Episode 1505: Interview with Liam Naden About Why a Life Without Fear is a Thriving Life

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining us on episode 1, 505 of the Inspired Stewardship Podcast.

[00:00:07] Liam Naden: Hello, I'm Liam Naden, and I challenge you to invest in yourself and invest in others, develop your influence, and impact the world by using your time, your talent, and your treasures to live out your calling. You know, having the ability to not just survive, but thrive is key.

[00:00:28] And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this, the Inspired Stewardship Podcast with my friend, Scott Maderer.

[00:00:45] And I was really confused because I said, how come when I used to really try hard and set goals and take every opportunity I could to learn more and study and really work hard and. Solve [00:01:00] every problem I could. Why is it that I ended up with a ton of problems in my life? Things not working very well.

[00:01:06] Scott Maderer: Welcome and thank you for joining us on the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent, and your treasures for your true calling. In the Inspired Stewardship Podcast, you will learn to invest in yourself, invest in others, and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.

[00:01:39] In today's podcast episode, I interview Liam Naden. I asked Liam about his journey from striving for success and having it all fall down around him, to finding success without the striving. I also asked Liam about how we are wired to not just survive, but thrive. And Liam also shares how living without fear is the key to truly [00:02:00] thriving.

[00:02:01] I have a great book that's been out for a while now called Inspired Living. Assemble the puzzle of your calling by mastering your time, your talent, and your treasures. You can find out more about that book over at inspiredlivingbook. com. It'll take you to a page where there's information and you can sign up to get some mailings about it as well as purchase a copy there.

[00:02:24] I'd love to see you get a copy and share with me how it impacted your world. Liam Naden is a trailblazing coach who brings together cutting edge neuroscience, psychology, and down to earth strategies to help people unlock their true potential, conquer challenges, and live a life of purpose and balance.

[00:02:44] His unique approach gets to the heart of how to succeed without the constant struggle. As the host of the Let Yourself Off the Hook podcast and coaching program, Liam shares practical insight on how to thrive naturally without the stress. He's also an [00:03:00] experienced marriage and relationship coach.

[00:03:02] hosting the Growing in Love for Life podcast and authoring the Growing in Love for Life series, a 20 volume collection of short books on marriage. In addition, Liam has created several transformational relationship coaching programs. Liam went from being a millionaire to losing everything virtually overnight and becoming homeless.

[00:03:21] But he bounced back to an amazing life, traveling the world, living on his own yachts, including eight years sailing through 15 countries in Europe, and now he's embarking on his latest adventure. Exploring Europe by Motorhome. Welcome to the show, Liam. Hi, Scott. Great to see you. Thanks. So for being here, the intro, I talked about a lot of the work you've done and you've had a pretty interesting journey to get where you're at today, but at the same time, I know, in a paragraph, there's no way I could really share the depth of the journey, you just hit the high points, talk a little bit more about, how did you go [00:04:00] from.

[00:04:01] quote, on top of the world, at least, from, at least it looks that way to losing everything to realizing, wait a minute, maybe I wasn't doing this the right way and need to be doing something different.

[00:04:13] Liam Naden: Yeah. Probably like most of the people listening or watching and maybe even yourself, I'd always been from as young as I can remember, one of these people who was a success driven person, I wanted to be the best that I could be.

[00:04:25] And I was prepared to work really hard and learn anything I could. really to have a great life. I didn't just want to settle for something mediocre. I wanted to be rich and I wanted to have freedom and I want to do lots of exciting things. And really for many years, that's exactly how I, that was the basis of my, the way I lived.

[00:04:44] I was always setting more goals. I had always had my own business. So I've had 18 different businesses in my life. And so I, Started off from universities with my own business and I worked really hard to build up my businesses and I achieved a lot of [00:05:00] success. I became a millionaire and beautiful home and lots of nice travel and all those sorts of things.

[00:05:06] And I'd also been a student of success. I'd been to all the, as many seminars with the great names of personal development and self help, about, about goal setting and motivation and, changing your beliefs, changing your subconscious mind, doing all these different techniques to learn how to be successful.

[00:05:25] And as I say, I achieved what I thought was success, if you like. But something really weird happened and I remember it was down to one specific day and I was, I just put the finishing touches on my dream home that I was building, wasn't quite finished but almost was, and it was this amazing house, absolutely enormous, and one of the things it had in it was a music room, because I'd been a musician earlier on and I'd always had this dream of having This style of house, building a house with a music room, but this particular day I sat down, I went and I sat [00:06:00] down in the music room and I looked out the windows and it had an amazing view out to the mountains.

[00:06:05] And it was a beautiful day and I was sitting there enjoying the sunshine. I wasn't enjoying the sunshine actually, but I was feeling the sunshine. And I said to myself, I remember thinking, I've done it. I'm living my dreams. All of my goals, I've reached all my goals. I always wanted to have this exact house.

[00:06:23] One that I designed and planned. It's got everything I want. I've got my own businesses. I can travel. I've got, I'm a millionaire. I can travel and do anything I want. How do I feel about it all? And what you would have expected, or what I expected, was to feel great, to feel really, satisfied that how much I'd achieved, because I really had achieved most, if not everything, of what I thought I really wanted.

