Is our success in life determined by genetics, luck, talent, or some other mysterious force? In today's episode, I share a powerful insight from neurobiology that will help you realize that so much more is possible if you can learn to do this one thing.

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Well, hello there, my friend welcome aboard to the daily podcast.

Have you listened in before?

Are we all friends?

You and I, but if you, if you're brand new listener, welcome aboard of your Regulus

night, it is good to have you back.

My name is Jonathan Doyle, this my friend.

It's the daily podcast.

It is called the daily podcast because yes, you guessed it.

I try to do it every single day, 365 days a year.

Often people go.

Why do you do it every day?

People are going to listen to it every day.

Well, it seems that they actually are listening to it every day.

At least.

My mother and my caboodle, R and S and others.

Depending on the day of the week.

I love doing it.

You know what I'm doing it lately is because I'm learning with you

because I am learning with you.

I'm reading a lot.

I'm uh, I'm alert a lot.

I'm thinking a lot.

And I'm just finding this stuff really helpful.

So I just want to share it with you and hope to be a blessing to you.

Please make sure you have subscribed.

It does make a big difference.

If you could hit that subscribe button here in Spotify or apple

podcasts or Google podcasts or wherever you're listening.

Hit the subscribe button.

It does make a big difference.

And of course there's a YouTube link here cause I'm on YouTube every single day.

And you can find the video version there.

I'd love you to do that.

And of course there is a coaching link.

If you would like to do some private coaching with me.

You just jump on board.

I do a send you a zoom link and we start working together and it's a really

simple process where you and I catch up.

And we identify what needs to change.

What's important to you.

And then I really get behind you as a coach and get you moving forward.

It could be your business.

It could be your relationships could be health and fitness, whatever it is.

Let's get on a call.

So go check out that coaching link friends.

I hope you had a chance to listen to yesterday's episode.

Where I shared some really deep insights from a book I've just

finished by a guy called Jay stringer.

It's a really deep episode.

We looked at shame.

We looked at past scripts.

We looked at what we looked at, what keeps us in failure.

So I really think that was pretty cool yesterday.

So go check it out today.

We're going to keep heading along that same path together.

The, uh, I am on a journey.

I'm on a journey of exploring shame.

I have been reading a whole bunch of books about this this morning at about 5:00 AM.

I had my heavy pack on, I went and did like a long, long rock, long hike.

Listening to an 11 hour book at the moment on a, from a clinical

psychotherapist on shame.

I just think there's a really interesting concept that affects so many people.

So many of us.

At a very deep level.

And I'm currently simultaneously reading Kurt Thompson's book

called the soul of shame.

And the start of this book is a kind of exploration of neurobiology.

It's just this wonderful emerging field that takes, uh, how

would I explain this to you?

If you think of how.

You know, psychology has developed.

I started to say to people that the first psychological textbook only

appeared in 1901 by William James.

It's the first ever book on psychology and you go back further and say, well, a

lot of the great philosophers, even Plato and Aristotle were talking about matters

of the soul, which kind of reflect this.

This fascinating aspect of what it means to be human, this deep

inner state that we all possess.

And then of course, you've got the three VNS schools, the

psychotherapy you've got Freud.

And then color.

And then the third Viennese school with Victor Frankl.

All of this I'm getting at is that it's a relatively new discipline, but

now what we're seeing is the merging of that sort of psychodynamic stuff.

The psychotherapeutic areas, Freud even.

You know, like I said earlier, Plato Aristotle.

All the way through the centuries, but now we're because of the

advances of the hard sciences.

We're able to get a much better insight into the actual physical

working of the brains, neurobiology the structure of the brain and how

to fix how we live, think and feel.

So what's good about this book, soul of shame by Kurt Thompson is that

he's bringing these things together.

He's bringing together the neuro-biological, the spiritual

he's running from a Christian perspective and the therapeutic.

So I just want to give you one quote that really jumped out at me and hopefully

I can really make this useful for you.

He says this, ultimately we become.

What we pay attention to.

And the options available to us at any time.

Uh, myriad, the most important of which are located within us.

One more time.

