How To Avoid Despair During COVID

Well, Hey everybody, Jonathan Doyle with you once again, welcome

friends to the daily podcast.

Great to be back with you.

I've had a few days away where we are doing some new, interesting things

in our business as a result of.

All the restrictions of COVID.

I do miss my traveling.

I was talking on a zoom call yesterday.

Some people in Canada.

Um, who I'm doing a virtual event for them.

And I was sort of just saying, it's funny, isn't it?

That when we go through this whole COVID experience that.

I look back at all the times and I was traveling so much.

I mean, I was flying.

Sydney to Dallas probably once every month or so once every two months.

And when you're on those 16 and a half hour flights and you're in airports,

you sort of think how good would it be?

You know, how good would it be if I could just be home for a while,

it could just be in my own house.

And here we are now more than our own houses at times with various rolling

lockdowns and, uh, I guess the message in that is that, uh, as we go through life,

as we go through each day, Let's really try and focus on the gratitude that you

know, for anything good that's happening.

Because one of these, one of the things I think we've all learned in this journey

of the last year or two, is that these things can be taken away pretty fast.

So a gratitude, just gratitude for the smallest things.

A good cup of coffee.

You know where I sometimes work.

I've got this beautiful floor to ceiling glass windows, and the

sun comes in and, and just that.

Cause we were in, went to here.

And most of the time, this is, this has been a tough winter.

It's often really bleak and cold has been raining a lot.

So I'm just finding these little rays of sunshine.

If you'll excuse the.

You know, the, um, the metaphor, but, uh, these little moments of joy.

That we can find every single day, if we decide to we be attentive.

Now today, what I want to talk about is kind of on this broad

mental health COVID theme.

Every one of us is going to be different.

Right.

You're going to have, uh, just your, your own sort of genetic background, your

personality background, the experiences you're living through right at the moment.

So we're all going to be different, but I do think it's fair to say

that a lot of us are struggling with moments of despair, uncertainty.

There's a lot more depression.

Mental health issues are.

Uh, very clearly becoming problematic as people are in

during this difficult season.

So, what I want to talk about today is how we.

You know, something that we can do to address this when, uh, I don't know if

you've been there, but you know, there's a lot of despair around a lot of despair.

Despair happens when we lose hope.

We begin to think that.

This is just how things are going to be.

Things are going to be difficult things aren't going to change.

And we lose hope.

So I want to talk about that.

I want to talk about how we deal with it.

And the background to this is I buy personality and somebody who

has struggled my entire life, really with seasons of negativity.

Depression unhappiness.

So, you know, the irony of me doing a motivational podcast for so long, and all

of you have seen me on stage know that I definitely don't come across as that.

Um, thank the good Lord.

I've been in a really good place for a long time now, but I definitely know

what it's like to have those seasons of unhappiness and despair and depression.

So I'm somebody that's had to work extremely hard to

manage my own psychology.

I'm definitely not there yet.

And I guess none of us will ever fully get there.

But I am somebody who's learned a few things about how we manage it.

And I think we often want a really complex solution.

We often want a really complex.

I think there's a huge industry.

Both in the psychological professions, the medical professions

that wants to perpetuate the idea that there's not a, you.

On our own.

There's not a lot.

We can do.

So I go on, I just want to be careful about how I say this, but

I think we can often underestimate the power that we do have to change

our own experience of the world.

Sometimes all we need is a good.

A good person to encourage us and to give us some tools.

So let's do it.

Let's talk about it.

A long time ago, I did a podcast called don't take the off ramp and that has been

a thesis for me for a very long time.

And where I live here in the national capital.

There's a sort of a freeway where you drive in.

There's a bunch of off-ramps to go to different places.

And I remember driving one day, a few years ago, and just this clear sense,

this idea that mental health and going into despair and depressive thinking

is a lot like taking an off-ramp.

We often get a seed thought or the seed thought.

It's this.

Thought that crosses our mind about something we don't want or

something that's not going well.

Something, you know, a thought about the future.

And then we take the off-ramp and before we know it, uh, in, in acceptance

commitment therapy, they call it.

Um, being hooked.

Being hooked.

It's like, you know, imagine getting like a, a fishing or

caught in a jumper or a hat you.

You're kind of flailing around and the more you go with, the

more you're trying to deal with it, the more hooked you become.

So we're dealing with this issue of being hooked and taking this off ramp.

So.

As much as I would love to give you this incredibly elaborate strategy.

The first thing that began to help me over the years was this

sense of don't take the off-ramp.

What this means is you've got to get extremely good in the moment.

At not following the negative thinking.

Now the pushback I get sometimes as well, you know, what have you really

need to work through difficult issues?

Yeah.

I'm not saying you don't do that.

But you're smart.

You know what exactly what I'm talking about?

Don't, you know, that experience when immediately you just get

hooked on a thought and you're off and you start feeling worse.

And one of the ways to, I guess, think about it is.

Is your thinking, making you feel more miserable or more grounded and optimistic?

