Most People Died at 14, They Just Haven’t Noticed Yet

Well, hello there, my friend.

Guess who?

It's me.

It's Jonathan Doyle.

I am excited that you're here.

I wanna be a blessing to you wherever you are.

You're on a treadmill, you're in a car, you're in an

aircraft, you're in your house.

I don't know where you are.

Gosh, I wonder what the most unusual place is that somebody is listening right now.

Maybe we don't-- maybe we shouldn't think about that too much.

Anyway, I'm glad you're here.

I genuinely am.

It is a joy to do this, and I hope that there will be something in this

message that will be a blessing to you.

I've called today's episode Most People Died at 14, They Just Haven't Noticed Yet.

This is based on a conviction, and I don't know if you'll agree, but let's

just, uh, let's run it up the flagpole together and see who salutes, as they say.

Can you agree that when we're young, we don't care?

Like like I remember being a certain age and my mother wanted

to take me clothes shopping.

I would've been like eight or something like that, maybe,

definitely not older than 10.

And I remember having… Like, she may as well have said to me, "Look,

I'd like to take you to the dentist for the dentist to tear out your teeth

with pliers and no anesthetic," because it was kind of the same vibe as, "I

want to take you clothes shopping."

Like, I just… There was no universe in which that was important to me.

Like, I just couldn't care less.

I'm like, "You could put me in a potato sack," and I'd be like,

"Can I still play cricket?" Just lost all my American viewers again.

Cricket, no one understands that.

But you get my point.

I just didn't care because at eight years of age or younger, you don't care.

You go way back to younger, you run a nude on the beach, and everybody

thinks you're hilarious, okay?

You do that at 40, and you get arrested.

Go figure.

But do you remember that?

Do you remember being just younger and everything was possible

and everything was exciting?

And people could be mean, but you kind of brushed it off

and you're still, you know…

I don't know.

I'll speak from a male perspective.

You, you put on a Spider-Man outfit at six and, and you're genuinely thinking

to yourself, "I don't care what anyone says. I'm swinging off that light post.

I, I, I am climbing that building." You're so-- Your life is so immersive.

It's so… There's so much potential and possibility.

And then, of course, what happens to all of us, right?

At some point we become that terrible word, we become realistic.

And in my notes here, I, I had this written down, "By 14, most people have

already surrendered the core conviction that life could be extraordinary."

Now I want you to hear this next line.

"The rest of their decades are spent decorating the cell."

decorating the cell.

Isn't that powerful language?

That we become realistic.

This is what we have to do.

Last week's episode, I talked about shoulding all over yourself.

You ever heard that one?

That you should do this, you should go to this university, that you wanna

make people happy, you should get this career, you should marry this kind of

person, you should drive this kind of car.

We learn to believe that our lives can't be that free, that we can't

really be alive and authentic.

But just on that concept of authenticity, can you and I not agree together that

the most interesting, the funniest, and often the most successful people

we are ever going to encounter are people who are outrageously authentic,

who just have a filter that's like, "Other people's opinion of me…"

Remember the famous saying?

Come on, you all know this.

"Other people's opinion of me is absolutely none of my business." I've

come to this late, but I would like to, like suggest, by the grace of God,

I've become a bit of a specialist in this, that I, I think that I don't

really care what anyone thinks of me.

As I've come back to really producing a lot of content, I can promise

you there is this tiny little voice of, like, maybe some family members

or maybe some people that knew me a long time ago that go, "Him?

What's, what's he doing that for?" Well, friends, I'm doing that because

for certain years, years ago, my life was in the toilet, and now it

isn't, and now I wanna tell everybody what you need to do to change it,

and I don't care if people wanna ridicule that or, or have an opinion.

I genuinely don't care.

Because if I've got 100 people in the room, and I genuinely mean this,

and if 90 people don't care and, and 10 do or one does, I'm there.

I'm like, I wanna bring whatever I can that's useful because I don't

care whether people don't like it.

Now, concentrate.

The risk in saying that is you think that I'm possibly arrogant, right?

Like, I don't care what anybody thinks.

There's a difference between being grateful to God for who you are

and being a narcissist, right?

So these are the two extremes.

That, that to be authentic, to go, "This is how I'm made." I was talking to someone

recently, and I was trying to get them to understand aspects of their personality

that they were struggling with.

I kept saying to them, "You know what, man? Like, this is, this is a feature.

It's not a bug." How many of you listening right now have aspects of your

personality that God handcrafted for you that you've just spent the last five,

10, 15, or 50 years apologizing for?

Would it not be great for that to stop?

Would it not be great to go, "This is the package"?

This is the package.

Now, you're gonna grow, you're gonna learn, you're gonna

change, you're gonna get better.

