Do Uncommon Things — We Become What We Repeatedly Do

Well, hey there, my friend.

Jonathan Doyle with you once again.

Welcome to the show.

I am stoked you are here.

Let us pray together that there will be some blessing here for you

today, something useful that, uh, the great God that animates this

cosmos will-- is, is so interested in the movement of the stars and also

simultaneously, at the same time, uh, it's a tautology, in your life as well.

And let's trust that something in this short message is gonna

be a huge blessing to you today.

I wanna share with you a very quick interaction I had recently.

I was coaching, uh, this person, and often I find in coaching

with executives and entrepreneurs they're, they're often really good

at knowing what they don't want.

Really good at knowing what they don't want.

Uh, what they do want is kind of the start of the magic.

You gotta help them get there.

But often all of us can be like this.

"Well, I don't want this. I definitely know what I don't want."

Technically, this is to do with what we call towards goals, away goals.

It's a story for another day.

But in this interaction, they're telling me that the one thing they really

didn't want, the most awful thing they could think of, the thing that was…

I said, "Well, you know, what do you want?" And they couldn't get there.

"Then what don't you want?" And they said, "Well, I don't wanna be average."

That was really interesting A- and this person is a, is an entrepreneur, and

I'm, I'm talking to them, and I- we're working through a whole bunch of stuff.

We had a, a fantastic meeting together.

But I went away from it thinking, "That's really interesting.

They don't wanna be average." And I'm thinking, "How do I work with that?"

'Cause we meet up regularly, and I'm thinking, "How do I come at that?

What are the, what are the tools and the strategies that you would do when someone

says, you know, 'I know what I don't want.

I don't wanna be average?'" And the path of my life has led me

through so many interesting, I guess, ideas and philosophies.

And in my second master's program, I did a second master's degree in philosophical

anthropology, and I got to study classical philosophy at a pretty deep level.

And one of the key things that I took away from it that really has impacted my

life, and I've shared it with hundreds of thousands of people in live events, is

this idea from Aristotelian metaphysics, which I'm sure you wanted to know about.

It's basically this classical Greek idea that we become what we do.

So that may sound shockingly obvious to you, but pr- tell, pr- promise

you, my friend, most people live their entire lives completely divorced

from the power of that statement, that we become what we repeatedly do.

So this was Aristotle's, one of his big ideas, because I've shared this in

previous messages, but basically the Greeks were interested in, you know,

you know, like, the heroes of Greek mythology, some of you would be familiar

with, like, the great stories, uh, the great epics a- and the belief that there

were these incredible men and women ordained by the gods to do certain things.

And in early Greek philosophy, they were trying to figure out, you know,

are people just born a particular way?

Do the gods of Olympus just, you know, the great heroic figures of great

tragedies, did God, did, did the gods just make them virtuous and courageous?

You know, they wanted to know, are, are we born a particular way?

And then once we're born that way, and the gods make us that way, are we stuck there?

And so the question that Aristotle was asked was: How does the

courageous person become courageous?

'Cause courage was a value that was very important in that

culture, and they were curious.

Did Zeus just make someone magically courageous, and other, the next person

standing next to them, they missed the lightning bolt, the thunderbolt,

and they weren't courageous?

And Aristotle famously said, "Well, it's simple. The courageous person

does courageous things." And that may sound so simplistic, but it

was, like, early philosophy, right?

It's two and a half thousand years ago, relatively early in the philosophical

movement, was this idea that if you wanna become something, do the things

that are congruent with that becoming.

That's a good little phrase.

If you wanna become something, do the things that are

congruent with that becoming.

So when this entrepreneur says to me, "I don't wanna be average," then eventually,

a few days later, I m- I must be slow, it took me a while to get there, but

I'm like, "Well, then why don't we begin by not doing average things?"

Not doing average things.

If you don't want to be average, then make a list of what are average things?

What does the average person do?

What do they do with their time?

What do they do with their health?

What do they do with their diet?

What do they do with their career?

What do they do with their relationships?

And it's not about judgment.

It's, no one's better than anybody else.

Everybody is equal in dignity, worth, and value in the eyes of God.

We are all children of God, all co-equal in dignity, value, and worth.

But we also have this radical freedom to decide what we do with

the gifts that we've been given.

