Is our success in life determined by genetics, luck, talent, or some other mysterious force? In today’s episode, I share a powerful insight from neurobiology that will help you realize that so much more is possible if you can learn to do this one thing.

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Transcript
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Well, hello there, my friend welcome aboard to the daily podcast.

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Have you listened in before?

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Are we all friends?

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You and I, but if you, if you're brand new listener, welcome aboard of your Regulus

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night, it is good to have you back.

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My name is Jonathan Doyle, this my friend.

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It's the daily podcast.

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It is called the daily podcast because yes, you guessed it.

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I try to do it every single day, 365 days a year.

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Often people go.

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Why do you do it every day?

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People are going to listen to it every day.

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Well, it seems that they actually are listening to it every day.

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At least.

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My mother and my caboodle, R and S and others.

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Depending on the day of the week.

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I love doing it.

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You know what I'm doing it lately is because I'm learning with you

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because I am learning with you.

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I'm reading a lot.

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I'm uh, I'm alert a lot.

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I'm thinking a lot.

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And I'm just finding this stuff really helpful.

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So I just want to share it with you and hope to be a blessing to you.

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Please make sure you have subscribed.

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It does make a big difference.

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If you could hit that subscribe button here in Spotify or apple

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podcasts or Google podcasts or wherever you're listening.

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Hit the subscribe button.

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It does make a big difference.

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And of course there's a YouTube link here cause I'm on YouTube every single day.

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And you can find the video version there.

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I'd love you to do that.

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And of course there is a coaching link.

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If you would like to do some private coaching with me.

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You just jump on board.

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I do a send you a zoom link and we start working together and it's a really

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simple process where you and I catch up.

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And we identify what needs to change.

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What's important to you.

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And then I really get behind you as a coach and get you moving forward.

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It could be your business.

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It could be your relationships could be health and fitness, whatever it is.

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Let's get on a call.

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So go check out that coaching link friends.

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I hope you had a chance to listen to yesterday's episode.

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Where I shared some really deep insights from a book I've just

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finished by a guy called Jay stringer.

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It's a really deep episode.

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We looked at shame.

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We looked at past scripts.

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We looked at what we looked at, what keeps us in failure.

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So I really think that was pretty cool yesterday.

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So go check it out today.

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We're going to keep heading along that same path together.

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The, uh, I am on a journey.

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I'm on a journey of exploring shame.

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I have been reading a whole bunch of books about this this morning at about 5:00 AM.

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I had my heavy pack on, I went and did like a long, long rock, long hike.

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Listening to an 11 hour book at the moment on a, from a clinical

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psychotherapist on shame.

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I just think there's a really interesting concept that affects so many people.

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So many of us.

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At a very deep level.

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And I'm currently simultaneously reading Kurt Thompson's book

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called the soul of shame.

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And the start of this book is a kind of exploration of neurobiology.

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It's just this wonderful emerging field that takes, uh, how

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would I explain this to you?

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If you think of how.

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You know, psychology has developed.

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I started to say to people that the first psychological textbook only

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appeared in 1901 by William James.

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It's the first ever book on psychology and you go back further and say, well, a

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lot of the great philosophers, even Plato and Aristotle were talking about matters

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of the soul, which kind of reflect this.

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This fascinating aspect of what it means to be human, this deep

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inner state that we all possess.

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And then of course, you've got the three VNS schools, the

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psychotherapy you've got Freud.

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And then color.

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And then the third Viennese school with Victor Frankl.

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All of this I'm getting at is that it's a relatively new discipline, but

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now what we're seeing is the merging of that sort of psychodynamic stuff.

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The psychotherapeutic areas, Freud even.

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You know, like I said earlier, Plato Aristotle.

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All the way through the centuries, but now we're because of the

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advances of the hard sciences.

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We're able to get a much better insight into the actual physical

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working of the brains, neurobiology the structure of the brain and how

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to fix how we live, think and feel.

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So what's good about this book, soul of shame by Kurt Thompson is that

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he's bringing these things together.

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He's bringing together the neuro-biological, the spiritual

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he's running from a Christian perspective and the therapeutic.

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So I just want to give you one quote that really jumped out at me and hopefully

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I can really make this useful for you.

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He says this, ultimately we become.

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What we pay attention to.

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And the options available to us at any time.

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Uh, myriad, the most important of which are located within us.

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One more time.

