In today’s episode I want to offer a very simple strategy about how we can all deal with the challenges of COVID in terms of how we can easily fall into despair. Is there a simple mental process we can use on a daily basis to avoid falling victim to negative and unproductive thinking. In this episode I want to make the case that it is possible and we have much more power than we think.
Transcript
Well, Hey everybody, Jonathan Doyle with you once again, welcome
Speaker:friends to the daily podcast.
Speaker:Great to be back with you.
Speaker:I've had a few days away where we are doing some new, interesting things
Speaker:in our business as a result of.
Speaker:All the restrictions of COVID.
Speaker:I do miss my traveling.
Speaker:I was talking on a zoom call yesterday.
Speaker:Some people in Canada.
Speaker:Um, who I'm doing a virtual event for them.
Speaker:And I was sort of just saying, it's funny, isn't it?
Speaker:That when we go through this whole COVID experience that.
Speaker:I look back at all the times and I was traveling so much.
Speaker:I mean, I was flying.
Speaker:Sydney to Dallas probably once every month or so once every two months.
Speaker:And when you're on those 16 and a half hour flights and you're in airports,
Speaker:you sort of think how good would it be?
Speaker:You know, how good would it be if I could just be home for a while,
Speaker:it could just be in my own house.
Speaker:And here we are now more than our own houses at times with various rolling
Speaker:lockdowns and, uh, I guess the message in that is that, uh, as we go through life,
Speaker:as we go through each day, Let's really try and focus on the gratitude that you
Speaker:know, for anything good that's happening.
Speaker:Because one of these, one of the things I think we've all learned in this journey
Speaker:of the last year or two, is that these things can be taken away pretty fast.
Speaker:So a gratitude, just gratitude for the smallest things.
Speaker:A good cup of coffee.
Speaker:You know where I sometimes work.
Speaker:I've got this beautiful floor to ceiling glass windows, and the
Speaker:sun comes in and, and just that.
Speaker:Cause we were in, went to here.
Speaker:And most of the time, this is, this has been a tough winter.
Speaker:It's often really bleak and cold has been raining a lot.
Speaker:So I'm just finding these little rays of sunshine.
Speaker:If you'll excuse the.
Speaker:You know, the, um, the metaphor, but, uh, these little moments of joy.
Speaker:That we can find every single day, if we decide to we be attentive.
Speaker:Now today, what I want to talk about is kind of on this broad
Speaker:mental health COVID theme.
Speaker:Every one of us is going to be different.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:You're going to have, uh, just your, your own sort of genetic background, your
Speaker:personality background, the experiences you're living through right at the moment.
Speaker:So we're all going to be different, but I do think it's fair to say
Speaker:that a lot of us are struggling with moments of despair, uncertainty.
Speaker:There's a lot more depression.
Speaker:Mental health issues are.
Speaker:Uh, very clearly becoming problematic as people are in
Speaker:during this difficult season.
Speaker:So, what I want to talk about today is how we.
Speaker:You know, something that we can do to address this when, uh, I don't know if
Speaker:you've been there, but you know, there's a lot of despair around a lot of despair.
Speaker:Despair happens when we lose hope.
Speaker:We begin to think that.
Speaker:This is just how things are going to be.
Speaker:Things are going to be difficult things aren't going to change.
Speaker:And we lose hope.
Speaker:So I want to talk about that.
Speaker:I want to talk about how we deal with it.
Speaker:And the background to this is I buy personality and somebody who
Speaker:has struggled my entire life, really with seasons of negativity.
Speaker:Depression unhappiness.
Speaker:So, you know, the irony of me doing a motivational podcast for so long, and all
Speaker:of you have seen me on stage know that I definitely don't come across as that.
Speaker:Um, thank the good Lord.
Speaker:I've been in a really good place for a long time now, but I definitely know
Speaker:what it's like to have those seasons of unhappiness and despair and depression.
Speaker:So I'm somebody that's had to work extremely hard to
Speaker:manage my own psychology.