That's a good, I'm not talking about denial.

I'm not saying we don't ignore our difficult circumstances.

They're a given they're going to happen.

You know, I remember Tony Robbins used to say the only thing about

success is that you get a better quality of problem, right?

Everybody thinks that we're going to get, you know, if you get rich or you win

the lottery or you get this promotion or this relationship, then you'll be happy.

No, you just get a different kind of problem.

You get a bigger problem.

That's, you know, With bigger, bigger payoffs.

If you can surmount them.

I'll give you an example.

A youngest child has been really sick this week.

She's got a middle ear infection, tonsillitis.

So she comes into our room at about 2:00 AM last night, wakes us up.

And, uh, you know, we've been around this.

Merry-go-round as parents for a long time.

So I just said to Karen, I said, Hey.

She can sleep in here.

I'm going to go and sleep in her room.

So if I go to the princess pink bedroom at 2:00 AM, And I'm lying in there and

I'm really struggling to get back to sleep and it starts what starts Jonathan?

Well, the hook, you know, the hook that you all get sometimes at two or

three in the morning, write the hook.

And this negative thinking starts.

And I, and I got some getting really good at this.

I just caught it immediately.

I'm like, I'm not going there.

I'm not going there.

And this is the essence of this message.

I'm trying to teach that we don't take the off-ramp.

That we begin to catch these thoughts.

The second they happen.

And we don't go with them.

You know, Cove it's taught me so much.

And one of the big things in recent episodes, I've talked so

much about this 24 hour mentality.

There is so much despair and anxiety that comes from projecting

way out into the future.

And have you seen how your thinking can do this?

It's like, well, what did this happens?

And what did the vaccine and what are these?

And what if I don't take the vaccine?

And what if this happens?

And what if you know, what about if I can't get a job here

or this happened to my kids?

If we go right.

We're into the distant future.

And I'm the biggest believer and I'm, I've come to these pretty late

in life that you get 24 hour blocks.

You get 24 hour blocks.

Yes.

You keep an eye on the future.

Yes.

You have a broad plan about how you want your life to go.

But you only get 24 hours.

And, you know, theoretically.

You only really get the next moment.

Right?

I mean the room you're sitting in.

You know, listening to this or wherever you are, you could be out walking.

A tree could fall on you or a car could lose control and kill you in 20 seconds.

I've seen it happen.

I remember years ago I was riding my motorbike.

Yeah.

To the beach one day.

And, uh, the sun had just come up and I remember there's

this lady walking, her dogs.

On the side of the road.

And she was just off the side and I saw this car was behind this car

and the car was driving along and the sun obviously blinded them.

And I watched this car just drift off to the left side of

the road and hit this poor woman.

And I was the first person there.

It was the most traumatic experience.

But it reinforced, you know, that you can just be going along, minding

your own business and your life can end anything could happen.

Right.

Seriously.

So that doesn't lead me to depression or anxiety.

That just leads me to this grounded realization.

Okay.

I'm alive now.

I'm going to try and bless people.

I'm going to try and stay positive.

I'm going to try and manage my thinking.

I'm going to try and live this 24 hour block.

And that's how I'm doing it.

Friends.

And I got to tell you, since I've been living this way, it's had quite an effect.

I, I, you know, I'm sure I have the odd day where I go a bit backwards, but.

This is what I got for you.

I'd love to give you a 5,000 page thesis about all these different things, but

we've got to get really good here.

It is.

One more time.

Mental toughness, mental toughness.

What is mental toughness?

I think it's the ability.

To catch yourself in the act.

Of negative.

Unproductive unhelpful thinking.

And choose.

This is the toughness part.

Choose, you know how you have to choose to go to the gym.

You have to choose to go for a walk or a run.

You have to choose to eat properly.

The toughness part comes from making ourselves do things that

we don't actually like to do.

I mean, it's easier for us really just to kind of just go along and.

And just, you know, go, I used to go down the path without thinking it's comforting.

Isn't it?

It's comforting.

Because one of the things that we want as humans is we always want certainty.

Has a deep psychological principle Maslow went on at first.

Uh, but it's really been developed.

It's the idea that humans don't do too well in uncertainty.

So if you really want to, you know, it's the learn helplessness experiments they

used to do on rats, where they used to shock rats, no matter what they did.

And the rats eventually just got.

Went into chronic depression.

So, you know, what we want is certainty.

We want to know that whatever's happening.

There's some certainty.

So that works both ways.

You know, people can get into despair and depression and

what that gives them certainty.

What certainty is it?

The certainty that life is terrible.

The certainty that they're never going to reach their goals, the certainty

that they'll always be unhappy.

So then if we stay in that space, And then what needs to happen for me?

And I'm not speaking to anybody else now is that you get sympathy, right?

Because if your life's terrible and you can prove to everybody who had

terrible your life is, and you get sympathy and you get reinforcement.

And that's why I think it's called mental toughness because it's much harder.

