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Episode 865th August 2022 • The Daily Podcast with Jonathan Doyle • Jonathan Doyle
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In a world of victim culture and blame it becomes a revolutionary act to let go of bitterness and resentment and take radical responsibility for you life.

In today's message we explore a very challenging insight from the 19th century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche that I came across in Douglas Murray's new book, The War On The West.

If you are ready to find a way to a deeper experience of life and its possibilities then this is the episode for you.

Grab a free copy of my book Bridging the Gap here:

https://go.jonathandoyle.co/btg-pdf

Enquire about booking Jonathan to speak:

https://go.jonathandoyle.co/jd-speak-opt-in

Find out about coaching with Jonathan here:

https://go.jonathandoyle.co/coaching

Transcripts

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Well, Hey everybody.

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Jonathan Doyle with you.

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Once again, welcome friends to the daily podcast.

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New listeners, regular listeners.

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Welcome back.

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As always hoping I can bring you a little bit of insight and encouragement

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today as you go about the business.

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Of being a human in this busy and complex world that we are inhabiting together.

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Friends.

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Please make sure you subscribe, hit that subscribe button.

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And it is always a blessing.

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If you can leave a review.

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Give it some rating.

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It really does help with the algorithm.

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And of course, as always, all of the other stuff you need to

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know is in the show notes here.

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You can find links, how to book me, how to get free access

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to various bits and pieces.

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So please, when you've done listening, go and check out

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the show notes friends today.

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We're going to go into something quite.

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Well, when you first hear it, it's quite challenging.

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And, uh, I think all of us like to be told that everything's

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good and that we're good and that everything's gonna work out just fine.

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We, uh, we like that.

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I think there's enough difficulty and challenge in the world without being

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told that there's more and more problems.

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So today's message is going to be a challenging one.

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For me and for all of us, I read this last night.

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I've actually been reading through Douglas Murray's latest book, the war on the west.

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I've you familiar with Douglas Murray?

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He's a British public intellectual.

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Uh, I've really enjoyed his previous two books.

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Uh, the strange death of Europe and the madness of crowds.

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He is.

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Uh, a really cosmopolitan, highly educated guy, and you'll find

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them all over the internet.

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He's been on Joe Rogan, a whole bunch of different places.

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Just one of those people that thinks deeply.

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I'd say he's probably been trained in.

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I guess rational sort of dialect Dickies is a logical structural thinker.

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Um, so very good at rhetoric and argument and logical debates.

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I really appreciate a lot of what he's been sort of sharing

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over the last few years.

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His latest book, the war on the west is basically referring to this kind of

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vast self-loathing that has rolled out.

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I look over a significant period of time and, uh, in the west in terms of.

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All sorts of complex issues.

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We are being taught to, I think in some ways, despise

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our own history and tradition.

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And I think his book speaks to the heart of that, but, uh, Let's not

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go down that rabbit hole right now.

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Some of you I know, will disagree with that thesis.

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Some of you will be very supportive of it.

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And, uh, you know, I guess that's the point, isn't it?

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That one of the things that would be helpful in the world

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at the moment is the ability to.

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At least have a disposition to listen to other insights and ideas, even if

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they're contrary to what we, uh, we know to be true, it's worth just listening

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to understand another perspective.

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I think that's something worth doing it doesn't mean

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we agree with it or validated.

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It just means.

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We have the decency to listen to it.

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And, um, you know, it's something that I've been working on over the years just

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to actually try and deeply understand.

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Where other people are coming from, particularly when they disagree

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with me, I've got a long way to go.

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Got a long way to go.

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But you see in the book.

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Uh, last night, I'm almost finished it, but he sort of, he

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argues that at the root of a lot.

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Of what we're seeing culturally is a deep kind of sense of resentment of.

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Often I talk about the victim mentality that pervades the world,

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and I think victim mentality.

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Is highly destructive.

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It's destructive of cultures.

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It's destructive of self it's destructive of relationships.

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Because it's, it does a few things.

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Once we deeply down the rabbit hole with victim hood, we give

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our power away immediately.

