When you might be about to crash into a wall the last thing you should do is look at the wall. It’s counterintuitive but looking away from what concerns you is the best way to avoid it. The more we pay attention to what we dont want, then the more likely we are to get it. In today’s episode I want to talk with you about why we need tp far more attention to what we do want rather than what we dont.
Transcript
Well, Hey everybody, Jonathan, with you once again for the daily message,
Speaker:I don't know what to call this anymore.
Speaker:There it's a daily podcast.
Speaker:Uh, putting it out here now on YouTube.
Speaker:It's on the website as well.
Speaker:So just want to, every single day brings some blessing to everybody.
Speaker:That's listening.
Speaker:Want to bring you some encouragement or just want to bring you one little idea?
Speaker:Why?
Speaker:Because my entire life I've had to battle most of this stuff myself,
Speaker:and I've got to work so hard every day, just to keep a positive,
Speaker:productive forward facing mindset.
Speaker:So I teach this stuff, not because.
Speaker:I've mastered it because I need to hear it every single day.
Speaker:So I've maybe if it's only just me watching a listing,
Speaker:I'd still keep doing it.
Speaker:But, uh, I hope this is a blessing to you now, today.
Speaker:I want to talk a little bit about focus.
Speaker:I want to talk a bit about where we place our cognitive mental
Speaker:energy, our imaginative focus.
Speaker:I just read a few things yesterday that really resonated with.
Speaker:I think when I looked in my own life over years, you know, for
Speaker:a long time in my life, I was kind of not where I wanted to be.
Speaker:I mean, we never get there.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:We're always approximating and heaven is home.
Speaker:So this is a journey.
Speaker:None of us are going to have some point where we suddenly go, yes, I've made it.
Speaker:This is everything I ever could have wanted right here.
Speaker:Perfect.
Speaker:So we're on this journey, but I realized that for many years I was writing
Speaker:goals and, and I felt that I had class.
Speaker:But I wasn't getting where I wanted to be.
Speaker:And I want to tell you how I sort of began to get a shift in life.
Speaker:I want to offer this to you today.
Speaker:I realized that I was falling into the classic trap that you do hear a lot about
Speaker:in personal development thinking, which is the focusing in, on what you don't want.
Speaker:Now we can write goals and we can say, you know, Jonathan,
Speaker:I write goals and I go, yeah.
Speaker:So do I, or so.
Speaker:But what we often tend to focus on is what's not working well.
Speaker:We often tend to find focused on is the scarcity and the lack
Speaker:and the things that are missing.
Speaker:There's a reason we do that.
Speaker:We've actually got evolved to do it.
Speaker:You see positivity and optimism and not our default settings, you know, regular
Speaker:listeners just know are always, I'm talking about this because this aspect of
Speaker:evolutionary psychology is so crucial and we can change our thinking, but we have
Speaker:to do it from the basis of knowing the kind of hard genetic wiring that nature
Speaker:has put into us as a school species.
Speaker:And that wiring is all about survival and.
Speaker:You know, back in caveman times, the people that survived were
Speaker:not really the optimist, right?
Speaker:The ones that launched the boats out to discover new places, usually drowned and
Speaker:got killed in storms right now, a couple of them made it, but most of them didn't
Speaker:the ones that explored new territories usually, uh, got eaten or shot or killed.
Speaker:I read this great quote, recent, I can't quite remember the exact phrasing, but
Speaker:it was like, you know, uh, pioneers get killed, settlers, get rich.
Speaker:I think it was, you know, the explorers that go out there and open up new
Speaker:territory usually end up dead eventually.
Speaker:But the ones that come after them and settle in those spaces that they've
Speaker:discovered tend to do really well.
Speaker:So there's this evolutionary bias against optimism and against
Speaker:daring and against positive.
Speaker:Sounds crazy.
Speaker:Doesn't it often like to say that, uh, you know, do we always
Speaker:want to be positive all the time?
Speaker:And I say, well, not quite because you don't want an
Speaker:optimistic airline pilot, right?
Speaker:You want your airline pilot to be a pessimist.
Speaker:You want them to assume that the worst might happen.
Speaker:So as we go through life, You know, we, we find that there's this subtle balancing
Speaker:act between recognizing the difficult, hard things in life while also looking
Speaker:towards the future, what we do want.
Speaker:But I think what I did for many years was I'd be wanting to change something, but
Speaker:I'd be focusing on what wasn't working.
Speaker:I'd be focusing on the lack on the scarcity, on the thing that I didn't have.
Speaker:And that of course, leads to worry and anxiety.
Speaker:I think that I'm really at the position now where you don't get the
Speaker:breakthrough, you don't get the growth.
Speaker:If you're focused hard on what you don't have.
Speaker:So there's this kind of ability that we have a suspension of belief.
Speaker:We need to look away from the reality sometimes and look very clearly
Speaker:towards what we do want now to do that.
Speaker:I want to give you a quote.
Speaker:So let's go, it's a quote from Tony Robbins.
Speaker:I really like it.
Speaker:So let me share that with you.
Speaker:He says one reason.
Speaker:So few of us achieve what we really want is that we never direct our focus.
Speaker:We never concentrate our power.
Speaker:Most people dabble their way through life.
Speaker:Never deciding to master anything in particular.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:I love some of the keywords in that people dabbling their way through life.
