Stop Working to Earn Freedom — Lead With Freedom

Show Notes

In this episode, John Douglas talks about why so many hardworking men still feel stuck even when they are doing everything right.

He breaks down the idea that freedom is not something you earn later, but something you learn to live now.

Instead of constantly reacting to pressure, expectations, and responsibilities, this episode focuses on leading from within. It is about understanding your identity beyond titles, letting go of fear-driven patterns, and building a sense of control that does not depend on external success.

If you have ever felt like you are working hard but still not free, this episode will shift how you see it.

Learn more: https://www.derunation.com

Timestamps

00:00:00 — The Inner Game of Leadership
 Mastering your inner world vs chasing external success

00:01:22 — The Flawed Belief About Freedom
 Why waiting for “someday” keeps you stuck

00:02:21 — Freedom as a Way of Life
 Shifting from future thinking to present living

00:03:23 — Your Default Emotional State
 How your internal state shapes your reality

00:04:23 — Working from the Inside Out
 Creating results from within, not reacting outside

00:07:43 — The Cost of Survival Mode
 Success at the expense of health, family, and peace

00:08:42 — Mastering Yourself for Peace
 Focusing on what you can actually control

00:10:50 — Working With Life, Not Against It
 Alignment vs ego-driven resistance

00:12:09 — The Million Dollar Question: Who Am I?
 Identity beyond roles, titles, and expectations

00:13:10 — Understanding the Ego and Status
 How ego quietly drives your decisions

00:16:10 — Spiritual Growth as “Unbecoming”
 Letting go of fear and limiting beliefs

