Makes Sense - with Dr. JC Doornick - Guess Who Has Cancer - Pull the Weeds Before You Plant the Seeds - E-182

Episode Date: June 26, 2026

The night in the ER that changed everything. After being diagnosed with advanced kidney cancer, Dr. JC Doornick found himself overwhelmed by fear, uncertainty, and an endless stream of advice from well-meaning people. But instead of asking only how to fight the cancer, he began asking a different question: What allowed it to grow in the first place? In this deeply personal episode, Dr. JC shares the story of his diagnosis for the first time and introduces a powerful mindset shift inspired by his Interface Response System (IRS): before you plant new seeds, you must first pull the weeds. Learn why healing isn't just about treatments, supplements, or new habits—it's about transforming the terrain of your mind, body, and life so that health can thrive. Whether you're facing illness, burnout, grief, or any major life challenge, this episode will help you stop chasing solutions and start creating the conditions for lasting change. Follow Dr. JC Doornick and the Makes Sense Academy:► Makes Sense Substack - https://drjcdoornick.substack.com ► Instagram: / drjcdoornick ► Substack: / drjcdoornick ►Facebook:  / makessensepodcast ►YouTube:  / drjcdoornick     MAKES SENSE PODCAST Welcome to the Makes Sense with Dr. JC Doornick Podcast. This podcast explores topics that expand human consciousness and enhance performance. On the Makes Sense Podcast, we acknowledge that it's who you are that determines how well what you do works, and that perception is subjective and an acquired taste. When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at begin to change. Welcome to the uprising of the sleepwalking masses. Welcome to the Makes Sense with Dr. JC Doornick Podcast. SUBSCRIBE/RATE/REVIEW & SHARE our new podcast. FOLLOW Podcast: You will find a "Follow" button in the top right. This will enable the podcast software to alert you when a new episode launches each week. Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/makes-sense-with-dr-jc-doornick/id1730954168 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1WHfKWDDReMtrGFz4kkZs9?si=003780ca147c4aec Podcast Affiliates: Kwik Learning: Many people ask me where I get all these topics, which I've been covering for almost 15 years. I have learned to read nearly four times faster and retain information 10 times better with Kwik Learning. Learn how to learn and earn with Jim Kwik. Get his program at a special discount here: https://jimkwik.com/dragon OUR SPONSORS: Operly - Take Back Control of your Work Day and Get Rid of All Your AI Apps - Welcome to the new world of Time Freedom and Unlimited Scaling and Success with Operly -  https://go.getoperly.ai/video?ref=jean-claude-claude-d-2a95 Blue Blinds Bakery - Hand Crafted with all-natural ingredients - www.blueblindsbakery.com   0:00 - Teaser 0:57 - GREAT MORNING HUMANS 1:22 - SNAP MOMENTS 8:51 - I was born to crush this. 12:46 - The Offering of Seeds 16:25 - Pulling Weeds Before Planting Seeds 18:05 - The Back Story of how i got to the Hospital 22:02 - Here's How I Plan To Kick The Shit Out oF Cancer 22:17 - The Garden and the Terrain 26:26 - What Conditions in my life allowed this weed to grow? 30:17 - New Daily Affirmation 31:38 - Pulling Weeds With The IRS 33:39 - THe New HEartbeat of my Second Book 33:59 - My Commitment and New Call To Action 38:37 - Outro Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Have you noticed that the world that we live in has been doing most of the thinking for you? That your beliefs, perceptions, reactions, fears, and doubts have been shaped by unsolicited outside noise? How easy it's been for you to slip into that default sleepwalking mode and label it as life and reality. Yeah, that ends here. Welcome to the Make Sense with Dr. J.C. podcast. This is your opportunity to start thinking for yourself, reclaim control, and start thinking, Step back into that role as the shock caller and dominant force of your own reality. It's when you change the way that you look at things, that the things that you look at begin to change.

So let's wake up. Let's rise up. And let's make sense of why and how shift happens. Make sense. Great morning humans. Great morning world. I am Dr. J.C. Dornick, otherwise known as and going by the dragon. And I want to welcome you to make sense with Dr. J.C.

podcast and also welcome you to the uprising of the sleepwalking masses. I don't even know how I'm going to do this episode. So I've prepared it. I hope that it is well received. And it makes sense to all of you. For those of you that know me, I've spent years and years and years now talking to you about something that I call the snap moment.

