Well, Hey everybody, Jonathan Doyle with you.
Once again, welcome friends to the daily podcast.
I do apologize.
I've been off the air for, I don't know, a week or so.
Just the standard.
Craziness and chaos of life that you guys all experienced too.
It's all, uh, we're all experiencing the demands of a finite time
in this temporal universe.
I was talking to a friend on the weekend and, uh, he agreed with me
that the single greatest commodity at this moment in history is time.
You know, there's, uh, there's so many things you can increase in life, right?
You can increase your learning, your knowledge, your health, your fitness,
the quality of your relationships.
The one thing you can't increase is time.
So I do apologize.
I love doing these podcasts.
I love the beautiful feedback that I received from so many of you.
So, uh, I'm back in the studio, really going to press ahead and get some good
content out to you guys in the episodes.
Uh, that are coming up now.
Housekeeping as always, please make sure you've subscribed.
I am humbled.
I'm really quite chuffed.
If I could use that word.
That's a very British word, that one, but you all know what it means.
That, uh, the podcast is growing and it's just really beautiful
to, uh, to see it reaching more and more people around the world.
So please subscribe, share it with friends and family.
Chuck it on your social media feeds place.
It gently.
If you want to, rather than Chuck it, you can just place it gently
on your social media feeds.
And I'd also love you to go and check out all the, uh, the show notes.
See the links.
There is a cornucopia, a plethora.
Of links here on the podcast version.
Uh, there's all sorts of things.
You can jump across to the YouTube channel where I do a YouTube version of this.
If you're interested, the YouTube version Judas.
Uh, adjust shorter.
I just try and do a shorter version on the YouTube platform.
And of course, on rumble, there's a lot of other links you can get free
access to my book, bridging the gap.
You can book me to speak live.
You can find out about coaching and of course you can check
out Karen's masterclass.
Karen, my wife does an incredible masterclass.
Program for women all over the world.
So, um, If you happened to find that you are in fact female.
And that you are interested in growing and, uh, experiencing more
of the rich tapestry of life than go and check out Karen's masterclass.
There's tons of great information on that link friends.
Tomorrow, I'm going to be speaking at a live event on the topic of resilience.
And I thought, what better way both to prepare myself.
And to offer you guys something then to kind of flesh out some of
what I'm going to be talking about.
I think it's a really topical issue.
I think all of us at different points in life.
I could use a bit of a booster shot to use a topical term.
If you will, uh, of resilience, it's a real buzzword.
What does it mean?
How do we increase it?
Do we even need So look, I'm going to jump in with a few thoughts here.
I think it is an important topic.
I think it's something that's useful for us to have our heads
around and to be thinking about.
Uh, how it impacts our lives and how we can improve in this area.
The first thing I wanted to share with you simply is that resilience
regionally comes to us from science.
It's not really a sociological term.
Or a mental health or psychological term, it actually comes from, from
science and it describes the ability of an object to regain its shape after it
experiences some application of force.
So one way to think about this would be to be imagined a spring, right?
A big spring.
And as you press that spring down, there is a change in its shape.
But as the pressure is released, It returns back to its normal
So that is what resilience means in the scientific literature.
It's the ability to, to bounce back, to reform to the original shape.
So in contrast, you can imagine a balloon, right?
It starts off
As a small piece of, uh, of plastic or rubber it's inflated.
It changes its shape, but if you apply enough force to it, you completely
obliterate the shape, right.
It sort of just completely implodes and can tear into different pieces.
So.
You could say that the balloon doesn't have a lot of
resilience, but the spring does.
So, of course, as this applies to us, what does it mean?
Well, I guess it's the ability of each of us to return, to shape,
to return to our ideal shape after the application of force.
And what is the application of force?
Well, it's basically.
Stress.
Various forms could be grief, could be lost, could be work pressure,
family pressure, health issues.
All the different travails and challenges of life.
The cause us to experience.
Negative circumstances that, uh, place us under pressure.
So resilience is the ability of each of us as human persons to return,
to shape, to bounce back from the difficulties and challenges of life.
So.
One of the things I wanted to address tomorrow in the live
event is why this is so topical.
I mean, for those of us that are a bit
It's not a word that we kind of grew up with.
You wouldn't have heard it much.
I definitely never heard it much as a, as a child or a teenager, even
in my twenties probably wouldn't have been until my thirties that
I began to hear about it more.
And I guess it's got strong connections and applications to
the world of mental health and.
I guess as I was preparing, I thought, why is this so topical now?
And it's, I think it's worth understanding that.
Is the great growth in mental health challenges and pathologies that we see,
particularly in the developed world.
I think you're an outgrowth of a range of environmental factors
that are worth remembering.
So I would put it down to.
I'm going to suggest two main factors.
One would be a vast, vast, unprecedented growth in complexity.