[00:06:48] But instead of that, instead of feeling great and satisfied and grateful, I felt absolutely miserable. I was so unhappy. I was so stressed. I [00:07:00] was shaking. I remember with the stress in my life, because the reality was I still had a ton of problems. My marriage wasn't going well and I had all of these problems in my businesses and they weren't particularly big problems, but they were just constant problems.

[00:07:16] And I'd lived with this for years and I'm sure people can relate to this and, you're seeking success, but. It's like you achieve things and then something comes along and almost you've got another problem you have to deal with. Now I'd always learnt that problems are a natural part of success.

[00:07:33] That if you want to be successful, you have to learn how to overcome your challenges. You have to learn how to deal with problems. And problems are good, they make you stronger, they make you better and wiser. But that, all that didn't really help because I felt so miserable and I thought, Is this all there is?

[00:07:50] When do I actually get to experience success. How much money do I need to make? What needs to happen for me to be able to cut out all the problems and the [00:08:00] stress from my life? And I said to myself, maybe I'm going down the wrong track here. Maybe there's something I'm, I miss completely. And I actually said to myself, I'd be prepared, I think, to give up everything I have Give it all away, get rid of everything, if it means I don't lose my soul.

[00:08:18] Because really that's what it felt like. It felt like my life energy was being drained out of me. So I was in a really bad space, and the funny thing was, or not funny, but what happened next was, sometimes they say you have to be careful what you think about. Literally within weeks, I lost the lot.

[00:08:35] I lost the house with the music room. I lost my marriage. I lost my businesses. They all collapsed. I lost all my money and I ended up literally with nothing much more than the clothes on my back and a few minor possessions and I had to move back in with my elderly mother. and sleep on the sofa in the living room of her small apartment.

[00:08:56] So this was such a massive change, and I couldn't understand why it had happened to me. [00:09:00] In fact, there are two things I kept asking myself. The first one was, why is this happening to me? Why has this happened? This isn't on my goals list. I know how to set goals. I know how to use my mind for positive thinking and the law of attraction and all of these different techniques.

[00:09:15] This should never have happened. And the second thing I asked myself was, what do I do now? And both of those questions, I had no idea what to do. I had no answers. I didn't know why it had happened to me. And I didn't know what to do. I had no clue. I had nothing. I had no money. I didn't know anybody where I was.

[00:09:34] And what I didn't realize or what I actually did next was the key. And what I, and I figured out later, this is the secret, if you like, not on some sort of woo level, but on a physical practical level, what I did was something I would never have done if I hadn't reached rock bottom, and that was, I gave up trying.

[00:09:52] And I said, I'm not going to try anymore. That's it. I don't care what happens. I don't know why it's happened. I'm not going to try and keep figuring it out. I [00:10:00] don't know what to do. I'm not going to keep trying to figure it out. I don't have any energy left to give. And so I'm done. Now, I wasn't suicidal, but I was in a very low state, but I literally said, whatever happens, it can't get any worse than this.

[00:10:13] I give up. And from that moment, things started to change and things started to show up in my life. And I met a couple of people out of the blue who helped me get into my own business. Now I had no money, but I don't really know how it happened, but it all happened. And before I knew it, I was running my own business again and I was making good money and I was enjoying myself.

[00:10:36] And then another business opportunity came along. And I took that, and that worked really well. Then I had a new relationship show up, and that was working really well. And before I knew it, I was doing all sorts of amazing things that I never dreamt I'd be doing. For instance, I moved with my partner to Europe, quite, not so long after.

[00:10:58] And we bought a brand new yacht, and we spent [00:11:00] eight years sailing. Mediterranean and the Baltic and going to all these different places, all the while managing our businesses from the yacht. And I remember one day, another day, waking up in the Greek islands, on our yacht, it was a stunning day, stunning morning, in a beautiful bay, we were at anchor, and there were no other boats around, just us, and I went for a swim off the back of the boat, and I got back out, and I said to myself, this is it, this is what I've been looking for, all this time because I don't just have everything working really well for me in my life, but I'm actually able to enjoy it.

[00:11:36] I feel like my life's got purpose. I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing. And the weird thing was, I'm not dealing with any problems. My businesses, I've got two businesses that are going really well with me not being there. I'm in the Greek islands on a yacht and the businesses are working really well.

[00:11:53] I don't wake up in the morning facing a whole lot of problems. Things just go smoothly and I was [00:12:00] really confused because I said how come when I used to really try hard and set goals and take every opportunity I could to learn more and study and really work hard and solve every problem I could, why is it that I ended up with a ton of problems in my life, things not working very well and feeling, and in the end losing everything and just feeling totally stressed all the time, whereas now Everything's just working perfectly and the ridiculous thing was, or is, I said to myself, I'm not setting any goals.

[00:12:33] I don't have any goals. I'm not looking for any opportunities. I'm not cha I'm not looking for anything. But things are just coming along. Now it was all very weird and I said to myself, I need to figure out what I'm doing differently. Because I want to make sure this life carries on. It's so different to the other one, and I want to make sure whatever it is I'm doing differently.

