You were Designed to be Free and Decisive

I want to talk about your natural settings because I think restoring the [clears throat] natural settings that we're born with are actually the best way to achieve success even if you want to use that word. I'm using that word very loosely because I really define success not in a narrow sense but in terms of things like you know authenticity creativity expressing yourself those types of things and yeah too there can be physical or what we say maybe more measurable aspects to success if that makes means making more money or whatever it is that's a part of it sure but the factory settings we have what are your factory settings and I think that those factory settings are perfectly fine. They're optimal actually for creating the life that you want, the successful life that you want. So, what I consider to be the factory settings, two aspects of our psyche that we're born with, okay? People have called those the masculine and feminine aspects. I have my own way of describing them. I talk about the the free spirit and the builder aspect of the psyche. Now, if if those do they're there when we're born effectively. Now, the the free spirit is fully formed when we're born and the builder is there, but it it takes time to mature. So if those two things are working well within us and they have really ideally speaking a symbiotic um mutually cooperative relationship with one another. If those two things are working well and are symbiotic, there's nothing else to talk about. You're you're off to the races, right? That's what we're looking for. So, I'll talk about what those two things are and um [clears throat] what it looks like when they're cooperating with each other, how they can get corrupted. So, we lose those factory settings and they get configured into something else. Something that is sadly probably much more prominent in our culture uh for people and who will find themselves struggling or having self-sabotage or undermining themselves or have procrastination problems etc. So, and then we'll talk about how do you restore the settings? Okay, back to the original way it was supposed to be. So, what are these settings? This masculine feminine, this inner free spirit and this builder aspect. Well, the the free spirit is basically the part of us that is open, spontaneous, imaginative, creative, um, enthusiastic. That part of us, the feminine aspect or the free spirit has sort of one basic requirement, and it is that it not be coerced or made to feel as if it doesn't have a choice. If it feels that it's lost a sense of freedom, it gets corrupted. Okay, so that's the first thing. Now that's there from day one and that never changes. That doesn't change as you grow older. That stays exactly the same as it was. Its function doesn't change. So we know this because if you look at like a small child, right, they are full of openness. They're full of spontaneity. They're full of desire and wanting and creativity, right? Trying things, curiosity. In fact, they'll want to do so many things. This is why they're focused here one second and then they're over here doing something else and they're sort of there they're all over the place. And this is why as we develop the the the builder aspect or the masculine part is required because what its job is to do is to choose from the the menu if you like that is presented from the the free spirit or the feminine and to choose or to prioritize which one of those things to to pursue. Okay. The builder aspect and again it takes time. Children don't have the builder really. It's not fully online. It develops over a couple of decades actually. But with that part when it's working well is it it's it's like an executive, right? It doesn't necessarily want anything and of itself. What it wants what it wants is to whatever it's focusing on is to see it through to completion to see it manifest into something to build it. Okay? So that's a requirement for the the the free spirit. The free spirit left to its own devices is too sporadic. And that's why the grounded part of the the masculine or the the builder is is is how are we're set to be. It's the part of the settings. It's natural for us to have that. So when the when the free spirit is left alone, it's too ungrounded and it doesn't pursue things. This we can see this in people who have 15 projects started and nothing is quite resolved, right? not not has followed through on or left to its own devices the the the builder that doesn't work either because really it doesn't have anything original that it wants to pursue in and of itself. It doesn't have the desire. Now people who are lodged in the builder aspect they will be maybe you know you might know somebody um maybe it's your own personal experience to a degree but they will be doing things in life if it's just they're in that part they're on balance to that degree they're just in their builder part that will be pursuing things for 15 years not really knowing why they're doing it and then after 15 years they're like I did that why did I do that I don't even know why I was doing it. So, they're quite diligent. They have the diligence and the follow through of it, but there's not really any sense of why they're doing it necessarily. So, we want those two aspects to be working symbiotically, cooperating with one another. What typically happens is as the builder is developing, as we're growing older, that part gets sort of shaped and mainly gets shaped by external um environment that that we're in or particularly the language that we're around. So, it starts to pick up on language, coercive language is the problem with it. So, have to need to that's not good enough, hurry up, etc., etc. And what happens is the the builder, which is very very non-judgmental as a default setting. It just wants to take its the desires that it's fed and it wants to see them through. There's not really any morality in it. It starts to pick up all this coercive language. And that then has a knock-on effect on the free spirit because that's that's that's corrupting the one requirement it has, which is to feel a sense of autonomy and freedom. So the builder turns into a kind of a internalized bully that we carry around inside us, right? Barking orders at us. Do this, do this, don't do that. Hurry up, this isn't good enough, etc. And the other part, the free spirit becomes a rebel. So that part now you'll hear thoughts like it's not good enough. I'm not going to I'm not going to what's the point? It's I'm not interested in that. I don't want to do it. Right? becomes reluctant or rebellious against any of these orders that it's receiving from what was the builder but what has now become a bully. So we will find ourselves in life through this conditioning we go through this language this coercive language in this very very uncomfortable position of thinking that um well we what you'll notice if you're you're paying attention to it you're bringing awareness to it is that the okay I can see the bully and I can see the rebel how do how am I going to get these two parts to cooperate