Well, hello there.
My friend, Jonathan Doyle with you once again, welcome
aboard to the daily podcast.
It is good to be with you this morning.
I'm really looking forward to doing this episode.
It's going to be a good one.
I'm glad you're here.
You're in the right place.
I, um, set my alarm today to be up at 4:00 AM and unfortunately discovered that, uh,
I don't know, I woke up earlier than that.
I woke up at 3:00 AM.
I think it was three 17.
I'm going to be honest.
And, uh, I just, it's one of those things where I thought, you know what, I'm not
gonna, I'm just gonna toss and turn.
If I try and get back to sleep, I've got a 5:30 AM zoom call with someone in Europe.
So I sorta thought, Hey, I'll just get into the day.
I'll just get it done.
Get started.
So, so far feeling pretty good.
I've got a.
I'm hearing the studio doing the podcast now.
And then they've got this five 30 call.
And then it's on the bike and then it's the gym and a.
And then straight into a bunch of other stuff for the day.
So I reckon by about 12.
These are this little Energizer bunny is going to need some new batteries,
but, uh, it's good to be alive.
It's going to be doing stuff, you know, like.
There's a there's many different problems you can have in life, but boredom is
not one of the ones that I experienced.
So listen, you're in the right place.
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Listen today.
I'm going to talk to you about something that is really been
integral to my own journey.
I want to share with you a principle of life.
That is going to be useful to you today, possibly.
Tomorrow, possibly some point in the time ahead.
Definitely.
It's a principle around what you do when things are difficult.
When things are not going exactly as we like.
Or, you know, go beyond that and say times when things are just incredibly hard,
just really difficult seasons of life.
I don't think any of us listening to this would a, would ever say
that life is completely perfect.
It's a, this side of heaven.
It's not going to be exactly the way we want it.
But it's worth remembering that.
Um, yeah, we all have these difficult seasons, right?
We will have these times when things are really hard.
And, and what do you do?
And there's so many strategies over the years I've been doing this podcast.
I've talked about a whole bunch of different strategies that people use.
Yeah, people use avoidance and there's so many different forms of avoidance.
You can avoid difficult experiences, difficult emotions through alcohol or
drugs or food or internet or distraction.
Pick your poison, my friends.
There's so many ways that this moment in history, To avoid the
difficult circumstances of life.
And so many of the great writers have understood that really, that the.
The way through is to go through the way through difficult times
is really not to avoid them.
It's to kind of, it's a guess it's a mixture of acceptance and taking actions
is weed balancing act, where sometimes you have to accept that things are difficult.
And take the action that we can, and that's really what today's
message is going to be about.
It's going to be about.
I guess if we were going to give it a broad sort of concept, it would
be this idea of keep moving forward.
And I'm going to unpack this a little bit because you know, when we're dealing
with difficult times and you know, whatever you're dealing with right now,
I mean, I've got such a diverse group of listeners, but my friend, you could
be dealing with financial problems, parenting problems, relationship problems.
You know, there's going to be people listening.
You've got major relationship problems.
They're going to be people listening who are lonely because
they're not in a relationship.
It's this weird thing about being human, right?
Like where.
We're unhappy in relationships sometimes.
And we're miserable if we're not in a relationship, right.
We are.
I think God looks at us and he never gets bored looking at
the complexity of our lives.
But everybody's gone through something right.
It'd be big, could be small.
It could be health could be Korea.
Who knows.
What do you do?
Well, we've talked about avoidance already, so you can avoid your problems.
You can try and avoid them by not thinking about them.
You can try and avoid them with the forms of distraction
that I've already mentioned.
You know, you can do the rabbit in the headlights thing.
You can just get kind of stuck and just kind of freeze we're back to that.
What is it?
Fight flight freeze and fawn.
I didn't know.
Foreign existed.
Foreign is where you kind of, uh, you form over the person
threatening you, you kind of like.
Um, try and ameliorate the situation, try and make them happy.
And so the problem goes away.
You fawn over them.
So that's, you know, the freeze mentality, right?
Like we just kind of.
Let me kind of freeze.
There's a known as we fight our situation, which can be good.
It can be the right thing to do.
Um, flight, which is avoidance.
So we kind of boiled down to these four major strategies when things
are difficult, but I want to focus on a couple of other options.
Regular listeners know that I've always been fascinated by.
Uh, military special forces around the world.
I I'm fascinated by them because I just kinda like.
How they.
I guess in stand C8 or demonstrate.
The capacity of the human mind and spirit to enjoy difficulty.
I think I really, that.
That's what it is for me.
It's not a necessarily militaristic thing.
