In a culture that has elevated victimhood to a fine art many people have learned to find a reason for their failures or poor performance. So many people simply blame circumstances or others for whatever they fail to achieve. However, a small number of people have learned that no matter what the external circumstances may be they take a radical responsibility for their lives and the effort and energy they bring to every worthwhile goal.

If you want to build a new level of success in your life then the first thing to fix is this; you need to take total responsibility for your internal standards and remove all blame from external conditions.

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Well, Hey everybody, Jonathan Doyle with you.

Once again.

Welcome my friends to the daily podcast.

I've gone back to a dedicated podcast edition.

I was doing a single video addition and splitting out the audio.

But, uh, you know, what.

Oh, I've got this weird kind of fascination with high quality microphones.

Everybody's got their weirdness, this one's mine.

And, uh, I'm using this beautiful Shure SM seven B microphone

because I felt for the podcast.

Sometimes the audio is a little bit off.

Cause if you watching stuff on YouTube and video, People find that much easier.

But I wanted to give you guys the regular podcast listeners.

Some, uh, some good audio content as you go about your day and

some good audio quality today.

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regularly, but haven't subscribed.

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Okay.

It is early in the morning.

I've been up since about 3 58 M best time of day.

Outside the studio it's foggy.

It's cold.

It's dark.

It's miserable.

And I'm in this warm studio.

We've had a really cold start to the year.

It had to the winter.

It's a, I think it's going to be one of the coldest we've had in

a very long time, took Karen and the kids up to the, to the snow.

Just, I think it was last week, which was really a bit of fun.

We don't see a lot of snow around here, so it was good to get up there

and experience that as a family.

But my friends, it is Blake.

It is cold outside, but it is warm here today in the studio.

As we discuss today's topic, we're going to talk a little

bit about setting internal.

Standards.

As many of, you know, have you been listening in regularly?

I've been coaching a sporting team have been coaching.

My daughter's a division two soccer team, and it's been a

really interesting journey.

I've learned a great deal.

They're a fantastic group of young women.

It's been a real pleasure to do it.

But I've learned a lot in the process.

And one of the things I noticed in yesterday's training session, And

I spoke to the team about this.

So I'm not sort of betraying their confidence in any way.

The issue of internal standards now.

A lot of times we allow our external environment, other people.

Circumstances our energy levels to set our internal standards.

So we had.

A whole bunch of people training last night and you can truly see the variants.

In the level of execution in the training drills.

So I think we had about 14 players there last night and you see this diverse.

Set of performances.

And the drills were requiring a certain level of execution, but it's quite

extraordinary to watch that you will have person X who just internally

brings a high level of performance, and then you're going to have another

player who's just not bringing it.

I think if I had one great fascination over these many years in the area of

personal development, it would be that it would be that mysterious X factor.

That conditions.

What we bring in life.

It's just, you can have two people coming from the same background,

the same difficulties in life.

One person.

Really struggles to, to grow and develop and develop their potential.

Another person just absolutely knocks it out of the park.

I saw an interview the other day with, uh, Ben Carson.

Who have spoken about in previous years, Ben Carson ran for us

president, I think back in maybe 2016.

He was a really extraordinary guy.

He grew up in the housing projects of Detroit super poor.

Uh, no father in the home.

Uh, he really struggled with learning difficulties.

He had to kind of teach himself to read.

He would go and sit in public libraries.

Long story short, he becomes a phenomenal world, famous brain surgeon.

He said he was the first person to separate.

Uh, Siamese twins joined at the brain.

And then of course went on to run for president.

So this is a guy who's had an, you know, you could actually see his love story.

I think it's called.

It's something hands.

Think it's healing hands.

The movie there's a movie about his life is really worth watching.

Very moving.

So you see this person coming from the most extremely difficult

background, who yet makes something remarkable of themselves.

So, this is what fascinates me, this sort of.

Why do people come from?

You know, I mean, You know, I don't want to be unkind, but there's this

some public figures these days who've come from a lot of money, but yet act

quite reprehensible in certain ways.

I'm thinking of two in particular.

I won't name.

Because it would sound awfully judgmental, be done at anybody's full journey.

We don't know exactly what triggers what they do, but.

Isn't it true that there's plenty of people that come from a lot

of affluence and success, but yet managed to blow their lives up.

And there's people that come from.

Great.

Poverty and difficulty and yet managed to make something themselves.

And then there's everything in between.

You'll get people from poverty who go on to have really awful

lives and do terrible things.

