For many years I lived my life thinking that whatever negative or destructive thoughts were rolling around in my head were objective reality. I seemed to live like a passive observer and suffered years of negative feeling states as my thoughts played havoc with my life.
In today’s episode I explore a great insight from famous author David Foster Wallace who reminds us that if we want to live full and productive lives we need to start getting very good at noticing and directing our thinking.
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Transcript
Well, Hey everybody.
Speaker:Jonathan Doyle with you.
Speaker:Once again, welcome friends to the daily podcast.
Speaker:Hope you're doing well, please make sure you've subscribed.
Speaker:Hit that big subscribe button.
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Speaker:And if you like, what you're hearing today would be wonderful.
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Speaker:Stick it on your various social feeds if you have them.
Speaker:And, uh, hopefully what we share today is just going to give you and the people you
Speaker:care about a little bit of encouragement.
Speaker:A little bit of inspiration.
Speaker:That's all we need some days, a little spark, just to a little thought to
Speaker:keep us going throughout the day.
Speaker:Something that resonates with us now.
Speaker:A couple of things.
Speaker:Um, When, so another family movie yesterday, we've got this habit lately
Speaker:of, uh, the whole family going out.
Speaker:We like seeing movies.
Speaker:It's one of those things where.
Speaker:You know, despite the advances of technology and the craziness of modern
Speaker:life, going to a cinema still has a bit of the magic that it always had.
Speaker:You know, back in the day, you sort of go in there and the world
Speaker:kind of disappears for that.
Speaker:You know, two or two and a half hours and yesterday.
Speaker:On the recommendation of my oldest daughter who saw this movie.
Speaker:With a friend a few weeks ago, we went and saw the Phantom of the open.
Speaker:When she first texted me about it, I thought she meant the Phantom of
Speaker:the opera said, yeah, blah, like.
Speaker:Well, you know, I know the story.
Speaker:Do we need to see that?
Speaker:But it's actually the Phantom of the open.
Speaker:And it's a true story about, um, Morris G flit Croft.
Speaker:True story.
Speaker:And, um, it's just really interesting story about a guy.
Speaker:Who tries to do something really remarkable, but it's,
Speaker:uh, it's quite a beautiful film.
Speaker:It's a great Testament to family, to marriage, to love, to, uh, To
Speaker:a whole bunch of things and, uh,
Speaker:I was sitting there thinking, man, it's weird how Hollywood operates.
Speaker:It can just serve up the most deprived.
Speaker:You know, destructive content and then it just turns around and turns up.
Speaker:You know, some really beautiful movie, so go figure how so.
Speaker:I, uh, we try to be very selective about what we watch.
Speaker:We had this joke early in our marriage.
Speaker:You know, we used to watch a lot of movies before the kids came along
Speaker:and I always wanted to watch what I call triumphs of the human spirit.
Speaker:Karen said, you wanna watch a movie?
Speaker:I say, yeah, sure.
Speaker:She goes, what do you want to watch?
Speaker:Let's say.
Speaker:Let's watch a triumph for the human spirit.
Speaker:And she got really sick of triumphs of the human spirit.
Speaker:She thought that we should watch the occasional romantic comedy
Speaker:and I could not see how that could be the will of a loving God.
Speaker:So I said to a no care and try and visit the human spirit.
Speaker:It took me a long time to work through that catalog because
Speaker:there's a lot of movies.
Speaker:To have some aspect of the triumph of the human spirit.
Speaker:So, um, love those.
Speaker:I just love films that are uplifting.
Speaker:Uh, the last few nights we've been watching rewatching, the
Speaker:Narnia movies as a family.
Speaker:Um, my, my kids, my teenagers are like, you know, this super cool.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:But they're just like, can we watch nanny?
Speaker:I said, I wouldn't tell anyone.
Speaker:I want to tell you friends.
Speaker:Uh, so they're beautiful films and I just love how these great themes, isn't it.
Speaker:True.
Speaker:How these great themes just roll through a reality.
Speaker:You know, I'm a huge believer in the concept of.
Speaker:I guess the classical understanding of natural law, that there are
Speaker:givens to the cosmos that there are, there is a structure to reality.
Speaker:There's a reason why these beautiful films move us.
Speaker:Why.
Speaker:You know, I've always had this weird, I'm just, I'm sort of rambling a bit
Speaker:here, but just giving you some more insight into what sort of motivates me.
Speaker:I've always really struggled.
Speaker:Um, with dark films, with evil stuff, I cannot watch it.
Speaker:I remember as a kid, you know, seeing a movie with some friends and just
Speaker:being, you know, really affected by it.
Speaker:So I guess what I'm saying is I'm a big believer in, um, and just
Speaker:trying to expose ourselves to things.
