Sometimes, our opinions can blind us. 
There was a time, when I was very angry with the Christian church, and very judgmental of most Christians, and when I had a list of objections to Christianity a mile long. But even when I was there, God still reached out to call me home.  I spent 10 years trying to get home to that God, but not knowing the way. 

In this episode today, I want to talk about how, when I finally dropped my guard and walked into a Christian church, I finally found my way home, and I found all my objections answered, and I found myself growing closer to God in ways I never saw coming … And with that, I found a peace in my soul like never before.

The post BYC #63 – Christianity: Why I Believe… and, Facing the Tough Questions appeared first on Breaking Your Chains.

I'm recording this episode, and putting it out, on Christmas Eve, because I really felt compelled to do so. Today I needed to spend a few minutes talking about the holidays, and how the expectations the media puts on us don't necessarily reflect reality, and how that can sometimes lead to depression when our lives don't live up to them.

The post BYC #62 – Let’s Talk About the Holidays appeared first on Breaking Your Chains.

It’s been five years since Pam and I first moved to Tampa, Florida, so I asked her if she’d come on the show with me to talk about living here. We discuss both the pros and cons of living in Tampa, if Tampa is the best part of the state, and then we compare Florida with both California and Hawaii.   Then my "hater" friend John had to come on the show to share his hysterical point of view on why Florida blows California away.    And finally, my friend Kris comes on to share his story of being flooded out of his home during Hurricane Helene last year.

The post BYC #61 – Five Years in Tampa: Comparing Florida with California and Hawaii appeared first on Breaking Your Chains.

Last episode, I brought on a couple of my friends, April Hunter and Wade Williams, and we started a conversation around the seven deadly sins.  Today is part two, and we’ll finish the conversation by covering some big ones… greed, lust, and pride. 

But wait, there’s more!  After relistening to it, I found myself going into a deep dive on certain aspects of lust that I wanted to try and understand further, from a Biblical perspective.  I’m not going to say I was successful.  To say it was challenging is an understatement.  But it feels like, every time I take a deep dive into trying to understand something in the Bible that challenges me, I come away feeling closer to God, and closer to Jesus… and this was no different.  I feel like I grew, so I'm sharing that journey here after the conversation.

The post BYC #60 – The Seven Deadly Sins, Pt 2 appeared first on Breaking Your Chains.

Today I’m gonna bring you a fun conversation around the Seven Deadly Sins… and how learning to avoid them can make your life better.  In order to do this, I’m bringing on two guests, April Hunter and Wade Williams.  (April, you might remember from Episode 51 about Online Dating.)  We don't claim to have all the answers. The goal with today’s show is just to make you think, because I think the danger is not thinking about them at all.  This show is part one, of a two-part series, and covers the history of the seven deadly sins, as well as sloth, wrath, gluttony, and envy. 

The post BYC #59 – The Seven Deadly Sins, Pt 1 appeared first on Breaking Your Chains.

Today I'm gonna talk about my journey into church, and how I went from so angry with the church, to really feeling compelled to go. I’ll share the nervousness of that first time, and how it feels now, four months in.  I’ll also discuss some questions I’ve had and challenges I’ve faced, as well as what I learned from them. 

I realize “church” can be a very polarizing topic, but I think this podcast truly has something for everyone, no matter how you feel about it ... And if you don’t think much about church at all, but you do like a good story, with entertainment, drama, humor, vulnerability, and compete honesty, you’ve got that here too.

The post BYC #58 – Church appeared first on Breaking Your Chains.

We constantly hear about the importance of watching what we put into our body, but nobody ever talks about the importance of guarding what we consume with our minds.  Today, we’re going to talk on that. We’ll discuss the science of how our thoughts and behavior can be molded, without our conscious awareness.  We’ll tell a story about our major media companies doing just that.  And, we’ll talk about the many ways that the harmful media we consume can affect us. 

The post BYC #57 – Guard Your Mind appeared first on Breaking Your Chains.

After the divisiveness of the last election, I wanted to look into the science and psychology of how that happens, in hopes that some understanding could better help me to “break the spell” of the negativity.  What I didn’t expect to find, was that, MOST of the time, when it comes to our opinions on things like politics… we’re not really all that knowledgeable about the things we believe.  We’re all just a bunch of idiots, arguing about things we know nothing about!  Researching this show was totally eye opening to me…  and I think you’ll find this show really eye opening as well.  We'll have some fun with the craziness of it all, but I think there’s a lot everyone can learn from this show, to improve our lives and better come together.

The post BYC #56 – Stop Arguing With Idiots, Ya Idiot. appeared first on Breaking Your Chains.

Language is so useful to society, that the negative side of it is often totally ignored… and that’s that simple words can really shape our perception, and the framework of our language, can really cage our minds. Today, we’ll discuss the many ways that words and language can do that, while sharing a ton of examples and scientific studies. We’ll also talk priming, hypnosis power words, neurolinguistic programming, how words can be used to divide and control us, how to spin that for the positive… and much, much more.

The post BYC #55 – The Power of Words appeared first on Breaking Your Chains.

This episode is more of a thought experiment: It began at a meetup group, when I mentioned how weird it was that we have these ancient pyramids, similar in age, construction, and use, all over the world, but from a time when the world was not connected at all. A reply, with a possible link between the ancient pyramids and the Tower of Babel, led me on a journey, questioning the possibility of that link... which then led me into a line of thought about how our words alone, can fall totally short with regards to understanding God.

The post BYC #54 – When Words Fall Short appeared first on Breaking Your Chains.

Consciousness is something that has baffled people forever. What is it? Where is it? How do we even define it? I think the confusion sets in because it can mean so many different things to so many different people. It can mean anything from "our feeling of being awake", to something extra-sensory and unknown within us, to a type of bond that connects us all. Today, I will make an argument for all of these descriptions... and more.

The post BYC #53 – A Case for Cosmic Consciousness appeared first on Breaking Your Chains.