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
Well, hello there, my friend welcome aboard to the daily podcast.
Speaker:Have you listened in before?
Speaker:Are we all friends?
Speaker:You and I, but if you, if you're brand new listener, welcome aboard of your Regulus
Speaker:night, it is good to have you back.
Speaker:My name is Jonathan Doyle, this my friend.
Speaker:It's the daily podcast.
Speaker:It is called the daily podcast because yes, you guessed it.
Speaker:I try to do it every single day, 365 days a year.
Speaker:Often people go.
Speaker:Why do you do it every day?
Speaker:People are going to listen to it every day.
Speaker:Well, it seems that they actually are listening to it every day.
Speaker:At least.
Speaker:My mother and my caboodle, R and S and others.
Speaker:Depending on the day of the week.
Speaker:I love doing it.
Speaker:You know what I'm doing it lately is because I'm learning with you
Speaker:because I am learning with you.
Speaker:I'm reading a lot.
Speaker:I'm uh, I'm alert a lot.
Speaker:I'm thinking a lot.
Speaker:And I'm just finding this stuff really helpful.
Speaker:So I just want to share it with you and hope to be a blessing to you.
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Speaker:And of course there is a coaching link.
Speaker:If you would like to do some private coaching with me.
Speaker:You just jump on board.
Speaker:I do a send you a zoom link and we start working together and it's a really
Speaker:simple process where you and I catch up.
Speaker:And we identify what needs to change.
Speaker:What's important to you.
Speaker:And then I really get behind you as a coach and get you moving forward.
Speaker:It could be your business.
Speaker:It could be your relationships could be health and fitness, whatever it is.
Speaker:Let's get on a call.
Speaker:So go check out that coaching link friends.
Speaker:I hope you had a chance to listen to yesterday's episode.
Speaker:Where I shared some really deep insights from a book I've just
Speaker:finished by a guy called Jay stringer.
Speaker:It's a really deep episode.
Speaker:We looked at shame.
Speaker:We looked at past scripts.
Speaker:We looked at what we looked at, what keeps us in failure.
Speaker:So I really think that was pretty cool yesterday.
Speaker:So go check it out today.
Speaker:We're going to keep heading along that same path together.
Speaker:The, uh, I am on a journey.
Speaker:I'm on a journey of exploring shame.
Speaker:I have been reading a whole bunch of books about this this morning at about 5:00 AM.
Speaker:I had my heavy pack on, I went and did like a long, long rock, long hike.
Speaker:Listening to an 11 hour book at the moment on a, from a clinical
Speaker:psychotherapist on shame.
Speaker:I just think there's a really interesting concept that affects so many people.
Speaker:So many of us.
Speaker:At a very deep level.
Speaker:And I'm currently simultaneously reading Kurt Thompson's book
Speaker:called the soul of shame.
Speaker:And the start of this book is a kind of exploration of neurobiology.
Speaker:It's just this wonderful emerging field that takes, uh, how
Speaker:would I explain this to you?
Speaker:If you think of how.
Speaker:You know, psychology has developed.
Speaker:I started to say to people that the first psychological textbook only
Speaker:appeared in 1901 by William James.
Speaker:It's the first ever book on psychology and you go back further and say, well, a
Speaker:lot of the great philosophers, even Plato and Aristotle were talking about matters
Speaker:of the soul, which kind of reflect this.
Speaker:This fascinating aspect of what it means to be human, this deep
Speaker:inner state that we all possess.
Speaker:And then of course, you've got the three VNS schools, the
Speaker:psychotherapy you've got Freud.
Speaker:And then color.
Speaker:And then the third Viennese school with Victor Frankl.
Speaker:All of this I'm getting at is that it's a relatively new discipline, but
Speaker:now what we're seeing is the merging of that sort of psychodynamic stuff.
Speaker:The psychotherapeutic areas, Freud even.
Speaker:You know, like I said earlier, Plato Aristotle.