Speaker:I'm definitely not there yet.
Speaker:And I guess none of us will ever fully get there.
Speaker:But I am somebody who's learned a few things about how we manage it.
Speaker:And I think we often want a really complex solution.
Speaker:We often want a really complex.
Speaker:I think there's a huge industry.
Speaker:Both in the psychological professions, the medical professions
Speaker:that wants to perpetuate the idea that there's not a, you.
Speaker:On our own.
Speaker:There's not a lot.
Speaker:We can do.
Speaker:So I go on, I just want to be careful about how I say this, but
Speaker:I think we can often underestimate the power that we do have to change
Speaker:our own experience of the world.
Speaker:Sometimes all we need is a good.
Speaker:A good person to encourage us and to give us some tools.
Speaker:So let's do it.
Speaker:Let's talk about it.
Speaker:A long time ago, I did a podcast called don't take the off ramp and that has been
Speaker:a thesis for me for a very long time.
Speaker:And where I live here in the national capital.
Speaker:There's a sort of a freeway where you drive in.
Speaker:There's a bunch of off-ramps to go to different places.
Speaker:And I remember driving one day, a few years ago, and just this clear sense,
Speaker:this idea that mental health and going into despair and depressive thinking
Speaker:is a lot like taking an off-ramp.
Speaker:We often get a seed thought or the seed thought.
Speaker:It's this.
Speaker:Thought that crosses our mind about something we don't want or
Speaker:something that's not going well.
Speaker:Something, you know, a thought about the future.
Speaker:And then we take the off-ramp and before we know it, uh, in, in acceptance
Speaker:commitment therapy, they call it.
Speaker:Um, being hooked.
Speaker:Being hooked.
Speaker:It's like, you know, imagine getting like a, a fishing or
Speaker:caught in a jumper or a hat you.
Speaker:You're kind of flailing around and the more you go with, the
Speaker:more you're trying to deal with it, the more hooked you become.
Speaker:So we're dealing with this issue of being hooked and taking this off ramp.
Speaker:So.
Speaker:As much as I would love to give you this incredibly elaborate strategy.
Speaker:The first thing that began to help me over the years was this
Speaker:sense of don't take the off-ramp.
Speaker:What this means is you've got to get extremely good in the moment.
Speaker:At not following the negative thinking.
Speaker:Now the pushback I get sometimes as well, you know, what have you really
Speaker:need to work through difficult issues?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I'm not saying you don't do that.
Speaker:But you're smart.
Speaker:You know what exactly what I'm talking about?
Speaker:Don't, you know, that experience when immediately you just get
Speaker:hooked on a thought and you're off and you start feeling worse.
Speaker:And one of the ways to, I guess, think about it is.
Speaker:Is your thinking, making you feel more miserable or more grounded and optimistic?
Speaker:That's a good, I'm not talking about denial.
Speaker:I'm not saying we don't ignore our difficult circumstances.
Speaker:They're a given they're going to happen.
Speaker:You know, I remember Tony Robbins used to say the only thing about
Speaker:success is that you get a better quality of problem, right?
Speaker:Everybody thinks that we're going to get, you know, if you get rich or you win
Speaker:the lottery or you get this promotion or this relationship, then you'll be happy.
Speaker:No, you just get a different kind of problem.
Speaker:You get a bigger problem.
Speaker:That's, you know, With bigger, bigger payoffs.
Speaker:If you can surmount them.
Speaker:I'll give you an example.
Speaker:A youngest child has been really sick this week.
Speaker:She's got a middle ear infection, tonsillitis.
Speaker:So she comes into our room at about 2:00 AM last night, wakes us up.
Speaker:And, uh, you know, we've been around this.
Speaker:Merry-go-round as parents for a long time.
Speaker:So I just said to Karen, I said, Hey.
Speaker:She can sleep in here.
Speaker:I'm going to go and sleep in her room.