In fact, it's the first chapter of my book makes sense. And the snap moment represents that moment when you, your entire world changes. A lot of people have reached out to me. Some people come to my mastermind. We offer a free mastermind once a month where we just interact. A lot of people explain because they get it. They say, I want to share my snap moment.

But it represents the moment where your entire world changes and you're focused in that moment, which is kind of the blessing because sometimes it's very, very scary and traumatic when it first happens. But it forces you to see with absolute clarity, with crystal clear clarity, what actually. actually matters most. And what's also great about the snap moment, for those of you that have read the book, and that's what the correlation of the name is, is in that moment, in that space, you not only experience absolute clarity, but everything makes perfect sense. Now, if you miss that experience and you miss the snap, that's probably why you should be reading my book and why you

should learn what we call the interface response system. But it's kind of like this absolute moment of clarity that just happens in a snap. So for those of you that have been following me for a while, you know, I've been typically talking about past snaps that have happened to me. Well, last week, I had a new snap moment and probably might be the biggest one of my life. So I'm going to just go for it and just share it with you guys. Most people do not know this. But if you know me, this could be an exciting journey together.

But it was last week, almost a week ago. It was actually a Friday night. Yeah, it was a Friday night because I remember I had an event. I had a speaking event on Saturday morning that I ended up not going to. But it was 3 a.m. in the morning and I'm in the emergency room at Greenwich Hospital. And the reason why I was there is I was experiencing, a lot of people have been asking me why I didn't come to that event. But I was experiencing terrible wincing pain in my lower left back. Now, I was a chiropractor, so, you know, I was thinking maybe,

was a kidney stone or back pain, but I had had it for about three weeks, and it was only bothering me when I laid down at night. So I was not too worried about it, but either way, my wife caught on to what was going on, and she made me go to the hospital. So when my wife tells me to do something, I just do it, because she's my lovely partner in life. So there was this moment at three in the morning, and I was by myself because she had to stay back and watch Lexi. They did a bunch of tests on me, including a CT scan, and this guy walks in that I had never met before in my life. because he was working in the background, and I'm just sitting at three in the morning

in this hospital room next to this woman that's moaning and groaning. And it was kind of funny. You know, I was kind of trying to make some fun of it. But this is what he said to me. He goes, hey, J.C. So I just took a look at your CT scan. No, you don't have a musculoskeletal problem,

and you don't have a kidney stone. In fact, you have a 13 centimeter tumor in your left kidney, which means, by the way, that you have what we call renal cell carcinoma, and we can see also that it's metastasized into your lymph nodes. So we're going to have to probably take immediate action. It's three in the morning, everybody. We're going to have to take immediate action.

So you're scheduled to see Dr. S. I'm not using real names. Dr. S on Monday, and he will most likely want to do open surgery, which is the complicated surgery, to take the kidney out and then recommend appropriate therapies. Any questions? What the fuck? So all I can do is tell you that, you know, because I hope that you're curious to figure out how I'm addressing this,

because this is the nature of my work. I just remember thinking like, wow, what the fuck just happened? I was thinking, did I just go from being like a super healthy guy, about to turn 55, which is my lucky number, and I've always been looking forward to that birthday in July, having just back pain or what I thought was a kidney. stone to being diagnosed with cancer? Did that just happen? And the answer was, yes, that's what happened. And all I knew in that moment, you know, because I was in reactionary mode, and I'm going to talk a little bit about this today, and it's going to add to the topic of today, but I was in reactionary mode, and all I knew was to text my wife. I mean, that's, you know, everything about my life is about

my wife and my kids, right? So I had to text her and share the news. And by the way, I just want to let you know that typically when I come to you and I do these rise-ups or these podcast episodes, I've got a nice cup of coffee, I've got a nice glass of water, and I've also had a little bit of something to eat. But today I'm having a biopsy, so I had to fast. So there's so many funny things about this. But anyway, I went from this guy that was perfectly healthy, in fact, infatuated with my health, you know, for all the you that know me, to a guy that has. cancer. So I texted my wife to share the news. And what happened is, this is part of the lesson, it led first to a feeling of deep sadness. So it was very, very sad. And that was kind of coupled with this intense fear and what we call catastrophizing. You know, I started to catastrophize in that