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

If we believe that you know we need to work hard and grind it out and build something solid, and then we get freedom, like once we achieve a certain level of success, then we'll be free. You're already off to a loss, I'm afraid to tell you. I am your host, John Douglas, and founder of Daru. This space is for hardworking men building businesses, carrying responsibility, and providing for their families who feel they should be freer. You see, the world has changed, and leading through hard work and long hours now limits a man's influence. The new way is mastering the inner game of leadership so you can carry it well, enjoy what you're building, and still feel free. Deru is leadership for the 21st century. And you're very welcome to this second episode. And this episode is all about mastering that inner game of leadership. And so we're going to talk what is mastery, what is the inner game, and so that you can basically become aware of what it is that you might need to change within yourself to experience more freedom in what you're building and what you're growing and in life in general. So I want to start with something that I discovered last autumn, and that is I realized a lot of the guys I was working with, they wanted to build freedom. And they had started a business and worked their asses off to build freedom for themselves, for their family, to have work freedom. But the big but here is how they were thinking and working were actually working against themselves. How they were thinking and working actually were keeping them trapped in the rat race that they've been trying to escape. And so it's one thing to build something on the outside that can give you freedom, but it's a whole different game to actually experience it and live it. And so our beliefs are funny things because if we believe that you know we need to work hard and grind it out and build something solid, and then we get freedom, like once we achieve a certain level of success, then we'll be free. You're already off to a loss, I'm afraid to tell you. Because belief is a powerful thing, and if your belief is that freedom will come someday, well then your body is only living and your presence is only in the now. And someday and later do not exist in experience. What you experience, you experience right now, and so believing that freedom is something that will come in the future is flawed because it always feels like it's just about to come. The next opportunity will take us to the next level, and then we'll be free. I know it's busy right now, but you know what, it's gonna calm down in a couple of months, and then I'll have it a bit easier. These are lies that we keep telling ourselves. So what we need is a better idea, we need a better idea to believe from and to think life into. And that idea is that that I want to share with you today, is that freedom can be a way of life. And just to prove that freedom can be a way of life, just think about the pressure and the stress that you've gone through in life. Like where is your default state that you experience? How would you describe your energy or your feeling or your emotion over the last couple of months? Is it energized, enthusiastic, confident, certain, powerful? Or does it feel a little bit more like busy, drained, burnt out, guilt, isolated? Because that energy you carry is what you're really experiencing. And so all we need to do, if you can live from a negative experience or a drain an energy that drains you, then it's just as easy to live from an energy that energizes you. And all it requires is conscious effort, some conscious thinking, some conscious realization. And so I want to share with you this episode because this is mastery, it is not about just you know being good at something. For me, it's something much deeper than that. It's the consequence of having that mastery. And mastery for me is about that freedom, having that freedom. And one of the laws of life is that whatever happens within happens without. So everything grows from the inside out. You think of a seed, an acorn is planted in the ground, and then it sprouts, and then you know, a couple of hundred years later it's a fully grown, mature oak tree. It started within the seed, and the seed expresses expressed itself through its environment and through life, and grew into this big, beautiful, magnificent oak tree. And all life starts like that. I'm from a farm, and uh we have lambing season here in springtime. They all start with a fertilized egg that through the gestation period grows into a lamb, and then the lamb obviously is born and then it's grown and then it lives. And so life happens this way all the time. And too often we are programmed and conditioned to let the outside control the inside, and so we're living from the outside in, not the inside out. And when you live from the outside inwards, that's not mastery, that's reaction, and so living from the outside inwards is causing you to be a plating for your environment. So instead of uh a strong grounded man that's shaping that has the power to shape his reality and has the power to influence others without force, you could call this the law of attraction, and so instead of having that, you end up with the law of repelling. So the things you actually want, you keep repelling them because you're working from the outside in and not the inside out. This is a whole game changer, and also the thing about working from the outside in is that there's so much going on in life, like just think of and think of your own life. You have your job, your business, your family, your community, your friends, your family, your health, your growth, your physical environment, your car, you have your local town or village, and then you have wider things beyond that, things that are happening in the world. The economy, politics, war. We have so many things going on in life. And guess what? All the future is unknown and uncertain. It's a complete unknown. There's certain things we know. We know it's probably going to be sunny tomorrow morning, or at least the sun will rise, whether we get to see it or not. But we know different things like that, we know that those natural rhythms and seasons. Well, that power that's behind all them is the same power that's in you. But when you're working from the outside in, you don't get to experience that. You just you you're using it to react. So you're basically using it the same way an animal would react to fear in its environment, you're basically maybe one or two levels above that. And mastery is about overcoming that and rising above that totally, so it doesn't own you anymore. Because a