The Most Important Person in the World — A Simple Skill That Changes Everything

Well, hello there, my friend.

Jonathan Doyle with you.

It's another episode of the Daily podcast, and I'm really pleased

you're here 'cause you matter, and I wanna give you something useful.

Today, we're actually gonna give you something useful and practical.

It's a overarching meta-principle of human interaction that's really simple.

I've been teaching this on stage for many, many years, and I wanna frame it

for you in a question, 'cause I wanna give you something that if you can begin

to use this skill consistently, it, it makes life more enjoyable, and it

will help you in so many areas of life.

It's super simple.

I wanna ask you a question.

Who's the most important person in the world?

Who is the most important person in the world?

You might say Jesus, you might say a spouse, or your kids, or a friend.

No, I wanna make it, uh, I wanna give you something else.

Who is the most important person in the world?

Here is the answer: the person standing in front of you.

You see, I've spent 20 to 30 years as a speaker globally, and you

meet huge numbers of people, right?

'Cause you're speaking and, or you're off stage and you m- you meet the audience

afterwards, and you just meet people and it's, it's beautiful part of the job.

And one of the great sort of blessings that I've been given is that I, I have

a great desire to be authentic and to have integrity and to show up for people.

I love it.

I just, I, I find humans so interesting.

I'm actually an introvert by nature, so I eventually get utterly exhausted by what

I'm about to tell you, but it's worth it.

And it's simply, when I'm talking to somebody, I try and give them

my complete and full presence and attention, and I do it consciously,

and I have to concentrate on it.

It's not natural maybe for me, and I don't know if it's natural for anybody.

We listen to each other, but deep listening, deep focus, is probably, in

a technologically distracted culture, something that's happening less and less.

So I want you to begin to develop this mindset.

Whenever you're talking to somebody, whether it's in your home, whether it's

at work, whether it's in a social setting, show up to it with a full intensity.

So I, I really do this.

Like I, I… it's a skill maybe that I've developed over time, but I will

be talking to somebody or listening to somebody, and I'm really focused.

I, I, I know that, I guess in this short message I'm talking a little bit about my

experience of doing it, but in general, I don't talk about myself very much.

I- why?

Because I live with myself.

I can talk about myself to myself anytime.

But I don't get to know you.

I haven't met you before.

And so if I meet someone, I'm really interested, like, "Tell me about you.

What motivates you?" Yesterday, you know, I, uh, was talking to somebody who's

a CEO of a bigger company, and I just found him interesting and I was just

like kept hitting him with questions, not about so much his professional

life, but about him, what animates him.

What are his problems?

What's going on for him?

What's a challenge?

And just listening.

It's amazing what happens if you just decide to listen and develop this mindset

that the person in front of you is the most important person in the world.

That goes the same for restaurants, for McDonald's

drive-through, if I'm playing golf.

It doesn't matter where I am.

It's like if I'm having a conversation, I try and bring full intention to it.

So this is not a world-shaking, profound message.

I'm just reminding you today of something that many people easily forget in

this very, very distracted culture.

And it's simply that you never know what you are gonna learn, you never

know what doors are gonna open simply from being truly, deeply present

to the person in front of you.

So I want you to start making this a deliberate habit, right?

That's it.

It's, it's not profound, it's not complex.

This isn't gonna be a half-hour podcast.

It's gonna be a super simple message.

Who is the most important person in the world?

The person right in front of you, okay?

Show up for that person, remove distractions, stay present.

I just, I just gotta not rant about this, but the level of phone addiction

is just going through the roof.

Just pay attention.

Walk around and just look how many of us now are just completely s- face down,

head down on the screen, which means what?

The ability to actually pay attention to somebody in real time and to

bring your full humanity to that is gonna become rarer and rarer.

So get good at it.

Finally, who is the most important person in the world?

I want you to practice this today, tonight, whenever you're listening.

Put it into practice.

The most important person in the world is the person standing right in front of you,

'cause you gotta block everything else out, forget everything else in the world,

and give them your full humanity, 'cause you never know what you're gonna learn.

All right, come and subscribe, Instagram, jadoylespeaks, YouTube, jadoylespeaks.

Everything else is on the website, jonathandoyle.co, .C-O.

Hope you can subscribe.

If you like the content, go share this with somebody, and when you're

sharing it with them, give them your full attention, because they're the

most important person in the world.

This has been the Daily Podcast.

My name's Jonathan Doyle.

You and I are gonna talk again tomorrow