Speaker:Lead to the development of goodness and virtue and hope because.
Speaker:There's plenty of stuff to make us miserable and deliberately
Speaker:watching dark evil stuff.
Speaker:I just think isn't exactly how I want to do life.
Speaker:So just take, make of that.
Speaker:What you will judging nobody, but there's just so much content
Speaker:that is so dark as a parent now.
Speaker:You know, you spend about an hour trying to find something that's
Speaker:not going to traumatize your kids.
Speaker:So, um, let's just keep that front of mind, that what we read, what we
Speaker:listen to, what we think it matters.
Speaker:It's significant that, um, you know, the old garbage in garbage out,
Speaker:it's what we put into ourselves.
Speaker:Uh, what we allow through the doorway of our consciousness is pretty significant.
Speaker:The other thing I wanted to talk about just before we jump into today's quote,
Speaker:I want to talk to you about adaption.
Speaker:Um, you know, Regular listeners know, I'm a huge believer in, um,
Speaker:you know, a lot of physical training.
Speaker:I do.
Speaker:Uh, you know, I do a huge amount compared to most people.
Speaker:And I constantly say, I'm not telling anybody to do what I do.
Speaker:Uh, but, uh, you know, it's, it's morning in the studio here.
Speaker:I've already done an insane.
Speaker:Um, bike race this morning.
Speaker:I'm feeling pretty good.
Speaker:I've got to get through all the pushups today and then I might do
Speaker:another rocket, but I want it to talk to you about this rucking adaption.
Speaker:Rucking.
Speaker:If you're not familiar with it is really nothing more complex than using
Speaker:a, a pack with heavy weight in it.
Speaker:And walking up Hills, that's rocking.
Speaker:Uh, comes from, uh, sort of, uh, military stuff.
Speaker:And a us special forces where they kind of, you know, had to be
Speaker:able to carry pretty significant loads for long periods of time.
Speaker:So I've been doing these rocks.
Speaker:We're kind of lucky because where we live, we back right up onto a mountain
Speaker:and there's a couple of really.
Speaker:You know, solid little peaks there that, uh, I really steep.
Speaker:And so yesterday I've been dragging around.
Speaker:I don't know, maybe.
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:I guess I've been dragging around kind of 25 kilos, which I guess
Speaker:from my American friends is about.
Speaker:Probably a bit more than 60 pounds.
Speaker:And yesterday I added another seven and a half kilos plate, which was a big jump.
Speaker:And I think that took me to some way around.
Speaker:I think I was in the ballpark of 35 to 40 kilos, which would be 80 to 90 pounds.
Speaker:And it was brutal and it was.
Speaker:It's really hard.
Speaker:So I had the dog with me and I did my standard.
Speaker:You know, my, my standard.
Speaker:Uh, distance and the distance.
Speaker:Isn't so much the issue because it's more the weight and the altitude and
Speaker:sort of the, the gradient, right.
Speaker:But as I was doing it, I'm just, I finished it.
Speaker:And I just wanted to share with you the, you know, the power of adaption that, you
Speaker:know, Our bodies can do amazing things.
Speaker:And whether right now you're fit.
Speaker:Or you have totally out of fitness, your bodies can adapt.
Speaker:So I just want to encourage everybody that, you know, for me,
Speaker:I think that, um, you know, so much of the mental health stuff that we
Speaker:deal with, one of the biggest things we can do is just think carefully
Speaker:about how we're using our bodies.
Speaker:You know, I think for me in the years that I've, you know, exercise has just been
Speaker:such a huge part of mental health for me.
Speaker:And, but this adaption thing, just, um, like I've been saying in recent
Speaker:weeks, if, if you're only walking to the letterbox, then, you know, walk to the
Speaker:letterbox and take an extra 10 steps.
Speaker:If you're running 10 kilometers, we'll try run in 12.
Speaker:You know, that's how I got into ultra marathons.
Speaker:When the lockdown started.
Speaker:Uh, I, you know, went out and ran 5k NextEra, and 10 K and literally
Speaker:it was like, there's like dominoes.
Speaker:The next time I did 12.
Speaker:A couple of days later, I ran a half marathon.
Speaker:I went and ran 22 kilometers.
Speaker:And then I thought, wow, that was, that was hard.
Speaker:But you know, I did it.
Speaker:And then a few days later ran 30 kilometers and then my brain started
Speaker:saying, well, 30 kilometers is kind of close to marathon, distance marathons, 42.
Speaker:So.
Speaker:And then I went out and ran a marathon.
Speaker:And then, uh, that was on a Sunday morning during lockdown is, went
Speaker:out and ran a marathon on my own and then started running longer
Speaker:distances in the ultra category.
Speaker:So.
