Your Blind Spot Is Running Your Life

Jonathan Doyle with you.

It is good to be with you today.

I hope I can offer you something really useful.

In just a moment, we're gonna talk about something uncomfortably useful,

a simple idea that, is obviously so simple that most of us don't do it.

So we'll get to that in just a second.

Been up early, just had a long walk in, subzero temperatures in the pitch black.

It is the best time of day.

I know I'm not gonna sell you all on this, but just the ability

to be up early and to move.

We are designed to move, and I think you'll agree that our culture has

been magnificently constructed to stop us moving as much as possible.

been hominids, we've been bipedal carbon-based humanoids for

millions upon millions of years.

We've been Homo sapiens for about three hundred and fifty

thousand years, and almost that entire time we have been moving.

We are a species that if we didn't move every day, we starved or got eaten.

So it's just so deep in our DNA to move, to be active, and this is a moment in

history when that's pretty difficult.

So I always wanna encourage you, just whatever it is.

I've done so many, extreme things over the years, from ultramarathons to so

much power lifting and cycling, all the different things that I do, but at

the moment I'm just enjoying walking.

And so whether you're running ultras or, as I've said many times, whether you're

just walking to the letterbox, get moving.

It really matters.

Friends, today I wanna talk to you about an experience I had a while ago, coaching

somebody who just asked to catch up, and I talked to her for a long time.

We went through a whole bunch of things, and if I have a sort of a

superpower, it's the ability to kinda listen to somebody and pretty quickly

pick up what the core issue is.

So we spent a lot of time talking about what was happening and the

questions they were trying to resolve, but what was obvious to me

very quickly was, what was obvious.

I could see pretty quickly that there was one significant issue that

this person was not resolving and historically had not been able to resolve

that was causing them the problem.

this was a really intelligent person.

This was not somebody who was out of touch with themselves.

This was someone who was really quite astute, and here is the essence

of what I want to share with you.

I want to offer you the idea that the significant things that we

need to do or change in our lives are often very hard for us to see

because we're so close to them.

So over the years, I've had the privilege of working with so many people, and

as I look into my own life as well The thing that we need to do, the

significant thing that needs to happen, is often really difficult for us to see

clearly and to action expeditiously.

I think we catch glimpses of it.

I'm trying to get you to think about your own life.

Is there something in your life at the moment that you kinda go I kinda know that

needs to change," but it gets swept very quickly back into that darker corner of

your mind, and we'll get to that tomorrow.

We'll get to that another time.

it's one of the reasons that often people that overcome addictions, can

have such a huge release of energy and a huge change in their lives.

Obviously not everybody does this, but you'll all be familiar with one

or two people that have, whether it's, in wider culture or somebody in your

family who's made some big change, and they become a very different person.

And the reason is because the thing that was holding them back

was something that they couldn't bring fully to consciousness.

So my thesis is that most of us probably have some area of our life that we are

deliberately not paying attention to.

And this is the benefit of having coaches and mentors, because it's often having a

great coach or mentor that we get a person in our life who can say, "Seriously?

You don't see this?

Like, how do you not see this?

It's enormous." And the, I guess the question is, why don't we see it?

When there's something in our life that's holding us back and causing us

difficulty and pain, why don't we see it?

And as I was reflecting on that before recording the episode, I

think it's basically because we are

I've said many times, this is the key thing that Freud got right.

I think he got vast amounts of things shockingly wrong, but one of the things

he did get right is around the motivations around pleasure and pain That we are

optimized to seek what is pleasurable, and we're optimized to avoid what is painful.

And whatever it is in our life that is significantly problematic for us and

holding us back, to turn and to face it, to take responsibility and ownership for

it, to go, "This is the thing that I am thinking, doing, consuming that's causing

me these problems," is inherently painful.

Whether it's a humility thing, like we actually don't wanna be exposed, we now

have to confront the fact that we're not all-seeing, all-knowing, the fact

that we're not always on our own side.

These are unpleasant things to have to face.

So it makes a lot of sense that we would tend to either deliberately ignore

them or self-medicate them in some way, because it's painful to do it.

But the key issue, the key thought that I want to suggest to you is, if you

want significant change and improvement in life, it's the ability to turn

and face these uncomfortable things.

It's why, like in my own sort of Catholic tradition, it's why we have

things like examination of conscience.