and if we don't look at the language because the language around it was mainly the the problem Okay, it's the coercion, the force sort of philosophy that was introduced. The the solution to restore the factory settings is to change the language because the language was really what happened, the problem. So, it changed the free spirit in the builder to a bully and a rebel. And our job now is to notice, well, that's okay. I'm seeing that and now I want to restore the factory settings. Typically what we will do is most of us will have identified or taken the side of the bully more. We see that sort of as rational and yeah I mean yeah I have to do it. If you repeat that law often enough to yourself you really start to believe that the bully is sort of has a point and you sort of resent the inner the rebel part that's there. But you can't disown the rebel. You'll need the rebel part because that when we restore it to health that's going to be the the free spirit. That's where all the ingenuity, creativity, actual genuine desire and autonomy and attraction to doing comes from. Okay. So, what we're looking at is language. And one of the things that I propose people do um I talk about it more in my my first book um procrastination decoded um is to work on the narrative. Okay? The way we're talking to ourselves, the types, the type of language we're using. Narrative therapy is always a way we do this. So practically speaking and this is why I wanted to make today's video on is how do we go about changing this story? Okay, do we just use positive thinking for instance? Well, it's not really that helpful and I'll explain why. But one of the things we want to do is to actually get in touch with the negative story, the story of the the bully and the rebel. We want to bring awareness to that first because that's there in the morning when we wake up usually and you can go into denial about it, right? But it's still going to be there. So denial isn't going to be useful to us. We want to start looking at that story. Start, okay, that that's what I'm that's that's the operating system right now. That's the tension. That's where the conflict's coming from. And you write it down on paper. Okay? Write or type it out on your computer or wherever you write. Okay? But get it out of your mind and onto something external. And you can start bringing awareness to it. Okay, that's why I'm conflicted. I can see the problem. One part is barking orders. The other part is saying I don't want to do it. And we can start to gently question a lot of it. But really what we want to do is there's a a concept in CBT which is called um opposite thoughts where effectively the the more helpful story that we're going to start to live by and try to integrate is effectively the opposite of what we've been telling ourselves through that conditioning. So any coercive language gets changed into the the language of autonomy and freedom which is choosing. I choose to I can do. I'd like to do. Okay. It's more about requesting those types of things. And the other so we're trying to instill a sense of freedom in what we're doing. Now the other thing we're trying to do so that that's helping the the the free spirit. Okay? It wants to hear language or freedom because remember it's primary um requirement is is that it be free. And the other thing that we can do in the narrative work [clears throat] is to instill a sense of decisiveness. Okay? because that's going to help the the the bully restore that to the the the builder. Okay? So the builder is decisive. So instead of even being nice to yourself about things, it's instead of saying, "I'm not going to bully myself. I'm not going to judge myself. Yeah, sure that would help." But we're trying to really instill is a sense of decisiveness. So in in in the original story could be I never follow through in anything. um I'm always confused about what I want to do, etc. Where the the new narrative will become about I know exactly what I want to do. I'm capable of making choices. I'm capable of having boundaries, right? We can put that stuff into the new narrative as well. So when the factory settings are restored, what it looks like is that you're talking to yourself and you're communicating to yourself an underlying sense of freedom in everything that you're doing and an ability to be decisive in everything that you do. Okay? To be decisive. The alternative, you know, it's not about it no longer becomes about am I doing the right thing? Should I be doing this or that? Right? It's I make choices. There is no right and wrong here. That's the bully. The bully uses that morality type language. Don't do that. It's wrong. Do this. This is the better thing. The the builder is just decide. Okay, I'm doing this. Is it good or bad? No. That's what I've decided to do. There's no real morality in the builder when it's working effectively. Now, the book, so I'm talking here in this video about doing that inner work of changing the narrative, how you talk to yourself, right? the book the my other book um after you don't show up is more a method right it outlines a method for decisiveness how to be decisive right and that book is I think it's life-changing okay I think if you can read that book and it gives you a method but I'm what I'm talking about in today's video is the underlying story you have the narrative that you're talking uh how you're talking to yourself and this is really what I'm suggesting is the aim of what that story should be. It's all about freedom, right? Freedom, wanting, choosing to. And the other part we're trying to instill is to um heal the what has become the bully back into being the builder, which is and the the the whole purpose of the builder is to be the executive, which is choosing and being good at choosing, choosing, being decisive. Okay, that's what I'm doing. So we work on that inner work of changing that narrative, getting it out of here, putting it onto paper, something external and working on it to improve it to change the way we talk to ourselves and relate to ourselves. And when we're doing that, the methods in the book, the the in the the newer book I have or any other method, there's a few like there's a lot of like tips near the end of that book, all of those things become much more useful if you're changing that narrative. So there's two aspects to this. There are the practical things that you do, the strategies about how to be decisive, but changing that story in there too is super super helpful. So, I hope that's useful and it's just one of those things like it's about our culture is constantly sending us messages about hurry up, do it, why haven't you done it already, etc., etc. We get that from our early childhood experiences. We get it through school and we get it everywhere else, right? So, it's about reversing that and we do that well those methods will become much more effective. So, keep that in mind and I hope that's useful insight and uh thanks for watching as always and uh have a great weekend. Take care of yourself and I'll see you guys very soon. Bye for now. >> [music]