No matter what might be happening in the world, we can all learn to become guardians and gate-keepers over the information and ideology that tries to enter into our hearts and minds. As fear and despair are pumped out relentlessly by mainstream media we have to become much more proactive as we guard our own hearts and minds. In this episode I want to share some insights with you about what we can do to become people of faith and hope in a challenging historical moment.
Transcript
Well, Hey everybody, Jonathan Doyle with you.
Speaker:Once again, welcome to the daily podcast, a little bit of a break.
Speaker:As we've all been enduring, the latest pay mutations, the latest stir.
Speaker:Challenges and trials of the, uh, the COVID pandemic we're back in lockdown
Speaker:here, which, uh, you know, you got to find a silver lining, right?
Speaker:You got to find a silver lining and, uh, there's many, many challenges,
Speaker:but it's been a time for family.
Speaker:It's been a time for, I've been homeschooling.
Speaker:I've been teaching my own three children.
Speaker:Karen said to me, Hey.
Speaker:There's two people in this marriage.
Speaker:And, uh, one of them started their career as a trained teacher, Jonathan
Speaker:and Karen said it was definitely not her.
Speaker:So you can guess who's taken on the role of, uh, doing.
Speaker:Yeah, daily teaching education for my kids.
Speaker:It's been great.
Speaker:Actually.
Speaker:I've been getting really organized and going back through some high
Speaker:school maths and I'm teaching.
Speaker:My youngest daughter, Latin and my, uh, my son, French on top
Speaker:of the daily stuff we're doing.
Speaker:So it's a really interesting season, isn't it?
Speaker:So none of us would have wanted it, but.
Speaker:I guess we've got to do our very best don't we to find whatever
Speaker:positives we can find in this particular season that we're in.
Speaker:So I want to send a big word of encouragement to you all listening
Speaker:and, uh, to give you a sense of hope.
Speaker:I think we're in a big hope deficit.
Speaker:Aren't we, we, many of us, I've got people listening all over the world, but I know.
Speaker:Many listeners are dealing with all sorts of challenges.
Speaker:And when that builds up, that becomes this kind of fatigue.
Speaker:Doesn't there, this kind of exhaustion.
Speaker:Where we just want something to go back to normal so we
Speaker:can all get on with our lives.
Speaker:So I guess today, I want to talk about a few simple strategies and
Speaker:ideas that we can put into place.
Speaker:Around how we manage.
Speaker:Uh, minds and our hearts during an unexpected season of life, none of us
Speaker:knew this was coming hard to think about.
Speaker:These challenges that we face, but I am convinced that one of the
Speaker:things we need to get very good at.
Speaker:Is to become gatekeepers of our own hearts and minds.
Speaker:You see.
Speaker:Our emotional experience, uh, in a world, our psychological, uh,
Speaker:reality is very much conditioned.
Speaker:By not just what's going on around us, but of course how we explain it to ourselves.
Speaker:So I think if you look at the impact of mainstream media, right.
Speaker:Or the impact of mainstream media in terms of the fear narrative,
Speaker:the, you know, it's very successful to communicate fear to people.
Speaker:Because there's a very strong, evolutionary, adaptive advantage for
Speaker:fear, of course, because as we evolved as a species, We learned that fear.
Speaker:Uh, people who were afraid of things tended to live longer.
Speaker:You know, if you saw something rustling in the bushes and you ran the other way,
Speaker:you're probably lived longer than the people that just walked into the bushes.
Speaker:So we definitely have this evolutionary, adaptive, biological advantage to fear.
Speaker:I'm a kind of very predisposed.
Speaker:To see it to respond to it, to.
Speaker:To, uh, to take action and to, uh, you know, and often the fear that's presented
Speaker:to us at the moment is quite abstract.
Speaker:It's abstract fear about something that might happen or something
Speaker:that happened to somebody else.
Speaker:And we should be afraid because it happened to them.
Speaker:So it's not as if the fear for many of us is, you know, a.
Speaker:A real immediate pressing fear.
Speaker:So what tends to happen then is rumination.
Speaker:Rumination is kind of this process by which we go over
Speaker:and over and over and over.
Speaker:What might happen or what we think is happening in them, that
Speaker:that fear just wears us down.
Speaker:So the first thing I want to say to you today is be very, very careful.
Speaker:About how much exposure you're giving yourself to that fear narrative.
Speaker:So I tend to look, I haven't read or watched really mainstream media.
Speaker:And as long as I can remember, When I'm sourcing information, I tend to go for
Speaker:some really high-end research journalists.
Speaker:I trust, uh, sources that I really trust.
Speaker:And I do the work.
Speaker:I try to get my head around some of the data and.
Speaker:And actually go, okay, well, Do we need to be afraid.
Speaker:He, I mean, how real is some of what's being presented to us, right.
Speaker:So, I just want to encourage you all that.
Speaker:If you want to dial down that experience of FIA.
Speaker:Then we want to get good at.
Speaker:Protecting and being gatekeepers of our own hearts and minds.
Speaker:I was up early today and I was reading my Bible and I was reading
Speaker:a scripture from John chapter 14.
Speaker:It's the famous line where Jesus says, peace, I leave you.
Speaker:My peace.
Speaker:I give you not as the world gives.
Speaker:Do I give to you now?
Speaker:Here's the important line he says, do not let your heart be troubled.
Speaker:No, let it be afraid.
Speaker:Listen to that again, do not let your heart be troubled nor let it be afraid.
Speaker:I want to draw your attention to the word lit.
Speaker:Do not let do not allow, do not permit your heart to be troubled.
Speaker:And there's always sort of journaling about that.
Speaker:I thought.
Speaker:That's really interesting, isn't it?
Speaker:That Jesus instructs us.
Speaker:Two.