moment. This was my knee-jerk reflex to it. Before I had given myself, which is what we do here, an opportunity to think about it. But I was catastrophizing the worst-case scenario that I was going to die, but not only die, I was going to suffer and put my family through a nightmare. Here's what's going on. Boom, boom, boom. Campfire, building, blaze, including both loss, you know, loss of me, as well as the absurd bills that are going to follow that will probably take our family completely under after all the hard work that we've done. Because we have shit insurance, because we're kind of coming out of a little bit of a storm. So it's like everything leads into this. And it's like, are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? But I've been through a lot of are you

kidding me's in life. But I had all of those fears. My first feelings about that were that I felt really bad. I wasn't worried about dying or anything like that. I just felt really bad and I felt like I had let them down. But that's my nature. You know, my wife and my three kids are all that matters to me. For whatever reason, that's my why. So that's my biggest fear is letting them down. And here I am thinking that this is how I'm going to let them down. And it kind of, you know, it was a little bit of a dark space, you know. And I was kind of like pretending I was fine, but I was pretty fucked up.

But that's how our initial reaction typically feels, isn't it? You know, like you might not be going through something like this or you might be because we have such a large audience. I'm sure that a lot of people are going to be sharing about this stuff. and we've got a lot of work to do. That's how we initially react to things. Because here I am, the guy that teaches people healthy reactions. And I was kind of freaking out, you know.

But freaking out and feeling that way is part of it. It's part of it in the sense that that's what I say when you catch yourself drifting and then you have to start shifting. I was drifting off into that phase that a lot of people stay in for a long time. And I made a shift. And I'm coming to you with that shift today. And I'm very, actually, very excited about it. So today is not about telling you the whole story, by the way.

And this is important for everybody to know. I am at 100% peace with this. In fact, all of the work that I have done leading up to this moment with writing my book, my interface response system, becoming open and curious to changing the way that I look at things. I mean, it's like, hello? why was I doing all those things, detaching from outcomes, living in the present moment, unwrapping the present moment, in acknowledgement of the things that matter most, and also working feverishly for 20 years now on my physical and mental health, for 20 years I've been

working all that. All of that was in preparation for this. It's pretty interesting, right? I'm actually sure of it. In fact, while we live in a world where so many people struggle to figure out their calling in life and purpose, I can tell you I was born to crush this. And I've been training for it my whole life. What do you think about that? And then I have to be very empathetic here. Because, you know, like if you're going to be this guy that's going to like go after this and and be like totally optimistic and somebody is not, you know, you could probably not recognize recognize the importance of being empathetic to other people. So I know that certain people who are struggling right now with maybe what they would deem a harder version of it or everybody's got

their circumstances and I've got mine. Or maybe you've lost a loved one or something like that. You're probably not going to agree with this next statement that I'm going to make. But if you've been following me for a while, I think you will understand this and this will make sense. But I almost feel less at the opportunity to experience this and go through. through this. Why? Well, because remember, first of all, if you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. So part of it is, I'm deciding to turn it around and reframe it. But then there's something inside of me that actually believes this. I can tell you that I thought before this, and you guys know that I've done plant medicine work and meditate every day,

and I do all of this self-development work. But I thought that I knew prior to, you guys, to this, what it felt like to live in the present moment with 100% clarity and sense of gratitude, that was child's play. That was child's play compared to the way I feel now. I am more awake, clear, and grateful than ever before. And that's how I can justify telling you that I feel blessed at the opportunity to go through this fight. And for those of you that don't know, I'm symptom-free. My bloods are clean. everything. There's no way that anyone would know that I have this if I didn't have this fluke accident where I was gardening and I pulled my back out and all of this sequence of events happened

and my wife told me to go to the hospital. They didn't want to give me a CT scan because they thought it was like a disc injury or something. No kidney tests of any sort. And I'm the one that said, I think we should get a CT scan. And they're like, a CT scan. Why? And I'm like, this is just weird. It's weird how I only have pain when I laid down. I was a, chiropractor, blah, blah, blah. And that's when they came back and saw that I had a 13 centimeter mass in my kidney, which is bigger than my kidney. My tumor is bigger than the kidney, and I had no idea. That's not meant to scare you about anything, but, you know, cancer comes in all different flavors. You know what I mean? I can tell you that the words, I remember when the doctor

