Welcome to the Daily Podcast with Jonathan Doyle! In today’s episode, we delve into the profound insights of Les Brown, focusing on conquering habits, facing fears, and rising above others’ opinions. As we embark on this journey of personal development together, let’s explore the power of habits, the impact of fear, and the courage needed to navigate societal expectations. Join me as we uncover the keys to personal growth and fulfillment in our daily lives.
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Introduction to the Journey to Personal Growth
On today’s episode, we will explore the power of positive habits in personal development, confront fears for breakthroughs, and navigate opinions with courage for authentic living. Hey there, my friend, Jonathan Doyle with you once again, welcome aboard to the daily podcast. I am pleased you are here. It is my great pleasure and privilege to try and bring you something encouraging, something inspirational for you today on this journey of life. As we walk the road together on this expensive road of personal development, as we always say, you don’t need a whole bunch of great ideas to change your life. You just need one good idea that you are actually prepared to use.
We’re back, I guess broadcasting every single day around the world at least five days a week. I really hope that you’re going to get something out of today. So please make sure you have subscribed and hit that subscribe button. If you’re not a regular subscriber, I’d love you to share this with people. Everything else is on the website: jonathandoyle.co.
Imposter Syndrome Series Announcement
I also want to suggest to you I’ve just completed a two-part series on Imposter Syndrome. It’s something that I’ve been asked about a lot lately. I did a live interview about a week ago with a really big US entrepreneurial association, which has tens of thousands of members. It was just a great privilege to talk about that topic.
So I went a bit deeper and I wrote two long form articles on it. If you’re interested in that, just go to the website, jonathandoyle.co. And if you go to the blog page, you’ll see a blog tab, have a look around for Imposter Syndrome Part 1 or just hit the search bar on the website type in imposter and you should find it. Just grab yourself access to that because it’s some good content.
Last thing, you can find me at @jdoylespeaks on Instagram. Particularly if you’ve got any topics you’d like me to cover. If there’s any issues, challenges that you have in business, personal development, life, relationships, health. Any of those areas, just send me a message on Instagram. You can DM me at @jdoylespeaks or you can email me directly at jonathan@jonathandoyle.co.
Les Brown's Barriers of Life: Habits, Fears, and Opinions
All right, friends. Let’s do it today. We’re going to talk about a really useful insight from the OG himself, one of the great original speakers in personal development, Les Brown. Great story, just came from such a difficult childhood to become one of the absolute great speakers. There’s so much fluff on the internet, right? There’s so many influencers offering overnight success. I’ve been doing this podcast for at least a decade. I’ve been speaking now for close to 30 years. There’s just some people that are like Les Brown that have been around for a much longer and have contributed so much.
This morning I made some time to just take the dog for a walk. Just so much of the time I’m out running, recycling, training, really hard, wiping myself out. It’s been nice the last few days, just to back off and just to enjoy thinking and walking and just being. Today I was listening to some great Les brown stuff and like the great speakers do.
He just reminded me of a very simple insight. He said, there’s three things that are holding you back. There are three things that tend to hold us back, it’s not just three. There’s there’s lots of things we can do in life. We’re very creative aren’t we, we’re very creative sometimes at creating habits, ideas, addictions that hold us back. But there’s three big ones. They’re very simple. I’m going to share them with you. We’ll unpack them briefly and get you on your way.
Les brown reminds us today. That there are three things that hold us back and they are. Our habits, our fears and the opinions of others.
The Power of Positive Habits in Personal Development
The habits piece is huge, you go back to classical Greece two and a half thousand years ago, Aristotle was talking about this. He would talk a lot about excellence and he would say that excellence is a habit. It’s not something you do once. It’s something you do repeatedly. And the habits that are in our lives are so powerful. I don’t know how much attention you are paying to your daily habits, but it is a thing.
Yesterday. I was building a shed for some of our bikes. It’s a stage you get to when you have way more bikes than you have children. You don’t know how they arrived, but you really can’t live in your own home anymore because everywhere you turn, there’s a bike. So I’m building this shed, but I listened to a three and a half hour long form interview with the American journalist Tucker Carlson and who was the other guy, Lex Fridman.
It was a really interesting discussion, whatever you think of either of those guys. But one of the things that Carlson was talking about was rituals. They’re asking him, How do you stop from becoming, letting your success go to your head? And several times they asked him how he manages himself, and he kept saying rituals. He’s got these rituals that he follows each day, which for me are habits.