lot of the mastery is about ownership, and so who owns who on the inside of you? Time and time again, I've talked to men who are running a business, and they say, I feel like the business is own owns me rather than me owning the business. And I might ask them, How long has this been going on for? Well, it's always been that way. These are guys that are in business maybe 20 years. So I'm not saying that you can't survive like that if you don't work from the inside out, because that's exactly what you are doing, is you are surviving. But it comes at a cost. Success in survival mode comes at a cost, and it often comes at such a big cost that it you start to question whether the success itself was even worth it in the first place. And so one of my big missions is not about helping men achieve more, because I believe they have the capability, capability to do that anyway. It's helping them achieve it differently, helping them achieve it with freedom and not achieving, you know, achieving it for freedom. Because achieving it for freedom usually comes at a cost to your health, to your family, to your finances, to everything. So if you want to integrate your life better and kind of master your life better, you need to start with inside. Because when you see all these things we have in our own environment that I just listed out a few minutes ago, when it comes to inside, there's just you. There's your thoughts, there's your emotions, there's your actions, there's your habits, your behaviors, your disciplines, your willpower. It's just really just you. So instead of thinking of a million things that you have to control or try to think about, you just have to think more about yourself, but not in a self-wallowing or self-pity way, in a self-reflective way, to see where am I actually going well and doing well, and where am I where do I still feel owned by something? And so when I talk about the word freedom, I'm really talking about peace, peace of mind. And I'm sure as a leader in a business, you're probably thinking, I would love to have more calm and peace in my day, instead of the chaos and the busyness that exists there. And so the only way you can get that is by inner mastery, mastering the inside, so that nothing owns you anymore. And I'm not talking about escaping responsibility. That's often what you know, freedom as a reward, that mentality is trying to escape responsibility because you're trying to make your enough success to where you can say, I don't need to work anymore, I don't need the money anymore, or I don't need I've earned my money, or I've got to a certain level. That's escapism, and you feel you need to earn it and prove your way there, and that's suffering. What I'm talking about doing is making freedom a way of life, making that peace of mind a way of life by nothing owning you. So you own the responsibilities, but you let go of the outcomes. You start to work with life and not be working against life. Because the irony of working with life or working against life is that when you're working with life, you're actually working with yourself. And the only way you work with yourself is that you know yourself, you understand yourself. And I'm not talking about who you think you are, I'm talking about who you really are. Who are you deep down in the depths of your soul? I'm talking about that man, I'm talking about that potential. So working against life is actually working against yourself. Because if we think about where does pressure come from? We might say it comes from the deadlines or the outcomes or something that's happening around us, but all it is is our interpretation of that event and of that situation, and that our our awareness of that, the lens, the perception with which we see these events and situations, that's what basically tells the story. And the story is one of pressure, the story is one of you know, I need to, I'm trying, I should be. They're all ego talk. So working against life really is stemming from ego and fear. Working with life stems from truth and alignment with the truth. So this is where you match who you think you are with who you truly are. And so therefore the the game becomes I need to know who I am. Who am I? And that's the million dollar question is who am I? Who am I behind being a father, behind being a husband? Who am I without wearing all the hats that I wear in business? The business owner, the fixer, the problem solver, the therapist some days, I'm sure, the str the strategic guy, the strategist, the leader. You wear all these different hats. But who are you behind all those things? Because they're just titles that you give yourself, roles that you give yourself in life, and you should give yourself because they ground you and they keep you focused and they keep you driven. That's great. But who are you behind all that? Who am I behind all that? Because if I don't know the answer to that, I can't align with that. And if I can't align with that, then I can't work with myself. And I can't work with myself, I'm gonna work against life, and I'm gonna it's gonna feel like a battle, it's gonna feel like competition, it's gotta feel like pressure all the time. Because it owns me, because I don't know myself. And so I want to touch on ego for a moment because a lot of a lot of men that maybe haven't worked on themselves before, they think when they think of ego, they think of the guy that thinks he knows it all and thinks he's the best and thinks he's the greatest, you know, that cocky, boastful, macho, bravado kind of uh image that we see. But that's just one way ego is expressing itself, and that's often an inferiority complex that's expressed through superiority. Somebody thinks they're better than you, better than others. But there's other people who have that inferiority complex, but actually they they suffer more from imposter syndrome and feel they're inferior to others. So you have that as well. So it's funny how it's the same thing at the root, but it's it's expressed differently, expressed in two different ways. But ego ultimately, you can't get rid of ego. You have ego, you are ego, but you're also something beyond your ego as well. But your ego is kind of like your identity and it's driven by status. Now, you might be thinking here, like that this isn't this does not, you know, it's not relevant to me. I can guarantee you now you're 100% driven by identity and a status. It might not be status to have the kind of car, to have the house, to have whatever, have some kind of success, but it's some status. It could be status as a father that you want to be a man of your word to your wife and to your kids. That's a status, that's an identity. And it might