It's why you have the sacrament of confession, because it's like this ability

to go, "Oh, I need to be aware of these things in my life that are problematic,

and I need to deal with them."

it's baked into the sacramental cake of Catholicism, and I'm sure that there's

many other faith systems or psychological systems that have some approximation

of that, that we don't grow, we don't change until we confront what is

really significantly holding us back.

So I wanna give you a couple of quotes on that.

There's a great quote here that I've used many times over the years from

Carl Jung, who was Sigmund Freud's protege and the founder of the second

Viennese school of psychotherapy.

But Carl Jung has had a significant impact on psychotherapy in

general, and listen to this quote.

He says, "Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and

you will call it fate." you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your

life, and you will call it fate." So this is the essence of victim mentality, right?

people look at their life not being how they want, and they will fall into

some form of, victim mentality, right?

We blame our spouse, our boyfriend, our girlfriend, our parents, the

economy, the weather, the government.

we find ways to blame something in the system that is making us

victims, and we call that fate.

I'm just like this.

This always happens to me.

I can't change." So when you hear Jung say, "Until you make the unconscious

conscious, it's gonna run your life," and you're just gonna look

at the outcomes of your life and you're gonna say that's just fate.

That's just... this is what I can't-- What can I possibly do?"

And I-- You have to understand too that people that have magnificent

lives, that really build and create something special in their lives, are

people who refuse to accept the idea of that kind of fate or victim mentality.

It's "I need to be aware of what is holding me back. I need to

take responsibility for it."

Because if Jung's right, until we get pretty clear on the things that

are really driving us or stopping us, it's very hard to change them.

So that is the essential idea that I wanna put in your h- mind today,

that until we make and peace with, or at least shed some light on, the

fundamental things that hold us back, it's very difficult to change them.

I was listening to somebody recently who has this mantra where they say,

"Sunlight is the best antiseptic." Sunlight is the best antiseptic, right?

It's s- sometimes it's-- if a room is all dark and disgusting and it's

hasn't been cleaned properly and it's all stuffy, it's the ability to throw

open the doors and to pull back the curtains and to open the windows that

suddenly reveal what's really there.

And when you see what's really there, you can begin to work on it and

begin to make significant changes.

So this is the burden of personal growth and development, right?

This is the actual burden.

It's the burden of, "I want life to be better.

I wanna be better for others.

I wanna be better for myself.

I want to make manifest the glory of God that is within me.

And to do that, I have to confront the things that aren't great." I am deeply

convinced we're heading into a very challenging moment in human history.

Some of you would know that I spent a lot of time in the areas of global

finance and investment and taxation systems and theories of culture.

Some of you would know that I've obviously spent many years in those spaces.

And we're heading into a particularly challenging moment in human history where

navigating these challenges is gonna require us to be diligent, hardworking,

alert, awake, responsible for our lives.

So the first thing is to take some time.

and I guess how do you do it, right?

You have to make some time for focus, for silence, for processing these

difficult and challenging aspects.

I've always been a big journal person, so sometimes it's making the time,

and even just stillness and silence.

I was at mass on the weekend, and somebody was talking about the need just to

have some time each day for stillness.

Because as an investor, one of the things you, do, is you look for scarcity, right?

You look for scarcity.

and we're at this moment in a culture where there is so much noise and

distraction and stimulation that the thing that's actually scarce is stillness,

silence, calm, peace, reflection.

So if you wanna navigate these challenges, you've gotta give yourself that gift.

So practically, just try and make a decision sometime in the next 48 hours

that you're gonna go somewhere, sit somewhere, and just think about your life.

What is going on in your life?

What are the things that are stopping you and holding you back?

Because until you make them conscious, clear, and a decision to work on

them, then they're not gonna shift.

And I just wanna finish by telling you that life can be pretty good.

Can improve.

You can really address some of the things that are holding you back.

But to do that, the first step is stillness, silence,

contemplation, and awareness.

So make time for that.

All right, my friends, that's it.

I hope that's useful to you.

If you're hearing this on the podcast, please subscribe.

You can find me at Instagram, JDoyleSpeaks, and, I think somewhere

on YouTube, JDoyleSpeaks as well, and the website jonathandoyle.co.co.

God bless you, my friend.

This has been The Daily Podcast.

Go out there, get conscious, pay attention, and you and I

are gonna talk again tomorrow.