None of us goes looking for hard times but when they come there is always a hidden opportunity. In a victim centred and blame obsessed culture we need a reminder that life is actually tough. It’s never going to be rainbows and unicorns all the time. In today’s message I take you on a deep dive into the truth about life and how even the hard times can help us grow and develop and become more rounded, resilient and succesful people.
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Transcript
Well, Hey everybody.
Speaker:Jonathan Doyle with you as always welcome back my friend to the daily podcast.
Speaker:Hope you're regular listener.
Speaker:If you're brand new, welcome aboard.
Speaker:Great to have you in this community of people all over the
Speaker:world, trying to move the needle.
Speaker:A fraction forward in 24 hour increments, we only get 24 hours a day.
Speaker:but there's a lot we can do in that time.
Speaker:Last week, I did a video on podcast on a great quote from Zig Zigler,
Speaker:where I from memory, the exact quote was something along the lines of
Speaker:lack of time is not our problem.
Speaker:Lack of direction is we all get the same 24 hours in a day.
Speaker:So friends.
Speaker:Directions, what matters?
Speaker:Isn't it knowing roughly where we're trying to head and then refining
Speaker:that clarity, getting clearer and clearer all the time about
Speaker:where we're going, what matters.
Speaker:What's significant, what we care about, who we care about.
Speaker:And self-improvement yesterday.
Speaker:I.
Speaker:We talked about a great quote from Marie Currie, who talked about, you know, the,
Speaker:the two goals of life self-improvement and improving the lives of others.
Speaker:Two great goals to have in life, but that is not today's topic today.
Speaker:We're gonna talk about the light and air topic of resilience and
Speaker:hardship, resilience, and hardship.
Speaker:We'll rip into that in a second.
Speaker:Housekeeping.
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Speaker:So for my American friends, that's probably afternoon your time.
Speaker:So, uh, friends, please make sure you subscribe.
Speaker:Go check out the show notes.
Speaker:Why would you check out the show notes?
Speaker:Cuz in those show notes, you can get free access to my book, bridging the gap.
Speaker:You can book me to speak.
Speaker:You can now get links across to the YouTube channel where
Speaker:I'm doing video versions.
Speaker:Excuse me.
Speaker:I'm about to, uh, go and do some great videos later today.
Speaker:So please make sure you're on the YouTube channel as well.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:Let's rip in.
Speaker:I want to talk about resilience and hardship.
Speaker:It has occurred to me of late that.
Speaker:Well, let's put it this way yesterday.
Speaker:We talked about the self obsession in our culture.
Speaker:The constant sense of life is about us.
Speaker:Life is about self-promotion life is about the radical autonomy of self.
Speaker:Today.
Speaker:I want to riff on a similar kind of theme, which is sort of the idea
Speaker:that life should always be happy.
Speaker:If you look at our media and marketing engines, this kind of idea that everyone
Speaker:else is kind of happy most of the time and beautiful and popular and doing
Speaker:great things and going to the best parties and buying the great greatest
Speaker:stuff and doing important things.
Speaker:And releasing their inner unicorn and chasing the rainbow and, uh,
Speaker:that, uh, if we're not experiencing that, something's terribly wrong.
Speaker:Now I'm being a little flippant there, but I think you can agree
Speaker:with me that just like, there's this radical sense of self autonomy.
Speaker:There's also this radical sense of life is about happiness.
Speaker:That the purpose of life is to be happy, which is technically true.
Speaker:Aristotle.
Speaker:As you know, I'm a, I'm a classical scholar.
Speaker:Aristotle would agree that the purpose of life was to be happy.
Speaker:But the classical definition of happiness, if comes from the Greek word
Speaker:EU pneumonia, which means to fully become what you are for the Greeks, the happy
Speaker:person was the person who actualized the fullness of their potential and became
Speaker:all that they could reasonably become.
Speaker:So happiness was not a kind of feeling state happiness.
Speaker:Wasn't just kind of do I have this psychological,
Speaker:emotional sort of sense, OFS?
Speaker:It was something much more deep.
Speaker:It was something much deeper than that.
Speaker:It was a sense of am I fully becoming who I can become?
Speaker:Am I contributing what I can contribute?
Speaker:Another way that I've explained it to audiences is it's like a software code.
Speaker:All of us carry within us a kind of software code.
Speaker:The Greeks would call it a Damon, not a demon, a Damon.
Speaker:And it's kind of like software code, like a soul.
Speaker:And the purpose of life is to actualize that code, to release into the world, the
Speaker:fullness of all that we can reasonably be.