Speaker:You know, a little bit of effort here, a little bit of effort there,
Speaker:and maybe they look into this.
Speaker:Maybe they're looking at that.
Speaker:They drift along, right?
Speaker:So many of us can do that.
Speaker:We drift, he's telling us that if you want something different, if
Speaker:I want something different, what's necessary, extraordinary focus, focus.
Speaker:So earlier today I was reading some, uh, some stuff on.
Speaker:Macro finance again, and the concentration that I need to bring to it.
Speaker:And even being here in the studio, the desire to just be focused, to
Speaker:be present, to be trying to bring you something energetic and useful.
Speaker:We got to become masters, not dabblers.
Speaker:We need to use our focus in ways that service, not in ways that
Speaker:pull us away from things, right.
Speaker:We want to be focusing on what we do.
Speaker:So Karen and I got a whole bunch of goals we're working on at the moment and
Speaker:you got to become a different person.
Speaker:You actually have to become somebody that just goes, you know what?
Speaker:I'm not looking at the present reality I'm done with that.
Speaker:I'm not looking at all the bad stuff from the past.
Speaker:I am genuinely focused now on what's in front of me.
Speaker:I'm going after the future.
Speaker:And there seems to be this inexorable law of the universe, that the
Speaker:more that you stay energized and focused on what you do want.
Speaker:I don't ever think I'd say these words, but, but the more that it tends to come
Speaker:towards you, I know some of you are going to go, Jonathan, you're sounding a lot.
Speaker:Like you just read the secret.
Speaker:I don't know what to tell you.
Speaker:I just don't know.
Speaker:Here's the question.
Speaker:How do you.
Speaker:Do you want to leave life focused on all the bad stuff that's happened?
Speaker:Do you want to live your life focused on everything that's
Speaker:missing in your life right now?
Speaker:Or do you want to live your life focused on what you want?
Speaker:I mean, you've got to make that choice.
Speaker:So even if I don't.
Speaker:I'm just going to take the shot.
Speaker:You see, after I get out of the studio here got a three hour training ride
Speaker:because on October 3rd, I've got a 255 kilometer race with 5,000 meters
Speaker:of vertical climbing on the bike.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So now when I do that race, it'll be the toughest race I've ever done.
Speaker:And I'm pretty sure I'll finish it.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:My fitness is good and I've got the history for it.
Speaker:But even if I did it, would it be worth having the shot?
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:You know, where's my focus, my focus right now.
Speaker:Isn't alcohol.
Speaker:Gosh, I hope I can make it.
Speaker:My focus is on the training.
Speaker:My focus is on the outcome, so whatever you want to be different.
Speaker:Same thing.
Speaker:Don't focus on what could go wrong.
Speaker:I mean, you make practical, uh, you practically look at issues.
Speaker:You go, well, you know, what about this?
Speaker:What about that?
Speaker:What if this goes wrong?
Speaker:Should it be practical, reasonably practical, but practical people don't tend
Speaker:to get all that they want out of life.
Speaker:Practical people tend to do there.
Speaker:It's important to be practical to a degree.
Speaker:But, uh, I remember Christine Kane talking about this idea of, um,
Speaker:holy discontent, holy discontent.
Speaker:Cause some people like we should just be satisfied with your life.
Speaker:You know, God's given you life.
Speaker:You'd just be happy with whoever you've got.
Speaker:Sure.
Speaker:I'm happy with what I got, but that doesn't mean that I have to
Speaker:be completely comfortable with it that I can't want something else.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:So let's wrap up folks.
Speaker:You got to focus on what you do want, not what you don't want and when
Speaker:that part of your brain starts to go.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:But, but, but, but, but, but, but you don't listen to that part.
Speaker:If I've developed one skill in the last decade, it's the ability
Speaker:to stop listening to myself.
Speaker:I should do a whole message on that.
Speaker:A lot of the time, you don't want to listen to yourself a lot of the time,
Speaker:your brain and your psyche is not helping.
Speaker:It's just like, thank you enough.
Speaker:We're good.
Speaker:I'm just going to keep thinking this.
Speaker:I'm going to keep going this way.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:So focus in on what you do.
Speaker:One stop focusing on what you do.
Speaker:Hope that's useful.
Speaker:I'm going to keep doing that.
Speaker:All right, housekeeping.
Speaker:Please make sure you've subscribed.
Speaker:Or if you're listening to this on podcast or you're here on YouTube, if you're
Speaker:on the website, please add, do that.
Speaker:Hit the subscribe button, share this with some people I'm going to
Speaker:have some really good new, online training courses coming out soon.
Speaker:So, uh, if you're not on the list, just go to, uh, Jonathan doyle.co.
Speaker:Make sure you use one of the signup boxes there.
Speaker:And get yourself on the list so I can keep letting you know, when these new
Speaker:courses come out, you know, with lock downs and everything else, a lot of
Speaker:people are just accessing online content.
Speaker:I'm going to try and put together some of my best strategies for people in
Speaker:one place where you can access those.
Speaker:It's gonna be very exciting.
Speaker:So that's it for now.
Speaker:Um, please come and say hi, send me an email.
Speaker:jonathan@jonathandoyle.co.
Speaker:I hope this is useful.
Speaker:My name's Jonathan Doyle.
Speaker:This has been the daily message.
Speaker:We have to start calling it that, and I'm going to have
