Hey guys, Scott Merton here. Welcome to class five of the five limits beyond the lebrons. And so in this lesson, I'm looking at the cage, which leads on from now class about the trap. So just to recap, in our life, we want something. And then adversity comes it impacts us, we get stuck in reactions I talked about in the tribe. And then we want to find ways in our life so we don't get impacted.

And we don't have to have adversity in our life. And so we build what I call the cage. And it's kind of based on the beliefs, the ideals and values that we take on from families, from communities that we grew up in the cultures, the countries that we deal with the cities that we live in, etc And they feel good to us on an ego level, because it gives us a sense of identity. And that gives us reassurance that we belong somewhere. But they definitely limit our experience and align. And we, like I'm saying, like we we build them to stop the adversity impacting us.

So adversity being money, relationships, career, health and body and sexuality. And we make choices and take actions based on voiding those things. And so in the case, we make choices, we take actions that give us safety. Give us security, give us control, give us our ownership and give us status. And you might look at this and go Yeah, that's what I want. But let's delve into it.

But because we'll start to see how the positives of that but the negatives, so looking at safety, so safe choices, and actions of those that we know have a high chance of being right, successful, but don't cause us pain. So in like in a relationship, you might say things that please other people. And you might not say, but you really want to say because it's gonna cause pain. They, they, they conform to what's acceptable or expected, right? It gets us approval. And but they maybe they limit us.

It's not what we really want. We go for the safe choice not all we really want. A classic being you know, when choosing a career in life, you might not do what you really want to do you want to what's gonna give you a comfortable job and making money getting you the lifestyle that you want. It also means we aren't really seeing the who we are. And if you don't know what safe choices to make, that's when we start to doubt. And this brings us into a place of security, like we make all these safe choices and start to feel secure.

Because we can start to repeat these actions to get approval and acceptance. We find comfort in that. We get responsibilities, we start to take on routine, but we tend to live life on the terms of others. That could be relationships, it could be the place that we work in. It could be you know, the terms and conditions that we have in our experience of money, credit cards, mortgages, those kind of things. And it means for living on the terms of others that means that we're putting out putting ourselves In a place where we can have second, eventually what I've seen is we get really bored.

If our security is threatened, then we start to feel anxious and we start to panic. But out of security is what we get is a sense of control represents the control over these influences in our life. But diversity keeps changing. We're always challenged. And so we start to live life to keep adversity out of our life. So it doesn't impact us.

And a life is dictated to us by the things we put first in our life so we can have security. That means actually, even like we're trying to control things in life, we're actually under control. And if we don't like if we don't feel like we have control, we start to feel fear. And this brings up we have a bit of control. The next that comes out of that is ownership. It gives us a sense of possession ultimate control, we feel like the boss Network important, given responsibility for important things, relationships, taking care of partners, family, work, etc.

And we reach a point in life a lot of the time, where we are unable to cope with all of the responsibility for the bills we have to pay, making people making ends meet, trying to perform what we're trying to maintain good relationships, trying to stay on top of the health, trying to have a good sex life. It all catches up with us eventually. And will become attached to what we own or possess. If you take those things away, then it really challenges your sense of identity. So this comes up for clients that I work with that they're they're in good jobs that they hate. Get a certain lifestyle.

They have a certain kind of identity in what they do, but they really want to do something else. Or maybe they're in a relationship and it's not working and they want to leave that relationship. It's going to really impact their identity and how they're seen by the people around them. And that's where we get paralyzed and stuck by a walk, we were trapped in the rat race, trying to make make it all work. Trying to be this person we think we want to be or what others want us to be, and we can't get out of it. And so this leads to the status part of the cage.

So he has this identity and standing within our families, friends, peers, colleagues, and community to make choices and actions that reinforce that identity and status. And we hide the parts that don't fit into that. taking actions that Further identity and status, so how people see us how they expect us to behave friends you can it can bring huge guilt shame for ourselves and reactions and resentment from others and possibly ridicule. So it's like you want to get out of a job, trauma, travel the world and maybe live a different lifestyle and the first thing that your family says is don't be ridiculous counter that you got all these responsibilities you need to take care of. So that's how it starts to limit what we want in our life. And eventually, we self destruct we end up doing things that are unhealthy for us.

Squarely spending money on things we shouldn't be. in relationships, we people have affairs, for example, damage their relationships with their family. They do things in a career that are very destructive. plays out in health and body as well. And sex and sexuality is a big one. People start having sex with people I shouldn't be having sex with etc.

And it all goes down very quickly, downhill very quickly. So on one hand, the cage is really good for our egos. It gives us a sense that we are right we have success and when we get approval of who we are and what we do. We feel like we belong and have influence. We have responsibilities. We have value, we're trusted, and we get respect and praise.

But it's really we have to see the cage for what it is it's a bit of a lie. So it's built on choices and actions that aren't really counting from your authentic self what you really want to be alive? Yes, going back to living your life and putting yourself second all the time you're living life on the terms of others. We're using the case to keep adversity from impacting so we don't get triggered and stuck in the cage. But this is it we we still do. And in the end, you know what I'm saying that the cage places massive resistance.

And over time, those choices and actions that we use to build the cage become the triggers for the trap. When we're making these choices, taking these actions that we hate to do with resent it. This is where we start to burn out, get tired and end up in a depression. And, you know, we can really see how our actions and the life that we have, it's really hurting us And so the way people see us isn't who we really are on the inside. It's a very different experience inside and I get this a lot from clients that come to see me the successful, they have everything that anyone could want, but inside they're really miserable. So it means the cage doesn't do what it's supposed to do.

We're still impacted by adversity, we still get stuck in the trap. It starts to inhibit what we what we want from life really for ourselves. And it really obscures the, the forces driving ally. So you know, what drives us to build a cage or it's that we don't want to be impacted by bursary. We're gonna avoid the trap. Ultimately, we're afraid.

We don't want to feel fear. And so that's the topic of our next class is the specters of fear. Things that we don't want in our life. So I'll see you in the next class.