Speaker:So if I go to the princess pink bedroom at 2:00 AM, And I'm lying in there and
Speaker:I'm really struggling to get back to sleep and it starts what starts Jonathan?
Speaker:Well, the hook, you know, the hook that you all get sometimes at two or
Speaker:three in the morning, write the hook.
Speaker:And this negative thinking starts.
Speaker:And I, and I got some getting really good at this.
Speaker:I just caught it immediately.
Speaker:I'm like, I'm not going there.
Speaker:I'm not going there.
Speaker:And this is the essence of this message.
Speaker:I'm trying to teach that we don't take the off-ramp.
Speaker:That we begin to catch these thoughts.
Speaker:The second they happen.
Speaker:And we don't go with them.
Speaker:You know, Cove it's taught me so much.
Speaker:And one of the big things in recent episodes, I've talked so
Speaker:much about this 24 hour mentality.
Speaker:There is so much despair and anxiety that comes from projecting
Speaker:way out into the future.
Speaker:And have you seen how your thinking can do this?
Speaker:It's like, well, what did this happens?
Speaker:And what did the vaccine and what are these?
Speaker:And what if I don't take the vaccine?
Speaker:And what if this happens?
Speaker:And what if you know, what about if I can't get a job here
Speaker:or this happened to my kids?
Speaker:If we go right.
Speaker:We're into the distant future.
Speaker:And I'm the biggest believer and I'm, I've come to these pretty late
Speaker:in life that you get 24 hour blocks.
Speaker:You get 24 hour blocks.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:You keep an eye on the future.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:You have a broad plan about how you want your life to go.
Speaker:But you only get 24 hours.
Speaker:And, you know, theoretically.
Speaker:You only really get the next moment.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:I mean the room you're sitting in.
Speaker:You know, listening to this or wherever you are, you could be out walking.
Speaker:A tree could fall on you or a car could lose control and kill you in 20 seconds.
Speaker:I've seen it happen.
Speaker:I remember years ago I was riding my motorbike.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:To the beach one day.
Speaker:And, uh, the sun had just come up and I remember there's
Speaker:this lady walking, her dogs.
Speaker:On the side of the road.
Speaker:And she was just off the side and I saw this car was behind this car
Speaker:and the car was driving along and the sun obviously blinded them.
Speaker:And I watched this car just drift off to the left side of
Speaker:the road and hit this poor woman.
Speaker:And I was the first person there.
Speaker:It was the most traumatic experience.
Speaker:But it reinforced, you know, that you can just be going along, minding
Speaker:your own business and your life can end anything could happen.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Seriously.
Speaker:So that doesn't lead me to depression or anxiety.
Speaker:That just leads me to this grounded realization.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:I'm alive now.
Speaker:I'm going to try and bless people.
Speaker:I'm going to try and stay positive.
Speaker:I'm going to try and manage my thinking.
Speaker:I'm going to try and live this 24 hour block.
Speaker:And that's how I'm doing it.
Speaker:Friends.
Speaker:And I got to tell you, since I've been living this way, it's had quite an effect.
Speaker:I, I, you know, I'm sure I have the odd day where I go a bit backwards, but.
Speaker:This is what I got for you.
Speaker:I'd love to give you a 5,000 page thesis about all these different things, but
Speaker:we've got to get really good here.
Speaker:It is.
Speaker:One more time.
Speaker:Mental toughness, mental toughness.
Speaker:What is mental toughness?
Speaker:I think it's the ability.
Speaker:To catch yourself in the act.
Speaker:Of negative.
Speaker:Unproductive unhelpful thinking.
Speaker:And choose.
Speaker:This is the toughness part.
Speaker:Choose, you know how you have to choose to go to the gym.
Speaker:You have to choose to go for a walk or a run.
Speaker:You have to choose to eat properly.
Speaker:The toughness part comes from making ourselves do things that
Speaker:we don't actually like to do.
Speaker:I mean, it's easier for us really just to kind of just go along and.