Speaker:All the way through the centuries, but now we're because of the
Speaker:advances of the hard sciences.
Speaker:We're able to get a much better insight into the actual physical
Speaker:working of the brains, neurobiology the structure of the brain and how
Speaker:to fix how we live, think and feel.
Speaker:So what's good about this book, soul of shame by Kurt Thompson is that
Speaker:he's bringing these things together.
Speaker:He's bringing together the neuro-biological, the spiritual
Speaker:he's running from a Christian perspective and the therapeutic.
Speaker:So I just want to give you one quote that really jumped out at me and hopefully
Speaker:I can really make this useful for you.
Speaker:He says this, ultimately we become.
Speaker:What we pay attention to.
Speaker:And the options available to us at any time.
Speaker:Uh, myriad, the most important of which are located within us.
Speaker:One more time.
Speaker:Ultimately, we become what we pay attention to and the options
Speaker:available to us at any time.
Speaker:A myriad.
Speaker:The most important of which are located within us.
Speaker:This is a rich quote, my friend.
Speaker:First thing I want to draw your attention to is firstly, that this
Speaker:guy is quite brilliant, right?
Speaker:He's a highly educated person.
Speaker:And to write a phrase like this, ultimately we become
Speaker:what we pay attention to.
Speaker:Think about the profundity of that and think about what it means, if he's right.
Speaker:If he's right.
Speaker:He saying that where we place our attention.
Speaker:Determines who and what we become in the journey of life.
Speaker:So, as I said yesterday, I want you to understand that there are theoretically.
Speaker:Millions hundreds, moons, even billions of things that you could
Speaker:pay attention to at any given moment.
Speaker:So there's the physical world around you.
Speaker:There's the temperature in the room.
Speaker:There's the lights.
Speaker:There's the things that surround you.
Speaker:There's the feeling of clothing on your body.
Speaker:You could pay attention to any of that, right?
Speaker:Theoretically.
Speaker:So as we go through life, there's this constant process by which we
Speaker:make decisions about where we place.
Speaker:Uh, attention.
Speaker:So, what I want to do is take a big leap here and think about the times in life.
Speaker:When we struggle with things like depression or anxiety, for example,
Speaker:cause they're the big ones that are plaguing so much of modern life.
Speaker:If we're going through these things, think about where our,
Speaker:where our attention is now often.
Speaker:You know, in a depressive state.
Speaker:Our attention will be upon.
Speaker:The experience of low energy, our attention will be upon our brain is
Speaker:a meaning making machine our mind.
Speaker:So it's looking for meanings.
Speaker:Why do I feel this way?
Speaker:Oh, it's because I am ex because I'm no good at, because this person
Speaker:said this because no one loves me because I always screw up because.
Speaker:You know, my parents were never there when I was a kid or I never knew my
Speaker:father or fill in the blanks now.
Speaker:I'm not diminishing or minimizing the significance and importance
Speaker:of any of these things.
Speaker:But what I am saying is that we have this incredible power to
Speaker:choose where we place our attention.
Speaker:So, let me give you some obvious examples.
Speaker:I was speaking to someone just the other day about the
Speaker:incredible book, the happiest man.
Speaker:Alive.
Speaker:I don't know if you've read that Edie.
Speaker:It's a book by a guy called Eddie Jack, who.
Speaker:And it blew my mind.
Speaker:I actually heard the audio version first, and then I bought about
Speaker:five copies as I do sometimes instead of giving them to people.
Speaker:So long story short, Eddie, Jack, who.
Speaker:Survives the most horrendous experience in world war II.
Speaker:It captured by the Nazis is families killed and.
Speaker:And just the experiences he's imprisoned in Auschwitz for the duration of the
Speaker:war, but manages to come out alive.
Speaker:And I remember exactly where I was.
Speaker:I was on a long training run when I really heard this
Speaker:profound part of the book where.
Speaker:He was repatriated.
Speaker:Oh, he was, you know, after the war, he emigrated, sorry to Australia.