And people from affluence who build on the foundation they've been given.

So look, I think the only thing we can conclude is that all of us

have this sort of radical freedom.

To decide what we actually want to achieve and contribute in life.

And the purpose of today's message is really the link it back to

this idea of internal standards.

You really, they can't be forced on you.

I said to the, to the girls last night, I said, if you will not

bring your own internal standard.

Then the way that the universe is constructed is that.

Someone else is going to enforce a standard on you.

You see.

You let's just say you don't have the standard of obeying laws or

doing the right thing will then eventually if it goes far enough,

The police and the legal system are going to enforce a standard on you.

Okay.

So you can see that if we don't eventually bring some level

of internal standards, then.

The world around us is going to enforce all sorts of external standards and

probably many of them that we want, like.

So, what are you doing?

This is the great question.

This is the thing that keeps me awake at night.

How do we do it?

I think this just, you have to show up for yourself.

You have to kind of go.

I don't care.

What the weather is doing, what the economy's doing,

what the government's doing.

What my spouse or kids are doing, I'm going to set my own internal standard.

And rather than being a burden, I think it's actually leads

to a kind of freedom, right?

It leads to a kind of sense of no matter how difficult things are in

life, you control the internal standard.

You need to define it.

You need to know what you stand for.

What's significant to you.

And again, on that.

That may sound abstract when I say at first, but we all carry around within us.

This hierarchy of values.

Somebody came to me yesterday with a complex decision.

They were trying to make.

And they made the comment about Dar.

They said, oh, look, I'm really, you know, I really indecisive

and I struggled with this and.

And I worked through this decision process with them and I helped them to

see, they had a hierarchy of values.

That's where the clash was.

That's where the tension was.

There were two or three things that they valued that were

playing out in this decision.

I said, you have to really work out what your hierarchy of values is.

What's the most important thing.

So we bring this back to the idea of standards.

We have to work out.

What are the most important things in our life?

Is it.

Is it success?

Is it hard work?

Is it loyalty to family?

Is it, uh, I'll always try and bring excellence.

We have to be conscious of these specific things that matter to us, the things

that we say are significant in our lives.

Because I really am noticing a culture and a lot of people who are just drifting.

And not really taking responsibility for what they bring in the world.

And I really, as I say, many times we have a culture that

massively empowers that sickness.

I think it is a kind of.

Mental spiritual sickness.

We have a culture that empowers victim hood.

We have a culture that empowers, uh, just sort of expecting that

the government's going to bail you out and give you whatever you want.

And, you know, just yesterday it was, it's funny here in Australia.

Uh, two state governments have got together and I think they've just come

up with something like a $9 billion.

Pre preschool program.

It's something way.

You know, they're going to pump $9 billion into, uh, you know,

Some sort of new fancy, they're going to build some new childcare

facilities and do blah, blah, blah.

And I looked at it because you know, of course.

A lot of the way my background's in macroeconomics, I'm looking at it going.

$9 billion.

You know, the economies.

Train wreck and.

And, you know, the Australian population is aging and our productivity is

falling and our GDP is stagnant.

And yet we're funding these kinds of projects.

To the tune of $9 billion of money that doesn't exist.

So if you're listening to this guy and we'll talk is a really good thing, I go.

But what's interesting to notice about it is, um, you know, somebody in the

comments on this article said, well, but you have to realize that our high school

we're scores and our university stuff is getting worse and worse and worse.

So we're throwing more and more money at the front end, but we're still getting

the same results on the back end.

But my, my point in sharing this story of these, this is that.

You know, honestly, You may think I'm a little cynical, but I don't think

it's really about, because some people in government had this passionate

concern for preschool education.

I think it's just a vote by.

I think it's basically just, you know, let's just.

You know, throw $9 billion.

Right.

And there's elections coming up for one of these state

governments, $9 billion, right.

And what I'm getting at is that it leads to a sense of entitlement.

It may leads to a sense of the government's responsible

for providing all this stuff.

And just trust me on this.

Having interviewed some of the best economists in the world

on another show that I do.

It's a really strong phenomenon.

This moment in history, this vast money printing where sort of government

just runs program after program.

And we all kind of get hooked on it.

We all kind of get expect that, uh, you know, things are just going to

turn out exactly the way we want and someone's always gonna rescue us, but

someone's not always going to rescue us.

What we actually want is not to be dependent.

We want to be independent.

We want to have these strong internal standards about what we are going to

develop, grow and contribute in the world.

Sorry.