[00:12:54] keep doing it. So I need to understand what I'm doing differently. And that took me down a whole new area that I'd [00:13:00] never studied or never been exposed to. And all of the personal development and spirituality and all of these other things that I'd studied, all the books I'd read and the courses I'd done, I'd never heard about this idea.

[00:13:11] about the fact that there's a natural approach to success. We're actually naturally biologically designed to thrive. And this isn't, as I say, a spiritual idea, although it is actually taught in spirituality. It's a biological idea. Nobody had told me about biology, about nature, about how it works. And what I realized was what I was doing was I was interacting with nature in a completely different way.

[00:13:36] And that was what was making things work in my life. I really do now is share this information with people, share what I learned, not only to help me or how I've applied it in my own life, but when other people get this idea and they use it too, they get remarkable results as well. So that's really my mission, is to help people realize that, a lot of what we've been taught about who we are and how things work on a physical [00:14:00] level, they're not actually quite true.

[00:14:01] And that's why, and you have to say to yourself. If I'm not getting the results I want, then maybe what I think, maybe there is a different approach. Maybe there's a something I'm missing here. I'd missed it for years and I was very fortunate to go through the experience of losing everything. So I had to, I was forced to take a different approach and then discover the right way to do it if you like.

[00:14:23] Scott Maderer: So a couple of things jump out to me that I want to circle back to, at the beginning it was interesting because you said you, you set out, you wanted to be rich. This was the word to use rich, do exciting things and have freedom. And that was the order you even put it in. And it sounds like you'd achieve success in that you were rich and you were doing exciting things.

[00:14:48] You're building your perfect house, all of these things, but it doesn't sound like you really had freedom. Even though you seemed to have freedom, but you didn't really have freedom. Is that, would you agree with [00:15:00] that? Or am I misunderstanding the early part of the journey?

[00:15:03] Liam Naden: No, absolutely right. But here's the reason why, and here's the thing. Most of us, why do we set a goal? When we say we want to be rich or we want to have freedom, what we're saying is we think when we get those things, we'll get what we really want. We don't want to be rich. We don't want to have freedom.

[00:15:22] We want the feeling that we think that will give us the great feeling of, having lots of money. And, but we don't realize that it's the feeling we're after. We just, so we go after all these things thinking that's what is going to give it to us. And that was exactly the track I was going. I thought when I'm rich, then I'll have.

[00:15:39] freedom and I'll be happy, and when I can do whatever I want, then I'll be happy. But it's not the way it actually works. What you've got to focus on, and we could talk about this, how this works biologically, what are you going to focus on is by, is recognizing that's the feeling that you want.

[00:15:55] Like I had in the yacht. That was the only difference. I was rich again. I was a millionaire [00:16:00] again. I had the freedom again, but I had a different feeling. And it all comes down to both how your brain works, and how your perception works. But we make the mistake of going after things that we think will give us the feeling, rather than realize when we focus on creating the feeling first, in a biological way, and we can explain how this works scientifically.

[00:16:20] When we focus on that, then what we need to reinforce those feelings is going to show up. And often they're different to what we think they'll be. We think we need to be rich. We think we need 10 million in the bank, or we need this marriage that we're in, or this relationship we're in. We think we need that to work for us to be happy.

[00:16:37] But when you do it the other way you, and you operate naturally, the right things show up in your life for you to really feel what you're after, what you're looking for, being happy, basically.

[00:16:47] Scott Maderer: And that's where I was going with that is, rich to me is a goal setting statement.

[00:16:52] I want X amount of money. I want to be a millionaire. I want to be a 10 millionaire. I want to be a hundred millionaire. And the reason what I tell people for [00:17:00] a goal, the reason that something is a goal is because as a beginning, a middle and an end, you, I want to do it.

[00:17:05] I'm working on it. I'm doing it. I've done it, or I want to do it. I'm working on it and I failed to do it. It's a beginning, a middle and an end where when you go towards the emotional things that you're talking about, what, the wise, the purpose the feelings, the contentment, the happiness, the joy, these sorts of things, those, Don't really have a beginning, a middle and an end, they become part of the state of being part of who you are, as opposed to, and I think that's one of the reasons that goal setting can set us astray so often is because, what happens, I've got a million dollars.

[00:17:41] I don't feel the way I want to feel, so I must need 2 million. And pretty soon you've got 400 million and you're still not happy, you just got to keep moving the goalpost as opposed to, like you said, recognizing that actually what you're after isn't that target, it's something else, it's something beyond that.

[00:17:58] Talk a little bit about how [00:18:00] as you began to study that, how you began to arrive at that distinction.

[00:18:04] Liam Naden: The first thing I realized, which I'd completely missed, is there are laws of nature. and they override everything. And this is really strange because I'd never really thought about nature, but if you think about it, if you're standing on top of a 10 story building and you're con and you are trying to convince yourself that you walk off and you're going to fly into the air, how are you going to get on doing that?

[00:18:26] Now you can meditate, you can pray, you can use every mind technique you can. You can think of that's been invented literally. You can try all of those things. You can write it down as a goal. You can visualize it and all these things. But the second you walk off that building, you're going to go straight down because it doesn't matter what else happens.

