← What Are You Made Of?
What Are You Made Of?
Winning the War Within: Breaking Addiction, Rebuilding Identity, and Finding Truth with Bob Gardner
00:33:58
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome back to the Woody Made up show. It is your boy C Rock here? I'm with Bob Gardner today and we're going to have a great conversation here. And, and you know, the thing about this show is I really enjoy how people get vulnerable and share the things that they've overcome in their life. And then a lot of them have started to help other people with the things they figured out. And Bob's no different than that. And Bob's going to share what he's made of today. Bob, what's happening?
- [00:25]
B
Not much. I'm just sitting here talking to a cool cat that I just met online.
- [00:29]
A
Thank you, thank you. I'll take that. Y. So, Bob, let's get into it right away, man. You've had time to think about this. What are you made of?
- [00:39]
B
I would say I'm going to give you two answers because they're both true for me and they're sort of paradoxical. One is a relentless search for the truth. That's what's driven everything in my life. It's just this relentless. What is really going on, what is really the case, both spiritually, physically, you know, mentally, all of the other things that has driven me to where I'm at. And then the other one is the answer that Bodhidharma gave the emperor all those thousands of years ago. He's the founder of Zen Buddhism stuff. The emperor is like, what have I earned by all of this stuff that I've done? I've supported all of these monks, I've built these temples, I've done all this stuff. What merit have I gained for the next life? And Bodhidharma looks at him, he says, none. And nobody talks to the emperor that way. So the emperor is like, what the looks at him and he's like, this is a guy who's got wild eyes, by all accounts, massive like hair, like beard, huge beard. He's carrying his sandals on his stick like he's dusty from a long trip. He's come from the western heaven of India all the way over into China to pass on the torch of Enlightenment. You know, he's the founder of Zen Buddhism, all this stuff, right? He comes there and the emperor looks at him and he says, I've, I've earned no merit. Who are you to say such a thing? And Bodhidharma looks at him and he says, I don't know. And that's the end of the historical record. That's the end of the conversation. I don't know. Like this guru, this enlightened person, like Shows up with this. I don't know. And I've wrestled with that for years because it feels like it's a very true answer. One, how could I possibly state what I am? How could I put that into a language prison? But two, it's still going. I'm still discovering what I'm made of.
- [02:20]
A
Great answer.
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B
So, I don't know.
- [02:22]
A
You said to me, I didn't know how I was going to answer that, but that was one of the greatest answers I've heard from that question in a thousand episodes. That was good.
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B
Well, good.
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A
Yeah, I like that. I like that a lot, man. A lot for me to think about. All right.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And so, so, okay, man. I'm Got myself thinking about that. I don't know. So, you know, I saw a post on social media, Reese. Oh, go ahead.
- [02:50]
B
Honestly, that's the place to start. Like, my, My whole journey had to start from the place of admitting of how, I don't know, I was an addict, I was in the mace. I was in all these places where my wife was going to leave and I had all these issues going on and for me to stop and instead of, like, saying, well, I know what's going on. Let me fix this problem, to step back and, like, admit how little I know, that's really the place where new revelation can show up, where, where a real perception can dawn.