That was a tangent.

I'm passionate about it.

I think we need to.

Stop looking for external forces to rescue us.

And just start to bring our own energy effort and talent.

And passion and creativity to the world.

I just, it bugs me.

I just think it's a, it's a victim based culture where expectation of.

Being rescued is not particularly good for development now.

The last thing I'll give you here is a great quote from Ray Kroc.

Ray crock of course, was the founder of McDonald's.

It's a China restaurants.

You may have heard of it.

Ray Kroc says the quality of a leader is reflected in the

standards they set for themselves.

Could you imagine if our political leaders had, you know, Really high internal

standards, really high internal standards.

And, you know, As you know, I read a great deal on the founding

fathers of the United States.

And, and you look at their focus on the civic virtue, personal virtue.

You know, coming back to the government example, you know, George Washington

famously said that no generation should incur debts, that it cannot

discharge in its own lifetime.

No generation should incur debts that it cannot par.

Discharge payoff in its own lifetime.

Can you imagine what that would do for our sort of political system and economy.

If you know you couldn't print money and.

You know, fund everything with debt.

If you couldn't pay it off in your own lifetime.

And what I'm getting at again, is that back at that, in that

founding era, there was this sense of great personal responsibility.

Yes.

There was a strong religious element to it, but for, for many

of them, they were humanists and they kind of weren't necessarily

coming at it from a spiritual lens.

It was just this deep idea that humans.

Should have very strong internal standards.

And if people, if enough people had strong internal standards,

we'd get a certain kind of culture.

So friends, that's all I really wanted to say today.

I know there's a lot in that as always, but I'm passionate about this.

I'm passionate about.

How we set internal standards.

No one can do it for us.

We just have to make this firm decision, not a resolution.

I was reading some great stuff yesterday.

Resolutions.

You know, a very much open to whatever's happening in the environment around us.

You know, we can make a resolution, but if things change, we'll let it go.

Whereas decisions from the Latin

It means to cut off from, to burn the ships, to, to, to break down the bridges.

So you can't go backwards and to go forward.

If we have these internal standards, we build a different kind of culture.

So.

Practically as you go through your day next 24 hours, 48 hours.

Start looking at your internal standards, starting noticing.

When your energy's down and you're kind of like, ah, I can just eat this or I can

just do that or say this, or it doesn't matter if I do a lousy job on this.

Can I give you one last story?

Would that be okay?

I did tell the girls in soccer a few weeks ago, quick story.

Uh, years ago, I was, uh, trying to buy Karen and engagement ring.

We've been married 20, almost 22 years now.

And I was working about six jobs.

I was an undergrad at university of college, and I ended up getting

this job as what we call a dish pig.

I used to scrub all the dishes in a commercial kitchen and do all the

cleaning and, uh, you know, one night.

I would die.

Everyone would leave and then they'd sort of close up, but I'd be one

of the last people there doing all the final cleaning, mopping,

all the floors and all that stuff.

And it was me and the security guard and, uh, one night I'm.

Uh, mopping and I lean right down and a mopping this floor.

And as I look across.

I see under this big commercial dishwasher, is this spoon right?

Up underneath this dishwasher right at the back on the floor.

And I could tell her to been there for like, you know, since prehistoric times

this thing was glowing, it was that dirty.

And I remember this profound moment where I had this strong sense.

I thought, well, no one knows that I've seen that.

And who cares if it stays there?

And then I had this real moment of clarity and I said, Jonathan to myself, I said,

you'll know that you didn't do it, that you didn't make the effort to pick it up.

So I got down on my stomach on this wet floor.

And I sort of crawled under this commercial dishwasher and literally

scraped this spoon out with my fingers and, um, and washed it.

And I sort of held it up in the air and I was like, LA.

I was like this sword from the stone Excalibur moment.

But it was a real reminder to me that.

Um, it's what we do with, we don't have an audience that really matters.

Right.

And this is what we do when we don't have an audience that really matters.

So, if you want to move your life forward, if you want to improve your outcomes.

Heck of a lot of it's got to do with internal standards.

All right.

That's it for me today, please make sure you subscribed.

Go check out the links in the show notes.

If you want me to speak at a conference and advent work with your business.

Uh reach out to me and make sure you grab that free access to the book bridging

the gap that's in the show notes i'd love you to share this with some people if

you like what you're hearing just stuff like this long a few friends and say hey

you might like this all right everybody god bless you my name's jonathan doyle

this has been the daily podcast and i'll have another message for you tomorrow