[00:18:46] The laws of nature override everything. And that's obviously the law of gravity. Try and stop your heart beating. You can't do it. Try and stop breathing for a while. What I didn't realize, and what I think most of us have missed, is that we [00:19:00] are in control. We are controlled by the laws of nature.

[00:19:02] We can't get around those. But fortunately for us, nature has, nature is designed for every living thing, not just to survive, but to thrive, to be its best. Because if you'd ask any biological scientist, what's the purpose of life? How is biological life organized? How is it designed? They would say the primary purpose of life, just like the law of gravity dictates you'd go down, there's a primary purpose, a law, that Overrides everything else and everything is driven and wired and designed to do whatever it can to survive So that's what every living thing is aiming for constantly.

[00:19:41] But what gives something the greatest chance for survival is Thriving the better an organism is the greater the chance it has for survival. The stronger it is, the healthier it is, it's obviously going to live longer. So nature's actually designed to ensure that everything thrives. [00:20:00] Everything is aiming constantly to be the best that it can be.

[00:20:03] And if you look throughout nature, that's what there's very little, there's been quite interesting research done on this more recently, but even Charles Darwin, when he was researching evolution he noticed this, that most of nature, has a hundred percent success rate. There's very little failure in nature.

[00:20:20] A tree might be planted in the wrong place, or a storm might come along, or there might be, some food, a famine somewhere, so the animals die. But most of the time, nature is really thriving, but without struggle and without stress. And that's the way it's designed, because that's What ensures that it has the greatest chance for survival.

[00:20:40] And nature has had millions, hundreds of millions of years to work out the best ways to make life as easy as possible, so that it has the greatest chance for survival. That is the purpose of nature. Now for humans, we have exactly the same biology and the same biological purpose. We're designed to be the best that we can be, so that we have the greatest chance for [00:21:00] survival.

[00:21:00] But for us, it doesn't just mean being as good as we can be physically, it almost, also means mentally and emotionally. In other words, the happier we feel, the better we feel emotionally. The greater our chance for survival, and science and medicine are showing this over and over that the less stress you have in your life and the more fulfilled you feel, the more creative you are, the more you contribute, and the healthier your body is.

[00:21:27] So we're designed to have the states. The question is, Why aren't we thriving? Why aren't we being the best that we can be? You ask a hundred people, ninety nine and a half of them will tell you they're not the best they can be. They've got problems, they're not happy, they're stressed, and they feel like they're living way below their potential.

[00:21:44] That can't be natural, so why is it happening? Why are we the odd ones out where we're not thriving? It comes down to we're not living life the way it's meant to be lived, and the natural way of living is to recognize that Every living thing has been given a machine to ensure that it thrives by [00:22:00] being the best that it can be, and that's a brain.

[00:22:02] The brain is not there just to keep your heart beating and your organs functioning and you breathing. It's to make sure that everything happens to you in your life so that you thrive, so you be the best that you can be, which means being happy. And if we're not, so that's what it's designed to do, like for every other organism.

[00:22:21] So if that's not happening, there's only one conclusion you can come to, either it's, or two, either it's faulty, either the brain is faulty. Which is hard to believe, because biologically we've survived all these millions of, hundreds of millions of years. If it was faulty, we wouldn't have survived. The only other conclusion you come to is this machine is not being used the right way.

[00:22:41] We're not using the machine, the brain, in a way that ensures that we thrive. Just like a motor car. If you, a motor car's a machine with a very specific one job. get you to where you want to go in the most efficient, easy and enjoyable way. But if you don't drive it, if you don't know how to drive it or if you drive it the wrong [00:23:00] way, what's going to happen?

[00:23:00] You're not going to get to where you want to go and you're going to end up with all these problems along the way and it's going to be stressful. It works exactly that with the brain. This was such a fundamental thing that I'd never thought about, no one had ever mentioned, but once I started to realize and study how the brain actually works, and I'm not talking here about the subconscious mind and all of those things, I'm talking about physically how it works, how it's designed to make us thrive, I discovered there are four different biological regions within the brain, they all have a role to play, and we're not using those four parts the right way, the inevitable result, problems show up in our life.

[00:23:37] But if we do use them the right way, the Bizarre as it sounds, you don't have problems in your life, and that's not just wishful thinking or a fancy idea, it literally is not only possible to live without problems in your life, that's the way you're biologically designed, is not to have problems. Problems don't help you extend your life they stress you and make you weaker physically, mentally, and [00:24:00] emotionally, and get you doing the wrong things and struggling.

[00:24:03] Struggle's not a natural part of nature. So that's really where I. Went with all of this and it took me to a very interesting place to understand the biology and how we're wired to thrive

[00:24:16] Scott Maderer: So when you think about the brain functioning that you were just talking about And I've heard different people name things different ways But for you, how do you label the four parts of the brain that you're talking about?

[00:24:30] Liam Naden: Essentially you have four, four biological functions because you have two brain states. Now if we think about, if we talk about this thriving state, being the best that you can be, what does it actually feel like? What does it actually mean on a biological level when you're being the best that you can be?

[00:24:46] And people have described the state as being in the flow. Being in the zone, we've all had those feelings from time to time where we're feeling everything's just falling into place. This is life is great. I feel wonderful. They don't last [00:25:00] very long, but we've had that experience. And athletes, artists, composers, creators.