- [03:14]
A
So, yeah, you know, and what I was thinking about when you said that is, is that the biggest barrier to learning is thinking you know everything. Yeah. And it's because then you fail to be curious and observe. And if you're not being curious and observing, then how are you going to learn? So, yeah, so that's really powerful. So many people think they know everything. And, and you hear on social media, you're watching people, all the content that's out there, or most people are on social media, you're not anymore. But, but, but, but, but, like, you see all these different posts and everybody knows everything, and then it's almost information overload. But, you know, one of the things for me is I'm. I've committed to being a lifetime learner. And the other thing I was thinking about, Bob, was when you mentioned truth. I saw a post on social media recently by a friend of mine, and it was pretty interesting because he was talking about truth versus being honest with yourself. And the truth can be, I guess, subjective, but they're really. That's kind of dicking itself, the definition of truth. But it. But people. Yep, but, but, but it is. But people. What's true to them, they believe to be true. Right. But being honest with yourself, there, there's no really subject. You're either honest with yourself or you're not. And honesty, I think that's something that you had to go through is like, hey, look, I need to be honest with myself here. And when you mentioned, I don't know
- [04:41]
B
it, I mean, honesty is, is the, like if you can't do that. And granted, we all have different levels of ability of being honest with ourselves. Okay, so I start from this place of being somebody who, who got into looking at pornography as a 14 year old kid because I was curious. And then like, I wanted to figure out how the plumbing worked and my dad was uncomfortable having those kinds of conversations. So I solved the problem. I figured out how to figure. And the Internet had just come online. I figured everything out. But that quickly turned into, oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna avoid social, awkward social situations because this feels a little bit better, or, man, I feel down. I'd rather turn to this. And then slowly that becomes sort of an addictive behavior. Whether you wanna call it an addiction or not, people argue about that all the time. But it became a coping mechanism and it stayed with me for 18 years until my wife was like, okay, I can't handle it anymore. We'd been married eight years, we had four kids at the time, young boys. I was worried about ruining these kids anyway. But I was in this space where I had not been honest. I had not been honest about my temper, I had not been honest about the feelings that I had of insecurities or whether or not I measured up. I honestly felt, and I didn't want to admit it to anybody, that God made a mistake on me, that I was broken in some way like a factory defect, and somehow I managed to make it into existence. But, you know, I grew up and my mom, bless her heart, not to use the southern phrase, but she's an amazing woman who has given so much of her life to her kids, you know, gave up on careers and stuff so that she could raise us kids. But, you know, she grew up in this Jewish household. They heckle each other, they do all these stuff. So I get a 99% on a math test. What's the matter with you, Bob? You know, and so this sort of. I internalized this in a way that was like, there's something wrong with me. So I grow up running from this. And because I couldn't be honest with it and just say it out loud without anybody trying to fix It. Like, just say it out loud. Yeah. This is a thing that feels like a real thing. It might not be real, but it feels big right now because I couldn't do that. I was always running. And that's what led to the addiction. That's what led to all the depressive mood swings and the suicidality and all of those bipolar kind of stuff. My wife thought I was bipolar for a lot of years, all because I was running from the being honest, being true to myself. And I think you're right to point out that the word truth has got a lot of baggage to it, where we can just say, like, just be real, man.
- [07:05]
A
Yeah. Yeah. So. And those things were the things, the byproduct, and this, the symptoms of the addiction that your wife was fed up with is the bipolar, quote, unquote. Right? Mood swings, what have you?
- [07:18]
B
Well, those were there before. And I think the addictive behaviors just sort of, like, fed into them because they all come down to. Look, your reaction to the world around you is a result of really one thing, what you think is happening, and it's automatic, and it's a muscle memory. Like you made sense of it at some point in time in your life. And then when you see that thing again, that previous judgment's there.
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A
Right.
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B
My previous judgments about the world were, I don't belong. See, we were in the military. My father moved around a bunch. He was a fighter pilot, so we got Tom Cruise on one end. Not that that's exactly what he did, but in my mind, that's what he did. And I always had to be in a new school, had to make some new friends. So I was always the outsider. And so I made sense of myself as the outsider. The guy that had to earn his validation by being the smart kid or the funny kid or something else like that. And then I would try to excel in whatever thing I could excel in. And so I had that kind of sense of myself. Well, because I made that up. How I saw the world came through that lens. Those were the glasses.
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A
I was right.
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B
Even if it was sunny outside, it was coming through the glasses that said, it's sunny and you don't quite belong.
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A
Yep, I gotcha. And so there's a difference between realizing you have an issue and doing whatever you can to correct the issue. And then we're doing that and sharing it with everyone. Right. And admitting it to people. So why did you do that versus just keeping it to yourself and fixing it?
- [08:51]
B
Well, okay. It started with, I had to do that in order to keep My wife. So when I go to a 12 step meeting, we went. I went to those for a bit before, you know, they just weren't doing what I wanted.
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A
Were you drinking too, other addictions or not?
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B
No, no, this was. This was a. I got into drugs a little bit later and then had to deal with that. But the 12 step program was really catered towards sexual addiction, and it was for couples. So I got to listen to other wives and what they were going through. That was a real eye opener for me because I couldn't hear it from my wife. But so I was going there and that was the first time I had to be like, okay, look, I have an addiction. And it was really powerful for the first few weeks to be able to say that, because it was like being real. And that was the first time I was real with other people. But I had. I mean, it's almost a badge of honor sometimes to say that you've been an alcoholic and now you've. You're. You're sober these days, but you can't really say in today's society, oh, I was a porn addict and now I'm not looking at porn anymore. People just don't look at you the same way. It's almost like, yeah, you overcame it, but let me keep my kids at a distance. So I wasn't going to share any of it at all. But we were struggling financially, and I was running my kung fu school and doing web design on the side and teaching at Arizona State University. And I was like, I had like four jobs, and I was just trying to put food on the table, and it wasn't working well. And I had a business coach, Garrett J. White. Wake up, Warrior. You've heard of him? Yeah. And he totally got in my face. And I was trying to come up with some business plan for my kung fu stuff, and he's like, wait, wait, wait, wait. He says, what do you know so well that you could talk to anybody in the world around it and even the Queen of England, and you wouldn't flinch. Like, you just know. You know it very well. And, you know, the only two words that came out of my mouth, I was like, well, fatherhood and porn addiction, like, those are the things that I know really well. And he's like, that sounds like unique selling proposition. So he threw everything out the window. I'm in front of like 500 guys on this call, you know, and they're all listening in as he's grilling me. And then he's like, how long you been free And I am like, oh, it's been four years. And I'm like doubting myself on the call. I'm getting called on the carpet. My heart's racing. I'm starting to breathe a little bit shallow. I'm like, I hope nobody notices. And he's like, how long have you been free? Four years. He's like, are you sure? Yes. Like, are you sure you're free? Like you're not just like doing it in the closet and pretending to be free? You're free. I was like, yes, yes. It's been four years. He says, okay, well then, like, there's lots of people struggling with this. Counselors, therapists, don't know what they're doing. It like all of this body work and this other stuff that you're doing, that's like, people don't pay money for that. Like that's. There's millions of them. You can, they're a dime a dozen. But this is something real. It's breaking up families. You need to go do this. And then he was really intimidating to me. He's kind of a, He's a big personality.
- [11:36]
A
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
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B
And so he got up and he, he was like, you have three days. Put a video online. So I was like, oh, crap. But my family is at stake. And because it was like, I gotta pay for my family. I gotta support them. I was like, okay, I'm willing to let anybody look at me as the porn guy if at least my kids can have an education and have a home, a roof over their heads and stuff. And so I went and within that weekend I recorded a video and I just. My brother in law is an FBI agent and when he saw the video online, he was like, that's too much information to put online, buddy. And I was like, I just said I should probably should have told my family first. But. So the reactions were quite genuine, but a little extreme.
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A
Oh yeah, I bet. And, and what did that video do for you besides that?
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B
The reactions, the. Oh, man. Do right. To go and to take the thing, that is the thing one you're most ashamed of. And to put it out there for everybody to see. I was doing like dry heaves between takes on the video. You know, I was, I was, I. And I put it online and I was just like. I don't know, my hands, like, I had like a three day long adrenaline rush. You know, I was just having a hard time. And a couple people on the call had called up and they, they wanted some help and so I started helping. Bit by bit. But just to be able to put it out there allowed me to have a conversation that people don't get to have anymore. The conversation of, yeah, this is really what happened. This is legitimately what happened. This is all that happened. We don't need to talk around it or make euphemisms around it like, this is legit real. And it became this central place. The next video I did was of my wife and her story. And so she got to talk about what a dick I was probably still am, and all the things that. That felt like for her, because I had seen how much it helped the people around her. And so when she puts that online, then people started to gravitate around this because they were like, well, these are people. These are people that aren't hiding. They're not trying to doctor it up. They're not trying to say, I've overcome and life is hunky dory. But they're just like, this was real for me. And, you know, I talked about the effect on my kids. You know, my oldest, eight years old at that point in time, he. That was the first time he said he wished he hadn't been born. That's rough.
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A
Yeah.
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B
When your oldest son tells you that. So I had to sit down with him on the ground and ask him, like, what do you want to do? And for him to turn around and be like, I want to do your program. Dad was like, okay, let's do this thing.
- [14:07]
A
Yeah, that's awesome. Wow.
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B
Because I helped create that situation in him, so it made sense. I was. I was so glad that he wanted to turn it around.
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A
And how long ago was it did you do that first video?
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B
2012.
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A
Okay. So, man, it seems like yesterday, but it's. It was faculties. Okay.
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B
No, no, that was in 2012. That video was 28, 2017.
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A
Okay. Still 2017. Okay. And then from there, it just created a community. Where you. Did you set up a community or how did it.
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B
No, I was really. Because of what I'd seen in 12 step programs. And this isn't to bash them. They do it some. They do some things really well. But what I'd seen is people find this community, and this is a community of friends built around a problem. And I didn't want. I never wanted to be identified with the problem, but that's why. That's not my identity. To say I'm an addict felt like it dishonored what all the rest of me.
- [15:01]
A
Yeah.
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B
When we say, what are you made of? I don't know. So for me to like, condense it to a label, and one. That charge just felt wrong. So I didn't want to create a community because I. I didn't want people to come together and be like, yeah, we. We made all this. We're all these good friends, really. How did you meet? Well, you know, I just didn't want to create that. And so for the longest time, it was just individual word of mouth. But I am a martial artist, man. I, like, get in a room and we. And I'm probably not a great martial artist, but I love movement, and I love goofing off, and I love discovering things bodily. And what I found to help with all of this stuff around addiction, all this stuff around trauma, because then their wives would come and ask about this. What I found to help with it was. Was body stuff. It was, like, retraining my instinctive response to the environment. So I was like, I got to get these people in a. In a room. So it was in 2019. It was just after I started my podcast. It was in 2019. I do. I ran my first retreat. We've run, like, 35 retreats.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And they started out as three days. I was like, what could I do in three days with these guys? Because there's so much you can do with a person that is. That bypasses all the thinking, bypasses all the talk and everything else, and gets right into the instinctive responses in the body, which what the body's carrying, its tension patterns, its movement patterns, everything else. So that. That. The first retreat I get there, there was a guy who was a therapist there. He had been struggling. His wife had divorced him. He'd been struggling for two years, just going to therapy every week, doing everything he knew how to do. And he came, and I stuck a knife in his gut. The butt end of a knife just right up under his liver. And something in that encounter just, like, reoriented his whole idea around what real pain was. Like, am I really in pain over my. Like, what is this thing? And it just forced him into a reality that, like, oh, man, I've been living in my head this whole time. And I coached him how to breathe himself out of it and how to relax the area. And all of a sudden, it wasn't painful anymore. And then all of a sudden, he's getting this weird neurological hit that's like, oh, wait, even if I am in pain, it doesn't have to stay painful. Wait, what? And so now his body is starting to adapt, and within those two, three days, he goes home, and he's like, yeah, I still got some stuff to work out, but, like, I actually don't resent my wife. Like, I don't have this resentment thing here anymore. It was amazing to see this happened with several people in there. And I was like, okay, we should do another retreat. Yeah.
- [17:37]
A
You know, and there's a lot of it, too, that comes down to personal responsibility. You know, people are looking for their. Their. Their partners, their friends to make them happy, you know, and. And. And resentments builds up a lot of times. What I've noticed is, you know, working with a lot of people is resentment builds up a lot of times when you're not doing what you should be doing to fulfill your destiny and. And dreams, and then you want to blame other people. And, and because we allow other people to steal our dreams from us or we give, we don't set barriers or boundaries. I should say boundaries. We don't instill discipline in our lives. And it's all the things that we are doing that we end up resenting other people outwardly for the things that we're not doing that we should be doing, you know?
- [18:22]
B
Yeah.
- [18:22]
A
And then once you release, take that, and you get people to understand the importance of taking responsibility and understanding that we cause and create the universe we live in. We do. It's not we live in all the God's created universe, but we, the little shell bubble, whatever we live in, we're the ones responsible for creating the good and the bad.
- [18:40]
B
Yeah. I mean, if you just think about it bodily, like our conscious experience is made from inside our body. It's not. Yes. The world is out there, and it can intrude for sure in positive and negative ways. But ultimately, I mean, I was just talking to my, what, my fourth son yesterday. He's 14 years old. He's really complaining about weeding, and he's just like, but mom's making weed, and I don't want to. I hate weeding. It makes me so upset. And then I get, like, allergies, and I just get sick and I hate it. And I was like, okay, fair. Sometimes there's things we got to do in life, but you got an option. You can weed or you can weed and have a bad day. Which would you like?
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A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's good.
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B
And people don't realize it's an option. Like, you don't actually have to feel this way. I learned this really powerfully from one teacher of mine, Martin Wheeler. He's out in Holly, Beverly Hills area, runs. Gosh, I forget what it's Called Wheeler Systema. And he runs this show with jiu Jitsu guy. What is it? Higa Machado. Like, they have the same school. So I went out to go train with him, went out a couple times, and I had a private lesson with him, and he's working on some stuff, and he has me lay on the ground, and he starts walking on me and he starts doing stuff, and he takes the side edge of his foot, and he just stands all like 190 pounds of himself right on my belly button. So I'm on the ground, and I'm looking up at him, and my eyes probably bugged out, and I'm like, I can't breathe. My diaphragm is locked. And he looks down at me in his inimitable English accent, and he goes, you know, you don't have to make that noise. And I am under it. And I go. And it was the first time anybody had even given me the option. Like we don't have in society today. Most of the languaging is around validating your emotions and your feelings and your thoughts and your opinions. And my job is to invalidate people's emotions and thoughts and feelings. Because when you validate something, like you validate a parking ticket, you can stay parked. When you're looking for validation, it's because you want to stay put where you're at. You don't want to move. And my job is to be like, no, no, no, no, no. You don't actually need to feel bad about that. They don't even know that nobody gave them the option to be like, wait, I don't actually have to get dramatic.
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A
That's sympathy. That's sympathy. What you're talking about is when you give sympathy, you can sympathize people to death.
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B
Totally.
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A
That's. Yeah. So when you simply. You're giving sympathy to people, the more you can give them, it gives them that. That permission to stay where they are. You know, I just realized something, too, when you were talking about having that foot in your stomach. I lift. You know, I lift and work out and stuff. And as I'm getting older, you know, you get little pains and aches. And when I get up, sometimes if I'm sitting for a while or I hop out of bed and it's like a little sore or whatever. I always have to. I don't always have to, but I feel like I always make a noise like, oh. Like I'm looking to make sure my wife realizes that I'm sore.
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B
Isn't that crazy?
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A
And then she's going to say, oh, you okay? Or what's the matter? And this and that. And then I feel like, oh, yeah, this is, this is powerful stuff that people. I'm very, very refined and worked on and I've done my work, but I still have these things. And this is the time learner.
- [21:53]
B
It takes someone who has done that work to be able to be honest about that little thing.
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A
Yeah.
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B
You know, because we talk about honesty and there's like all these grades. I can be honest about big things, but can I be honest about the fact that that little noise I just made, I didn't actually have to make. I was doing it to manipulate somebody else's behavior so that I could get something out of it? Yeah, those are harder. That's, it's harder to see, let alone be honest about with somebody else.
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A
Think about, okay, well, doing it there. Where else am I doing this? And then turn your attention on how other people are doing it so that you're not manipulated.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Yeah. That's deep stuff, right?
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B
Yeah.
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A
We're talking martial arts.
- [22:31]
B
I mean, yeah, it is, it really is martial arts. I mean, all this stuff I learned, I mean, when I, when I do these five day retreats now, they're five days long and we basically, in these retreats, I'm taking people through. It's been a while since we haven't put one on in a year or so. So maybe we'll set up another one if there's interest. But they're like, in my mind, I go, I need to take a person through every possible situation in their nervous system that I can safely and have them discover, no matter where they're at, they're okay. And then they can look at other people and realize like, this person is fine. They just don't realize that they're fine. And so then they can chill out a little bit. But their discovery that they're okay in these retreats is like a huge thing because then they stop trying to manipulate people in order to kind of get their way or something. They just realize, like, I don't actually have to freak out about this. So we'll, we'll take them through. Like I'll, I'll work with them at first, which is like push ups and how holding a push up position for like three minutes, you know, and sometimes I'll have them go down, sometimes up. And I'm like, I don't really care if they succeed or not because what I want to know is what's their mental game? Like, what are all the Extras that they're adding to this. So they do three, three minutes on, on their knuckles, on a push up, on like a cement pad outside. And afterwards they're like, man, I didn't pay for this. I'm like, yes, you did. And on top of it then I'm like, but that's the thought that went in your head. I didn't pay for this. This isn't right. This person's doing something wrong. Man, I'm not as strong as that guy. Holy cow. I'll never be able to do this. If I can't do this, I'll never be able to fix this big problem in my life. I can't even do a push up and all of that stuff. And I go, none of that's necessary. This is the first 30 minutes. By the time they get to the venue, I have them on their, on their fists on the ground so that they can discover the link between. I just put you under physical duress and you did all the rest.
- [24:23]
A
Yeah, you know, we just, man, this is bringing up so many different things I could talk about. So I just had an event in Vegas this past weekend. We threw four events per year called Quantum Expansion. And I didn't hear people directly complain about anything, but then I heard, I always hear everything. Like, I always like people, you know, they're going to make sure that they share that they heard so and so doing this right? So, but like people complaining about not, not the event or not me or anything like that necessarily, but different things that are going on or that they had to pay for a drink here or there or so and so was rude to them, whatever it is. But people, people complain a lot. That's another thing. They complain a lot and they wonder why their life is not optimized and they're not expanding to the degree that they could potentially. That's one thought I had. And you can comment on
- [25:21]
B
what entertains you, trains you, right? I heard that somewhere. What you tune into, you turn into. And I've expanded that in a bunch of different ways in the book that I wrote about all this stuff. But in the end, well, if I'm entertaining myself with a way of looking at the world that sees everything as negative and attacking me, then I'm training to be a master at being a victim. And mastery at victimhood is very, very common these days. We've learned it. And the reason they don't understand why it goes differently is because they see through that lens everything happens to you. So all the good stuff must be happening to that person, not by that person. And that's the shift that they have to see. Like, oh, dude, I did that. Some of the hardest work that they have to do is recognize that the emotion that they're feeling. We have this phrase in English, right? He made me feel angry, or he made me angry or he made me upset. I'm like, really? Is that really what happened? And they can't see. And part of the training, I have to take them through the process of like, learning to separate the. The interpretation of what happened from the facts of what happened. He did that and then you felt anger. Those are observed phenomena. Did he inject that feeling in you? Like, did he like breathe on you in a way? Like something went through the air vibes and soaked into your skin. And then you were like, the hulk came out. Like, this was gamma radiation. Like, did. Did you actually observe that? And they, they're like, no. And then I have to be like, so then what did you actually see? And that's when it starts to break down where they go, oh, my gosh. I didn't. I got angry. But I guess if somebody else had done that, it would have been. I'd have gotten angry. So I guess it's not them making me angry. Congratulations. I made me feel how I felt. Way to go. You did that all by yourself?
- [27:13]
A
Yep. And you know the other thing that we experienced, Regular plank. You talk about being on a push up position, but like regular plank on your elbows. I had a guy do it, lead a workout for the group, and beforehand I knew he was gonna do this plank thing to start the workout. And he said, mentioned something about five minutes. This is like weeks ago. And so I'm at the gym and I'm practicing more planks and working my core more than I usually do. And I was like, usually I do a core plank. I'll do a plank for a minute in between sets of lifting or something, right? And then I start to shake. Because your nervous system starts to shake as you get towards that minute. And then I said, well, I'm gonna go a little bit longer than a minute. Cause I gotta try to work up to five minutes. I gotta get as close as possible. So I started going to minute and a half, two minutes. And then I was like, that's it, two minutes. Okay. This is as far as I can go. I'm by myself, working out. We go to the event. We start off with the plank. He puts music on, loud music on. He's talking to us while we're in a circle. Doing planks. And I just kept going and going and told myself, like, I'm the man and I'm built different. And I started talking to myself and yelling out loud and all this other stuff.
- [28:16]
B
Right.
- [28:17]
A
And never, like, wanted to show anybody that I was feeling anything. Which is opposite of what I told you about when I'm getting off the couch or something like, oh, my wife's around. Right.
- [28:27]
B
So we choose our moment.
- [28:29]
A
Yeah. Well, eventually I just, I, I thought I was close to five minutes. I, I wanted to get close to five minutes. I know it's got to be just under five minutes. And I said, hey, mark that time. I'm going down. Mark that time. Because they weren't announcing that the timer wasn't seen. Right. And so when I got over there, I had done over eight minutes.
- [28:46]
B
Nice.
- [28:47]
A
And so the power, a couple things of. Obviously our mind, the energy of the people around you going into the same goal after the same goal that you add is exponential. It's not an addition, it's. It's exponential. And also having the competition and not letting, when you get into that mode of not wanting sympathy from anyone, but you're going to go forward and you don't need the sympathy four times as long.
- [29:11]
B
Yeah.
- [29:12]
A
That's not saying anything about me. That's saying about the, the actual. Process of doing that really, that gets you there.
- [29:22]
B
It's.
- [29:22]
A
It's just powerful. So. I love this stuff, man.
- [29:26]
B
Martin, Martin Wheeler, one of the things he had me do, he's like, okay, get into a push up position. He's like, okay, you're going to take one minute to go down and you're going to take one minute to come back up. And so I'm like, okay. And I'm. I did the one minute to go down just fine. That's easy, right? But my brain's already psyched out by the time I had the bottom. So we have to turn around. And I'm like, okay. And I start pushing up and I'm not budging. There's like no nothing in me. And I'm like. And I'm trying every possible way to maneuver and get myself, but I've only got to go up a millimeter. Right. Cause I can't just burst it.
- [29:59]
A
Right.
- [30:00]
B
I could have done that, but like to, to inch your way up.
- [30:03]
A
Oh, yeah.
- [30:03]
B
Over the course of a minute, I brought. Maybe I moved a couple millimeters, maybe I moved a centimeter. I don't know. It wasn't far. And finally he's like, okay, you can stop and it may had maybe been like a minute, 20 or something. And then he looked at me and he said, you know, you're strong enough. You've just built weakness into your muscles. That's what he said. You've woven weakness into your muscles with your thoughts. And I had to sit with that for a long time. I actually went out in the parking lot afterwards, and I think I cried for a bit because I was just like, I am so weak. Wow.
- [30:39]
A
Mentally.
- [30:41]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Mentally. To have him on one hand be like, you have plenty of muscle. It isn't the muscle that's the issue, Is it like you have decided to lose already? Yeah.
- [30:54]
A
Good stuff.
- [30:55]
B
That's got a lot of repercussions.
- [30:56]
A
Well, Bob, as we wind down here, I want to just know this question here. Answer this question. What did overcoming the issues that you had do for your marriage?
- [31:10]
B
Oh, wow. My wife never felt safe. She felt like I would protect her life. She. She trusted me with her life, but not with her soul. Because I wasn't a person. If I couldn't be, like, dependable on for myself, like, how could I be dependable for her? And so there was a level of emotional intimacy and relational intimacy that was not there. And then I, because I was dealing with my own stuff, I wasn't really as present as a father. So she had this sort of burden of recognizing, like, oh, wow, I married this guy. And after we talked about this maybe a couple years ago, like, within a year, she was like, ah, maybe I made the bad wrong decision marrying this guy. And it took her eight years where she was planning, like, exit strategies for the last couple years, like, do I leave when he's gone? Do I tell him and then leave, like, what? Where? It was pretty rough to go from that to, okay, this guy's on a journey, that's fine. But now he's here, he's helping with the kids. She had gone from just trying to micromanage everything just so she could feel like there was some sense of stability and control. And now when there is stability in the man, she's allowed to now start to relax some. And now we could date in a totally different way as a married couple.
- [32:38]
A
Yeah.
- [32:38]
B
And we could talk in a totally different way. Don't get me wrong, we still got all kinds of things to work out.
- [32:44]
A
Of course. Of course. Yeah.
- [32:46]
B
But. But the, you know, she's not like, by herself going, like, okay, well, I just am stuck with this instead. She's got a partner in crime.
- [32:55]
A
Yeah, yeah. Good stuff.
- [32:58]
B
Makes a huge difference.
- [32:59]
A
Good stuff. Bob all right, where can people go deeper with you to learn more?
- [33:01]
B
Bob so I got a podcast, alive and Free with Bob Gardner. Recently. I've been like on a sort of spiritual journey exploring some of the other stuff. But there's backlog of many years of episodes talking about all things addiction, anxiety, depression, you name it. That's all there. I got a book on Amazon and on Audible. I do the voices and all the Russian accents and everything else in the Audible. If you want a rollicking adventure with yours truly in your ears, you can check it out. It's called Built for Freedom Adventures through Depression, Anxiety, Stress, Stress, Trauma, Addiction, Pain, and our body's natural or innate ability to let go of them all. And then there's my website, thefreedomspecialist.com all
- [33:37]
A
right, go check it out. Bob, thank you so much for your time, your vulnerability today. I appreciate you being here, man.
- [33:42]
B
No, man, it's my pleasure.
- [33:43]
A
Mike, great conversation. Hang tight while I wrap this up, folks. That's this episode of the what do you Made of show. I hope you got something out of this episode to implement in your life, to make your life and those around you's lives better. Keep coming back. Hit the subscribe follow button. And also be that one.