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And as I always say, I'm not denying that there have been

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historical injustices at times.

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I'm not being flippant about it.

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I know that those are very real things.

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But once we really surrender ourselves to a victim mentality,

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then our power is externalized.

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And what Douglas Murray would say is that once we find an outward source

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to blame, we exonerate ourselves from doing the hard work of basically living.

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If you can point to an external force and say, that is the reason that I am unhappy.

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That's the reason I don't have what I have.

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Well, eventually, what do you do next?

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I mean, what do you do next?

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And this is what I want to get to.

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He's actually quoting in the book, Friedrich nature.

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One of the most influential figures of 19th century philosophy had a vast

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impact in continental philosophy, particularly, um, as the national

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socialist Nazi movement emerged.

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A lot of Hitler's thinking was based.

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Deeply on, I guess, on niches concept of the Uber mention.

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And the Superman principles.

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Uh, we don't need to go down that rabbit hole.

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Nature was brilliant, but just extremely dangerous.

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You know, he used to say on stage that guns don't kill people.

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Ideas do.

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And this is quoting nature because nature is trying to get to.

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I guess part of what nature would say is that we need to take a

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radical, radical, radical, radical responsibility for our lives.

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That we need to accept the difficulty and pain and hardship of life and not

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flinch from it, but actually accept that.

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If we're going to fully, I guess, develop who we are.

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Um, then we need to accept the difficulties of life.

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Take powerful responsibility for our lives and press on now.

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I know I've got such a diverse listenership.

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I'm not endorsing niches philosophy per se.

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Um, like a lot of things, you know, in life there's, there's some value, there's

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some gold buried deep in some pretty challenging and a rather toxic ideas.

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But let me just give you this.

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He quotes him here and he sort of says, somebody must be to blame.

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But you, this is nature, but you yourself are this somebody.

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You yourself alone are to blame for it.

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You yourself alone.

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Are to blame for yourself.

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I remember how I started saying this is going to be a tough episode.

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You yourself are to blame for yourself.

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Wow.

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I know a whole bunch of you just lost your mind.

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You're like, hang on, hang on, hang on.

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Hang on.

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What about people that are victims of abuse or trauma or violence,

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you telling me that they are responsible for what happened to them?

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Of course, they're not the cause.

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That's absolutely not what I'm saying.

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What needs is getting at is eventually as we look at the tapestry of our life.

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No matter what's happened to us.

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Eventually.

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We have to take responsibility.

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Let me give you an example.

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I don't know if this is accurate and I'd love you to sort of email me or jump

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across on the YouTube channel, leave some comments and tell me I'm crazy.

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But.

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When I had my accident in 2019.

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I, uh, you know, it was a majorly physical it majorly.

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Is that a word, I guess it is.

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It was a, it was a massively, physically traumatic injury.

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So I destroyed both arms shattered, multiple bones and, you know, in my,

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in both wrists and they've got a whole bunch of metal in both sides and.

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A whole bunch of other stuff.

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And.

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The process of recovery was utterly brutal.

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It was months and months.

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And just the pain and the rehab and the.

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And just all the stuff that went with, and if anybody's been through

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major injuries and surgeries, you know what I'm talking about?

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It's a long road back, but you see the trauma had happened, right.

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I didn't choose the trauma.

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I didn't choose the accident.

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The accident sort of chose me.

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But my response to my recovery.

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Was my own now.

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Yes.

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I had access to good people, but we sought out good people and I had to do

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the hard work of physical rehabilitation.

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So I, what I'm trying to do here is say yes, there was trauma.

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Yes.

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There was something I didn't choose, but I was responsible for the response

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I made to the incident itself.

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Eventually see, I could have sat around and said, well,

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I'm not going to do anything.

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You know, it's just too hard.

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I'm just going to keep taking these tablets and sit here and do nothing.

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And you see.

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I think that's what nature is kind of alluding to here that.

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Eventually.

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Eventually in the path of life, we have to be responsible for our lives.

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That doesn't mean we don't process the pain.

