In today’s episode I want to offer a very simple strategy about how we can all deal with the challenges of COVID in terms of how we can easily fall into despair. Is there a simple mental process we can use on a daily basis to avoid falling victim to negative and unproductive thinking. In this episode I want to make the case that it is possible and we have much more power than we think.

Transcript
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Well, Hey everybody, Jonathan Doyle with you once again, welcome

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friends to the daily podcast.

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Great to be back with you.

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I've had a few days away where we are doing some new, interesting things

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in our business as a result of.

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All the restrictions of COVID.

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I do miss my traveling.

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I was talking on a zoom call yesterday.

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Some people in Canada.

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Um, who I'm doing a virtual event for them.

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And I was sort of just saying, it's funny, isn't it?

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That when we go through this whole COVID experience that.

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I look back at all the times and I was traveling so much.

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I mean, I was flying.

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Sydney to Dallas probably once every month or so once every two months.

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And when you're on those 16 and a half hour flights and you're in airports,

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you sort of think how good would it be?

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You know, how good would it be if I could just be home for a while,

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it could just be in my own house.

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And here we are now more than our own houses at times with various rolling

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lockdowns and, uh, I guess the message in that is that, uh, as we go through life,

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as we go through each day, Let's really try and focus on the gratitude that you

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know, for anything good that's happening.

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Because one of these, one of the things I think we've all learned in this journey

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of the last year or two, is that these things can be taken away pretty fast.

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So a gratitude, just gratitude for the smallest things.

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A good cup of coffee.

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You know where I sometimes work.

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I've got this beautiful floor to ceiling glass windows, and the

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sun comes in and, and just that.

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Cause we were in, went to here.

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And most of the time, this is, this has been a tough winter.

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It's often really bleak and cold has been raining a lot.

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So I'm just finding these little rays of sunshine.

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If you'll excuse the.

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You know, the, um, the metaphor, but, uh, these little moments of joy.

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That we can find every single day, if we decide to we be attentive.

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Now today, what I want to talk about is kind of on this broad

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mental health COVID theme.

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Every one of us is going to be different.

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Right.

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You're going to have, uh, just your, your own sort of genetic background, your

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personality background, the experiences you're living through right at the moment.

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So we're all going to be different, but I do think it's fair to say

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that a lot of us are struggling with moments of despair, uncertainty.

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There's a lot more depression.

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Mental health issues are.

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Uh, very clearly becoming problematic as people are in

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during this difficult season.

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So, what I want to talk about today is how we.

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You know, something that we can do to address this when, uh, I don't know if

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you've been there, but you know, there's a lot of despair around a lot of despair.

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Despair happens when we lose hope.

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We begin to think that.

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This is just how things are going to be.

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Things are going to be difficult things aren't going to change.

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And we lose hope.

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So I want to talk about that.

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I want to talk about how we deal with it.

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And the background to this is I buy personality and somebody who

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has struggled my entire life, really with seasons of negativity.

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Depression unhappiness.

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So, you know, the irony of me doing a motivational podcast for so long, and all

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of you have seen me on stage know that I definitely don't come across as that.

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Um, thank the good Lord.

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I've been in a really good place for a long time now, but I definitely know

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what it's like to have those seasons of unhappiness and despair and depression.

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So I'm somebody that's had to work extremely hard to

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manage my own psychology.

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I'm definitely not there yet.

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And I guess none of us will ever fully get there.

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But I am somebody who's learned a few things about how we manage it.

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And I think we often want a really complex solution.

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We often want a really complex.

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I think there's a huge industry.

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Both in the psychological professions, the medical professions

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that wants to perpetuate the idea that there's not a, you.

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On our own.

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There's not a lot.

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We can do.

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So I go on, I just want to be careful about how I say this, but

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I think we can often underestimate the power that we do have to change

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our own experience of the world.

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Sometimes all we need is a good.

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A good person to encourage us and to give us some tools.

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So let's do it.

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Let's talk about it.

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A long time ago, I did a podcast called don't take the off ramp and that has been

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a thesis for me for a very long time.