[00:25:07] High achievers, they all talk about the state when things just all fall into place and are going really well. So what's actually happening in those states on a biological level? The first thing to realize is that's our thriving state. That's our natural state, and we're not designed just to be in that state every now and then.

[00:25:24] We're supposed to be in that state all the time, pretty much, with one exception, which we'll talk about. So your natural state is this thriving state. Feeling like everything is going well in your life. Everything is flowing. There's no resistance. There's no stress and problems. The right people are showing up.

[00:25:41] You're making the right decisions. And what happens on a brain level when you're in this state is you're activating what I call the creative brain, which is located right in the very center of your head. This is a physical location. And the creative brain, as the name suggests, this is where your creativity comes from.

[00:25:58] It's your imagination. [00:26:00] It's your intuition. It's where you get those gut feelings from, that little voice within, that you don't know why, but you're, you know you should do something or not do something, that little voice is telling you. It's where you get the, your inspiration or your new ideas from.

[00:26:14] So you're working on a problem and you can't figure out the answer and you're struggling away and then all of a sudden when you're not even thinking about it, you suddenly get the answer and you go, where did that come from? It's where creative people like artists and musicians, they hear the music and they write it down as they often describe.

[00:26:29] They all say they don't know where the music came from, it came from somewhere. It came from activating, really accessing an infinite intelligence, if you like, through this part of your brain. So all of these resources are what you need to thrive. And that includes, this is where you know if you have a problem, you know the answer to it.

[00:26:48] You know what to do, and you do it. It's where your motivation comes from. So this is our natural creative state, but there's another state that most of us are activating most of the time, which blocks [00:27:00] off this creative state. And it's what I call your survival state. And that's the state that is biologically designed for only one purpose, and that is to get you to fight or, that we call it the fight flight mode.

[00:27:12] It's when you shut down all your creative resources and you react to a danger. And it's there simply as a weapon. to protect you if an unexpected danger comes into your life. So the way you're supposed to live is you're supposed to live naturally in your creative state, your thriving state. But if your brain recognizes as a threat to your survival, something that could harm you, like a long time ago, as a lion behind the rock, for instance, it switches brain states and it activates this fight flight mechanism, which is part of the survival brain, which is located at the back of your head, gets you to react.

[00:27:47] to, and focus on that one problem or that one danger, and you either, if it's a lion, you run away, or you shout for help, or you stand and fight, whatever it is, all those things that you do, that you react to. But we don't [00:28:00] realize that in that state, if we activate that part of the brain, We're shutting down the creative brain.

[00:28:06] We no longer have access to our creativity, our problem solving ability, our resourcefulness, our motivation, our insights, awareness, and we can't see opportunities. So the question becomes, how do I make sure I stay in that creative state and stop activating the survival state? Now, obviously the survival state's useful if you have got, maybe not a lion coming towards you, but if someone looks like they're going to hit you, or if you're a car, you're in the way of a car, that's what it's designed for.

[00:28:36] But those things might only happen once or twice in your life, if ever. So we're not really designed anymore, it's not necessary to use this state, but most people are using it all the time, and here's how they're using it. What activates that state, and shuts down this creative state, is fear. Fear is a signal from your brain saying there's a danger coming into your life, and the [00:29:00] way it does that, it's through another part of the brain, which is the emotional brain.

[00:29:04] Does it in the form of chemicals, hormones or neurotransmitters, that it floods your system with? and you feel stressed. All that is a sign that your brain has recognized that this is something that's a threat to your survival or something that could harm you. So it instantly puts you in reactive mode to fight off that danger so that you can go back and it shuts down that creative state.

[00:29:26] But you're only supposed to use this on the odd occasion when there's a real threat to your survival. But what people don't realize is when they feel fear and the other things that Sides of fear, which are stress, worry, anxiety, frustration, anger, sadness, all those emotions are actually caused by a subconscious fear.

[00:29:47] And your brain is saying there's something that's going to harm you. But we don't realize that when we feel stress worried and all those negative emotions, we're literally activating the wrong brain state. It's called the sympathetic [00:30:00] nervous system. And we're shutting down the parasympathetic nervous system, which is our creative state.

[00:30:06] And we can see what the problem is. Most people, what are they doing? They're feeling stressed, unhappy, frustrated. Lots of problems and they're trying to figure out what to do using the wrong part of that using this part of the brain which is not designed to It has no clue on what your goals should be.

[00:30:22] It doesn't know what you want. It doesn't know what you need to be happy. It doesn't know how to solve any of your problems. It doesn't, it's not designed to do any of that. It's just designed to not even think, not to pay any attention at all, other than just react to an immediate threat to your survival.

[00:30:37] So somehow what we have to do, is we have to realize we're using the brain the wrong way. We've got to do everything we can, and this is the core of what I teach, to stop activating the wrong part of the brain. And the more you stop and you shut down this survival part, and you, and there are people how to do this, there's two primary things you need to focus [00:31:00] on.

[00:31:00] But essentially, when you start to learn to live in your creative state, that's when you can solve your problems. And that's when you can start doing the right things. And it's also when you can see If you're supposed to have goals, which most of the time you're not, but you can see what you should be doing and where you should be heading.