But you don't wanna spend all this time wishing you were totally somebody

else and that, and that you've lost that beautiful energy and creativity.

You ever wonder where it goes?

You know, it's sort of what happens to us, right?

We're, we're six and someone makes fun of our Spider-Man costume.

Or we're, we're a 14 or 15-year-old girl going to some event and somebody

comments on our clothing or our dress or our hair, and it's devastating

because we're so fragile at that point as our psyche develops.

I get it.

I get it.

I get it.

We have a parent that says, "Oh, look, you need a fallback.

You, you need to do this.

You, you, you can't take those sorts of risks." What was that

great line from Helen Keller?

She said, "Life is a daring adventure or nothing." She's one of the great figures

of recent history, modern history.

She goes, "Life is either a daring adventure or nothing."

Come on, you know this is true.

Don't you find the person that turns up to the wedding in the big

Hawaiian shirt and, you know, is five champagnes in and laughing so loud

that nearby animals are getting scared?

Like, they're kinda interesting because they're kinda like they're doing them.

I was talking to someone the other day.

Yeah, I was in a meeting with a, with a, a serious professional who was running

a big firm, and this guy said to me in passing, he said, "You know," that he

realized in his 40s, he just decided that it was time to just be who he was

and let the cards fall where they will.

And across the conference table, I said to him, "You know, there's a great

quote from Oscar Wilde who said, 'Be yourself because everybody else is

taken.'" Be yourself because everybody else is taken Now, how many times

have I said this example of parents?

You know, if any parents are listening, when you look at your kids and you

see those innate abilities and gifts and talents and quirks and funny

things, and you don't want the world to crush them out of your child, do you?

It's heart-rending.

What do you th- and I keep… I said this in, in yesterday's episode.

What do you think God feels when God looks at you and sees all this unique

potential and capacity and ability being crushed out of you by people's comments

and people's a- and life experiences?

No, we've gotta fight to get it back and just go, "God, thank

you for making me this way.

Yes, I'm a sinner.

Yes, I, um, sometimes I'm, you know, short-tempered or I do this or I do that,

and I've got things to work on, yes." But the core package, my friends, your

core package, the quirks, the things that make you laugh, the weird things you

say, the, the, the things you're into, the way you dress, stop fighting it.

Stop fighting it because, because do, do you wanna get to the end of your life

and look back and go, "Well, I spent so much of the time deeply conditioned

by either cultural or social or relational expectations." 'Cause you're

not-- At that point, it's too late.

If, I'm trying to speak to anybody for whom it's not too late.

Now, yes, we are social beings.

We are definitely shaped in, in our, in our social environments,

and that's not a bad thing.

I'm not talking about radical narcissism, where everybody just goes

and yes, we do need to cooperate.

We do need to moderate our behaviors.

You know, one of the great things about the Western sort of project over the

last, I guess, well, since Athens, you know, like two and a half thousand

years, it developed eventually into what we call high-trust societies.

Never perfect, but definitely high-trust societies, which means what?

Societies where you kind of figured out that most people were gonna

do kind of the same basic things.

People weren't just gonna randomly murder you because they didn't

want you to randomly murder them or their family members.

So people kinda just, you know.

So that kind of socialization is really positive.

We call it pro-social.

It's a really good thing.

But don't you think there's a little latitude just to, in the

smaller things, to be yourself?

Just to be radically who you are?

Oh, there's a freedom that comes.

I wanna promise you, there is a freedom that comes when this moment hits you.

Maybe you gotta live long enough.

I don't know, 'cause I'm feeling it.

I'm just like, I wanna be a really good person.

I wanna help everybody.

I wanna be a blessing to people I encounter.

But if someone doesn't like me, I don't care.

It's like, whatever.

I don't know why.

Maybe I remind them of someone they didn't like, or maybe who I-- who knows?

Don't worry about it.

You'll never figure it out.

They probably won't tell you.

You just gotta do you.

So I'm asking you today to think about what is unique and special

and remarkable about you that you've buried under months, weeks, years, or

decades of other people's approval.

What could you say, think, do, be or feel or create or experience

that would take you back into some of that remarkable potential

and capacity that you always had?

You know, many years ago, I read what I think is one of the most

overrated books ever written.

Some of you may disagree.

It's by the American metaphysical writer Henry David Thoreau in his book Walden.

I always heard about it, so I figured I better read it many years ago.

And so basically, if you don't know the story, Henry David Thoreau decided

to take a year out of modern life.

This was 18… Oh boy, I'm gonna definitely have some English

department heads listening the one day.

He decides to take a year out of life, and he goes up to

this place called Walden Pond.

It's like a big lake.

And he writes this book imaginatively titled Walden.

He's like, "What'll I call it?