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And where I live here in the national capital.

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There's a sort of a freeway where you drive in.

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There's a bunch of off-ramps to go to different places.

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And I remember driving one day, a few years ago, and just this clear sense,

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this idea that mental health and going into despair and depressive thinking

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is a lot like taking an off-ramp.

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We often get a seed thought or the seed thought.

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It's this.

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Thought that crosses our mind about something we don't want or

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something that's not going well.

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Something, you know, a thought about the future.

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And then we take the off-ramp and before we know it, uh, in, in acceptance

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commitment therapy, they call it.

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Um, being hooked.

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Being hooked.

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It's like, you know, imagine getting like a, a fishing or

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caught in a jumper or a hat you.

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You're kind of flailing around and the more you go with, the

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more you're trying to deal with it, the more hooked you become.

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So we're dealing with this issue of being hooked and taking this off ramp.

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So.

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As much as I would love to give you this incredibly elaborate strategy.

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The first thing that began to help me over the years was this

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sense of don't take the off-ramp.

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What this means is you've got to get extremely good in the moment.

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At not following the negative thinking.

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Now the pushback I get sometimes as well, you know, what have you really

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need to work through difficult issues?

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Yeah.

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I'm not saying you don't do that.

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But you're smart.

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You know what exactly what I'm talking about?

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Don't, you know, that experience when immediately you just get

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hooked on a thought and you're off and you start feeling worse.

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And one of the ways to, I guess, think about it is.

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Is your thinking, making you feel more miserable or more grounded and optimistic?

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That's a good, I'm not talking about denial.

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I'm not saying we don't ignore our difficult circumstances.

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They're a given they're going to happen.

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You know, I remember Tony Robbins used to say the only thing about

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success is that you get a better quality of problem, right?

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Everybody thinks that we're going to get, you know, if you get rich or you win

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the lottery or you get this promotion or this relationship, then you'll be happy.

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No, you just get a different kind of problem.

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You get a bigger problem.

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That's, you know, With bigger, bigger payoffs.

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If you can surmount them.

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I'll give you an example.

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A youngest child has been really sick this week.

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She's got a middle ear infection, tonsillitis.

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So she comes into our room at about 2:00 AM last night, wakes us up.

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And, uh, you know, we've been around this.

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Merry-go-round as parents for a long time.

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So I just said to Karen, I said, Hey.

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She can sleep in here.

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I'm going to go and sleep in her room.

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So if I go to the princess pink bedroom at 2:00 AM, And I'm lying in there and

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I'm really struggling to get back to sleep and it starts what starts Jonathan?

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Well, the hook, you know, the hook that you all get sometimes at two or

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three in the morning, write the hook.

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And this negative thinking starts.

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And I, and I got some getting really good at this.

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I just caught it immediately.

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I'm like, I'm not going there.

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I'm not going there.

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And this is the essence of this message.

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I'm trying to teach that we don't take the off-ramp.

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That we begin to catch these thoughts.

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The second they happen.

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And we don't go with them.

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You know, Cove it's taught me so much.

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And one of the big things in recent episodes, I've talked so

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much about this 24 hour mentality.

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There is so much despair and anxiety that comes from projecting

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way out into the future.

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And have you seen how your thinking can do this?

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It's like, well, what did this happens?

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And what did the vaccine and what are these?

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And what if I don't take the vaccine?

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And what if this happens?

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And what if you know, what about if I can't get a job here

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or this happened to my kids?

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If we go right.

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We're into the distant future.

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And I'm the biggest believer and I'm, I've come to these pretty late

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in life that you get 24 hour blocks.

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You get 24 hour blocks.

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Yes.

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You keep an eye on the future.

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Yes.

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You have a broad plan about how you want your life to go.

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But you only get 24 hours.

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And, you know, theoretically.

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You only really get the next moment.

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Right?

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I mean the room you're sitting in.

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You know, listening to this or wherever you are, you could be out walking.

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A tree could fall on you or a car could lose control and kill you in 20 seconds.

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I've seen it happen.