[00:31:17] You can see opportunities. You get inspired with new ideas. All of the good stuff comes from this part of the brain. But when you're struggling, when you're frustrated, it's not going to happen. You're going to stay stuck, as I did for many years. I was stuck because I was chasing after things. How could I possibly know what I wanted?

[00:31:36] When I was stressed, because I was asking a part of my brain that's like a 10 year old, or maybe a 15 year old boy, knows how to fight, but it doesn't know anything else, and it's not supposed to know anything else. So of course I was stressed, and unhappy, and not satisfied with the results that I had, because they weren't really what I was supposed to be getting.

[00:31:54] They weren't really the things that were going to make me happy, and make me fulfilled, and give me a life without problems, [00:32:00] because I was blocking off the part of my brain that knew all of that stuff.

[00:32:03] Scott Maderer: The obvious question is we've all experienced those flow states and those states where you're in that, that higher creative state.

[00:32:12] But like you said, most people don't spend very much time there. So what are the things that block us from being in that state more often? Or conversely, how can we begin to move towards being in that state more often?

[00:32:26] Liam Naden: I think we recognize That's the name of the game. The name of the game is to eliminate fear from your life, because fear is the trigger.

[00:32:34] Now, obviously, you do need to, we're actually only born with two fears. I don't know if you're aware of that. There's only two things we're afraid of when we're born. So there are only two natural fears that we have. One is the fear of loud noises, and the other is the fear of falling.

[00:32:47] Every other thing that we learn to be afraid of, we learn through our life. And that's the problem, is that we've taught our brain to be afraid of all of this stuff that it doesn't need to be afraid of. So your wife comes along and says she wants a divorce, [00:33:00] and your brain thinks that's a terrible usually it says, if you feel stressed, it's your brain telling you that's a problem, that's bad.

[00:33:07] Your brain's not saying to you, actually you've been in a bad marriage for 30 years and maybe this is a good opportunity to really move on. That, that, that's a possible scenario. But we need to realize that fear is the enemy, and it doesn't matter the justification. It's a little bit like if I came to you and said, Here's a glass of liquid and I'd like you to drink it.

[00:33:26] And you said, of course, what is it? And I said, it's hydrochloric acid. And you would say, I'm not going to drink that. And I'd say, why aren't you going to drink it? And you say I know it's got what it's going to do to me. And I said, actually it's not that bad. And if you have faith and you believe, and here's a, you visualize that it's not gonna harm you, you're gonna be fine.

[00:33:44] And you say, look, I dunno what your planet you want, you obviously don't understand what the stuff is and what it does to me if I put it in my body. So no way am I going to take it, even if I used the stick with you and said, if you don't drink it. You're going to lose everything you have in your life, all of your friends, all of your [00:34:00] family, no one's going to love you for the rest of your life, and all your, everything you own.

[00:34:04] You're still going to say, look, it doesn't matter what justification you give me. I don't, there's no way I am going to touch that stuff because I know that if I do, life, that's it. I'm finished. Certainly going to harm myself if not kill myself. That's the point of understanding we need to get to with fear.

[00:34:23] To realize it doesn't matter what the justification. Because people say to me, Oh, it's all really well for you, Liam, you have this great life and say you've got no problems and but you don't understand my situation. I've got all these real big problems in my life and there's all the big problems in the world.

[00:34:38] You can't tell me just to ignore those and ignore everything, when I ended up homeless, that's a big problem, so I learned the hard way that fear, you have to get, you can't justify holding on to fear and the funny thing was when I, and I'm getting around to what to do, but it's really, it's the most important thing is to understand this because when you [00:35:00] do know Then you can go in the right direction of learning the right things to do, because you know the goal.

[00:35:05] The goal is to eliminate fear in your life, except when it's absolutely necessary, which might only be once or twice in your entire life, if that. So once you know that, you realize, and interestingly enough, actually, when I started to see that fear, biologically, is the blocker of your thriving state. I thought, where have I heard this before?

[00:35:26] And I remembered from my Christian upbringing, this is what the Bible teaches. It says 365 times in the Bible, be not afraid. And it also says endlessly in other places, have faith, believe, allow, all of these things. And they're not actually saying it as a nice idea and just to make you feel better. This is a biological instruction.

[00:35:49] What God, if you want to take a spiritual or religious approach to this, what God is saying to you is, I want to give you everything you need to thrive, and I've given you everything [00:36:00] you need. I've actually given you everything you need to thrive, including a machine. This is how it works. But if you're not going to use it the right way, I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do.

[00:36:10] I've given you the machine, I've given you everything you need, and it will be provided for you if you allow it to be provided, if you use it the right way. It's a bit like saying I've given you a motor car. It's not my fault that, and I've told you how to drive it. It's not my fault if you don't drive it right and therefore end up with problems.

[00:36:27] So it's taught throughout spiritual traditions as well. So when we understand this, when we say fear is the enemy, fear is what I have to really address in my life. The question becomes, what's causing the fear in my life? And it's triggers. And there are two sorts of triggers. One is external triggers.