Speaker:And just, you know, go, I used to go down the path without thinking it's comforting.
Speaker:Isn't it?
Speaker:It's comforting.
Speaker:Because one of the things that we want as humans is we always want certainty.
Speaker:Has a deep psychological principle Maslow went on at first.
Speaker:Uh, but it's really been developed.
Speaker:It's the idea that humans don't do too well in uncertainty.
Speaker:So if you really want to, you know, it's the learn helplessness experiments they
Speaker:used to do on rats, where they used to shock rats, no matter what they did.
Speaker:And the rats eventually just got.
Speaker:Went into chronic depression.
Speaker:So, you know, what we want is certainty.
Speaker:We want to know that whatever's happening.
Speaker:There's some certainty.
Speaker:So that works both ways.
Speaker:You know, people can get into despair and depression and
Speaker:what that gives them certainty.
Speaker:What certainty is it?
Speaker:The certainty that life is terrible.
Speaker:The certainty that they're never going to reach their goals, the certainty
Speaker:that they'll always be unhappy.
Speaker:So then if we stay in that space, And then what needs to happen for me?
Speaker:And I'm not speaking to anybody else now is that you get sympathy, right?
Speaker:Because if your life's terrible and you can prove to everybody who had
Speaker:terrible your life is, and you get sympathy and you get reinforcement.
Speaker:And that's why I think it's called mental toughness because it's much harder.
Speaker:It's much tougher.
Speaker:To do the opposite.
Speaker:It's much tougher to not go after sympathy.
Speaker:It's much tougher to catch yourself in the very act.
Speaker:Of unproductive thinking and you do the hard work of
Speaker:choosing a different direction.
Speaker:For me, it's like a conversation.
Speaker:I just find, as soon as that thought, I'm just like, no, no, it's like that.
Speaker:It's just like Kasi saying no to one of my kids.
Speaker:No.
Speaker:No, but can I get no, can I, but just one this time, just
Speaker:one time, I'll only do it one.
Speaker:No.
Speaker:It's just no.
Speaker:I'm not going there.
Speaker:It's like that old biblical story, right.
Speaker:Of the Israelites coming out of Egypt.
Speaker:If you're not familiar with it going watch prince of Egypt on Netflix.
Speaker:You know, they came out of Egypt and they start, some of them started to complain.
Speaker:They wanted to go back because they didn't like the tough process
Speaker:of going into the promised land, going into where they belonged.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:It's much easier to go backwards.
Speaker:It's really easy to go backwards.
Speaker:And it's always easy to go back with when things are difficult, it's much harder.
Speaker:It's tougher.
Speaker:To actually go forwards and to catch ourselves in the moment
Speaker:of unproductive thinking.
Speaker:So give you quite here from Vince Lombardi.
Speaker:Vince Lombardi was one of the most famous, uh, American football coaches.
Speaker:Uh, NFL coaches of, uh, I guess in American history, really.
Speaker:And, uh, just saying as a great ma as the master motivator of people.
Speaker:And, uh, he was his quote on mental toughness.
Speaker:He says, and I like our honesty is he says mental toughness is many things.
Speaker:And rather difficult to explain it's qualities are sacrifice and self denial.
Speaker:Also most importantly, it is combined with a perfectly disciplined
Speaker:will that refuses to give in.
Speaker:It's a state of mind.
Speaker:You could call it character in action.
Speaker:You know, there's so much in that he talks about, you know, A perfectly
Speaker:disciplined will that refuses to give in.
Speaker:So it's a discipline process, right?
Speaker:It's a process is going, I'm not going that way.
Speaker:I'm not having that thought.
Speaker:I'm not going to reinforce that negative despair filled thinking.
Speaker:Really, really.
Speaker:It's just Jonathan, there's just positive.
Speaker:Fluff.
Speaker:Well, I gotta be honest with you.
Speaker:Sooner or later you got to live your life, right?
Speaker:And I'll live my life one way for a long period of time until
Speaker:I started living this way.