told me about renal cell carcinoma or kidney cancer, when those words hit the air, and this is where I want to get into a little bit more of the topic today. And I'll tell you what's going to happen from now on. Things are going to be amazing. But when those words hit the air, kidney cancer, renal cell carcinoma, before I even had a chance, when I was going into that reactionary mode, before I even had a chance to step back and start thinking about it,

the entire world started throwing what I call seeds at me. Now, what I'm talking about here, because today's episode is called pulling weeds before you planting seeds. What I mean by people throwing seeds at me is everyone that I knew, and it came from a loving and great intention, had some sort of a solution for me. Everybody started to try to fix me, because I started to tell my closest friends and family. And everybody had some sort of a supplement, herbal remedy, some sort of a surgery, do this, don't do that.

And they were all well-intentioned, you know, some sort of special medication or concoction of certain medications. You'd hear one person say, oh, you must do this. and the other person would say, whatever you do, don't do that. Some sort of secret protocol, and there's a million of them. And I just want everybody to know

that I am incredibly grateful for all of the love. You know, I mean, I have the sense about me to say, like, these are people that love me and they want to help me. But here's the thing. It's all well-intentioned when people are, you know,

giving you these seeds. But little does everybody know that by sharing a protocol with me, they're also at the same time saying that the other protocol that somebody else shared with me is not the right one it's it's really a funny situation you know i don't know if people talk about this enough but all the protocols drinking lemon juice shots alkaline shots and and juicing the gershon technique and you know surgery no surgery immunotherapy all these things god i got about 50 protocols sent to be, 50. And all of them disagree with one another in some way. So my amazing friend,

you know, I have, I'm very blessed to have amazing friends and family. My amazing friend Jim, Jim Quick, of course, he started inundating me with love and support, you know, he actually said to me, he goes, this couldn't have happened to a better guy. And I was like, what are you talking about? And he's like, well, what I mean is like, nobody is better suited to crush this that you. And I was like, that's awesome. I'm sifting through. these 50 protocols and Jim said this. He goes, what matters most, this was wise, is that you choose, and by the way, you don't have to have cancer to have this lesson land, because people are overwhelmed by all sorts of stuff and AI and all that stuff right now. We're just using this as

an example. But what matters most is that you choose the protocol that you most align with and then forget the rest. Now, that's controversial in some ways, but that's what I've done. That's what we've done. So Mika and I, if you know my wife, My wife knows more about cancer than everybody in the world right now. She's the most love. And she's probably going to make a cancer cookbook because, like, the food that she's making me. And that's the irony of it, guys, is I am going to get healthier than I've ever gotten in my life. I was already healthy, but now I'm going to get, like, freakishly healthy.

And I have a lot of that I owe to my wife. In fact, Mika and I have just been nominated to be contestants for variety magazines. America's favorite couple. Can you believe that? Like, everything's coming in line. So here's what's interesting and brings the actual topic of today into discussion.

Most treatment protocols are more about killing the weed. In this case, would be the cancer. And almost none of them, a lot of the treatment protocols are about the garden, the terrain, my brain, and my body.

So what Jim said really resonated with me because what he was telling me is, what does your garden tell you? Today, we're going to talk about why it's important to first pull the weeds before we plant the seeds. Because I think a lot of people struggle with that. What is my wife says? It's a pleasure to be there for you. You know, it's interesting about couples.

I mean, I love my wife to no end. She knows that. We all have our strengths and weaknesses. And my wife loves to take care of me, which is not easy because I don't always allow people to take care of me. But I'm learning this because she's like doing all this stuff. God, I'm so lucky. So lucky to have her. So before I talk about the weeds and the seeds, I want to just give you a little bit more about the background of this story, which led up to the hospital, not as an education of cancer, but just an education of how sometimes we miss the

information that's been given to us. And that might be what this episode is about today, the whole pulling weeds and planting seeds thing. So I want to tell you a little bit about what was going on before I went to the hospital right there because I wasn't really paying attention in the right way. There was a weed talking to me and I was just out there planting seeds and you can't plant seeds in a bed of weeds. So the backstory of this whole deal is that for the past three weeks, I had been repetitively sleeping in our basement. We have a big finished basement with a guest bread. Why was I doing that? Because there's nothing more in the world than I love than laying next to my wife. well, for one thing, I do go to sleep very early.