[00:36:45] And most of us go through the day, and we feel bad, and we feel stressed, and we don't really know why we feel stressed. Sometimes we might say it's because I thought about that thing or I had that conversation with somebody. But a lot of the time we don't even know why we feel [00:37:00] stressed. But what's going on in our environment, there's all sorts of things that are triggering our brain on a, if you like, not on our conscious awareness level, that are triggering this part of the brain to suddenly say, look, there's a threat in your, to your, there's a threat to you here right now.

[00:37:15] Get into survival state and get rid of the threat. In other words, feel stress, worry, and anxiety. And if you don't know what it is, or if it's not real, even, a lion's, if it's a lion coming to you, that's real. But someone telling you, you might lose your money, or you're not going to be happy. You can't deal with that because that's not a real threat.

[00:37:34] But your brain is telling you that it is. So the first thing, the real trick is to get, eliminate the triggers. And start, and I have a whole, this is a lot of my coaching is helping people identify all the things in their life that basically anything that makes you feel bad. So here's a few obvious ones.

[00:37:52] Watching the news. How does watching the news make you feel? Forget what's on it, forget whether it's the truth or not, or whether [00:38:00] you need to know it. How does it make you feel? Does it make, because it makes you feel bad. Bang. You've activated the sympathetic nervous system, you've activated your survival brain, and you're going to stay stuck.

[00:38:12] How does a conversation with someone make you feel? How does a relationship with someone make you feel? How does doing a particular job or business or part of your business. How does that make you feel? If it makes you feel bad, it's a signal from your brain saying for some strange reason it's a threat to your survival, it could harm you, but it's going to keep you stuck.

[00:38:33] So you need to eliminate the triggers. And sometimes they're small ones like switching off the news or, saying to someone you're having a conversation with, I'm sorry, I've got something else I need to do and getting yourself out of the conversation. Sometimes it's bigger things like. this business or this job or this relationship or this place that I'm, where I'm living or, whatever it is, I really need to question it.

[00:38:54] If my brain is there to make sure that all the good stuff happens to me, and not just for [00:39:00] me, but for everyone in my life, all those good things that happen, I'm going to thrive if I just trust, allow, have faith, and be not afraid. Then maybe I need to question whether this trigger, or this trigger I need to move on from it or eliminate it from my life.

[00:39:14] So something could be difficult, but when you think about the glass of hydrochloric acid, they're not that difficult. They can be at the time, but when you understand this, you realize your life is at stake and the other sort of trigger. So they're the external ones. And the other sort of trigger is a little bit more difficult to deal with.

[00:39:29] I have a process called brain rebalancing, which addresses this, which is. You've taught your brain all these ideas and you have all these thoughts and most of them subconscious. You have all these subconscious fears, things that you're not even aware of that you're afraid of, but your brain knows they're there.

[00:39:45] So all of these things are going on inside your head, and that's triggering this fear response as well. So you need to get in and dig all those out, and they're all the things that we've picked up our entire life, that are all completely wrong about our, about life in general, about us. That [00:40:00] life's hard, life's a struggle, problems are natural, problems are good, everyone's got problems.

[00:40:05] You have to really work hard for everything that you have, and you have to earn things, and life's really unfair, and other people can harm you. None of those things are true. And again, it says, again, in the Bible, it says do not worry about what you shall eat, drink, and wear. This will all be provided for you, just like it is for the birds of the air and all throughout the rest of nature.

[00:40:30] And how much greater are you? Now, it doesn't say if you want anything, you have to work for it, earn it. You have to set goals. You have to try really hard. You have to, push and you have to overcome obstacles. It says it will be provided for you. And that's the way nature works. Everything is provided.

[00:40:46] Every other living thing, if it wants food, it finds food. As long as the environmental conditions are okay, it'll find food. We're the only ones who struggle. So we need to realize [00:41:00] that when we do this, life becomes a lot easier. We become a lot more productive because that's the way it's supposed to be.

[00:41:07] Scott Maderer: So I've got a few questions that I like to ask all of my guests, but before I ask those, is there anything else about the work you do or the message that you share that you want to make sure the listeners hear?

[00:41:19] Liam Naden: I think it's just this core idea, and I know I go on about it, but but it's such a simple idea that we miss, we, we over complicate things, we over think things, and that's all of this over complication and over thinking is a function of using the wrong part of our brain, because that's the part that's frantically trying to figure stuff out, rather than seeing naturally what needs to be done.

[00:41:38] The real message is stop overcomplicating things. Come back to a simple biological understanding of how we're naturally designed, and then everything else, as it says in the Bible again, seek first the kingdom of heaven, and the kingdom of heaven is within you. Seek first to use your brain the right way, and everything else will be provided.

[00:41:59] It [00:42:00] really is, it's simple. Not necessarily easy because we've had a lifetime of wrong information, but it is simple.

[00:42:07] Scott Maderer: So my brand is Inspired Stewardship and I run things through that lens of stewardship. That's one of those words that means a lot of things to me, but I've learned over the years it means different things to different people.

[00:42:19] So when you hear the word stewardship, what does that word mean to you?

[00:42:24] Liam Naden: I guess actually what it means to me is, I guess a slightly maybe spiritual or religious element is that we are here as protectors, guardians, or really should I say the, to be the greatest expression of something that is infinite.