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I remember years ago I was riding my motorbike.

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Yeah.

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To the beach one day.

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And, uh, the sun had just come up and I remember there's

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this lady walking, her dogs.

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On the side of the road.

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And she was just off the side and I saw this car was behind this car

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and the car was driving along and the sun obviously blinded them.

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And I watched this car just drift off to the left side of

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the road and hit this poor woman.

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And I was the first person there.

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It was the most traumatic experience.

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But it reinforced, you know, that you can just be going along, minding

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your own business and your life can end anything could happen.

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Right.

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Seriously.

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So that doesn't lead me to depression or anxiety.

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That just leads me to this grounded realization.

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Okay.

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I'm alive now.

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I'm going to try and bless people.

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I'm going to try and stay positive.

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I'm going to try and manage my thinking.

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I'm going to try and live this 24 hour block.

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And that's how I'm doing it.

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Friends.

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And I got to tell you, since I've been living this way, it's had quite an effect.

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I, I, you know, I'm sure I have the odd day where I go a bit backwards, but.

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This is what I got for you.

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I'd love to give you a 5,000 page thesis about all these different things, but

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we've got to get really good here.

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It is.

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One more time.

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Mental toughness, mental toughness.

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What is mental toughness?

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I think it's the ability.

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To catch yourself in the act.

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Of negative.

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Unproductive unhelpful thinking.

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And choose.

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This is the toughness part.

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Choose, you know how you have to choose to go to the gym.

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You have to choose to go for a walk or a run.

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You have to choose to eat properly.

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The toughness part comes from making ourselves do things that

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we don't actually like to do.

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I mean, it's easier for us really just to kind of just go along and.

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And just, you know, go, I used to go down the path without thinking it's comforting.

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Isn't it?

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It's comforting.

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Because one of the things that we want as humans is we always want certainty.

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Has a deep psychological principle Maslow went on at first.

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Uh, but it's really been developed.

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It's the idea that humans don't do too well in uncertainty.

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So if you really want to, you know, it's the learn helplessness experiments they

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used to do on rats, where they used to shock rats, no matter what they did.

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And the rats eventually just got.

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Went into chronic depression.

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So, you know, what we want is certainty.

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We want to know that whatever's happening.

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There's some certainty.

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So that works both ways.

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You know, people can get into despair and depression and

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what that gives them certainty.

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What certainty is it?

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The certainty that life is terrible.

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The certainty that they're never going to reach their goals, the certainty

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that they'll always be unhappy.

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So then if we stay in that space, And then what needs to happen for me?

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And I'm not speaking to anybody else now is that you get sympathy, right?

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Because if your life's terrible and you can prove to everybody who had

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terrible your life is, and you get sympathy and you get reinforcement.

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And that's why I think it's called mental toughness because it's much harder.

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It's much tougher.

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To do the opposite.

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It's much tougher to not go after sympathy.

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It's much tougher to catch yourself in the very act.

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Of unproductive thinking and you do the hard work of

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choosing a different direction.

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For me, it's like a conversation.

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I just find, as soon as that thought, I'm just like, no, no, it's like that.

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It's just like Kasi saying no to one of my kids.

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No.

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No, but can I get no, can I, but just one this time, just

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one time, I'll only do it one.

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No.

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It's just no.

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I'm not going there.

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It's like that old biblical story, right.

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Of the Israelites coming out of Egypt.

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If you're not familiar with it going watch prince of Egypt on Netflix.

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You know, they came out of Egypt and they start, some of them started to complain.

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They wanted to go back because they didn't like the tough process

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of going into the promised land, going into where they belonged.

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Right.

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It's much easier to go backwards.

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It's really easy to go backwards.

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And it's always easy to go back with when things are difficult, it's much harder.

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It's tougher.

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To actually go forwards and to catch ourselves in the moment

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of unproductive thinking.

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So give you quite here from Vince Lombardi.

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Vince Lombardi was one of the most famous, uh, American football coaches.

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Uh, NFL coaches of, uh, I guess in American history, really.

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And, uh, just saying as a great ma as the master motivator of people.