Ultimately, we become what we pay attention to and the options

available to us at any time.

A myriad.

The most important of which are located within us.

This is a rich quote, my friend.

First thing I want to draw your attention to is firstly, that this

guy is quite brilliant, right?

He's a highly educated person.

And to write a phrase like this, ultimately we become

what we pay attention to.

Think about the profundity of that and think about what it means, if he's right.

If he's right.

He saying that where we place our attention.

Determines who and what we become in the journey of life.

So, as I said yesterday, I want you to understand that there are theoretically.

Millions hundreds, moons, even billions of things that you could

pay attention to at any given moment.

So there's the physical world around you.

There's the temperature in the room.

There's the lights.

There's the things that surround you.

There's the feeling of clothing on your body.

You could pay attention to any of that, right?

Theoretically.

So as we go through life, there's this constant process by which we

make decisions about where we place.

Uh, attention.

So, what I want to do is take a big leap here and think about the times in life.

When we struggle with things like depression or anxiety, for example,

cause they're the big ones that are plaguing so much of modern life.

If we're going through these things, think about where our,

where our attention is now often.

You know, in a depressive state.

Our attention will be upon.

The experience of low energy, our attention will be upon our brain is

a meaning making machine our mind.

So it's looking for meanings.

Why do I feel this way?

Oh, it's because I am ex because I'm no good at, because this person

said this because no one loves me because I always screw up because.

You know, my parents were never there when I was a kid or I never knew my

father or fill in the blanks now.

I'm not diminishing or minimizing the significance and importance

of any of these things.

But what I am saying is that we have this incredible power to

choose where we place our attention.

So, let me give you some obvious examples.

I was speaking to someone just the other day about the

incredible book, the happiest man.

Alive.

I don't know if you've read that Edie.

It's a book by a guy called Eddie Jack, who.

And it blew my mind.

I actually heard the audio version first, and then I bought about

five copies as I do sometimes instead of giving them to people.

So long story short, Eddie, Jack, who.

Survives the most horrendous experience in world war II.

It captured by the Nazis is families killed and.

And just the experiences he's imprisoned in Auschwitz for the duration of the

war, but manages to come out alive.

And I remember exactly where I was.

I was on a long training run when I really heard this

profound part of the book where.

He was repatriated.

Oh, he was, you know, after the war, he emigrated, sorry to Australia.

And set up a life in the beach side area, Bondai, which many of

you would know is kind of like the Copacabana beach of Australia.

It's sort of the beach.

For tourists and stuff.

And he started this real estate business.

And.

But his first son was born Michael and Eddie Jack, who was still dealing

with this profound oppression.

Just just understandably right.

Because it look, think of all the loss and the trauma and the stuff.

So think about where his attention was.

Right.

And his attention.

Was understandably.

Placed upon all the evil, all the loss, all the pain, all the.

You know, the complete lack of justice and decency and all of that.

But his son was born and he was living in this deep, dark depression.

And he had this kind of a piffy when he suddenly realized

that he had to change that.

He held his son in his arms and realized that he had to change and.

I love these stories because you know what he did, he, he just changed.

He just literally changed.

He became a fundamentally different person and started this incredible

real estate business and did all this amazing stuff over the years and

influenced huge numbers of people.

And I'm going to argue that at least a very significant part of

this was because his attention.

Shifted.

His attention was placed upon his son and his attention was shifted

to the time that he did have left.

And his attention was shifted to the things that he could still do.

So let's come back to this Kurt Thompson quote.

He says, ultimately, we become what we pay attention to.

And the options available to us at any time, a myriad, of course, you understand

myriad means multiple, but the most important of which are located within us.

So think about the ability to place our attention internally on

all the things that are missing, all the lack in our lives, all the

ways we've been hurt or mistreated.

We have utter complete freedom to place our attention upon those areas.

Absolutely all the time.

No problems.

But we also have other options.

And friends, if you're anything like me, I have struggled with this because

I've been like in the midst of real pain at times in my life, I've been

like, you want to be justified, right?

You want to, you want to scream at the world, but I have every

right to feel this way because.

And absolutely.