Walden." And he built himself a little cabin, and he basically sat there

for a year and thought about life.

And there's a couple of killer lines in it.

Uh, uh, the one of them that I liked was, he's talking about fashion, and he said

something like, "The lead monkey in Paris puts on a new hat, and a week later,

every monkey in New York is wearing it."

I thought that was pretty funny.

Um, but the famous line that I wanna share with you, some of you may have heard this,

is, uh, and excuse the gender specific, but he says, "Most men," most human

persons, we'll say, "Most men and women lead lives of quiet desperation and go to

the grave with the song still in them."

Most men and women lead lives of quiet desperation.

That's important language, quiet desperation.

What does he mean?

I think he means so many men and women go through life with this nagging

anxiety that they're drifting, that they're cruising, that the, the time's

running out, the clock's ticking.

Now, you don't feel that, my younger listeners, my younger men and women,

you don't feel that now, but I can promise you that it is coming for

you if you don't switch on early.

Quiet desperation, the feeling that, that you've missed things,

that you've let things go, that you didn't bring the stuff to the world.

You don't wanna do that.

When I get to the end of this journey, it's like that great line from Hunter S.

Thompson where he talks about, you know, that, that you wanna, that you wanna slide

in broadside into heaven in a completely worn-out body yelling, "Man, what a ride."

You know, I was thinking tomorrow morning I'm training so hard.

You can see it every day.

If you're on Instagram, come and follow me at JDoyleSpeaks, JDoyleSpeaks,

and you'll see what I'm doing.

Tomorrow I've got like a 15K, 30 kilo pack ruck up these crazy hills.

So I'm gonna do that tomorrow and, and one of the things that I'm doing is a friend

of mine texted me from, uh, where was he?

He's in Seattle, and he texted me the other day and he goes, "Oh, you know,

we, we, we had a tragic loss recently 'cause, uh, somebody we knew had a,

a serious heart attack." And, and he was saying to me, "You know, you

should get yoursh- self checked out." Now I don't wanna be flippant about

this, but I was like, "You know, I don't wanna leave worrying about that.

I don't wanna be frivolous about it, but I just wanna keep pushing and keep pushing,

keep pushing a- and keep finding out what's possible because, you know, if, if

my life comes to an end, I want it to be 'cause I was still living, because I was

still doing things, 'cause I was still trying to be alive and encourage people."

So my friends, don't settle.

Who were you all those years ago?

You know?

That joy, that energy, that light.

Remember it?

Do you have any remember-- Look, go look at an old photograph.

It's still there.

That little child didn't go away.

It just got told to be quiet by everything around it, and that's

not how we're designed to live.

We're not designed for lives of quiet desperation.

Does my voice to you in this episode sound like quiet desperation?

No.

It sounds like, "Go.

Go.

Pull the trigger." You know, "Load that tank with aviation fuel and press

the accelerator." Like, get after it.

What does that mean?

I've said this for years.

For me, it means 15K, 30 kilogram ruck, and 4:00 a.m.

tomorrow morning in minus five.

For some of you, it means walking to the letterbox twice today.

I've said that so many times.

Maybe all the exercise you do is you walk to letterbox, letterbox once.

Do it twice.

Maybe some of you, you know, only make time to see a friend once a week.

This week it means twice.

Maybe some of you just need to pick up your phone and text a couple people and

say, "Hey, let's catch up. It's been too long. Let's have a coffee." Make

efforts, make efforts, make efforts.

Do things.

I've-- You know, the, the clearer that I've got, I, I just wanna tell you,

like, you know, I've really got my training right, my diet right, my sleep

right, and my energy levels are amazing at the moment, and one of the things I

notice constantly is this little voice.

For me, it's the Holy Spirit.

It's this little prompting that I get.

"Call this person, send them this book, buy this thing for that person, send

this message over here." I constantly get these little, little ideas, and

I'm getting really good at listening to them and not ignoring them.

'Cause I think that God, life, the universe is talking to you, maybe through

this message, saying, "It's time now.

It's time to wake up.

I made you for greatness.

You're created for a big story, and you've been living in a small one, and that needs

to come to an end." I gotta stop now.

I gotta have the discipline to stop 'cause I'll just keep going.

God bless you.

Please come follow me, Instagram, jdoylespeaks,

YouTube, Jonathan Doyle Speaks.

The website is jonathandoyle.co.

And if you like this podcast, please send it to somebody.

Send it to a family member.

Make sure you've subscribed.

Leave a comment.

It does make a difference, and just more people get to hear

it, and that's a blessing to me.

All right.

That's it.

Oh, I love doing that.

That was such a joy, and I hope it's a blessing to you.

My name's Jonathan Doyle.

This is the daily podcast, and you and I are gonna talk again tomorrow.