[00:42:42] If you think about a God. A God or infinite potential can only be expressed through something in this physical world, in other words, expressed through us. So we are the stewards. We are the protectors. We are the guardians of something much greater than what we think, than [00:43:00] something infinite that can flow through us as it does through the rest of nature.

[00:43:04] And I think we have not only that responsibility, if you like, but We should become aware and understand that's who we are. We're not just some weak, fragile thing. We're actually part of an infinite intelligence, and we need to protect that and nurture that because that infinite intelligence develops and grows through us.

[00:43:27] Scott Maderer: So this is my favorite question that I like to ask everyone. Imagine for a minute. Liam, that I could invent this magic machine and with this machine, I could pluck you from where you are today and transport you into the future, maybe 150, maybe 250 years. But through the power of this machine, you were able to look back and see your entire life, see all of the connections, all of the ripples, all of the impacts you've left.

[00:43:51] What impact do you hope you've left in the world?

[00:43:53] Liam Naden: The funny thing is, I don't really have any aspirations for anything other than just to be. [00:44:00] the best channel I can be, what I'm supposed to be doing. And I talk about in some of my work, which people will find on my website, a really cool concept, which is this whole idea that goal setting isn't natural.

[00:44:12] And spiritual traditions, Buddhism talks about this a lot, that desire is the enemy. And the reason they talk about that is When you live in the natural flow of life, you don't really have any aspirations for anything other than just being the best that you are right here and right now. In other words, having the best expression of yourself.

[00:44:34] You don't have expectations or projections about what you think should happen, what you want to happen. You just allow what's supposed to happen, and you know that the best things are happening here right now. And this comes into these things people talk about, for instance, mindfulness, being in the present.

[00:44:51] And that's really what it comes down to. And I guess without trying to avoid your question, I don't have any vision for who I will be in the future. I only have a [00:45:00] vision of who I am right now. And that is just doing my best, being the best and being in the flow of my own life and allowing whatever's supposed to happen to unfold.

[00:45:11] Because here's the problem. If someone had said to me when I was lying on my mother's sofa. Liam, what your ultimate goal is, what's going to make you sing, if you like, and thrive, is you're going to be traveling around the world, you're going to be living on your own yachts, and you're going to be living in motorhomes, and you're going to travel all around the world with a wonderful partner, and you're going to learn all about the brain, and you're going to be spending all this time teaching people all around the world a more natural way to live, the natural way to thrive, not in some woo way, but in grounded in science and practicality, and you're really going to help people in a big way.

[00:45:46] And you're going to be talking to people like, people on podcasts, like a gentleman called Scott, and you're going to do all these things. Now, if someone, if there was some way I knew that, I would have said that's absolutely insane. For two reasons. One [00:46:00] is I didn't know that I could ever do it. And the second reason is I didn't even know that's what I wanted.

[00:46:05] And I think that's the problem. We don't, we think we know what we want, but it comes back to what we were talking about right at the beginning. You have this idea of what you want, but it's based on fear, stress, and limitation thinking I need that. I want that because when I get that, then I'll be happy.

[00:46:19] But that can never be what you truly want because it's coming from the wrong part of your brain. You're using the stress part of your brain, the limited part to try and figure it out. So when you release all of that and say, I don't know what I want, and I don't need to know what I want because my brain is just going to show me what I need and want at the right time.

[00:46:36] Then you actually just release yourself to enjoy the only thing that exists, which is this present moment. And knowing that your brain, this thriving machine, it's going to make sure that everything that happens for you to thrive, if you let it do its job.

[00:46:51] Scott Maderer: You can find out more about Liam Naden over on his site. That's liamnaden. com. Of course, I'll have a link to that over in the show [00:47:00] notes. Is there anything else you'd like to share with the listener?

[00:47:03] Liam Naden: I guess the thing, I hope people go to my website. I don't hope they go to my website.

[00:47:08] I know that if it's right for them, if they want to find out more about this, that they will, because, if people are listening and they have this little feeling in their voice, maybe there's something in what Liam says, maybe you're not feeling that, but I really encourage people, when you get that little voice within you, which says, I should really check that out, whatever it is, Just do it because that's your creative brain trying to break through and show you not on any sort of Logical predictable way because it might be an illogical thing that you are you're called to do But just as the Bible says have faith believe trust don't do anything stupid or rash But if you just got a little voice that says just do that little step at a time, and just see where it leads you, you'll find when, the more you do that, the more things start to flow in your life, the more right things start to happen, and the more you let go and trust in the process, because you understand this is how it works, And the more [00:48:00] smoothly everything goes, as I say, it's not going to be necessarily what you expect, but it is going to be the right thing.

[00:48:05] And that's when you look back on your life and you say, wow, everything turned out exactly perfectly. And what an amazing life I've been living.

[00:48:20] Scott Maderer: Thanks so much for listening to the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. As a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen. But act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you enjoyed this episode please do us a favor. Go over to inspiredstewardship.

[00:48:43] com slash iTunes rate. All one word. iTunes rate. It'll take you through how to leave a rating and review and how to make sure you're subscribed to the podcast so that you can get every episode [00:49:00] as it comes out in your feed. Until next time, invest your time, your talent, and your treasures, develop your influence, and impact the world.