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Ultimately, we become what we pay attention to and the options

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available to us at any time.

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A myriad.

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The most important of which are located within us.

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This is a rich quote, my friend.

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First thing I want to draw your attention to is firstly, that this

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guy is quite brilliant, right?

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He's a highly educated person.

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And to write a phrase like this, ultimately we become

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what we pay attention to.

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Think about the profundity of that and think about what it means, if he's right.

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If he's right.

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He saying that where we place our attention.

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Determines who and what we become in the journey of life.

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So, as I said yesterday, I want you to understand that there are theoretically.

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Millions hundreds, moons, even billions of things that you could

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pay attention to at any given moment.

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So there's the physical world around you.

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There's the temperature in the room.

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There's the lights.

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There's the things that surround you.

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There's the feeling of clothing on your body.

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You could pay attention to any of that, right?

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Theoretically.

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So as we go through life, there's this constant process by which we

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make decisions about where we place.

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Uh, attention.

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So, what I want to do is take a big leap here and think about the times in life.

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When we struggle with things like depression or anxiety, for example,

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cause they're the big ones that are plaguing so much of modern life.

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If we're going through these things, think about where our,

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where our attention is now often.

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You know, in a depressive state.

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Our attention will be upon.

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The experience of low energy, our attention will be upon our brain is

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a meaning making machine our mind.

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So it's looking for meanings.

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Why do I feel this way?

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Oh, it's because I am ex because I'm no good at, because this person

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said this because no one loves me because I always screw up because.

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You know, my parents were never there when I was a kid or I never knew my

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father or fill in the blanks now.

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I'm not diminishing or minimizing the significance and importance

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of any of these things.

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But what I am saying is that we have this incredible power to

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choose where we place our attention.

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So, let me give you some obvious examples.

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I was speaking to someone just the other day about the

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incredible book, the happiest man.

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Alive.

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I don't know if you've read that Edie.

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It's a book by a guy called Eddie Jack, who.

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And it blew my mind.

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I actually heard the audio version first, and then I bought about

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five copies as I do sometimes instead of giving them to people.

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So long story short, Eddie, Jack, who.

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Survives the most horrendous experience in world war II.

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It captured by the Nazis is families killed and.

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And just the experiences he's imprisoned in Auschwitz for the duration of the

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war, but manages to come out alive.

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And I remember exactly where I was.

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I was on a long training run when I really heard this

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profound part of the book where.

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He was repatriated.

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Oh, he was, you know, after the war, he emigrated, sorry to Australia.

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And set up a life in the beach side area, Bondai, which many of

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you would know is kind of like the Copacabana beach of Australia.

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It's sort of the beach.

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For tourists and stuff.

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And he started this real estate business.

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And.

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But his first son was born Michael and Eddie Jack, who was still dealing

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with this profound oppression.

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Just just understandably right.

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Because it look, think of all the loss and the trauma and the stuff.

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So think about where his attention was.

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Right.

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And his attention.

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Was understandably.

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Placed upon all the evil, all the loss, all the pain, all the.

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You know, the complete lack of justice and decency and all of that.

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But his son was born and he was living in this deep, dark depression.

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And he had this kind of a piffy when he suddenly realized

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that he had to change that.

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He held his son in his arms and realized that he had to change and.

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I love these stories because you know what he did, he, he just changed.

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He just literally changed.

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He became a fundamentally different person and started this incredible

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real estate business and did all this amazing stuff over the years and

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influenced huge numbers of people.

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And I'm going to argue that at least a very significant part of

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this was because his attention.

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Shifted.

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His attention was placed upon his son and his attention was shifted

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to the time that he did have left.

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And his attention was shifted to the things that he could still do.

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So let's come back to this Kurt Thompson quote.

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He says, ultimately, we become what we pay attention to.

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And the options available to us at any time, a myriad, of course, you understand

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myriad means multiple, but the most important of which are located within us.

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So think about the ability to place our attention internally on

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all the things that are missing, all the lack in our lives, all the

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ways we've been hurt or mistreated.

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We have utter complete freedom to place our attention upon those areas.

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Absolutely all the time.

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No problems.

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But we also have other options.

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And friends, if you're anything like me, I have struggled with this because

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I've been like in the midst of real pain at times in my life, I've been

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like, you want to be justified, right?

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You want to, you want to scream at the world, but I have every

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right to feel this way because.

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And absolutely.

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And over many years of speaking on stage, I've taught people.

