The Most Difficult Thing: The Decision to Act

Well, hello there my friend Jonathan Doyle with you once again.

I hope you're well.

Hey, listen, if you are on Instagram, go and uh, find me at j Doyle Speaks.

Why?

Because I'm not really climbing Mount Everest this week exactly, but I'm

doing something kind of strange.

I decided on Sunday to run a half marathon every day for five days.

Uh, because as, as I said on Instagram this morning, I don't really know, it just

kind of jumped out at me that that would be something cool to do for the week.

So that's what I'm doing.

And it's Tuesday today in the studio, and I just did another half

marathon this morning, and that should get me to about 110, 120

kilometers by the end of the week.

So, uh, I just wanna say that.

So if you wanna see.

Proof that you can kind of do unusual, interesting things in real time.

That's where you find me Instagram.

Jay Doyle speaks.

Welcome aboard.

Listen, I just wanna share with you a quick quote from.

Amelia Earhart, I'm sure you're familiar with her.

I hope she's a very famous aviatrix.

I think I could be wrong, but I think that is the technical

term for a female aviator, an aviatrix, and it just sounds great.

Like if I know these days it's all gender neutral language, but

if, if I was a lady and I was.

Doing world famous flying.

I would love to be called an aviatrix.

I mean, anyone can be called an aviator, but to be an aviatrix.

Anyway, that's what she was doing.

And uh, famously, you know, she was doing this incredible, um, uh, aviation

adventure and, uh, she went missing.

And I think if I'm right, some, I hope there's no like secret Amelia

Earhart biographers listening today, but I think she went to, she

disappeared in the Pacific somewhere.

And, um, anyway, but she was famous for her courage.

And for her tenacity at a time, obviously when women weren't doing some of these

kinds of things, and she was just a huge figure of history and had a huge

following and a really simple quote from her, she just says this, the most

difficult thing is the decision to act.

The most difficult thing is the decision to act.

So I'm gonna break that open for you very quickly.

I believe in a quote that I read many years ago.

It said that most sort of poets and writers kind of have one big idea.

And they spend most of their life just re-articulating that idea.

And I think I'm kind of similar.

I'm learning stuff as I go, but there's a few dominant trends that regular listeners

know that I'm really fascinated in.

And this is kinda one of them.

And it's this gap between our feeling states and the difficult things that.

That if you do them bring significant results.

What I'm starting to think is that the longer that we think about something,

and I know the irony in me just having said, thinking about thinking, but

you get the point, is like, we live in a culture that just allows us to

sit on the metaphorical sidelines.

I believe it's a consumerist culture.

I believe it's a culture that thrives on.

Helping us to consume and to consume and to consume.

It's the engine of culture in many ways.

So consuming is relatively easy, but doing difficult, challenging

things is not so easy, and that's the message of this quote, that the most

difficult thing is the decision to act.

I woke up this morning.

Got my nutrition really wrong from yesterday, so I was really sore and my

glycogen stores were probably really low.

So I was, I don't know, maybe seven or eight K into this

half marathon this morning.

And I felt terrible.

In fact, I felt terrible the entire run.

I only took one single gel pack with me and my, you know, calves were super low.

And even at the start I was like, oh yeah, I could just do a 10 K today and

then just do a 10 K. And I go, but yeah.

But you said you were gonna do.

Half marathon every day for five days.

So I had to make the decision to just do what I said I was gonna do

when everything else seeks comfort.

And I, I look, some people talk about all this intuition and they

just know they, they have a sense of trust in their gut instinct.

I've never really had that that often.

I'm not that, I've never really been blessed with a strong sense of intuition.

Maybe something you have.

So, so much of the time I have to make myself do things that

I would otherwise not wanna do.

But here's what I want you to understand.

On the other side of starting the difficult thing, you get a certain kind

of momentum and the good stuff always comes at the end, and you develop a

certain self-respect from consistently doing things that you didn't want to do.

So.

Uh, gosh, I stand here in the studio and I feel like, uh, I feel like I'm

trying to communicate something so important, but it's so simple is that

I think we have been enculturated into a belief that we will always know what

to do and we'll be attracted to doing the thing that we should do, and I just

have not found that to be the case.

As a species, we're optimized for comfort, stability, and security.

We are optimized for that.

We're actually optimized to stay as stationary as possible.

Why?

Because as a species we're designed not to burn too many calories.

Do you understand that?

As homo sapiens, we actually optimize that food was scarce.

We never knew when the next significant amount of calories would be coming in.

So we learned as a species to do the minimal that you kind of had to do.

To get what you needed to get.

And so therefore, to do radical things, to do, you know, significantly

different things was something that was not particularly rewarded.

It was occasionally rewarded for outliers, people that found, you know, new areas

of game to hunt or new water sources.

So occasionally somebody would get a reward, but most of the time people

that did that died on the journey.

So you can see how we're kind of, uh, there's been reasons

why this is difficult for us.

So for you.

Whether it's improving a relationship, improving your health, starting a

business, growing your business, managing your team, whatever it is that's

significant can, if no one else tells you, it's probably gonna be hard, and

there's gonna be times when you just wanna stop and you, it's easier to just

go and find some comfort somewhere.

But this, as I've said so many times, this is the price tag of an uncommon life.

If you want one.

If you want what everybody else gets most of the time, what do most

people get without any disrespect?

What most people get is debt, poor health, and pretty much

functional or average relationships.

I mean, how many people have extraordinary health and fitness and energy?

How many people build an extraordinary financial base?

How many people break free of debt?

How many people have incredibly strong family relationships

and, and romantic relationships?

And some of you'll have some of those things.

But I just want us all to understand that, that if you want life to be

significantly better, you're just gonna keep hitting this thing all the time

and you just better get used to it.

And then as Amelia Earhart says, here, my friend, the most difficult thing, the most

difficult thing is the decision to act.

So what is it right now that you need to take action on?

Seriously?

Like, there's gotta be something, right?

There's something that you're not doing or you're avoiding, or that if you started it

would, would really help you in some way.

And you don't wanna do it because you, maybe you're afraid of failure

or maybe it's too difficult, or you're just not sure if it's the right thing.

Look, you're not coming back, right?

So it it, I'm not saying do anything dangerous or harmful to yourself,

but sometimes you just gotta act.

Sometimes you just gotta take the decision.

So let's go for it.

Let's get after it.

All right.

The most difficult thing is the decision to act.

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God bless you, my friend.

Let's get in the game and you and I are gonna talk again tomorrow.