So if I often say that, you know, We've been a species for about
350,000 years as, as homo sapiens sapiens, about 350,000 years.
Up until you know, about the industrial revolution.
1860s.
We tended to live in small communities of people.
You had relatively limited choices in terms of education in Korea.
You were very limited options in terms of travel.
Now, there are always outliers.
There were always men and women who were.
Taking great journeys or had access to greater wealth and could
have more experiences, but the vast majority of us as a species.
Tended to stay in the one Do the one kind of thing each day.
And be surrounded by the same people for the vast majority of our lives.
We could say, well, that must've been boring or maybe that wasn't that great.
But what we can also say is that it gave a great, be a great deal of stability
and predictability to our lives.
And it.
Um, it obviously created very strong social bonds, right?
So we, we came to rely very deeply upon each other because our
survival health and wellbeing really relied on the people around us.
Those social connections were compromised.
Uh, very existence could be compromised.
So this is my way of saying that.
The way that we have existed as a species has radically changed, radically
changed in a very short space of time.
So while not being a mental health professional, I would
posit that a significant amount of the mental health challenges
that we're seeing have a strong.
Environmental basis in terms of the complexity of our modern societies,
the neural load by neuro load.
I mean,
The sheer weight of distraction and information bearing down
upon our neural systems, creating these vast networks of complexity.
And at the same time as the social support that we once experienced on a daily
basis has also been somewhat compromised.
Are you hearing So we've got more and more complexity, less and less social support.
So it's not surprising.
I would suggest that a significant number of us at different times
can question our ability to cope.
And so this resilience thing becomes, you know, more relevant perhaps than
it's been in other times in history.
I remember recently reading a long-form article from the sociologist.
Frank Who.
Who made the point that in previous areas of history, when there was crisis.
Like pandemics or wars or natural disasters.
He said people definitely saw them as highly problematic and undesirable.
But he said that they also simultaneously saw them as forms of opportunity.
And he said that a lot of what's happening for postmoderns for us guys
is that when difficulty and crisis hits, we're not seeing opportunity
where quite fear based non that's not, everybody's not everybody listening.
But if you think about the kind of mainstream media narratives that we're
given, which is kind of, you know, fear sells, it's the old saying about.
You know, headlines, if it, uh, if it bleeds, it leads right.
If something scary.
Can be mainstreamed can be placed in front of us all the time.
I'm much more likely to pay attention.
And always remember that we're living in an attention economy, right.
We live in an attention economy.
So mainstream media, particularly and large corporations
understand that by selling fear.
Uh, they're much more likely to gain our attention.
So you put all these pieces together.
I just think we've got less social connection, more complexity, more fear.
Uh, well, abstract fear, right?
And more abstract fee.
I mean, uh, we've never lived longer.
We've never had a better quality of life.
We've never had better health really in terms of, you know, um, you know,
how long we live and the general access to health and healthcare.
But at the same time, there's just this sense of pervasive fear.
And what if, right.
So that's where I think the resilience things becoming more important.
So, what do we do?
Well, let's just quickly summary.
What have we got so far?
What is resilience a, uh, the ability to bounce back into
shape after pressure's applied?
Why is it relevant?
Because we're living in this complex demanding fear-based time.
That's going to require some new skillsets from us and Hey, before I forget.
I should mention Take some heart Let me tell you the good
news, the good news is that.
Without doubt, my friend, we are the most resilient species in planetary history.
We are the apex predator.
If you'd like to put it that way.
Uh, we find You know, we find a way it's very popular these days to.
To bash Western culture and to complain about all forms of, uh,
you know, issues and problems and this, that, and the other.
But let's remember humans are an incredible species.
The fact that we, you know, there's 7 billion of us on the planet and we
haven't yet all killed each other.
The fact that we do find ways to cooperate the fact that we do overcome
all sorts of difficult economic, environmental, medical challenges.
Take some hot, we're pretty amazing species.
And now we're sort of getting ready to look at interplanetary travel.
So yeah, there's plenty to be concerned about, but let's also
realize that we're also a species that figures things out and gets it done.
So.
You're part of that species so that stuff's in you as well.
That's pristine.
Uh, I wanted to say.
The next thing about resilience is to be gentle with ourselves because
there is mystery in the human person.
Every one of us is different.
Every one of us has different personalities and very
different life experiences.
Some of us have experienced extraordinary trauma, some of us less.
So some of us have different brain structure.
We just have a totally different neural wiring.
So, whether you feel that you are the most resilient person on
the planet or the least resilient person listening to today's podcast.
Take heart.
We're all different.
Um, there's no.
Absolute perfection.
There's no.
Sort of strategy or person that's worked at all out.
That's kind of self some slack because we're all on a journey towards growth.
We're all sort of trying to improve.