And over many years of speaking on stage, I've taught people.

This principle I've said.

You can come to me and you can list every single thing that's

happened to you, how terrible it is.

What it's done to you, why you are suffering.

And then I'm going to listen to you carefully and I'm going to

listen to you and pathic glee.

And then at the end of it all, when you're finally blown out

all of that emotion, energy, I'm going to say three words to you.

And here are those three words.

And.

Now what.

And now what.

You'll probably right.

And I understand that you would feel this way because what

happened to you is terrible.

But you still have to live.

And you have to find a way to find meaning and move forward.

And I just think that Kurt Thompson's offering is something quite extraordinary

today, which is a decision around where we place our attention.

So Franz, I turned 50 this year on December.

The first I'll be turning 50 years of age.

I still feel about 25.

But I'm just struck.

By the importance.

Of how much time I have left.

And how I want that time to be useful and the blessing and rich and joyful.

You know, some of, you know, I've been camping a lot lately.

I've been taking the kids out and we went out Friday night.

I took them out into the national park.

Um,

Middle of nowhere and it was just the best.

And we're just about, they're all about just to get into bed

in the tent at about 10:00 PM.

And I noticed.

That the moon had come up and we walked around the corner of these

trees and you had to be there I guess, but the moon was just artily spec

tacular, because there was no light pollution and it was just incredible.

And I've got these really good binoculars that I use for hunting,

and I took them out and gave them to the kids and you could see every

crater on the moon and it was like,

Well, I'm telling you this because it was just this beautiful moment of.

Or, and wonder.

And being together and sharing it together.

And I guess that we can choose to pay attention to these kinds of opportunities.

We can choose to pay attention to the things that are beautiful around us.

They're quite extraordinary.

So.

The last thing I wrote in these notes in preparing here is.

Was that this is a discipline.

It's a genuine discipline.

It's very easy to just get on this microphone and say these words and

people like, yeah, yeah, I get it.

I get it.

Yep.

Sure.

I understand.

But how do we actually do this?

Especially if you're not somebody that, you know, naturally gravitates

to the optimistic or the positive.

And I say it's a discipline.

It becomes something that you practice.

And like almost everything that I teach it requires.

Awareness and being awake.

Of removing things in your life that keep you asleep.

So that you are awake.

Because when you're awake.

Metaphysically to life.

Then you can begin to notice things like, yeah, I'm paying attention

to everything that's missing.

I'm paying attention to.

All of these internal states that are not helping me move forward.

I'm not talking about denying what you feel.

I'm not saying you ignore things.

I'm just saying.

You don't have to pay attention.

To all of the things that are not helping, maybe this helps.

Maybe it's like you have a party at your house and you invite 50 guests and.

And 49 of those guests.

Uh, interesting, energetic, happy, positive.

Greg grateful to be there.

And you've got this one guest who's like miserable.

And wants to complain about the temperature in your house, the food.

Uh, remind you that you had a party five years ago, that wasn't

very good and hit their surprise.

Anybody came to this one.

And you have 49 guests, you could be paying attention to.

And those 49 guests are going to help you to enjoy yourself and to learn things

from them and to have a great time.

But you're paying attention to this one guest.

I've done it.

So maybe that's a helpful metaphor.

Don't pay attention to the one guest.

You don't have to deny there.

You just smile and wave, right?

Like, Hey, glad you could make it kind of.

And then go and spend time focusing your attention on the 4

49 guests that really light you up.

To discipline her.

It is a discipline.

All right, that's it for me today, please make sure you've subscribed.

Please make sure you have subscribed.

That's very helpful for me.

Go and check out the coaching link.

If you want to do some coaching with me, we can work on

this kind of stuff together.

We can help you.

I can help you to start paying attention.

Not to what's wrecking your life, but towards you, what towards.

What you want to go towards, if you understand what I mean, I want to help

you focus your attention on the good things and the things that you still can

do that are gonna move you forward to go book yourself a coaching session with me.

All right, God bless everybody.

My name is Jonathan Doyle.

This has been the daily podcast.

I've enjoyed this one.

I hope it's a blessing to you and I'll have another message for you.