None of us goes looking for hard times but when they come there is always a hidden opportunity. In a victim centred and blame obsessed culture we need a reminder that life is actually tough. It's never going to be rainbows and unicorns all the time. In today's message I take you on a deep dive into the truth about life and how even the hard times can help us grow and develop and become more rounded, resilient and succesful people.

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https://youtu.be/e7_twEtwKPE

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Well, Hey everybody.

Jonathan Doyle with you as always welcome back my friend to the daily podcast.

Hope you're regular listener.

If you're brand new, welcome aboard.

Great to have you in this community of people all over the

world, trying to move the needle.

A fraction forward in 24 hour increments, we only get 24 hours a day.

but there's a lot we can do in that time.

Last week, I did a video on podcast on a great quote from Zig Zigler,

where I from memory, the exact quote was something along the lines of

lack of time is not our problem.

Lack of direction is we all get the same 24 hours in a day.

So friends.

Directions, what matters?

Isn't it knowing roughly where we're trying to head and then refining

that clarity, getting clearer and clearer all the time about

where we're going, what matters.

What's significant, what we care about, who we care about.

And self-improvement yesterday.

I.

We talked about a great quote from Marie Currie, who talked about, you know, the,

the two goals of life self-improvement and improving the lives of others.

Two great goals to have in life, but that is not today's topic today.

We're gonna talk about the light and air topic of resilience and

hardship, resilience, and hardship.

We'll rip into that in a second.

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All right.

Let's rip in.

I want to talk about resilience and hardship.

It has occurred to me of late that.

Well, let's put it this way yesterday.

We talked about the self obsession in our culture.

The constant sense of life is about us.

Life is about self-promotion life is about the radical autonomy of self.

Today.

I want to riff on a similar kind of theme, which is sort of the idea

that life should always be happy.

If you look at our media and marketing engines, this kind of idea that everyone

else is kind of happy most of the time and beautiful and popular and doing

great things and going to the best parties and buying the great greatest

stuff and doing important things.

And releasing their inner unicorn and chasing the rainbow and, uh,

that, uh, if we're not experiencing that, something's terribly wrong.

Now I'm being a little flippant there, but I think you can agree

with me that just like, there's this radical sense of self autonomy.

There's also this radical sense of life is about happiness.

That the purpose of life is to be happy, which is technically true.

Aristotle.

As you know, I'm a, I'm a classical scholar.

Aristotle would agree that the purpose of life was to be happy.

But the classical definition of happiness, if comes from the Greek word

EU pneumonia, which means to fully become what you are for the Greeks, the happy

person was the person who actualized the fullness of their potential and became

all that they could reasonably become.

So happiness was not a kind of feeling state happiness.

Wasn't just kind of do I have this psychological,

emotional sort of sense, OFS?

It was something much more deep.

It was something much deeper than that.

It was a sense of am I fully becoming who I can become?

Am I contributing what I can contribute?

Another way that I've explained it to audiences is it's like a software code.

All of us carry within us a kind of software code.

The Greeks would call it a Damon, not a demon, a Damon.

And it's kind of like software code, like a soul.

And the purpose of life is to actualize that code, to release into the world, the

fullness of all that we can reasonably be.

So what's this got to do with today's message.

The first thing is that a lot of times people can fall into

both anxiety or depression.

Excuse.

Or both, and it can happen because there's a vision of life that hasn't come about

and it becomes psychologically traumatic.

Now I don't wanna go deep down the rabbit hole of mental health.

That's not my point, cuz there are complex mechanisms by which people

experience psychological trauma and pain.

But a lot of times it can be because the life that we think we should have.

Either hasn't happened or is beyond our reach.

We look at the images presented to us and we think, well, if only I had that or I

owned this or I looked that way, then I'd be happier and I don't have those things.

So therefore we, we get, we can get into despondent and

despair and depression over time.

I think what's missing from all of this is a sense of the reality

of resilience and hardship.

What if I was to say to you friends, that life is hard.

What if I was to say to you that life can be painful and difficult and on one

level, you'll say, yeah, of course it is.

We know that we know bad things happen.

I would say that again, the nature of our 24 hour news and media cycle.

Presents human suffering to us, but it's very abstract.

It's like we get that.

There is a war in X country.

We get that there is financial issues here.

We get it, but it's, there's kind of a conflation emerging together.

Of the entertainment and news aspects of the news culture, right?

So that we kind of become somewhat Innu to the reality of human suffering.

So I said a few days ago that I'm teaching my oldest daughter world

history, and it's very, it's really true.

It's like so much of human history was literally hand to mouth

survival, trying to avoid Pele's death or being killed by somebody.

And just finding enough to eat.

You look at the Scottish philosopher, Hume.

Who famously said, life is nasty, brutish and short.

Um, and everyone's going, Jonathan, we, this is a motivational podcast.

What are you doing?

Life is not nasty, brutal, and short.

Well, he thought that, but he lived in Scotland.

And if the weather there, if you spend enough time in Scotland,

you're gonna be riding like that.

No offense to my Scottish brothers and sisters.

Beautiful country.

Great sporting teams, lovely weather.