Speaker:So what's this got to do with today's message.
Speaker:The first thing is that a lot of times people can fall into
Speaker:both anxiety or depression.
Speaker:Excuse.
Speaker:Or both, and it can happen because there's a vision of life that hasn't come about
Speaker:and it becomes psychologically traumatic.
Speaker:Now I don't wanna go deep down the rabbit hole of mental health.
Speaker:That's not my point, cuz there are complex mechanisms by which people
Speaker:experience psychological trauma and pain.
Speaker:But a lot of times it can be because the life that we think we should have.
Speaker:Either hasn't happened or is beyond our reach.
Speaker:We look at the images presented to us and we think, well, if only I had that or I
Speaker:owned this or I looked that way, then I'd be happier and I don't have those things.
Speaker:So therefore we, we get, we can get into despondent and
Speaker:despair and depression over time.
Speaker:I think what's missing from all of this is a sense of the reality
Speaker:of resilience and hardship.
Speaker:What if I was to say to you friends, that life is hard.
Speaker:What if I was to say to you that life can be painful and difficult and on one
Speaker:level, you'll say, yeah, of course it is.
Speaker:We know that we know bad things happen.
Speaker:I would say that again, the nature of our 24 hour news and media cycle.
Speaker:Presents human suffering to us, but it's very abstract.
Speaker:It's like we get that.
Speaker:There is a war in X country.
Speaker:We get that there is financial issues here.
Speaker:We get it, but it's, there's kind of a conflation emerging together.
Speaker:Of the entertainment and news aspects of the news culture, right?
Speaker:So that we kind of become somewhat Innu to the reality of human suffering.
Speaker:So I said a few days ago that I'm teaching my oldest daughter world
Speaker:history, and it's very, it's really true.
Speaker:It's like so much of human history was literally hand to mouth
Speaker:survival, trying to avoid Pele's death or being killed by somebody.
Speaker:And just finding enough to eat.
Speaker:You look at the Scottish philosopher, Hume.
Speaker:Who famously said, life is nasty, brutish and short.
Speaker:Um, and everyone's going, Jonathan, we, this is a motivational podcast.
Speaker:What are you doing?
Speaker:Life is not nasty, brutal, and short.
Speaker:Well, he thought that, but he lived in Scotland.
Speaker:And if the weather there, if you spend enough time in Scotland,
Speaker:you're gonna be riding like that.
Speaker:No offense to my Scottish brothers and sisters.
Speaker:Beautiful country.
Speaker:Great sporting teams, lovely weather.
Speaker:Likeness monster.
Speaker:Haggas love it.
Speaker:So just trying to walk back what I just said about Scottish weather.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:Moving forward.
Speaker:But for most of history friends, it was about suffering.
Speaker:It was about hardship.
Speaker:It was about just how awful and difficult life could be.
Speaker:So.
Speaker:We're in a new era where we seem to have abstracted human suffering,
Speaker:cuz we're mostly protected from it.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:We can have loss in suffering in our own lives, illness, sickness, and
Speaker:death, but most of us are protected from those great realities of human
Speaker:suffering that have been part of the human condition for millennia.
Speaker:So what am I getting at?
Speaker:I think we need to remind ourselves that if things are hard in
Speaker:your life at the moment, here's why it's because they're hard.
Speaker:It's just because they're hard and they're difficult.
Speaker:And we can either get despairing about that.
Speaker:Resentful, bitter angry.
Speaker:We can do the other great things in our culture at the moment, victim
Speaker:wouldn't blame victim wouldn't blame.
Speaker:If my life is unpleasant, it's somebody's fault friends.
Speaker:That is not a winning mentality.
Speaker:It's not even if you're right.
Speaker:That's not a winning mentality.
Speaker:If you are right about that, if you are correct about that,
Speaker:you you're still not gonna win.
Speaker:You're still gonna be in a situation where that is.
Speaker:Absolutely not what is gonna move you forward.
Speaker:Being a victim or moving into blame, never moves you forward.
Speaker:So.
Speaker:Let's begin by realizing that there will be seasons in your life and
Speaker:mind where things are just a grind, where it is difficult and hard.
Speaker:And if you want to have a different life, resilience comes from the acceptance of
Speaker:hardship and pushing through that hardship and staying faithful, strong and loving
Speaker:in the face of hardship and difficulty.
Speaker:Let me give you a quote here from, um, Josh Turner.
Speaker:It says life is a series of punches.
Speaker:It presents a lot of challenges.
Speaker:It presents a lot of hardship, but the people that are able to take those punches
Speaker:and able to move forward are the ones that really do have a lot of success
Speaker:and have a lot of joy in their life and have a lot of stories to tell too.