That's why you're listening to this podcast.
So let's realize that, you know, it's, it's complex.
You know, when I speak tomorrow, the room's going to
be full of so many different
And their ability to be become more resilient or their journey of
resilience so far, it's going to be predicated on so many things.
So.
Let's not be hard on ourselves.
Okay.
Because.
The full sort of Panorama of our journey is just that it's a huge.
Big tapestry of things that have shaped us.
And we just got to do the best we can with what we have.
So let me give you some practical things.
That I'm going to be talking about tomorrow.
First thing on resilience.
I don't think we can go far past Viktor Frankl.
And his book man's search for meaning.
I talk about it very frequently on the show.
If you've never heard of it.
Viktor Frankl was a Viennese psychotherapist.
He started the third school of VNS psychotherapy.
We had Freud first, then young Carl Young started the second Viennese school.
And Victor Frankel eventually was the progenitor of the third Viennese
school of psychotherapy, which of course was logotherapy from the
Greek logos, which means story.
So Frankel sort of developed this incredible psychotherapy model based on
the stories that we tell ourselves, right?
The, the internal dialogue that we have and how we describe
the world to ourselves.
What's this got to do with you?
What's it got to do with resilience.
And what is the relevance of his book?
Man's search for meaning.
Well, of course, many of you would know Victor Frankl.
It was captured in the second world war, along with his family
members and was sent to the Nazi extermination camp of Auschwitz.
Uh, his parents and his sister were sent to the gas chambers.
He survived and long story short, he.
Spent a huge amount of time Incredibly intolerable, evil
place, observing human behavior.
Why?
Because he was a psychotherapist.
He was highly trained Long story short, he decided that his thesis was
that there was basically two kinds of people in the extermination camps.
You said there was.
The vast majority of people who could find no meaning in their suffering.
Absolutely numb.
It was for them, it just felt completely arbitrary.
There was no justification for it.
There was no meaning to it.
It just felt so random, brutal, unfair, and arbitrary.
And he said, these people tended to tragically die very quickly.
Some of them tragically took their own lives.
Um, many of them just got sick and, uh, and sort of became very
weak and died much more quickly.
And he said there was this small group of people.
Who he wouldn't say flourished, but who really survived strongly?
He said simply because they were able to find a compelling meaning.
In their suffering.
And this was his basic thesis that.
It was not so much what was happening to you in your life, but
how you described it to yourself.
And the meaning that you could find in it.
And he said that those who forest with those who could find an empowering meaning
in whatever they were going through.
Now, let me jump across here to a quote that I wanted to share
with you from Amanda Ripley.
She says this resilience is a precious.
Skill interesting.
She says skill, right?
She doesn't say it's something you necessarily born with.
Resilience is a precious skill.
She goes on.
She says this people who have it tend to also have three underlying advantages.
Uh, belief that they can influence life events, a tendency to find
meaningful purpose in life's.
Turmoil and the conviction that they can learn from both
positive and negative experiences.
Okay, let me pass that for you.
Three things there.
The belief that they can influence life events.
So that The movement out of learned helplessness member
learned helplessness experiments.
They did these experiments.
In the mid to late 20th century, where, you know, if rats, they were
sort of doing these electrical shock tests on rats, poor little rats.
And the rats that couldn't influence what was happening, just caught up in a bowl
and basically died because they couldn't figure out how to change anything.
Whereas the rats that could figure out how to change the shock system
survived and did fine, right.
They even sort of did brain scans and all sorts of stuff.
And it's what they call learned helplessness and a sense of agency.
The belief that no matter how bad things are, you can still do something right.
So this is tying into this whole rebuilt resilience piece.
It's tying into what Frankel's talking about, finding meaning the
belief that you can influence stuff.
Uh, second part here in Amanda Ripley's quote, she says the ability
to find a meaningful purpose.
In life's turmoil.
Cause there is turmoil.
All right.
I'll be saying this tomorrow, you live long enough and you're
going to find some turmoil and then none of us get off for free.
Right.
It's it can be better or worse.
We can all have different experiences, but there is challenge and difficulty in life.
But what these people are talking about is finding a meaning.
What is the meaning?
How do you find one?
Well, put You know, if something's really hard in your life.
You can describe it to yourself in any number of ways, right?
You can say, well, this is hard because God hates me.
And I'm a really bad person.
I'm being punished.
That's a meaning, right?
That is a genuine meaning.
The other meaning you can have is this is testing me so I can
grow deeper in spiritual trust and teach others in the future.
Now there you got the exact same event.
You just got two radically different explanations.
And I know some people always push back at this point and they're
like, well, this is just crazy talk.
You can't really live this way.
That's not how things work.
And I go, you know what I actually think it is.
I think you can find a compelling meaning to difficult circumstances.