So there are things that I have been doing for 30 odd years now, those are just so ingrained in me that if I don’t do them, the world around me just seems problematic to me. If you could follow me for 24 hours, that’s why it’s cool to follow me on Instagram. You’ll see me kick off at about 4:00 AM each day on the stories because my alarm goes off at 4:00 AM, and I’m just at that stage with children in life where I get to get stuff done early. My habits are so predictable in my morning routines. So what’s holding us back in life is not a good habit; obviously, it’s the negative ones.
The first thing I want to put in your mind today is the power of habits. Negative habits, particularly with alcohol, time-wasting. I’m very disciplined even on social media. I produce a lot of content, but I consume very little. I’m becoming more and more disciplined in my habits. So, my friend, if you are not where you want to be, one of the first places to start is to be very honest and disciplined around the habits that constitute your day.
Fear Confrontation for Personal Growth
Second, fear. I’ve been speaking, writing, talking about this, and navigating my own life for so many years now. In fact, this imposter syndrome series that I’ve just written. Which you could find in the link in the bio or if you just go to the website. I learned a lot about how fearful conditions are. There are deep neuro-evolutionary reasons why fear is so strong. The fundamental human impulses are survival reproduction. However, survival is such a strong life impulse most of the time the things that hold us back are fears.
All sorts of relational and personal fears. And I just have to say to you, my friend, that “The price of admission to the life you want is your ability to confide, to confront your own fears.” I think that’s an Instagram quote. I’m just going to use that.
I like that and I actually just made that up. But I think it’s true. So many times the breakthroughs come on the other side of fear. They really just have the ability to value yourself enough to push through when you feel fear. So we’ve got habits, we’ve got to address, and we’ve got fears, we’ve got to address.
Authentic Living: Navigating Opinions with Courage and Purpose
Finally, the opinions of others. This goes back to our childhood. I was reading a fascinating quote yesterday from Charles Taylor, who wrote about the secular age. An incredible sociologist and philosopher. He was saying that the opinions that are formed in us early in life by significant people we can definitely transcend them, but they’re always there. So often, we don’t do or say things because we fall into patterns, habits, and identities.
We want to belong and to change those. Breaking out of that mode is very hard to do. But again, the price of admission to a unique and purposeful life of contribution, is to try and gravitate towards increasing authenticity. Is to do what you know is right. This is not about self-indulgence, it’s about having the courage to consistently go.
We are always going to care what people think of us, but we can’t let it have too much power over us. We have to eventually have the courage to do what we deeply believe and since this is the correct thing to do at each moment of our lives. It is not easy. We’re a belonging species. We value that but sometimes if you want to create different results, you’ve got to be prepared to let go of what people might think of you.
Mastering Habits: An Audit for Growth and Courage
All right. We’re almost done. With habits, do an audit. What’s good, what’s not, what has to go. And it’s hard. There’s nothing easy about this. It’s not just about listening to a few words. Some of the habits I’ve had to break over the years; there’s been very little pleasant about it, and you don’t get the result until some time afterwards. So we want to get a habit squared away. We want to look at the conditional that can be the consistent fears that are directing us. Because a lot of our success will require us to eventually push through those.
Finally, we want to have the courage to love the people who have an influence on our lives. But we should not allow ourselves to fall into a position of lacking courage and the capacity to break out of people’s opinions.
Closing Thoughts: Avoid Regrets, Embrace Growth
All right. My friends, there’s a lot there. I hope it’s encouraging to you. I do this because I want us all to grow, myself to grow, I want you to grow. Because the more you grow, the more you contribute, the better the world we live in. Because you don’t want regret. You don’t want to get to the end of your life with regret. Work on habits; work on fears; work on dealing with other people’s opinions of yourself. Implement the power of positive habits in personal development, confront fears for breakthroughs, and navigate opinions with courage for authentic living.
Please make sure you’ve subscribed to me on Instagram: @jdoylespeaks. everything else on the website. jonathandoyle.co. Go to that blog page and check out the imposter syndrome series. I think you’re really going to like it.
God bless you my friend. My name is Jonathan Doyle. This has been the Daily Podcast. You and I are going to talk again tomorrow.