So we kind of have this backup bed because I go to sleep sometimes at nine and I wake up at 4 a.m. And that's not what my wife does. She has the opposite schedule. But the reason why I was sleeping down there for three weeks, I didn't want my wife and my family to hear me screaming as I was in the middle of the night. As I said, I thought I had a muscle pain or maybe like a kidney stone. But every time I would roll over in bed, I felt a pain that was so bad that I was so bad that I actually would scream. So that's why I was like hiding in the basement. I thought it was a muscle writer or a kidney stone. And that's just kind of stupid guy stuff where we bury the keys under our failures and all that stuff. So I stayed in the basement so nobody would hear me scream with

the wincing pain at night. Like that's just how I am. You know, I just don't want to be a burden on other people, right? That's part of what I need to work on. But the pain got so bad one night that my wife started to catch on to it, you know, because she's always got a keen eye for what's going on with me. And that's how I ended up in the emergency room. But it turns out that the pain wasn't just physical. Like I said before, it was information. The doctor told me the news in a very, very non-emotional, clinical way. And just like that, with any other challenge and contemplation that we speak about on this podcast, so I'm looking at it, I'm changing the way I'm looking at it right now. In that moment, moment, I had a choice. It doesn't matter how bad the news is. I had a choice. We always have a

choice. I could perceive the news and immediately proceed into panic. And the reason why we would do that is because of what I call my MFTPSE, my mother, father, teacher, preacher, society, evolution, my operating system that is going without my say, right? My unconscious, automatic response system. and it could just overtake me and run me off of a cliff. Or, and this is what I did when the doctor told me that. Remember, he said, any questions? He says, so you have renal cell carcinoma, and it's metastasized, and we're going to have to do an open surgery,

and we're going to have to do some therapies and bum-a-pum-pum-pum, and you have no idea who I am. And it's three in the morning in an emergency room, and you have a talk in four or five hours that you're supposed to be at. It tells me this, and I could either react and freak out, or I could practice what I preach, and that's what I did, even though it was hard. And I said, hmm, M, M, haven't made up my mind yet. And I just paused.

And thank God that I did, because in that pause, because I come to you today with a complete reframe on this thing, in that pause, in that space between the news that I had just gotten, which included my knee-jerk reflex, right? My fear, my catastrophizing and all that stuff. That was part of it. You can't avoid that. But in between that and my response, I was able to make a distinction,

and I've been working on this distinction that I'm bringing it to you today, that really helped me lay the foundation for, I guess, what we could call, my newest hero's journey. You know, I interviewed Stephen Pressfield, famous author, creator of Legend of Bagger Vance and The War of Art, do the work. And we were talking about this because I shared this with him and he goes,

you've just started your newest hero's journey. And in that, I made this decision very, very similar to all the decisions that I've made when I've gone through tough times. I made a decision that day, which includes a lot of work. I was going to step into the arena and decided that I'm going to kick the shit out of this cancer. And here's how I'm going to do it. It's not just with the therapy and the treatment.

I'm going to kick the shit out of it with my mind. And I need everybody's help for that as well. So I want to tell you about a cool concept that I think you can apply to your life, but it's how I'm going to kick the shit out of this. And I call it the garden and the terrain. So I was thinking we all live in a dopamine-fueled, high-speed culture that really is obsessed with what I call the efficiency trap. We are so obsessed with efficiency that we have forgotten our role.

Like, we're more drawn to efficiency, getting things done faster with less work, and we're unloading our cognition. And this is happening with AI. So we have traded the old adage of if you don't succeed, try and try again for a new one that says, if you don't succeed, just try something else. We don't follow through with a lot of stuff. So we have thousands of options and next to zero follow through in this day and age because we're obsessed with planting seeds without acknowledging the importance of pulling the weeds.