If you're prepared to think about it, journal about it, do the work, go for
a long walk and find a better meaning.
Um, You know, I had a friend back in 2008 who got really badly hit in the Uh,
the major GFC, rather global financial crisis is somebody that, um, you know,
took her, it took a real beating.
And I remember talking to them when it was all going down.
I remember them saying to me, I'm coming back stronger.
And I just heard this conviction in their voice knows like
I have absolutely no doubt.
That's true.
It was like here, they were going through this awful experience, but basically
making this resolution to themselves that they were going to come back stronger.
So there was plenty of turmoil.
There's plenty of negativity, but they found a purpose.
Okay.
And the final thing she says It's a conviction that you can learn from
both positive and negative experiences.
That's important.
Like the belief that, Hey, if something goes really well awesome.
What did I learn here?
Well, you know, what, what, how can I get more of this?
If something negative happens it's what can I learn from this?
How can I make sure there's less of this in the future?
So you see permeating all of this is agency, right agency, the belief that
you can control things that you do have a voice that you can do stuff.
All right.
So that's the whole Frankel piece, the determining meaning piece.
How do you build resilience?
You determine, meaning you get deliberate and conscious
and specific about determining meaning when things go sideways.
Last thing.
Is tomorrow I'm going to be trying to I'll move it to a practical
point at the end, which is to say to people, okay, how do you build
How do you actually get more of this in your life?
And I think the way you do it is very Aristotelian.
So my post-grad background was very much in the Aristotelian ethics.
And if you look at Aristotle's kind of take.
On developing virtue and character, he would always say that you do it.
In the small things.
The famous question for Aristotle was he was asked to
how does the courageous person.
You know, become courageous because the Greeks were really interested.
In where the courage, for example, or you know, or creativity or artistic
ability, they were really curious whether people were just born with those things.
Or whether they develop them, right.
Nature versus sort So Aristotle was asked, how does the courageous
person become courageous?
And Aristotle famously said they do courageous things, right?
So at the bedrock of this Greek metaphysics, this Greek
sort of perception of reality.
Was we become what we do.
So that if we like we practice being courageous over time,
we become a courageous person.
So, how do you practice resilience?
You practice it in the small, small, small things.
So that when the big moments come, you've got something to draw them.
So.
Um, when you have small setbacks, When you have, I guess one of the ways that
I've done it over the years is through huge amounts of physical training.
Right?
I'm doing so much physical training that.
I learned to press on when it was painful.
I mean, that's what ultra marathons taught me.
Right.
Was.
It's not really about fitness after a while.
It's you've got the baseline fitness.
It's about pain management.
It's about the ability to press on when you don't feel like pressing on.
So resilience is built in these small situations of your life.
The ability to do hard things when you don't want to do hard things.
All right.
That may explain why so many people are struggling with it because we
are a culture at the moment that doesn't really enjoy hard things.
We like Netflix and we like.
You know, what is it?
You know, Uber eats We like being able to press a button on our phone.
And have some random stranger turned up at I house with a cheeseburger.
Okay.
We just don't like doing difficult things.
So a lot of the people that I admire and respect, you know,
over the years that I've followed.
Uh, guys like cam Hanes, David Goggins.
They fascinate me because they do hard things.
So you don't have to go and run an ultra marathon today, but if you want
to increase resilience, you just need to do small, hard things and just keep
doing things that are a little bit difficult and that will help you to grow.
There's a lot more than I want to say in it.
I'm going to try and get a live recording tomorrow so I can post that
for you guys, but let me do the summary.
We are dealing with resiliency issues because of complex changes
in human society, complexity and a breakdown in social bonds.
Resilience means our ability to bounce back into shape.
We're dealing with the mystery, our own personality in life experience, but thank
you to Victor Frankel and Amanda Ripley.
We can find meaning and hardship.
We can choose the stories that we tell ourselves.
What's the old saying?
There are no more important words than the words you say to yourself about
yourself when you are by yourself, you There are no more important words than
the words you say to yourself about yourself when you are by yourself.
It's that internal narrative.
Uh, in a couple of weeks, I'm going to be interviewing my great friend, Bob
Litwin who wrote a beautiful book on this called the best story of your life.
You know, Bob lost his wife tragically.
And felt his life was over.
And just his story about telling himself a brand new story.
And doing hard things, friends, it can be done.
All right.
That's a long one today.
Uh, please go and check out all the links.
Right?
Book me to speak.
Get a free copy of my book.
It's all in the links.
I hit the YouTube link on watch the video.
Uh, and go and check out Karen's masterclass for women.
It's really cool.
There'll be a link here for that.
All right, my friends, please make sure you're subscribed.
God bless everybody.
My name's Jonathan Doyle.
This has been the daily podcast.
And you and I are going to talk again tomorrow.