Likeness monster.

Haggas love it.

So just trying to walk back what I just said about Scottish weather.

All right.

Moving forward.

But for most of history friends, it was about suffering.

It was about hardship.

It was about just how awful and difficult life could be.

So.

We're in a new era where we seem to have abstracted human suffering,

cuz we're mostly protected from it.

Yes.

We can have loss in suffering in our own lives, illness, sickness, and

death, but most of us are protected from those great realities of human

suffering that have been part of the human condition for millennia.

So what am I getting at?

I think we need to remind ourselves that if things are hard in

your life at the moment, here's why it's because they're hard.

It's just because they're hard and they're difficult.

And we can either get despairing about that.

Resentful, bitter angry.

We can do the other great things in our culture at the moment, victim

wouldn't blame victim wouldn't blame.

If my life is unpleasant, it's somebody's fault friends.

That is not a winning mentality.

It's not even if you're right.

That's not a winning mentality.

If you are right about that, if you are correct about that,

you you're still not gonna win.

You're still gonna be in a situation where that is.

Absolutely not what is gonna move you forward.

Being a victim or moving into blame, never moves you forward.

So.

Let's begin by realizing that there will be seasons in your life and

mind where things are just a grind, where it is difficult and hard.

And if you want to have a different life, resilience comes from the acceptance of

hardship and pushing through that hardship and staying faithful, strong and loving

in the face of hardship and difficulty.

Let me give you a quote here from, um, Josh Turner.

It says life is a series of punches.

It presents a lot of challenges.

It presents a lot of hardship, but the people that are able to take those punches

and able to move forward are the ones that really do have a lot of success

and have a lot of joy in their life and have a lot of stories to tell too.

I like that ever heard of a movie called Rocky.

Can you imagine that, uh, instead of, you know, the story of this, uh,

unknown boxer struggling on the streets of, uh, where was he Philadelphia?

It was a story about, you know, a guy whose life was really awesome and things

just got better and better and better.

And, uh, then the movie ended.

It would be like, okay, that was weird, but why do we like Rocky?

Why do we look at that film of, you know, and, and why there's

this sense of the underdog?

There's a sense of pushing through incredible hardship and

suffering and pain and difficulty.

I don't know if you've seen will Smith in the movie, the pursuit of happiness.

We've watched that movie a few times and look, whatever else you say about

will Smith, the brother can act, right.

Like he, he can definitely act he, and in the pursuit of happiness,

it's quite a profound film.

I mean, you just see a guy who just gets pummeled, absolutely pummeled by life.

Just he's trying.

Right.

He is really trying and he just gets beaten up over and over and over

again, not physically, but just by life, by circumstance, by hardship,

by rejection, by failure, over and

And over and over again, it's just the most profound film

because you see somebody.

Uh, suffering massively dealing with this incredible hardship.

But just manages.

To resolve it at the end.

So do you notice that about us as humans, that we respond to

these stories of resilience?

Over hardship.

So if we love it in Hollywood, I think we need to learn to love it in our own lives.

So this message.

For is for everybody.

Who's doing a tough right now.

At the time of recording, we're heading into some really global, heavy.

Uh, financial, economic weather.

I think in terms of interest rates and a bunch of other things, a lot of people

are gonna be in a lot of pressure.

There's going to be some real hardship.

But humans do this, you know, and it seems that the heart of

the pressure is that some people just find a way to press through.

So the purpose of today's message is to move you beyond this.

Expectation that life will always be happy, will always be easy,

will always work out the way we want and realize that there will

be seasons where we just got to be.

Hard.

We've got to just sit, uh, selves like Flint and enjoy the slings and arrows of

outrageous fortune as Shakespeare would say this seasons, no season lasts forever.

You know, our lives are deeply embedded in the mysteries of the cosmos.

And one of the mysteries is the seasonality of things that things.

Empires rise and fall seasons, ebb and flow.

Tides rise and recede.

And there will be seasons in our life.

And the trick is that when they're hard seasons not to throw our hands in the air.

Pic needless fights with people by blaming them for our circumstance.

Hey, make changes.

I'm not saying don't make reasonable changes when things are difficult.

What I'm really getting at here is something else I'm simply

getting at this important idea.

That life can be difficult and hard, and we need to prepare ourselves for it.

We need to make firm decisions in the face of it.

We need to press on through it.

All right.

That's all I wanted to say today.

God bless your friends.

If you're facing hard times, hang in there, press through.

This is shaping you.

This is forming you.

It's like.

You're being forged in the furnace of hardship and that

forging process will change you.

It will change you.

You will become a stronger, better, more compassionate person in time.

As you go through these hard seasons.

Please make sure you subscribe, go and check out the show notes.

Book me to speak at your event.

I'd love to come and do that.

There's plenty more information there.

Jump across to the YouTube channel, check out the videos.

But God bless everybody.

Keep going, huh?

Keep going.

You're not alone.

This is a community of people.

There are other people listening to this right now alongside you, who

might be facing hard times, doing their personal along with you.

My name's jonathan doyle god bless you everybody this has been the daily podcast

and i'll have another message for you