Speaker:And set up a life in the beach side area, Bondai, which many of
Speaker:you would know is kind of like the Copacabana beach of Australia.
Speaker:It's sort of the beach.
Speaker:For tourists and stuff.
Speaker:And he started this real estate business.
Speaker:And.
Speaker:But his first son was born Michael and Eddie Jack, who was still dealing
Speaker:with this profound oppression.
Speaker:Just just understandably right.
Speaker:Because it look, think of all the loss and the trauma and the stuff.
Speaker:So think about where his attention was.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:And his attention.
Speaker:Was understandably.
Speaker:Placed upon all the evil, all the loss, all the pain, all the.
Speaker:You know, the complete lack of justice and decency and all of that.
Speaker:But his son was born and he was living in this deep, dark depression.
Speaker:And he had this kind of a piffy when he suddenly realized
Speaker:that he had to change that.
Speaker:He held his son in his arms and realized that he had to change and.
Speaker:I love these stories because you know what he did, he, he just changed.
Speaker:He just literally changed.
Speaker:He became a fundamentally different person and started this incredible
Speaker:real estate business and did all this amazing stuff over the years and
Speaker:influenced huge numbers of people.
Speaker:And I'm going to argue that at least a very significant part of
Speaker:this was because his attention.
Speaker:Shifted.
Speaker:His attention was placed upon his son and his attention was shifted
Speaker:to the time that he did have left.
Speaker:And his attention was shifted to the things that he could still do.
Speaker:So let's come back to this Kurt Thompson quote.
Speaker:He says, ultimately, we become what we pay attention to.
Speaker:And the options available to us at any time, a myriad, of course, you understand
Speaker:myriad means multiple, but the most important of which are located within us.
Speaker:So think about the ability to place our attention internally on
Speaker:all the things that are missing, all the lack in our lives, all the
Speaker:ways we've been hurt or mistreated.
Speaker:We have utter complete freedom to place our attention upon those areas.
Speaker:Absolutely all the time.
Speaker:No problems.
Speaker:But we also have other options.
Speaker:And friends, if you're anything like me, I have struggled with this because
Speaker:I've been like in the midst of real pain at times in my life, I've been
Speaker:like, you want to be justified, right?
Speaker:You want to, you want to scream at the world, but I have every
Speaker:right to feel this way because.
Speaker:And absolutely.
Speaker:And over many years of speaking on stage, I've taught people.
Speaker:This principle I've said.
Speaker:You can come to me and you can list every single thing that's
Speaker:happened to you, how terrible it is.
Speaker:What it's done to you, why you are suffering.
Speaker:And then I'm going to listen to you carefully and I'm going to
Speaker:listen to you and pathic glee.
Speaker:And then at the end of it all, when you're finally blown out
Speaker:all of that emotion, energy, I'm going to say three words to you.
Speaker:And here are those three words.
Speaker:And.
Speaker:Now what.
Speaker:And now what.
Speaker:You'll probably right.
Speaker:And I understand that you would feel this way because what
Speaker:happened to you is terrible.
Speaker:But you still have to live.
Speaker:And you have to find a way to find meaning and move forward.
Speaker:And I just think that Kurt Thompson's offering is something quite extraordinary
Speaker:today, which is a decision around where we place our attention.
Speaker:So Franz, I turned 50 this year on December.
Speaker:The first I'll be turning 50 years of age.
Speaker:I still feel about 25.
Speaker:But I'm just struck.
Speaker:By the importance.
Speaker:Of how much time I have left.
Speaker:And how I want that time to be useful and the blessing and rich and joyful.
Speaker:You know, some of, you know, I've been camping a lot lately.
Speaker:I've been taking the kids out and we went out Friday night.
Speaker:I took them out into the national park.
Speaker:Um,
Speaker:Middle of nowhere and it was just the best.
Speaker:And we're just about, they're all about just to get into bed
Speaker:in the tent at about 10:00 PM.
Speaker:And I noticed.