be like that in the business. I want to be a man of my word to my team and my clients. There's a status in that, and there's an identity in that too. And I'm not saying it's a bad thing, I'm just saying we need to be aware of it. Because if we're not aware of it, anything that challenges that status, we it owns us if it if we're not aware of it. So anything when we're aware of it, and something that maybe challenges our status, but because we're we're not owned by it, we are aware of that. We're just an ego, and this is the ego playing its game here, not actually me. And so when something challenges that status, let's say an event happens, like a client rings and they say they're giving out about something that's happened, the quality of the work. That challenges your status as a leader who is wants to be true to his word and you know, quality and excellence is up there as a value. But let's say let's say you know that client is always causing problems. They're the type of client that you you only took on the work because you needed it and you wouldn't do it again. So now you can react differently to that because you're aware that you're driven by status, and the status is driven by ultimately by fear, fear that you're not good enough, or you're not capable enough, or you're not worried enough, or the work you do isn't good enough, or capable enough, or wordy enough. And so we need to we need to be aware of these things so we can release them because in all of this personal development and growth and mastery, at one level you have personal development. This is the way I see it, and I've experienced it. And that is about like you set goals, you become more disciplined, you form new habits, and that's like gets you to a certain level, and it really it's a big benefit to your life. My life transformed through doing that. But I've realized in the last 12 months that the real game is deeper than that, it's inside of that, and it's more of a spiritual growth game. Because a spiritual growth game is not about becoming more, like personal development is about becoming your best, but spiritual growth is about unbecoming everything you're not, so you can be totally free. And what do we mean by that? Unbecoming those limiting beliefs that you carry from your childhood into your adult life. Now, these limiting beliefs and these fears that we carry, they're not written necessarily in our mind, in our head. So we can't see them, we're not on our conscious mind, we're not thinking about them all day long. Yet they they are subtly in the driver's seat. It's almost like there's a passenger in the seat, let's call it fear, and he's like a gun to your head, and he's telling you to drive a certain way. And so it's like you don't even know it exists. It's and one of the one of my clients lately said it's a little bit like Stockholm syndrome, where the kidnapper and the kidnapped form a relationship, and they almost like try to protect each other. And that's kind of uh relationship we have with that fear. Now, fear is a good thing, it keeps us alive when there's imminent danger, but most fear that we carry is illusional, it's doubt and worry of things that might happen in the future that don't even exist. So we want to overcome that, and so a lot of that is in the body. So the mastery is not just about the mind and the thinking, it's about how is my body habitually reacting to these situations? Where am I noticing a tightness or a friction? Because wherever I notice that tightness or friction, that's where I'm I'm separated in the side, I'm divided in some way. Because I don't feel that you know I'm competent or capable enough to achieve something or to be something, and therefore something outside now owns you. But really, it's something inside owns you that you haven't dealt with, and you need to you need to actually question it and be aware of it, because now you start to realize who you are and you start to unbecome that fear. So spiritual growth is a lot about unbecoming your fear rather than becoming something you're not. And so, why is all this important? Because your whole experience of life, let's bring it back to basics here. Your whole experience of life, you it's it's inside of you. Where do you think and feel? You don't think and feel out in your car. You think and feel inside in your body, in your mind. And so this energy is always moving inside, and we want to allow it to keep flowing. But every time there's a fear there, we block it. We build a barrier and we block it, we block that flow of energy. So the power, there's so much power in us already. And mastery is about letting that power out, bringing it out into the into the world, expressing that power. Otherwise, the fear remains, and the fear blocks it, and the fear restricts us, and the fear holds us back. And so, in a world that never switches off, in a world where there can be constant distraction, noise, and pressure, if you don't master the inner game, you'll never experience peace of mind and freedom. You'll be waiting for it someday soon, someday later, but it will never come. So ask yourself, who am I? Who am I truly? Who am I behind all my roles and my titles? And am I aligned with that man? And you'll know if you're aligned with that man, because you'll feel the enjoyment, you'll feel free, you feel like you can express yourself, you'll feel trusting that you can trust life, you can trust the things around you. You'll feel confident, you'll feel certain. And you'll know if you're not aligned, if you're misaligned, if your energy is misaligned, that and that power is blocked. And it's so when the power is blocked, that's why it gets drained. And so you'll feel tired, busyness, tight, tension, guilt, shame, frustration, anger, you'll feel these feelings. That's the easiest way to know if you're living aligned or not not living aligned. If you're free or not free, how does the body feel? What is the default? And so if you're serious about mastering yourself, the best place to get me is through LinkedIn, and we can have a short conversation and see if this is something that can help you. But I'll leave you with that reflection. Have a great day. Thank you so much for listening today. I really enjoy sharing this wisdom because it doesn't come from me, it comes through me from the work I do with men like you that I serve. So if the idea shared today resonated, be sure to like and follow the show. And if another man would value it, share this episode with him. Because the more men who hear this, the more of us can break free from pressure and enjoy what we're building. So let's enjoy the build together. Thank you for listening. I'll see you next week.