So I was thinking about that and it made me think about a garden. Now keep in mind, this is how I'm going to kick my cancer's ass. Because if you can't fix it in here, I don't believe that any medicine will work. Any therapy, surgery, or anything like that. And you know, all of the metrics will tell you that, that this is a battle between the six inches between your ears. So it made me think of a garden. So if you sow high-quality seeds into a patch of earth that's still choked by weeds, it doesn't matter how expensive or powerful the seeds are or how much you even water them.

the weeds in the existing garden, the existing bad habits, the incongruities of your life, the unchecked ego, the digital distractions that we have, the not spending enough time with your family, not addressing your health, the unaddressed traumas that are already established, right? Those are the weeds. This means that those things, because they're already there, have the home field advantage. So I just want you to think about your weeds right now for a second. because if you're going to go out and fight something like cancer, you have to pull some weeds. You have to create fertile ground before all these seeds of treatment come in. That's my theory.

That's where I'm getting my confidence and clarity that I'm going to crush this. And I'm going to teach a lot of people a really cool lesson. They have the home field advantage, the weeds, because they're already there. Their weeds have big, big roots, right? They're going to drink all the water that you put in there. They're going to steal all the sunlight and choke all of your new intentions out before they can even break the surface. So what we're saying now is I'm saying my strategy is I'm going to pull the weeds, not just plant the seeds. So you can imagine how I was inundated with all these protocols.

And in my mind, I'm like, thank you for all of that. But there's something else that I have to do first. And that's why I think I was blessed with this absolute crystal clear clarity of what matters most. and because that's always been my struggle is to make sure that I live in this space of living my life around what matters most. Easy to say that you do that, but something like this pushes you right into it. So I realize that in our lives we are so incredibly impatient for the bloom that we skip the clearing. We sign up for the new course, we start the new diet, or we launch the new project, right,

on top of a mess. So, I mean, I'm a health coach, and I take care of a lot of people that are trying to lose weight and get healthy. And they're trying to use this new protocol without clearing out the mess. And the mess has the home field advantage. So if you ever feel like you're not right for the job, it's because of your weeds. And I made this massive distinction. So this prompted me to ask the following question. Said, J.C., what conditions existed in your life that allowed this weed of cancer to grow? Because I do pretty much everything right. How did this thing grow? Okay, we could say it's hereditary, but I started to ask a different question.

What conditions in my life allowed this weed to grow? Because I'm looking at the stress of the last five years, right? The adoption, the business downturns that we've been through, the deaths in the family, the house in Greenwich that was way, way out of our reach to afford, but we did it anyway. The dysfunctional toxic family members, the lack of rest, because I've been working so hard and justifying that that was my and realizing that the terrain, if you look at me as the host of the weed, the terrain was ready for weeds. I remember I used to say to Mika, my chicken, I would be like, there's no way I'm going to get away with this. I mean, I was eating healthy. I was exercising and I was doing positive stuff and I was coming here with you guys. But all of that stuff was going on. So that was the first

distinction I made is that I didn't get cancer. I grew it. I grew it. I think anybody can grow it. I mean, if you're doing stupid shit that we know causes it, that's a different story. But I wasn't doing stupid shit. So I first heard of this, by the way, this pulling weeds and planting seeds. I have to give credit where credit is due. When I interviewed famous New York bestselling author, she wrote a book called ReWired, and she is the innovator of the tapping method. Her name is Jessica Orner. And she just said in our interview, this will come out in an episode soon. We already did it. She said, we must first pull the weeds before we plant the seeds. And what she was talking about is before you plant a seed or a thought in your head, you also have to pull the weeds. So it taught me,

and I'm hoping that this lesson translates for you. The goal of today was to share this news, but it was not to have you guys all just worry about me. And there's a lesson here that I hope that you guys can learn. I want to be an inspiration for people. So at taught me that sometimes the most productive thing that we can do isn't to plant something new. It's to first pull something old out. It's about what's called solarization. Letting the heat of your own focus sit on a problem until the root dies, the root cause, right? It's about the resource competition of your own mind. You only have so much sunlight or attention. If you give it to the way,

weeds of distraction, there's nothing left for the seeds of your purpose. We have to get rid of the weeds before we plant seeds. So this made me realize that my focus need not only beyond fighting and killing this cancer, we're going to do that stuff, but realizing that if I can create an environment in my vessel, in my terrain, if I can create an environment that can grow a weed, I can create a new environment that a weed can't survive in. That's my strategy. That's my strategy. So along with some of the newest most effective treatments like immunotherapy, thank God that we have that instead of chemo, and probably the inevitable surgical removal of the bad kidney, I started to go to work on my terrain. And that's what I need from my friends and family. That's the project.

