You’re Not Tired, You’re Avoiding — The Real Reason You’re Exhausted

Most of your tiredness isn't physical.

It's the weight of the thing you keep avoiding.

Okay, let's jump into this.

Do you sometimes feel an unusual fatigue?

Do you sometimes kind of feel, "Why am I so tired?" Now, I don't discount

the significance of significant mental health challenges that can sometimes

feel like a overbearing fatigue.

That is not what I'm covering in this message.

And the other thing I'd like to do with you very early in this

message is talk about my relentless love for and focus upon rest.

So we're gonna talk about tiredness today, and I'm gonna link it to

this idea that the-- one of the reasons you might sometimes feel

unusually tired is because you're avoiding some things you need to do.

So this is not a message about just push, push, push, 'cause

I am a huge advocate for rest.

If you meet any of my family, and even some of my friends, they would be able

to tell you that I have this, like, religious discipline around sleep.

It has transformed my life quite recently that I have a very disciplined

life, but sleep is the secret sauce.

Now, I'm not gonna bore you with the details, but I am so disciplined

about sleep, and it's very, very-- it's worked beautifully for me.

Maybe we can talk about that in another message.

But what I wanna talk about is what about this tiredness that

you just can't seem to explain?

And I've experienced this recently.

I'm in a very big training phase at the moment, so I'm doing, uh, a lot

of significant training, and it's very calibrated and it's, uh, I've got a whole

bunch of metrics that I run and, and sort of feedback systems so I know exactly

where I'm traveling in this program.

And I noticed even a few weeks ago, I was feeling like my metrics were

like, I should be feeling great.

Why am I waking up feeling like this?

And I wasn't depressed, but I had a lot of things, a lot of challenges going on and,

you know, business things and I suddenly realized that, with the help of someone

else, that this kind of was a fatigue that had nothing to do with a physical cause.

This was a fatigue that was being driven by other challenges and things that were

happening around me that I needed to really-- I was addressing them, but I

needed to take it up a couple of notches.

So what I wanna suggest is sometimes people use this exhaustion as, "I

can't do anything. I'm so tired." And it's this fatigue that, as I've

said, sleep won't actually fix.

But what I wanna suggest that what might be underneath it is maybe

the thing that you're not doing, the conversation you're not having,

the call that you won't return.

And here's the key.

Ready?

Avoidance drains you.

Avoidance drains you I want you to try and just conceptualize that for a moment.

You know, sometimes we might think that if we avoid difficult things, you know,

we're conserving our energy, or we're being practical or reasonable, or we're

just not in a place to deal with this.

But I wanna offer you a different perception.

I want to offer you the belief that refusing to be the master of your

life, refusing to make the difficult choices and decisions, may actually

be sucking the life out of you.

And that you're not tired because you're not sleeping enough.

And look, there's a whole bunch of things we need to be doing.

Need to get off screens earlier and, and, you know, get a good sleep routine

and all those sorts of things, and be active enough so that at the end

of the day, we're ready for rest.

So I say to Karen that if anybody needs me, I'm your guy between

four AM and about eight PM.

You-- Uh, anything you need, four AM to eight PM, I'm your person.

I'm your guy.

But after that, I'm done, 'cause I'm really dialed in on that.

But when this other fatigue is there in your life and you are doing some

of the other stuff right, can I offer you the idea that there may

be something else underneath it?

So one of the key principles that's helped me so much over the years,

and very much at the moment, is this.

You ready?

Energy follows action.

It doesn't precede it.

Energy follows action.

It doesn't precede it What about this idea?

What about the idea that the thing that you are avoiding is the very thing

that will hand you your life back?

The thing that you're avoiding is the very thing that will hand you your life back.

And I don't want this to sound abstract or kinda some, you know, woo woo idea.

I have experienced this so powerfully.

Like, there are decisions that I've had to make and challenges and

choices that are really complex, and I'm sure you have at times too.

And what do we do?

We kinda go round and round, just like that water going down a drain, where

we go round and round and round, and we, we don't wanna make the decision.

We don't wanna ask the person out, propose marriage, start the company,

sell the house, buy the house, start the career, register for the course.

We just go round and round, and we think we're being rational.

And friends, there is a place for deliberation.

There is a place for making wise decisions, and I'm an advocate for it.

But I also need all of us to understand that we need to be very careful that

we're not using avoidance and making it look like some kinda process that we're

going through, because underneath it all, we're gonna be exhausting ourselves.

Energy follows action.

Once you commit to a course and you close off the other options,

it's a quite a powerful moment.

I spent so many years in my life really paralyzed with decision-making.

You know, I used to have this belief, I was a very sort of, uh, what's the word?

People used to say earnest.

I always wanted to do the right thing.

I wanted to, you know, and, and look back-- I can look back now

and say it was anxiety driven, something I don't experience anymore.

But I could see how, because of my backstory, I was driven by

anxiety and control, that I, I needed to know that whatever I

was gonna do was the right choice.

I really had to know it.

And then because I had a Christian perspective, I didn't wanna upset

God, and I was like, "I've gotta know what God's exact desire is and

what's God's will, and if I gotta…

And I-- It's binary and I can't get outside it." So I spent all these

years kinda just not choosing, and it took all these years.

I said this two episodes ago.

I'm just here to save you time.

I'm not here 'cause I'm wise.

I'm just here 'cause I made a whole bunch of dumb choices, and I wanna

spare you from making the same ones.

I just got to a point where I was like, what I thought was, like devout

spirituality or what I thought was, like s- being a serious person in many

ways was avoidance of responsibility.

Avoidance of responsibility.

What responsibility?

The crucial responsibility that every single one of us actually has

for the outcomes in our own life.

No, we cannot control every outcome, but we do have a profound responsibility

to be the actors and directors in our own lives And so this fatigue that you

may be feeling, I just wonder how much of it might disappear if you got back

in the pilot seat of your own life and you started making some choices again

and started making some decisions.

'Cause I can tell you friends, it is so much like a snowball

going down a mountain.

What do I mean?

That once you start this process, it starts to get momentum, and then the

next thing and the next thing and the next thing, and you keep moving and doing

and choosing and trying and pushing.

And yeah, there's hard work to be done, but I am desperate for you to understand

it is the best, it is the best life.

Like I don't know where I'm gonna end up, but I know that I won't die of boredom

and I'm no longer gonna die of avoidance.

So let me just offer you that principle.

Yeah, sure, check out the physiological, you know, possibilities around fatigue.

Maybe you're dealing with grief and maybe you've had trauma and maybe

there's setbacks, but eventually, eventually avoidance will drain you.

Energy follows action.

Energy follows action.

All right.

Housekeeping, please come and say hi.

Instagram, jdoylespeaks, one word, jdoylespeaks.

You can find me on the website, jonathandoyle.co.

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Share this with some friends.

You ready to finish?

Here's what I want you to do.

Name the thing that you have been too tired to face and face it today