Speaker:It is amazing what we can do, the adaptions that we can make in time.
Speaker:Now, all I wanted to do as we wrap up is.
Speaker:Uh, today's quote is from David Foster Wallace.
Speaker:If you're not familiar with him, he's a real prodigy.
Speaker:Sadly.
Speaker:He, uh, he took his own life, very tragically quite a few years
Speaker:ago now, but he was an absolute prodigy, a brilliant writer.
Speaker:I think there's actually a movie about him.
Speaker:It's quite interesting.
Speaker:I think we've watched it a few years ago.
Speaker:Uh, you can also, if you go on YouTube, you can just type in David Foster Wallace.
Speaker:You can see him giving a commencement address at an American university.
Speaker:So just a brilliant writer who we, you know, tragically, we lost pretty young,
Speaker:but, um, just had that gift, you know, that gift of deep insight and writing
Speaker:the ability to write great prose.
Speaker:So listen to this quite today, he says this learning how to think.
Speaker:Really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think.
Speaker:It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to.
Speaker:And to choose how you construct meaning from experience.
Speaker:Because if you cannot or will not exercise this kind of choice in adult life.
Speaker:You will be totally hosed.
Speaker:That is good.
Speaker:Let's let's just break, open a little bit of this.
Speaker:He says, firstly, he introduces the idea that we can actually take exercise
Speaker:some control over how we, how we think the actual practice of how we think.
Speaker:And what we think.
Speaker:So.
Speaker:I've talked about this a lot recently.
Speaker:For many years, I always thought that whatever my brain
Speaker:was serving up was reality.
Speaker:So if I was having a thought, I kind of thought, you know, this must be real.
Speaker:So if I was depressed or I was anxious of our as afraid.
Speaker:I would go, well, this must be reality because I'm having the
Speaker:thought and I'm having the experience in my body of this must be real.
Speaker:And it's only in the last few years that I've started to
Speaker:really have this breakthrough where I begin to think that my.
Speaker:My thought process.
Speaker:Like a smorgasbord and an all you can eat restaurant.
Speaker:I can pick and choose which parts I want to.
Speaker:I want to give my energy to.
Speaker:I can pick and choose the parts that are going to help me be
Speaker:healthier and fitter in the parts that are not going to make me.
Speaker:Healthy and fit.
Speaker:So, you know, he says here, it means being conscious and aware enough to
Speaker:choose what you pay attention to.
Speaker:That's brilliant.
Speaker:Like, you know, you can literally, we have the ability to choose where our
Speaker:consciousness is directed, the specific things or people that we pay attention to.
Speaker:You see, in any given day, if you think about it, there are billions
Speaker:of inputs into your consciousness.
Speaker:Like literally from wherever you're sitting right now, you
Speaker:add you're conscious of the room.
Speaker:You're conscious of the temperature.
Speaker:You could take a drive in a car you're, you know, you're conscious
Speaker:of, you know, vast numbers of inputs, traffic lights, other vehicles, weather
Speaker:patterns, radio, or music in your car.
Speaker:All these different things, consciousnesses all in our, our
Speaker:attention can be quite expensive.
Speaker:So to not lose our minds and going crazy, we've learned over, you know, century
Speaker:and thousand millennia of evolution.
Speaker:To be more specific about what we pay attention to.
Speaker:So that's another thing I want you to just realize that we can literally
Speaker:choose where our attention goes.
Speaker:I think Tony Robbins used to say where, where attention goes, energy flows.
Speaker:I think that was his mantra.
Speaker:That where we place our attention and we place our attention on
Speaker:all the darkness in the world.
Speaker:As you know, nature said, if you gaze at the abyss long enough that
Speaker:you guessed the abyss gazes back,
Speaker:That if we choose to focus on fear, if we choose to.
Speaker:Direct our consciousness towards paranoia.
Speaker:What are other people thinking about us?
Speaker:What are they going to do to us?
Speaker:What's going to happen here.
Speaker:What's going to happen there.
Speaker:We then create neuro biological responses in our body.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:We actually create certain feeling states based on where our
Speaker:consciousness has been directed.
Speaker:So if we choose to direct our consciousness more deliberately
Speaker:and pay attention to things that are worthwhile and helpful to us.
Speaker:Then I think we can grow.
Speaker:It doesn't mean that we have this kind of Pollyanna attitude where we
Speaker:own, you know, we just sort of ignore everything that's difficult and focus
Speaker:only on what we think is wonderful.
Speaker:But I think there's a balance here that we can choose where
Speaker:our attention and focus goes.
Speaker:Now, the next thing he says is how you construct meaning from experience.
Speaker:I have spoken about this in so many episodes.
Speaker:Over the last few years.