Speaker:I like that ever heard of a movie called Rocky.
Speaker:Can you imagine that, uh, instead of, you know, the story of this, uh,
Speaker:unknown boxer struggling on the streets of, uh, where was he Philadelphia?
Speaker:It was a story about, you know, a guy whose life was really awesome and things
Speaker:just got better and better and better.
Speaker:And, uh, then the movie ended.
Speaker:It would be like, okay, that was weird, but why do we like Rocky?
Speaker:Why do we look at that film of, you know, and, and why there's
Speaker:this sense of the underdog?
Speaker:There's a sense of pushing through incredible hardship and
Speaker:suffering and pain and difficulty.
Speaker:I don't know if you've seen will Smith in the movie, the pursuit of happiness.
Speaker:We've watched that movie a few times and look, whatever else you say about
Speaker:will Smith, the brother can act, right.
Speaker:Like he, he can definitely act he, and in the pursuit of happiness,
Speaker:it's quite a profound film.
Speaker:I mean, you just see a guy who just gets pummeled, absolutely pummeled by life.
Speaker:Just he's trying.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:He is really trying and he just gets beaten up over and over and over
Speaker:again, not physically, but just by life, by circumstance, by hardship,
Speaker:by rejection, by failure, over and
Speaker:And over and over again, it's just the most profound film
Speaker:because you see somebody.
Speaker:Uh, suffering massively dealing with this incredible hardship.
Speaker:But just manages.
Speaker:To resolve it at the end.
Speaker:So do you notice that about us as humans, that we respond to
Speaker:these stories of resilience?
Speaker:Over hardship.
Speaker:So if we love it in Hollywood, I think we need to learn to love it in our own lives.
Speaker:So this message.
Speaker:For is for everybody.
Speaker:Who's doing a tough right now.
Speaker:At the time of recording, we're heading into some really global, heavy.
Speaker:Uh, financial, economic weather.
Speaker:I think in terms of interest rates and a bunch of other things, a lot of people
Speaker:are gonna be in a lot of pressure.
Speaker:There's going to be some real hardship.
Speaker:But humans do this, you know, and it seems that the heart of
Speaker:the pressure is that some people just find a way to press through.
Speaker:So the purpose of today's message is to move you beyond this.
Speaker:Expectation that life will always be happy, will always be easy,
Speaker:will always work out the way we want and realize that there will
Speaker:be seasons where we just got to be.
Speaker:Hard.
Speaker:We've got to just sit, uh, selves like Flint and enjoy the slings and arrows of
Speaker:outrageous fortune as Shakespeare would say this seasons, no season lasts forever.
Speaker:You know, our lives are deeply embedded in the mysteries of the cosmos.
Speaker:And one of the mysteries is the seasonality of things that things.
Speaker:Empires rise and fall seasons, ebb and flow.
Speaker:Tides rise and recede.
Speaker:And there will be seasons in our life.
Speaker:And the trick is that when they're hard seasons not to throw our hands in the air.
Speaker:Pic needless fights with people by blaming them for our circumstance.
Speaker:Hey, make changes.
Speaker:I'm not saying don't make reasonable changes when things are difficult.
Speaker:What I'm really getting at here is something else I'm simply
Speaker:getting at this important idea.
Speaker:That life can be difficult and hard, and we need to prepare ourselves for it.
Speaker:We need to make firm decisions in the face of it.
Speaker:We need to press on through it.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:That's all I wanted to say today.
Speaker:God bless your friends.
Speaker:If you're facing hard times, hang in there, press through.
Speaker:This is shaping you.
Speaker:This is forming you.
Speaker:It's like.
Speaker:You're being forged in the furnace of hardship and that
Speaker:forging process will change you.
Speaker:It will change you.
Speaker:You will become a stronger, better, more compassionate person in time.
Speaker:As you go through these hard seasons.
Speaker:Please make sure you subscribe, go and check out the show notes.
Speaker:Book me to speak at your event.
Speaker:I'd love to come and do that.
Speaker:There's plenty more information there.
Speaker:Jump across to the YouTube channel, check out the videos.
Speaker:But God bless everybody.
Speaker:Keep going, huh?
Speaker:Keep going.
Speaker:You're not alone.
Speaker:This is a community of people.
Speaker:There are other people listening to this right now alongside you, who
Speaker:might be facing hard times, doing their personal along with you.
Speaker:My name's jonathan doyle god bless you everybody this has been the daily podcast
Speaker:and i'll have another message for you