Speaker:Be proactive about something to be.
Speaker:Working against something he's reminding us to stop something happening.
Speaker:Because often we think that fear and all that stuff that happens
Speaker:to us is just a reality, right?
Speaker:It just comes at us.
Speaker:And it's, it's a real thing.
Speaker:But this reading this Bible verse this morning really reminded me
Speaker:that we have to be the protagonists.
Speaker:We actually have to be involved and engaged.
Speaker:In what we allow to take shape inside us.
Speaker:We can't be passive.
Speaker:I just think that's a really important insight and it's just a.
Speaker:Cause I've.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I just read it and I thought do not let your heart be troubled.
Speaker:Do not allow it to be, do not permit it to be so, so how do you do that?
Speaker:Well, I think you, you, you take practical steps.
Speaker:You don't allow it to be overwhelmed with information and scare tactics that
Speaker:are going to make you feel miserable.
Speaker:So you genuinely take a proactive stance.
Speaker:In what's going on in your heart and mind.
Speaker:So.
Speaker:That leads us to the topic.
Speaker:I think of hope.
Speaker:Because faith and hope and fear are kind of all intertwined.
Speaker:And hope.
Speaker:Is in very short supply at the moment.
Speaker:So the way that we begin to develop a sense of hope is to use our own faith
Speaker:and to stop focusing relentlessly on the darkness that surround us.
Speaker:You know, Friedrich Nietzsche used to say that if you, uh, you know, he had
Speaker:this concept that if you stay into the abyss long enough, the abyss stares back.
Speaker:And he was talking about his own journey in philosophy and the piston biology and.
Speaker:And his idea was that if you stare into the chasm that opens up.
Speaker:When you pull out the spiritual.
Speaker:Intellectual rug from underneath your own feet as sooner or later you
Speaker:attract the attention of the obese.
Speaker:It kind of sucks you in.
Speaker:It's a really interesting insight.
Speaker:It's sort of like if you stare into darkness, you draw the attention to that
Speaker:darkness and it starts to stare into you.
Speaker:It's a powerful insight.
Speaker:Isn't it?
Speaker:So that's a question around focus, right?
Speaker:That if we focus on the fear, if we focus on the darkness, I know some of
Speaker:you listening to me going, oh, you know, we need to be prepared and practical.
Speaker:I mean, come on.
Speaker:If you're listening to this, you're still alive.
Speaker:So you've been doing something right.
Speaker:Um, I just think if we choose to focus.
Speaker:Relentlessly on the narrative of fear that surrounds us so easily without
Speaker:being more proactive, then we're just going to get more of that fear.
Speaker:Now, the last thing I wanted to talk about today was a beautiful quote
Speaker:that I heard from the British, uh, journalist and writer, Jojo Moyes.
Speaker:You got to love a quote from anybody called Jojo.
Speaker:It's very trustworthy named Jojo.
Speaker:Isn't he just there, like, I can trust a Jojo.
Speaker:It's just, they sound fun.
Speaker:I love this quote.
Speaker:It is this Jojo Moyes says there is always a way out of a situation.
Speaker:Might be ugly.
Speaker:Might leave you feeling like the earth had gone and shifted under your feet.
Speaker:But there is always a way.
Speaker:Around.
Speaker:There is always a way around.
Speaker:I love the opening line.
Speaker:There is always a way out of a situation.
Speaker:I really love that.
Speaker:I just think that we need to.
Speaker:Be reminded that we need to be encouraged to understand that no matter what
Speaker:we're facing, there is always a way.
Speaker:There is always a way.
Speaker:The pages of history, it is full of men and women faced with the most.
Speaker:Difficult circumstances.
Speaker:That found a way around.
Speaker:You look at the Wright brothers, you know, But when, you know, the, the, this
Speaker:relentless just pursuit of gonna just find a way we're going to find a way
Speaker:Thomas Edison is light bulb story, right.
Speaker:We're just going to keep doing it and doing it and doing it
Speaker:until we finally work it out.
Speaker:So many of us have faced enormous challenges under COVID in our businesses.
Speaker:Some of us have been insulated from that, but I know many of you listening will have
Speaker:had all sorts of challenges and losses.
Speaker:This is along the way.
Speaker:But I want to say to you today, as I have experienced, and as I'm teaching
Speaker:myself, there is always a way.
Speaker:Out.
Speaker:Now that might mean we got to do all sorts of stuff.
Speaker:I'm definitely working differently.
Speaker:Working harder, change in a lot of approaches, trying different things,
Speaker:but there is always a way out.
Speaker:There is always a way around.
Speaker:So again, silver linings, right?
Speaker:No matter how dark these days are, no matter how challenging
Speaker:the situation is in COVID, let's be encouraged that it is also.
Speaker:Making us think and grow and hustle and change and develop
Speaker:and do things differently.
Speaker:We've got to find a way around friends.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:That's it.
Speaker:All I wanted to say.
Speaker:Summary.
Speaker:Stop being a gatekeeper of your own heart and mind.
Speaker:Start being a gatekeeper of your own heart and your own mind.
Speaker:Do not let the fear overwhelm you.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:I hope that's a blessing to you.
Speaker:Please make sure you've subscribed.
Speaker:You can find more about me on the website@jonathandoyle.co if
Speaker:you want to get in touch, but that's it for now, everybody.
Speaker:God bless.
Speaker:Get on predictive, Judy protective, Judy, stop protecting that hot in mind.
Speaker:Keep your eyes up.
Speaker:Keep your head up.
Speaker:Keep your eyes focused on faith and hope.
Speaker:And know that nothing lasts forever and the darker stays do eventually
Speaker:give way God bless everybody.
Speaker:My name's Jonathan Doyle.
Speaker:This has been the daily podcast.