It's more that what they, what they demonstrate to us, what they.
Bring into the, into a sort of clear focus.
Is the ability of the mind to.
Press on and enjoy difficulty.
So the us Navy seals, the elite special forces of the us Navy.
Kind of have this unofficial motto of keep moving forward.
Keep moving forward.
You know, this is not a fancy message.
It's you know, if you're, if you're hoping to wait to the end, to over reveal
some profound psychological principle.
Well, I think this is profound.
It's just that these days we're often looking for the latest
thing and some radical new idea.
And I think we've lived long enough as a species to sort of realize that
there's not too many great new ideas.
After, what we need to do is revisit the ideas that have worked in the past.
And so today I want to draw your attention to this idea of keep moving forward.
What does that mean in practice?
It means some days you just got to get up and you just got to execute
on the things that you don't feel like executing on doing the things,
the practices, the routines that sometimes you just don't want to do.
And that could be making your kids' lunches for school.
It could be.
Getting some exercising.
It could be prayer.
It could be, you know, Making the effort to talk to a colleague and stay
positive in difficult circumstances.
And, you know, I guess the essence of the keep moving forward modality is simply
doing the hard things that you don't want to do when you don't feel like doing them.
You know, Plato.
Of course said that, uh, feelings are excellent servants.
But terrible masters.
We need to listen to our feelings.
They bring us information.
But if they become masters of us, we have an enormous problem.
So let's keep focusing on this.
Keep moving forward concept.
And to give it a bit more structure.
I want to share something else with you.
One of the cool things about my kids getting a bit older now is
that you start to watch the movies.
That, uh, that you know, that you liked yourself when you were younger.
Really cool movies that obviously they either couldn't watch or
wouldn't have wanted to watch when they were five, the now older, and
they're like, cool, let's watch this.
So the other day, my son who's 14.
Put on the, uh, the movie Castaway with Tom Hanks.
I don't know if you're familiar with it.
It was a big deal when it came at many years ago.
It was kind of a big deal because look, if you haven't seen it.
Um, Tom Hanks gets stuck on an island.
And it's the story about how he deals with being kind of cast
away shipwrecked on this island.
And it's, it was funny.
When it came out because it's like a three hour movie it's
pretty close to three hours.
But there's only like a few short moments of dialogue in the whole movie.
Like a lot of the time it's him on the island and there's no one else there.
So there's no dialogue and look, he's a great actor.
I got to give him credit.
He really is quite a special talent.
You know, there's not a lot of people that could make that work and he does.
But it really part of what you're seeing in that film is what does
somebody do when they're faced with.
Incredible loss.
And frustration and uncertainty.
And, you know, one of the.
The subplots is that he's, he's missing his wife, you know, and, and also
this tension because he realizes that she probably assumes that he's dead.
So there's this, how does he get up each day?
How do you, how do you get up each day and keep going when you
know, there's no one else there.
There's nothing else to do every day is going to look like the day before and.
You don't know if anyone's ever going to help you out or rescue you.
And so.
What happens?
You know, towards the end of the film.
I'm not, I know if you haven't seen it.
It's hard not to do.
I, uh, Uh, plot reveal here, but there's a conversation at the end
where he's kind of talking about how he managed to get through each day.
And there's a scene in the film where he he's suffering so much.
He's so miserable that he plans to end his own life.
And he.
He sort of almost does it, but doesn't.
And at the end of the film is kind of unpacking.
What stopped him after that peak experience where he
couldn't face living anymore.
And he says these words actually, I tried to find the full dialogue, but
you can't get it cause a copyright, but.
He says these words, he says, I know what I have to do now.
I got to keep breathing.
Because tomorrow the sun will rise and who knows what the tide.
Could bring.
Now that's relevant because.
So I'm struggling not to do plot reveals.
Cause I know some of you might've seen it and you're gonna be like
John, and then don't tell us too much.
But let's just say the tide does bring an answer for him.
Right?
The tide brings an answer.
And so there's this sense?
I love this line.
I got to keep breathing.
So he has no power.
He talks about in that dialogue as well, being powerless, being
absolutely stripped of all power.
There's.
Before he was shipwrecked.
He had a really important influential career.
A lot of power over people.
And he's on this island.
He realized everything's gone.
Everything's taken from him and all that's left to do after he's finally
figured out how to do the basics of survival and keep himself alive.
Is to keep breathing.
Because if he stays alive, Tomorrow things could change.
So there's this profound kind of sense of.
Keep moving forward.
Keep breathing.
Just keep going.
Just keep moving.
I said a few minutes ago that there's not a fancy message
and it's not a fancy message.