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We don't, uh, you know, seek justice where necessary, but sooner or later, We

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have to become responsible for ourselves.

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I now know somebody listening to enjoy I'm responsible.

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I'm an adult.

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I'm talking about a deeper level here.

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I'm talking about our responsibility for all outcomes.

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You look at the work of someone like Jocko, Willink.

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You may have heard of.

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A us Navy seal commander wrote a couple of really important books on

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leadership and strategy and, you know, has developed a huge following online.

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Um, and his, he wrote a book called radical responsibility.

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You know that.

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What they.

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Well, they sort of developed in special forces.

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Was this idea that, that you had to be.

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Radically responsible for every area of your life that you

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couldn't blame someone else.

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You couldn't pass it off for somebody else's problem.

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If something broke down and went wrong.

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Why did it go wrong?

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Who was responsible?

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How do we make sure it doesn't happen again?

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So.

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I think this runs contrary to the victim mentality that we're going through as

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a culture, it's much easier to point to multiple reasons why we can't do X.

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We can't have X it's the economy.

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It's the government.

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It's my wife.

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It's my husband.

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It's my kids.

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I do it.

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I struggle with it all the time.

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I got to.

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That's why.

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You know, if this podcast had an audience of one, I would still

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be listening to myself going.

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Yeah.

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Jonathan, listen to yourself.

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This is good.

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This is good.

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You've got to put this into practice.

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So.

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I think my friends that the way forward.

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It's to look at the areas of our life, where there is brokenness and pain.

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And look at how we can step into responsibility for ourselves

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in each of those areas.

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Now, there will be a spiritual component.

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There will be prayer.

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Depending on your tradition, there could be all sorts of different

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aspects on a spiritual level.

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You know, we're not orphans, we're not cosmic orphans.

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God wants to guide us and grow us through these systems.

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There might be people, you know, it's seven 20 in the studio here today.

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I was up at four.

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I had a four 15 call with, uh, I got a spiritual director in the U S and

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where I'm on the call here at 4:15 AM, because I've always tried to

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seek out really good people to have.

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Input to help me grow to help me take responsibility and step up and stand up.

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So trust me, friends, if.

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Uh, if you're hearing any blame or condemnation in this message

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today, it's a, it's definitely.

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It's accidental because I'm speaking to myself here about

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this responsibility piece.

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So.

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I think that the rejuvenation of culture, of education, of family, life of personal

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life of civic, life of the public square.

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A lot of it's going to have to do with people going, you know what?

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I ain't going to blame this or that or this system or that person any more.

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I am going to take responsibility.

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I'm going to be responsible for my life and my outcomes as best I can in

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partnership with God in partnership with the universe, whoever we frame that.

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And I'm going to keep going.

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So friends, can I just ask you like, Is there an area of your life at the

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moment where you are handing over power?

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I've said this in many podcasts over the years.

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Then let's hear it.

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One more time from nature who says somebody must be to blame.

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But you yourself are this somebody, yourself alone are to blame for it.

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You yourself alone.

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Uh, to blame for your self.

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And when Marie unpacks this, when Douglas Maryann packs that idea, he says that

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once you moved from resentment, once you moved from jealousy, once you moved

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from blame, he says, what it does is it tends to unlock a huge amount of energy.

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Because all that energy that's been focused on other people and

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on other people causing problems.

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Is suddenly released and unleashed into the world.

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I really liked that idea.

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I think it's a very powerful one that as we move from blame to

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responsibility, this energy is unleashed.

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All right.

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That's it for me today.

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Uh, let me know what you think.

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Like if you think it's crazy, I hit the link here, come across to the

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YouTube version and put a comment.

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Cause I'm going to a YouTube version of this in a moment.

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Or just email me direct jonathan@jonathandoyledotcodotcojonathanatjonathandoyle.co.

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That's J O N a T H a n@jonathandoyle.com.

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God, bless your friends.

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Please make sure you've subscribed.

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Go and check out all the other links.

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My name's Jonathan Doyle.

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This has been the daily podcast.

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Andy, you and I are going to talk again tomorrow.

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