favorite pattern interrupts which I'm going to play for you right now is this. This is a salad bowl. This sound bowl right here. Whenever I find myself starting to feel a little bit fearful or I find myself starting to be a little bit stressed out I just go and it gets me back into the present in a second. right out of what I'm doing. Now, this sound ball also creates a frequency of 14 and 32 hertz, which is the heart center, the frequency of the heart center. So even more, so it's activating the God within me the creative within me to speak inside of this space. And this thing was only 70 bucks online. So sometimes when you find unconventional methods, and I've always found that sound is a great thing as an unconventional method, which really can help because the frequency can get you into the frequency of where you want to be. There's something called, there's a YouTube channel called meditative mind where it has like frequencies of like abundance frequency, or as for who's like, while I'm working, if I'm in this space, normally, I'll have them background, just playing the frequency the entire time, because the sound is influencing my emotional complex to stay within a flow state, which is where I want to be. So those are just a couple of my favorite hacks that I have that does really help. And again, it's all about being present. Because the more that we're present, this is where reality is, in the present. You're thinking about the past, you're in the matrix, when you think about the future, you're in the matrix, the mind the ego is in control. When you're in the present, you are creating your life the way you want it to be.

Curt Storring 51:09

Perfectly boatman that's funny I have between the introduction and the main part of this podcast, and then the intro, the sound that I use is just that it's a gong, it gets you dropped in immediately to pay attention. And I actually have a buddy Frank who owns I think it's called the own store who sells handmade, I think Tibetan samples for anyone looking for one of those, you know, shout out to Frank. So, man, thank you so much for this time, this has been so nourishing to me and so useful. I know just from like all the guys that I talked to, there's gonna be a lot of value in here for them. Could you let us know where to find you how to work with you and anywhere else that you want to point people to?

Unknown Speaker 51:49

Yeah, absolutely. So pretty much on all social media outlets, exact like my name. If you're coming from the show, and you want to send me a DM and just DM me red pill, I'll know that you've come from the show. And you can DM me not if you're not interested in being a client. If you have a question anything want me to clear up, I'll be happy to serve you that way to try and help create some clarity on what I'm talking about. I realized what I'm talking about has a lot of complexity. Inside of the web of what's happening. Hopefully what got spoken about you started to recognize some of the behaviors that you're doing inside of there. So I'm happy to serve you in that way. If you would like to find where my courses at it's the red pill method.com in which you want to Red Pill method.com You can see what everything is about. It's the coaching that I offer. And yeah, for now, that's where I'm at. There's a lot of different other avenues, whether it's relationship counseling, couples counseling, did family counseling, there's a lot of things that we'll do inside of that. But again, if you have any questions, the best thing to do is just to find me on social and shoot me a DM

Curt Storring 52:47

amazing. Okay, we'll put all that in the show notes at Dad.Work slash podcast for you guys listening head over there and on the walls, we'll put them in the podcast app so you can just go in and look at the description all that will be there. Zack, man, I'm pumped that we're able to do this thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

Unknown Speaker 53:02

Yeah, brother again. It was my honor. Thanks for having me

Curt Storring 53:04

on. That's it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. It means the world to find out more about everything that we talked about in the episode today, including Show Notes resources and links to subscribe leave a review work with us go to dad.work/pod. That's DAD.WORK/POD. type that into your browser just like a normal URL Dad.Work slash pod to find everything there you need to become a better man, a better partner and a better father. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai