Matt's Audio Letter of the Week

Alright, hey everyone. Welcome to this edition of the FBL, or the Feel Better Letter.

This is Matt.

Today, I want to talk about the illusion of choice, control, and free will.

And what I mean by the illusion of that is that a lot of people think change is just about deciding to do something and saying, "Oh, I'm choosing to do this," or, "I'm not choosing to do this."

We live with this idea that we just have free choice all the time, and all of this, right?

Now, I acknowledge that getting better is a decision, but it's a decision to change. It's not a decision to just stop engaging in unhealthy behaviors.

Because if that were the case, then anyone who dealt with any kind of unhealthy behavior, be it compulsions, rumination, avoidance, reassurance, or things like drinking, gambling, or any addiction for that matter, could simply decide to stop.

But the thing is, it's not just a decision.

See, what you have to understand is that you can't outrun your nervous system and your level of consciousness.

Your level of consciousness determines the behaviors you're going to do. And the more lower emotion you have stored in your system, the more you run from yourself, right? The more afraid you are of confronting your emotions and actually learning how to go through them, learning how to confront them, and doing all the work of unraveling all of that, the more you're going to be run by those emotions unconsciously.

That's why Jung said, "People will go to the ends of the earth to avoid confronting their own souls." And he said, "Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will run your life, and you'll just call it fate."

So a lot of people just say, "Oh, you know, I just have fear. I'm just an anxious person. It's just who I am. It's just my fate. It's just my destiny."

Not realizing they have the full ability to transcend it. Every single person.

There is no state of consciousness that can't be transcended, confronted, and gone through.

Now, it takes courage. It takes the willingness to admit, often, that you don't know how to do it. It takes the willingness to admit that you're afraid to do it.

And, you know, you can manage and cope and tell yourself that that is you doing the work.

And ultimately, this is where we have to get into the narrative of self-deception.

It's like, are you deceiving yourself in any way? Right?

Are you telling yourself, "Oh, I can change whenever I want," even though you've tried multiple times and haven't been successful?

Telling yourself that when you clearly haven't been successful requires more than just the decision to change itself. It also requires the courage to admit that maybe this isn't something you know how to do.

Maybe it's not something that you can just will your way through.

Maybe there is an element of, "I need guidance. I need support. I need community. I need accountability. I need these things that are going to actually help me facilitate this change."

Right?

And also, it's the courage to say, "Look, I'm not going to accept this as my fate. I'm not going to accept this as my reality. I'm going to literally figure out and implement what I need to create the reality that I want, create the reality that I know is possible for me, create the reality that I know I really desire for my life."

Because when you are operating from your lower emotion, you are not present, right?

Your lower emotion is always taking you from the past to the future in your mind. It hijacks the mind and ultimately guides your decisions and your behaviors.

This is where you have to really understand what taking back control really is.

Why TBC, or Taking Back Control, is called Taking Back Control is because the only time you're ever really going to be in control of yourself and your life—and moreover, where you're going in your life—is when you're actually able to find peace within yourself.

Because then you aren't making decisions from a skewed perception, trying to avoid or control a certain emotion that you don't want.

You aren't making decisions out of fear. You aren't making decisions out of resentment, guilt, contempt, or all of this junk that we carry around and operate from completely unconsciously.

And this is why, if you just tell yourself you're in control, that you can decide, and that you have the free will to do anything, you have to understand that you're, again, capped at your level of consciousness and your nervous system.

And that is the ceiling to the degree of control you actually have over your life.

If you just think about all the decisions you made—or let fear make for you, I should say—in your life, you would really begin to realize how out of control things really are.

And that's okay.

The first step is just to acknowledge that. And then the work begins.

And it's work that everyone can do.

So, just something to think about today. I hope this is helpful.

Again, if you're interested in doing this and integrating this, we'll have a link for an application down in the notes for TBC.

We have daily live groups. We offer an immense amount of support in integrating this into our lives, along with one-on-one messaging and the whole integration program.

So, if that's something that feels aligned with you, fill out an application and we'll chat.

Other than that, I hope you have a great day, and I'll talk to you guys soon.