In this episode I want to share with you some ideas about how silence and stillness are about to become revolutionary acts. In a world of intense media overwhelm and noise, some people are beginning to realise that there is a different path.

If you want to improve your entire experience of your own life then maybe it is time to stop following all the other lemmings off the cliff and make some different choices.

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Well, hello there, my friend Jonathan Doyle with you.

Welcome to the Daily Podcast.

Good to have you board.

Hope you're doing well.

Hope we're gonna bring you something useful that'll just get

you moving forward on this daring adventure that is your life.

In a few weeks, I am going to be flying to the continental United

States to speak in Phoenix to a large group of leaders, and the title of my

keynote is A Revolution of Stillness.

A revolution of stillness.

Why?

Because I'm gonna be talking about the fact that these people deal with

enormous amounts of complexity and there is so much coming at them.

And of course when you're dealing with really complex leadership questions,

these people are responsible for very significant sectors of the economy.

You know, what do you do?

Do you, do you work harder?

Do you try and use more efficient tools?

Do you try and read better books to become more and more capable of

leading in this particular space?

And I'm a contrarian by nature.

So both for me as an investor, but also in other areas of life, I, I almost

always take the contrary position to whatever mainstream thinking is.

I think I've probably always been that way, but I have a sense that

what may emerge as a revolutionary strategy in the months and years

ahead for the developed world will be the strategy of those few people.

Who choose to go in the opposite direction, which is to pursue stillness,

contemplation, and silence in the face of a vast and overwhelming

technocratic infrastructure, which is a fancy way of saying that there's so

much coming at us that we may struggle to process it, and even if we could

process it to use it in effective and strategic ways for our own betterment

and the betterment of those we love.

So lemme give you some ballpark data here.

I did some research in the studio and.

Best research we have is that the average person in the developed world

is encountering over 270 gigabytes per day of media-based content.

So that's not the sensory load that's just coming through your eyes, that

your brain processes at a sensory level, but this is actual media-based content.

So 270 gigabytes per day.

And as I often say, the bodies that we inhabit now as homo

Sapien sapiens, we've only been in these bodies about 350,000 years.

So if you go back 350,000 years, the people that you would encounter

have brains and bodies, very similar to the ones we have now.

And I mention that because if you think of the average person 300,000 years

ago, ask yourself how much sensory data their brain was encountering compared

to what we are encountering now.

So it's 270 gigabytes per day of media-based data.

But in terms of just sensory data, what our brains and minds are is

sort of, uh, taking in on a daily basis through our eyes and ears.

And our sensory networks 600 gig on that level.

So you've got 270 that we're indu, we're ingesting through media, but 600 gigs.

So we've got a combined total air of just a little under 900 gigabytes

of data a day entering our brain.

So what I'm beginning to wonder is there's an, there's gotta be some

sense of overwhelm here, right?

And I think you'll probably agree.

So the first thing I wanna do is just read you a quick quote here.

I'm reading.

Um.

One of the books I'm reading at the moment is, uh, stillness

is the Key by Ryan Holiday.

Really simple quote here.

He says this, there is way too much coming at us in order to think clearly.

It is essential that each of us figures out how to filter, how to filter out

the inconsequential from the essential.

It's not enough to be inclined toward deep thought and sober analysis.

A leader must create time and space.

For it.

A leader must create time and space for it.

So let's keep this short.

I'll just tell you what I'm doing.

I, I've, I've been a contemplative for many years, so my fundamental

disposition is introversion and.

Uh, silence and stillness and solitude are something that come pretty naturally

to me, but what I'm doing is pursuing it more consistently and aggressively.

So if you follow me on Instagram at j Doyle Speaks, um, as of today, you'll see

on my Instagram story, I started today at 3:16 AM I'm not telling you to do that.

I, um, I take sleep really seriously and I sleep really well.

I'm usually up at four, wake up a bit earlier, and I have about

an hour for prayer every morning.

And that time for prayer and stillness and contemplation is central.

And then I work really hard from sort of 4:00 AM 5:00 AM right through the day.

I usually play some golf in the afternoons.

And then I usually go back to, um, the cathedral where I live in, in

town here, and I have about another 30 to 40 minutes of silence and

contemplation in the afternoons.

Not every day, but that's pretty much the routine that I try to follow when I can.

So I am just advocating that what I think is gonna happen is.

Those of us that can begin to firewall ourselves a little bit from the inundation

of noise, data, insanity, chaos that comes at us through media and through

all the other busy aspects of our lives are gonna become people who are just a

lot more grounded and may end up having the kinds of insights and strategic.

Insights that are gonna be really important, but none of this is gonna

happen for you if you don't start to become more deliberate about it.

There's another little thing I do that sometimes I'll be working away

and I've got this other room where it's, it's really quiet in this

other room and it has a fan in there.

And sometimes I'll be like, I'll be working and busy and running around

doing stuff, but then I will take 20 to 30 minutes in this other room.

And there's nothing in it.

It's very, very simple, and it's just a chair.

I'll do some reading, but it's just like this gap now, and you might be

listening to me going, Jonathan, really look, your, your life's a bit different.

Like, not most of us are doing this.

You know, I think you can do parts of it.

I think you can definitely create islands in your day where there

is some stillness and silence.

If you, if you don't or if you think you can't, then.

Uh, you know, what sort of life is that?

If you cannot find 15, 20, 30 minutes a day for quietness and thinking

and stillness, and I know you, some of you'll be listening to me going,

well, you know what my life's like.

I've got three teenagers.

I got three teenagers, Karen and I run a global media business.

I'm producing, you know, two podcasts a day, every day, and obviously

doing a huge amount of training.

Yeah, and all the other things that I do.

Yeah, it's busy, right?

It's a very busy life, but these islands of stillness are so crucial,

so that's my challenge for you today.

When did you last experience real stillness and silence?

Are you aware that you are dealing with just under a thousand gig

a day of data and your brain is not really optimized for that?

So.

Stillness.

Meditation, contemplation, prayer, silence, solitude.

These are going to become.

The revolution, revolutionary act to the future.

And one, one of the things I'll be saying in the keynote is that

I do a short analysis of the nature of revolution itself.

And revolution happens for complex reasons in different contexts,

which I don't need to go into here.

But one of the central things about revolution is what people get to

a point where they say one thing.

One thing.

What is that one thing they say enough?

They say, enough.

This, the way that things are is no longer tenable.

It's no longer endurable.

We cannot keep doing this enough.

So I'm curious, as the media cycle gets more and more frantic and the, and

the fight for attention becomes more frantic, I wonder at what point some

of us will begin to go, you know what?

Enough enough.

I want my soul back.

I want my soul back.

So some of us are gonna have to start to climb the lofty mountain of solitude

and stillness and contemplation because that's where the magic's gonna be.

As I've always said, you know, I said I was a contrarian, but as I say, if you

do what everybody else does, then you tend to get what everybody else gets.

So moving in a different direction when everybody is running off the same cliff,

might be something you want to consider.

Alright, my friends.

I hope that's useful.

Please make sure you subscribed hit the subscribe button on the podcast.

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Uh, YouTube, Jonathan Doyle speaks.

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And, um, everything else is on the website.

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Keynotes.

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God bless you, my friend.

Go find some silence.

It's waiting for you, and you and I are gonna talk again tomorrow.