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This principle I've said.

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You can come to me and you can list every single thing that's

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happened to you, how terrible it is.

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What it's done to you, why you are suffering.

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And then I'm going to listen to you carefully and I'm going to

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listen to you and pathic glee.

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And then at the end of it all, when you're finally blown out

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all of that emotion, energy, I'm going to say three words to you.

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And here are those three words.

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And.

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Now what.

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And now what.

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You'll probably right.

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And I understand that you would feel this way because what

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happened to you is terrible.

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But you still have to live.

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And you have to find a way to find meaning and move forward.

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And I just think that Kurt Thompson's offering is something quite extraordinary

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today, which is a decision around where we place our attention.

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So Franz, I turned 50 this year on December.

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The first I'll be turning 50 years of age.

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I still feel about 25.

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But I'm just struck.

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By the importance.

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Of how much time I have left.

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And how I want that time to be useful and the blessing and rich and joyful.

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You know, some of, you know, I've been camping a lot lately.

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I've been taking the kids out and we went out Friday night.

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I took them out into the national park.

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Um,

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Middle of nowhere and it was just the best.

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And we're just about, they're all about just to get into bed

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in the tent at about 10:00 PM.

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And I noticed.

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That the moon had come up and we walked around the corner of these

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trees and you had to be there I guess, but the moon was just artily spec

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tacular, because there was no light pollution and it was just incredible.

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And I've got these really good binoculars that I use for hunting,

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and I took them out and gave them to the kids and you could see every

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crater on the moon and it was like,

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Well, I'm telling you this because it was just this beautiful moment of.

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Or, and wonder.

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And being together and sharing it together.

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And I guess that we can choose to pay attention to these kinds of opportunities.

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We can choose to pay attention to the things that are beautiful around us.

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They're quite extraordinary.

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So.

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The last thing I wrote in these notes in preparing here is.

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Was that this is a discipline.

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It's a genuine discipline.

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It's very easy to just get on this microphone and say these words and

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people like, yeah, yeah, I get it.

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I get it.

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Yep.

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Sure.

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I understand.

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But how do we actually do this?

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Especially if you're not somebody that, you know, naturally gravitates

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to the optimistic or the positive.

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And I say it's a discipline.

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It becomes something that you practice.

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And like almost everything that I teach it requires.

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Awareness and being awake.

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Of removing things in your life that keep you asleep.

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So that you are awake.

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Because when you're awake.

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Metaphysically to life.

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Then you can begin to notice things like, yeah, I'm paying attention

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to everything that's missing.

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I'm paying attention to.

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All of these internal states that are not helping me move forward.

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I'm not talking about denying what you feel.

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I'm not saying you ignore things.

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I'm just saying.

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You don't have to pay attention.

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To all of the things that are not helping, maybe this helps.

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Maybe it's like you have a party at your house and you invite 50 guests and.

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And 49 of those guests.

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Uh, interesting, energetic, happy, positive.

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Greg grateful to be there.

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And you've got this one guest who's like miserable.

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And wants to complain about the temperature in your house, the food.

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Uh, remind you that you had a party five years ago, that wasn't

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very good and hit their surprise.

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Anybody came to this one.

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And you have 49 guests, you could be paying attention to.

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And those 49 guests are going to help you to enjoy yourself and to learn things

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from them and to have a great time.

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But you're paying attention to this one guest.

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I've done it.

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So maybe that's a helpful metaphor.

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Don't pay attention to the one guest.

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You don't have to deny there.

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You just smile and wave, right?

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Like, Hey, glad you could make it kind of.

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And then go and spend time focusing your attention on the 4

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49 guests that really light you up.

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To discipline her.

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It is a discipline.

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All right, that's it for me today, please make sure you've subscribed.

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Please make sure you have subscribed.

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That's very helpful for me.

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Go and check out the coaching link.

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If you want to do some coaching with me, we can work on

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this kind of stuff together.

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We can help you.

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I can help you to start paying attention.

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Not to what's wrecking your life, but towards you, what towards.

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What you want to go towards, if you understand what I mean, I want to help

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you focus your attention on the good things and the things that you still can

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do that are gonna move you forward to go book yourself a coaching session with me.

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All right, God bless everybody.

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My name is Jonathan Doyle.

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This has been the daily podcast.

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I've enjoyed this one.

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I hope it's a blessing to you and I'll have another message for you.

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