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And, uh, he was his quote on mental toughness.

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He says, and I like our honesty is he says mental toughness is many things.

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And rather difficult to explain it's qualities are sacrifice and self denial.

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Also most importantly, it is combined with a perfectly disciplined

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will that refuses to give in.

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It's a state of mind.

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You could call it character in action.

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You know, there's so much in that he talks about, you know, A perfectly

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disciplined will that refuses to give in.

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So it's a discipline process, right?

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It's a process is going, I'm not going that way.

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I'm not having that thought.

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I'm not going to reinforce that negative despair filled thinking.

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Really, really.

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It's just Jonathan, there's just positive.

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Fluff.

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Well, I gotta be honest with you.

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Sooner or later you got to live your life, right?

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And I'll live my life one way for a long period of time until

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I started living this way.

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And I'm like, what am I happier?

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And some of you that will, is that all.

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Is that all there is to it.

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You just want to be happy and I get, yeah.

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Cause if I'm happier, here's what I'll tell you.

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I notice.

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When I'm happy, I'm a much greater blessing to the people I love.

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When I'm miserable and despairing and depressed, I am not good

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for my kids or for Karen.

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Or for my friends or for you?

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I find that if I don't take that off ramp, if I stay off that path and I

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just did just get this discipline.

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This self denial.

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Look at that word.

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Lombardi uses sacrifice and self denial.

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What is self denial in this context?

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I deny myself the ability to go off, to feeling miserable and getting sympathy.

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I'm going to deny myself that I'm going to say no, I'm no longer.

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I'm going to deny it.

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I'm going to stop it.

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I'm going to cut it off.

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I'm going to stand on my feet and deal with the difficult, challenging 24 hours.

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Blocks of time that we're going to confront me in this particular season.

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All right.

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There's a lot there.

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Huh?

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Now, let me clarify because, um, you know, I'm not, you know,

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some, some of us struggle with.

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Genuine mental health.

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You know, genuine anxiety, depression.

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So am I saying you don't.

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Uh, C medical, uh, mental health professionals course I don't.

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Uh, and, uh, and I'm not telling anybody to stop seeing somebody

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if they're doing it or not use medication, any of that stuff.

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I'm not saying that.

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I'm saying that you need to do what is best for you?

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But I'm just telling you what works for me.

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What works for me is fighting for myself.

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Refusing to abandon myself.

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I think that's what I used to do for many years.

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I just, my thinking would go off in this rabbit hole of negativity

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and I would just abandoned myself.

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See you, Jonathan.

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Good luck.

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Well, Hadn't you enjoy that trip into the dark forest of despair and, uh, we'll

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catch in a few months when you come back.

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I used to live that way.

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Karen would tell you she remembers seasons where I was just like, I'll

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be on stage motivating people, but in my private life, I'd be like following

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these rabbit holes of despair.

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And I don't know.

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Does that like integrity?

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No, I think I had to find the courage to still try to help people and bless

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people during a difficult journey.

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But now as I've sort of come out of that forest, Doing a lot of metaphors today.

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I feel like I've come out of that forest with some good news for

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people, which is firstly, we don't have to go into the forest at all.

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We don't.

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Okay.

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We don't.

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We really don't.

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We have power.

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You have much more power than you think power to control,

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where your thought processes go.

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All right.

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Let me know what you think of this home.

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All right, that's it for me today.

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Uh, look only housekeeping is please make sure you've

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subscribed as the coolest thing.

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I'm going to build out some more ways to get in touch with me

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and I'm going to build out some new cool resources for you all.

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In the next few weeks, that's kind of what I've been working on, but for

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now, just make sure you're subscribed.

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If you're a new listener, please hit that big subscribe button.

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God bless you everybody.

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Don't take the off-ramp, I'm really praying for you all.

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I just hope that you'll get in through this season and I hope I

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can be a blessing to you with these little moments of encouragement.

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All right.

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This has been the daily podcast.

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My name is Jonathan Doyle.

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God bless everybody.

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I'm going to have another message for you very soon

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