So if you don't wanna be average, just, just ask yourself, "Well, what

does, what does the average person do?

What do they earn?

How much do they save?

Where do they invest?

What do they do in their free time?

What do they do with their, their morning routines?

What time do they wake up?" And then once you've got a full list

of all those average things, this is where it gets really complex.

You ready?

Don't do them.

That's it.

That's the brilliant strategy.

Don't do those things.

And of course, conversely, if you wish, if there's anything in you, and I'm sure

there is if you are listening to this kind of podcast, if there is anything

in you that wants to be fractionally uncommon, then here is the greatest, most

radical, life-changing, epoch-shattering piece of news you are gonna hear.

Try this.

You ready?

Do uncommon things.

Do uncommon things.

You're familiar with people like David Goggins, right?

I love Goggins, I just do.

Met him in person once and, uh, read his books, and his audiobooks are great.

I, I just, I just love it, all of it.

It's unhinged.

I love it.

And I've done not s- not quite as insane as him, but I've done

a lot of pretty crazy physical stuff and, like, he's just…

He, he, he has this saying where he says, "Be uncommon amongst uncommon

people." So he took it to another level.

He went and associated with some of the most uncommon athletes in

the world, and then tried to take it up another level from there.

But the base message was, do things that most people won't do.

Yesterday morning it was about minus four degrees, and if you saw my Instagram story

yesterday @jdoylespeaks, you would see me, uh, running down the street at about 4:30

in the morning singing to myself, "It's minus three, it's minus three," 'cause it

was minus three, and it was pitch black.

And I can promise you, when I was standing in my warm, toasty garage

at, like, 4:15 AM, everything in me was like, "I need cookies.

I want warm cookies and, and a nice drink and warm feet." And

outside that door was minus four degrees, pitch black, no one around.

It's so cold it hurts your lungs.

And I got it done.

I just ran.

You can see it.

You can see it every day, 'cause I don't wanna teach you anything I don't do.

And I'm like, I just build this bank account of slightly uncommon things

and sometimes very uncommon things.

So are you with me?

If, if you can identify what you don't want, then don't do

the things that go with it.

You know, I, I gotta be careful what I say.

I don't wanna upset anybody, but, um, you know, I was, I was in the

shopping center the other day, and I just saw so many unhealthy people.

Now, I'm not judging them.

I don't know their story.

I don't know what might have happened or tragedies, but, but it was pretty

obvious that the cross-section, the average person was pretty unwell.

Like people just, you know, on, on walking frames in their 60s and, and I don't--

Look, again, I'm being sensitive here.

I don't know everyone's story, but, but as a general rule, there was a

lot of people just looking not great.

And I just wonder, if you, if you went back through all of that and looked at a

lifetime of decisions, what do you think you would see over a long period of time?

What do you think these people did with their bodies, their, their, their, their

food, their, their lifestyle choices?

Friends, look, I gotta be-- I'm trying to be careful here.

Everybody's gotta have something.

I like cigars.

I don't drink alcohol, but I do like a good cigar now and then,

and, and Karen, my wife, she tells me, she goes, "You'll die.

You, you'll-- If you die." I go, "Karen, it's one cigar." Like, if

I die, uh, that's, that's bad luck.

Like maybe I trip over a box of cigars and bang my head, and I get it.

Like, you know, I could-- I-- By the grace of-- By the will of God, I

could be gone in, in 10 minutes' time.

Who knows, right?

I get that.

But I do get that, that in general, if you do certain things regarding your

health and energy, you will probably get a different set of outcomes over time.

There'll always be exceptions, but can we agree together that's probably true?

So if you want uncommon results, you have to do uncommon things, and I can

say that, I can scream it from the rooftops, but until people make that

personal choice, nothing's gonna change.

So my will for you, my heart for you is if you don't wanna be average anymore, then

you must stop today doing average things, and you must begin an apprenticeship

in self-mastery and discipline and begin to do unusual and uncommon things

if you want extraordinary results.

All right, I'm doing another one of these tomorrow, so make sure

you've hit subscribe so I'll have another one for you tomorrow.

Find me on Instagram, jdoylespeaks, YouTube, Jonathan Doyle Speaks, on

the website, jonathandoyle.co, and you and I are gonna talk again tomorrow