Speaker:That you know, Again, Tony Robbins used to say that, you know, nothing has any
Speaker:meaning except the meaning you give it.
Speaker:I'm not quite sure.
Speaker:I completely agree because I do believe very clearly in objective realities.
Speaker:But the idea that no matter what happens to you in life, you
Speaker:are free to construct meaning.
Speaker:You're free to actually construct what this means to you.
Speaker:So somebody leaves you in a relationship you can say, well, they left me
Speaker:because I'm the worst person in the world and I'll never find anybody
Speaker:and I'm ugly and it's awful and I'll be alone for the rest of my life.
Speaker:Or you can be, well, you know, you can have grief and you can honor your grief.
Speaker:And you can feel your grief and you can say, well, I'm
Speaker:not in control of everything.
Speaker:And obviously it wasn't meant to be.
Speaker:There's nothing.
Speaker:I have to accept that I can't control everything and I have to
Speaker:trust that there'll be a better relationship for me in the future.
Speaker:Now, those are.
Speaker:You know, it's the same event.
Speaker:With two different constructions of meaning you lose your job.
Speaker:It can be.
Speaker:I'm going to be broke.
Speaker:I'm going to be eating cat food.
Speaker:I'm living on the street and nobody deliver employing me again.
Speaker:And my life's over, or it can be, this is really hard, but I'm
Speaker:resilient and I'll find a way.
Speaker:So same experience, just construction of different forms of meaning.
Speaker:So, you know, and he says, if you, if we don't begin to exercise these patterns
Speaker:of behavior, then we get totally hosed in life, you know, and it gives, it's
Speaker:amazing how these great principles.
Speaker:Flow through the great thinkers.
Speaker:You know, we've been talking about Marcus Orelia.
Speaker:who's really clearly make, you know, telling us that we can.
Speaker:I choose what we focus our attention on.
Speaker:And he's telling us that in the first century, Ady.
Speaker:And we've got David Foster Wallace telling us something, you
Speaker:know, almost 2000 years later.
Speaker:That we can choose where we direct consciousness and focus.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So how do we make it relevant for you?
Speaker:Think of something that you're going through at the moment.
Speaker:You know, that's difficult.
Speaker:Can you find an empowering meaning?
Speaker:Can you find an empowering meaning?
Speaker:You know, no matter what it is, there is a way, and again, always direct
Speaker:you guys back to Victor Frankel.
Speaker:You know, who's surviving Auschwitz, who's going through the, you know,
Speaker:Nazi extermination camp experience, but then finds an empowering meaning.
Speaker:And if he can do it in that place, then I think we can do it in whatever
Speaker:we're faced or whatever challenging situations we're faced with.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:So summary, go and check out Phantom of the open summary adaption.
Speaker:Your body can do way more than you think just as you gradually adapt to increasing.
Speaker:Ceasing the.
Speaker:The amount of work that you do physically.
Speaker:I just think that the more you do, the more your energy levels
Speaker:come up and the more you can.
Speaker:Contribute to the world around you.
Speaker:And finally.
Speaker:Let's take David Foster Wallace on board here.
Speaker:Let's realize that we have much more power over our consciousness than we
Speaker:think we can direct our attention.
Speaker:We can take some responsibility for how we think we can direct that consciousness
Speaker:and we can find empowering meanings, even in difficult circumstances.
Speaker:Now, friends, let me tell you, this is, this is an art form.
Speaker:You have to practice this.
Speaker:It does not just happen because we talked about it today and
Speaker:you go, yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker:I'll just do that totally different.
Speaker:This is something you must practice.
Speaker:You must catch yourself in the.
Speaker:Act.
Speaker:You must relentlessly catch yourself in the act.
Speaker:Of not thinking well and interrupt your pattern and start to actually about it.
Speaker:All right, please make sure you've subscribed.
Speaker:If you have not subscribed to this podcast, please do that for me.
Speaker:Leave a rating, leave a review.
Speaker:Now go and check out the show notes here.
Speaker:You can get free access to my book, bridging the gap.
Speaker:You can book me to speak.
Speaker:If you got an event conference, whatever it is.
Speaker:For your organization go and check out how to book me to speak there'll be a link
Speaker:here and you can also link across to the youtube channel which is where i'm doing
Speaker:this content in video format God bless you everybody listen Uh, Reach out to me
Speaker:if you have a topic that you want me to cover just for you jonathan at jonathan
Speaker:doyle.co dot c o send me an email and i will put together an episode on whatever.
Speaker:It ever difficult challenges you are facing We will keep it anonymous we
Speaker:don't have to use your name But um we can shape some content best episodes
Speaker:always come from listening to questions all right everybody god bless you my
Speaker:name's jonathan doyle Well, This has been the daily podcast and you and