Speaker:That the moon had come up and we walked around the corner of these
Speaker:trees and you had to be there I guess, but the moon was just artily spec
Speaker:tacular, because there was no light pollution and it was just incredible.
Speaker:And I've got these really good binoculars that I use for hunting,
Speaker:and I took them out and gave them to the kids and you could see every
Speaker:crater on the moon and it was like,
Speaker:Well, I'm telling you this because it was just this beautiful moment of.
Speaker:Or, and wonder.
Speaker:And being together and sharing it together.
Speaker:And I guess that we can choose to pay attention to these kinds of opportunities.
Speaker:We can choose to pay attention to the things that are beautiful around us.
Speaker:They're quite extraordinary.
Speaker:So.
Speaker:The last thing I wrote in these notes in preparing here is.
Speaker:Was that this is a discipline.
Speaker:It's a genuine discipline.
Speaker:It's very easy to just get on this microphone and say these words and
Speaker:people like, yeah, yeah, I get it.
Speaker:I get it.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:Sure.
Speaker:I understand.
Speaker:But how do we actually do this?
Speaker:Especially if you're not somebody that, you know, naturally gravitates
Speaker:to the optimistic or the positive.
Speaker:And I say it's a discipline.
Speaker:It becomes something that you practice.
Speaker:And like almost everything that I teach it requires.
Speaker:Awareness and being awake.
Speaker:Of removing things in your life that keep you asleep.
Speaker:So that you are awake.
Speaker:Because when you're awake.
Speaker:Metaphysically to life.
Speaker:Then you can begin to notice things like, yeah, I'm paying attention
Speaker:to everything that's missing.
Speaker:I'm paying attention to.
Speaker:All of these internal states that are not helping me move forward.
Speaker:I'm not talking about denying what you feel.
Speaker:I'm not saying you ignore things.
Speaker:I'm just saying.
Speaker:You don't have to pay attention.
Speaker:To all of the things that are not helping, maybe this helps.
Speaker:Maybe it's like you have a party at your house and you invite 50 guests and.
Speaker:And 49 of those guests.
Speaker:Uh, interesting, energetic, happy, positive.
Speaker:Greg grateful to be there.
Speaker:And you've got this one guest who's like miserable.
Speaker:And wants to complain about the temperature in your house, the food.
Speaker:Uh, remind you that you had a party five years ago, that wasn't
Speaker:very good and hit their surprise.
Speaker:Anybody came to this one.
Speaker:And you have 49 guests, you could be paying attention to.
Speaker:And those 49 guests are going to help you to enjoy yourself and to learn things
Speaker:from them and to have a great time.
Speaker:But you're paying attention to this one guest.
Speaker:I've done it.
Speaker:So maybe that's a helpful metaphor.
Speaker:Don't pay attention to the one guest.
Speaker:You don't have to deny there.
Speaker:You just smile and wave, right?
Speaker:Like, Hey, glad you could make it kind of.
Speaker:And then go and spend time focusing your attention on the 4
Speaker:49 guests that really light you up.
Speaker:To discipline her.
Speaker:It is a discipline.
Speaker:All right, that's it for me today, please make sure you've subscribed.
Speaker:Please make sure you have subscribed.
Speaker:That's very helpful for me.
Speaker:Go and check out the coaching link.
Speaker:If you want to do some coaching with me, we can work on
Speaker:this kind of stuff together.
Speaker:We can help you.
Speaker:I can help you to start paying attention.
Speaker:Not to what's wrecking your life, but towards you, what towards.
Speaker:What you want to go towards, if you understand what I mean, I want to help
Speaker:you focus your attention on the good things and the things that you still can
Speaker:do that are gonna move you forward to go book yourself a coaching session with me.
Speaker:All right, God bless everybody.
Speaker:My name is Jonathan Doyle.
Speaker:This has been the daily podcast.
Speaker:I've enjoyed this one.
Speaker:I hope it's a blessing to you and I'll have another message for you.