It's much tougher.

To do the opposite.

It's much tougher to not go after sympathy.

It's much tougher to catch yourself in the very act.

Of unproductive thinking and you do the hard work of

choosing a different direction.

For me, it's like a conversation.

I just find, as soon as that thought, I'm just like, no, no, it's like that.

It's just like Kasi saying no to one of my kids.

No.

No, but can I get no, can I, but just one this time, just

one time, I'll only do it one.

No.

It's just no.

I'm not going there.

It's like that old biblical story, right.

Of the Israelites coming out of Egypt.

If you're not familiar with it going watch prince of Egypt on Netflix.

You know, they came out of Egypt and they start, some of them started to complain.

They wanted to go back because they didn't like the tough process

of going into the promised land, going into where they belonged.

Right.

It's much easier to go backwards.

It's really easy to go backwards.

And it's always easy to go back with when things are difficult, it's much harder.

It's tougher.

To actually go forwards and to catch ourselves in the moment

of unproductive thinking.

So give you quite here from Vince Lombardi.

Vince Lombardi was one of the most famous, uh, American football coaches.

Uh, NFL coaches of, uh, I guess in American history, really.

And, uh, just saying as a great ma as the master motivator of people.

And, uh, he was his quote on mental toughness.

He says, and I like our honesty is he says mental toughness is many things.

And rather difficult to explain it's qualities are sacrifice and self denial.

Also most importantly, it is combined with a perfectly disciplined

will that refuses to give in.

It's a state of mind.

You could call it character in action.

You know, there's so much in that he talks about, you know, A perfectly

disciplined will that refuses to give in.

So it's a discipline process, right?

It's a process is going, I'm not going that way.

I'm not having that thought.

I'm not going to reinforce that negative despair filled thinking.

Really, really.

It's just Jonathan, there's just positive.

Fluff.

Well, I gotta be honest with you.

Sooner or later you got to live your life, right?

And I'll live my life one way for a long period of time until

I started living this way.

And I'm like, what am I happier?

And some of you that will, is that all.

Is that all there is to it.

You just want to be happy and I get, yeah.

Cause if I'm happier, here's what I'll tell you.

I notice.

When I'm happy, I'm a much greater blessing to the people I love.

When I'm miserable and despairing and depressed, I am not good

for my kids or for Karen.

Or for my friends or for you?

I find that if I don't take that off ramp, if I stay off that path and I

just did just get this discipline.

This self denial.

Look at that word.

Lombardi uses sacrifice and self denial.

What is self denial in this context?

I deny myself the ability to go off, to feeling miserable and getting sympathy.

I'm going to deny myself that I'm going to say no, I'm no longer.

I'm going to deny it.

I'm going to stop it.

I'm going to cut it off.

I'm going to stand on my feet and deal with the difficult, challenging 24 hours.

Blocks of time that we're going to confront me in this particular season.

All right.

There's a lot there.

Huh?

Now, let me clarify because, um, you know, I'm not, you know,

some, some of us struggle with.

Genuine mental health.

You know, genuine anxiety, depression.

So am I saying you don't.

Uh, C medical, uh, mental health professionals course I don't.

Uh, and, uh, and I'm not telling anybody to stop seeing somebody

if they're doing it or not use medication, any of that stuff.

I'm not saying that.

I'm saying that you need to do what is best for you?

But I'm just telling you what works for me.

What works for me is fighting for myself.

Refusing to abandon myself.

I think that's what I used to do for many years.

I just, my thinking would go off in this rabbit hole of negativity

and I would just abandoned myself.

See you, Jonathan.

Good luck.

Well, Hadn't you enjoy that trip into the dark forest of despair and, uh, we'll

catch in a few months when you come back.

I used to live that way.

Karen would tell you she remembers seasons where I was just like, I'll

be on stage motivating people, but in my private life, I'd be like following

these rabbit holes of despair.

And I don't know.

Does that like integrity?

No, I think I had to find the courage to still try to help people and bless

people during a difficult journey.

But now as I've sort of come out of that forest, Doing a lot of metaphors today.

I feel like I've come out of that forest with some good news for

people, which is firstly, we don't have to go into the forest at all.

We don't.

Okay.

We don't.

We really don't.

We have power.

You have much more power than you think power to control,

where your thought processes go.

All right.

Let me know what you think of this home.

All right, that's it for me today.

Uh, look only housekeeping is please make sure you've

subscribed as the coolest thing.

I'm going to build out some more ways to get in touch with me

and I'm going to build out some new cool resources for you all.

In the next few weeks, that's kind of what I've been working on, but for

now, just make sure you're subscribed.

If you're a new listener, please hit that big subscribe button.

God bless you everybody.

Don't take the off-ramp, I'm really praying for you all.

I just hope that you'll get in through this season and I hope I

can be a blessing to you with these little moments of encouragement.

All right.

This has been the daily podcast.

My name is Jonathan Doyle.

God bless everybody.

I'm going to have another message for you very soon