It's not some profound thing where you go, oh my gosh.
Jonathan just revealed to me the secret of existence that
I didn't know who was there.
I'm telling you that what we need to do is not collapse in a heap.
Were you allowed to collapse in a heap?
But then you've got to get up again.
So if you need to go and you know, not today necessarily, but when
things are difficult, there are times when we need to close our door.
And have a rant.
Tell God exactly how we feel, you know, shout at the sky.
Shout at clouds.
But eventually we have to keep moving forward.
Because the sunrises again.
And the tide can always bring us something different.
So you look at another film, like, um, lone survivor, the
story of Marcus Latrelle, who was a Navy seal is a true story.
They, um, they kind of got, uh, compromised on a mission in Afghanistan
and he's basically on his own.
And.
The whole premise of his survival is this unofficial Navy seals.
Motto of keep moving forward.
Keep moving forward.
If you're breathing, you can keep moving forward.
If you're breathing, things could change.
Anything is possible.
Anything can happen.
So.
That's really my message for you today.
So on a scale of one to a hundred, some of you might be sitting at about a 20
life is pretty good right now, you know, like you're suffering scales pretty
low you're you're at a 10 or a 20.
And.
He has a couple little niggles in your life that you'd like to be different,
but in general, it's a good season.
Things are going all right.
And there are some of you listening to me right now who are not sure how
you will enjoy the next 24 hours.
Am I messaged to all of us across that spectrum is.
The magic.
Is in the ability to keep moving forward.
The magic is the ability just to get up the next day.
And press on and do it on more time.
And hope and trust and pray that the sun will rise.
And that the tide of your life may bring something new.
And I hope you can hear the sincerity in my voice because I.
There's definitely been plenty of times where I've felt
this experience, this like.
What am I going to do?
Like.
As I get older.
I've sort of discovered that.
The worst never happens.
You've heard me say that before.
We struggle with worry.
And we were convinced that if God would just hand us the reins to the cosmos,
we would run our lives so much better.
Well, we'd run our life.
We'd run our lives probably for comfort.
I think that's what most of us would eventually move towards
is we would want comfort.
We want predictability.
We want ease.
But I think.
Sewn into the structure of reality itself.
What God's done in this universe, we inhabit is he's created.
Or permitted, I would say not necessarily created suffering
in any sense, but allows it.
That we strain and struggle against that and grow.
And I think I can prove that again by, you know, being a parent.
If my children have nothing but comfort and ease.
And all I do is reinforce that comfort and ease.
They never grow and they become narcissists.
They would become selfish.
They would become self-referential and self-absorbed.
So you start to see that what really matters here is.
Not rejecting what happens to us.
But finding a way to summon up that courage and to keep moving forward.
To keep moving forward.
You know, We don't get to see the future.
Right.
You really?
Don't, it's a platitude you get today.
You get today.
And you get today to grow, to move forward, to press on, to try again.
Tomorrow's not guaranteed.
You just got to get through these 24 hours.
So, listen, I hope that's a blessing to you.
I hope that is a word of encouragement because.
Maybe there's someone in your life that needs to hear that too.
And you can share this with them.
There is a certain magic that comes from resilience and resilience.
Isn't some secret life hack.
It's the ability to believe that you are in a story of your own development.
You're in a story where it is in some sense, you against the cosmos.
I do believe that God walks with us and supports us and sustains us in ways
that we may not recognize at the time.
But this is a big story that you're in.
You know, you are in a drama.
We know, we look at that movie, lone survivor and Marcus Latrelle.
The us Navy seal is against insurmountable odds will.
So you.
You know, You're against a lot of things, a lot of things against you.
There's a lot of difficulty and challenge and struggle and strain
and complexity and problems.
And you got to keep walking.
You just got to keep moving forward.
All right here's what i want you to do i want you to go check out the new
website@jonathandoyle.co dot c o jonathan doyle j o n a t h a n D o y l e.co go
check it out because uh, there's just everything's there and you can sort of
find About booking me to speak and a whole bunch of other stuff And uh i'm trying
to get back to do more daily Only on instagram and a lot of people still using
it so you can find me on instagram at Jay doyle speaks j doyle speaks There'll be
links here But for now that's it looked let me know what you think Um, Reach out
let pete let me know what you think of the episode There'll be links here to the
youtube channel as well go check that out but for now I just want to encourage you.
you got this keep moving forward keep breathing because tomorrow the sun will
rise And as tom hanks in castaway who knows what the tide Could bring god bless
you my friend my name is jonathan doyle this has been the daily podcast and you
and i are going to talk again tomorrow