Speaker:And I'm like, what am I happier?
Speaker:And some of you that will, is that all.
Speaker:Is that all there is to it.
Speaker:You just want to be happy and I get, yeah.
Speaker:Cause if I'm happier, here's what I'll tell you.
Speaker:I notice.
Speaker:When I'm happy, I'm a much greater blessing to the people I love.
Speaker:When I'm miserable and despairing and depressed, I am not good
Speaker:for my kids or for Karen.
Speaker:Or for my friends or for you?
Speaker:I find that if I don't take that off ramp, if I stay off that path and I
Speaker:just did just get this discipline.
Speaker:This self denial.
Speaker:Look at that word.
Speaker:Lombardi uses sacrifice and self denial.
Speaker:What is self denial in this context?
Speaker:I deny myself the ability to go off, to feeling miserable and getting sympathy.
Speaker:I'm going to deny myself that I'm going to say no, I'm no longer.
Speaker:I'm going to deny it.
Speaker:I'm going to stop it.
Speaker:I'm going to cut it off.
Speaker:I'm going to stand on my feet and deal with the difficult, challenging 24 hours.
Speaker:Blocks of time that we're going to confront me in this particular season.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:There's a lot there.
Speaker:Huh?
Speaker:Now, let me clarify because, um, you know, I'm not, you know,
Speaker:some, some of us struggle with.
Speaker:Genuine mental health.
Speaker:You know, genuine anxiety, depression.
Speaker:So am I saying you don't.
Speaker:Uh, C medical, uh, mental health professionals course I don't.
Speaker:Uh, and, uh, and I'm not telling anybody to stop seeing somebody
Speaker:if they're doing it or not use medication, any of that stuff.
Speaker:I'm not saying that.
Speaker:I'm saying that you need to do what is best for you?
Speaker:But I'm just telling you what works for me.
Speaker:What works for me is fighting for myself.
Speaker:Refusing to abandon myself.
Speaker:I think that's what I used to do for many years.
Speaker:I just, my thinking would go off in this rabbit hole of negativity
Speaker:and I would just abandoned myself.
Speaker:See you, Jonathan.
Speaker:Good luck.
Speaker:Well, Hadn't you enjoy that trip into the dark forest of despair and, uh, we'll
Speaker:catch in a few months when you come back.
Speaker:I used to live that way.
Speaker:Karen would tell you she remembers seasons where I was just like, I'll
Speaker:be on stage motivating people, but in my private life, I'd be like following
Speaker:these rabbit holes of despair.
Speaker:And I don't know.
Speaker:Does that like integrity?
Speaker:No, I think I had to find the courage to still try to help people and bless
Speaker:people during a difficult journey.
Speaker:But now as I've sort of come out of that forest, Doing a lot of metaphors today.
Speaker:I feel like I've come out of that forest with some good news for
Speaker:people, which is firstly, we don't have to go into the forest at all.
Speaker:We don't.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:We don't.
Speaker:We really don't.
Speaker:We have power.
Speaker:You have much more power than you think power to control,
Speaker:where your thought processes go.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:Let me know what you think of this home.
Speaker:All right, that's it for me today.
Speaker:Uh, look only housekeeping is please make sure you've
Speaker:subscribed as the coolest thing.
Speaker:I'm going to build out some more ways to get in touch with me
Speaker:and I'm going to build out some new cool resources for you all.
Speaker:In the next few weeks, that's kind of what I've been working on, but for
Speaker:now, just make sure you're subscribed.
Speaker:If you're a new listener, please hit that big subscribe button.
Speaker:God bless you everybody.
Speaker:Don't take the off-ramp, I'm really praying for you all.
Speaker:I just hope that you'll get in through this season and I hope I
Speaker:can be a blessing to you with these little moments of encouragement.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:This has been the daily podcast.
Speaker:My name is Jonathan Doyle.
Speaker:God bless everybody.
Speaker:I'm going to have another message for you very soon
