Alfred Adler has so much to teach us about effective ways to approach the journey of life. We live in a culture committed to ease pleasure and distraction. The great psychologist Alfred Adler reminds us that there is so much we can experience and contribute by making the firm decision to do hard things.
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Transcript
Well, hi guys, Jonathan Doyle with you with today's a little bit of encouragement
Speaker:and inspiration just for you today.
Speaker:I want to share with you a quote from one of my absolute favorite thinkers
Speaker:and psychologist, Alfred Adler.
Speaker:I was in Nashville, sort of pre COVID and I was doing some speaking there.
Speaker:And each day I got a chance to go out for a run and I was listening to a
Speaker:really good book that was trying to take Adler's I guess, philosophy of reality.
Speaker:And make it accessible.
Speaker:I got a lot out of it and it sort of led me down a path to learning more
Speaker:about Adler and what he has to offer.
Speaker:So let's jump into today's quote, because I think it goes to the heart of reality.
Speaker:I think we can all relate to it.
Speaker:Let's do it.
Speaker:Overcoming difficulties leads to courage self-respect and knowing yourself.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Here's my basic take on where we are as a culture.
Speaker:We're highly therapeutic, we're highly comfort and pleasure oriented.
Speaker:So because we live in a kind of turbo post-capitalist world,
Speaker:every desire can be catered to.
Speaker:And a lot of our system runs on consumption, right?
Speaker:So the, the economic model requires us all to be consuming and consuming and.
Speaker:Which makes it easy to be comfortable, right.
Speaker:It makes it easy to spend a huge amount of time.
Speaker:Sit in front of Netflix, wasting time doing a whole bunch of stuff.
Speaker:Um, our food system is highly calorie dense, so we've got, we don't have
Speaker:to go looking for food compared to what our ancestors had to do.
Speaker:You know, before you blink life can be very, very comfortable, very easy.
Speaker:And this is what Adler's reminding us of.
Speaker:That doing difficult things, seeking out difficult things is kind of central
Speaker:to that journey of becoming the person you're really capable of becoming you.
Speaker:See if you don't do difficult things, if you don't attempt difficult
Speaker:things, then nothing really changes.
Speaker:And I keep telling people, and I have for years that you're never
Speaker:going to really feel like doing.
Speaker:Most of the time when we're faced with something difficult,
Speaker:we don't want to do it.
Speaker:Our bodies and our minds have evolved for comfort and safety.
Speaker:So we don't tend to go looking for things that are difficult.
Speaker:So over the years, as many of you know, I've been kind of obsessed
Speaker:with ultra marathon running.
Speaker:I still train really hard.
Speaker:I go through peaks and troughs.
Speaker:Like I go through times when I do a little bit less and it's like,
Speaker:I've got this internal barometer.
Speaker:I get to a certain point.
Speaker:And I'm just like, ah, I need to get back to it.
Speaker:And I'll just start training hotter again.
Speaker:Even as I get a bit older, I was still pushing myself and trying to ground.
Speaker:So, I guess what I want to say to you in this message is, are there places
Speaker:in your life at the moment where you are genuinely seeking out discomfort,
Speaker:things that are scary for you that are forcing you to sort of generate a, a
Speaker:greater level of courage in your life?
Speaker:Sometimes, I think, you know, it's like a paradox.
Speaker:I've said that life's very comfortable, but life can also be pretty difficult.
Speaker:You know, things can happen randomly to us and there's plenty of suffering.
Speaker:So the question is, well, why would we go looking for suffering if it's
Speaker:going to come find us anyway, I think it's one of the mysteries of life.
Speaker:I think that as we grow, if we want to grow that, there's this weird
Speaker:thing that if we want to go and seek harder things, then the universe
Speaker:God is going to allow us to grow.
Speaker:I've been coaching lately.
Speaker:I've been coaching a sporting team and you really see it up close.
Speaker:You see this diverse group of people who I've got a common interest, but then
Speaker:you see this whole bunch of different approaches to the training, uh, to
Speaker:the effort required to do really well.
Speaker:So it's a weird mix of our personalities, our backgrounds, our histories, but there
Speaker:are things that you can control, right.
Speaker:There really are.
Speaker:There's definitely things that you can control.
Speaker:And I think if you just look into your life at the moment and start to go looking
Speaker:for something, that's going to challenge you, it could be a difficult conversation.
Speaker:It could be going for promotion.
Speaker:It could be something that involves fitness or training, but when
Speaker:you do these hard things, you.
Speaker:In every time I've done an ultra marathon or every time I've done
Speaker:some crazy bike event or push myself in some significant way, the payoff
Speaker:afterwards is quite extraordinary.
Speaker:You change you, you become a slightly different person.
Speaker:And, and, and that's why I like my adult talks about self-respect.
Speaker:'cause he's reminding us that as we do these things, we begin to look at
Speaker:ourselves and say, well, I'm the kind of person that can do these difficult things.
Speaker:It's very much like a snowball and the top of a mountain.
Speaker:Once you start, when she begin, then things begin to develop and
Speaker:you just get better at it over time.
Speaker:So look, summary, you can have any kind of life you want, but I would like to
Speaker:remind you that if you really want to.
Speaker:If you really want to develop it, won't be easy.
Speaker:You're going to have to seek out difficult things, but as you do
Speaker:them, you'll change in the process.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:That's it for me today.
Speaker:Please make sure you subscribe, hit the notification button wherever you're seeing
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Speaker:going to take you to a completely free access to my book, bridging the gap.
Speaker:I'm going to send you a chapter every couple of days.
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Speaker:Grab the free book.
Speaker:My name is Jonathan Doyle.
Speaker:I'm going to have another message for you tomorrow.