And the best way that friends and family can do this with me is do themselves too. You guys get to have a little more fun than me eating, but I use my new AI platform. Here's something that I did, and I have it greet me every morning with like a daily briefing, which is amazing. That's the sponsor of our show, so you guys will learn about it. Just to ask about it. It's called operally. We always put a link in the description for it. But it's an affirmation that helps me block out the noise every morning. You could do this too. You could have an affirmation every morning that helps me block out the noise and tap into the signal of my own healing and gratitude, my terrain. So I'm want to share, this is what I read every morning now. I am the host, the cancer is the weed,

my body is the terrain, I am building a soil so rich in health, so dense in protein, so resilient from movement, and so restored by sleep that no weed can thrive in it. I perceive the alarm. I'm not ignorant. I perceive the alarm, but I do not surrender to it. I pause instead. I pause the reflex of fear and conditioned response of my past, and I process the reality of my strength and power of my biological terrain. I process the reality of my strength and the power of my biological terrain, especially if I take care of it. I proceed with deliberate actions that nourish the host and protect the garden.

What if we all started protecting our gardens? What would grow? and what would no longer grow. I am not my diagnosis. I am the architect of my recovery. I am the observer of the battlefield, and I mean business. So I read that every morning.

Then, of course, I created an interface response system version of it. And this is the work that I do. And you don't have to have my situation. You can do this with anything in your life. But a situation like this makes you take things very, very serious. So how am I going to pull the weeds with the interface response system? So first, the first step, perceive, I acknowledge the weed. I'm not ignorant to it, right?

The cancer, the depth that we have, the burnout, the fear, all of that stuff. Hello. Hello there. But I do it without creating and buying into the story of it. I just acknowledge it as an observer. Remember, noise does not require your permission to show up. Noise does require your participation to stay. So it's okay to acknowledge something.

but you don't have to take ownership of it and participate. So step two of the interface response system process. I'm going to assess the terrain. So what habits am I protecting that are actually potentially killing me or growing weeds? Where am I letting the weeds of stupid shit consume my sunlight? I love that idea of recognizing that we're allowing some things to consume our sunlight and the water that we're trying to use to nerd. our garden. Whether it be giving fear and negativity or catastrophizing or bad habits that, in this

case, feed cancer, like sugar, right, things like that, or not drinking enough water and things like that. So I have a new reason to like really take those things seriously. And I thought it was taking seriously, but child's play, right? So that's the process phase and then proceed, right? We're going to shed and prune. Let the universe see that I mean business. every morning with my affirmations and my actions by clearing the ground. Stop doing weed producing things. Stop listening to weed producing people, news, ideas. And I'm going to do that before I add a new supplement or set a new goal or let go

of the belief that I have to do this alone. That's another weed infestation right there. So it's interesting to note in the process of writing. my second book, which I am right now. It was lacking one thing, and that was a heartbeat. I wasn't exactly sure why I was writing my next book, which is going to be amazing. I realize now that this is the heartbeat that I was looking for. So I want to share my commitment and call to action. For those who are wondering, my game plan, right? Because I know that a lot of you are looking to support me, and we're going to need your support in, in my way. And we're going to need your support

in many, many ways. I also want you to know that the best way for you to help me is to help yourself and make this like a movement. So figure out what that means for you. But here's my strategy. I'm going to be using immunotherapy and what's called aggressive environmental design. What that means is nutrition and mindset work. Combination of both.

I'm probably going to do that for about three to four months. and then most likely, inevitably, I will probably have to have that kidney removed on the left side. Very interesting how I seem to have contracted cancer in an organ that I have two of. I feel pretty psyched about that. So then it's going to be some sort of a rinse and repeat and a combination of immunotherapy and more environmental design for the rest of my life. So I not only plan to beat this thing, but I also plan to make it the catalyst and launch pad for a new upgraded Dragon 4.0.

So for those of you that have been following the podcast, coming to these lives, or working with me on any level, you ain't seen nothing yet. This is going to be the catalyst for a whole other level. And I'm wondering right now in my head if there's somebody that thinks that I'm being naive and living in denial. And my answer to you is yes, 100%. I'm 100% exhibiting the superpower. of denial. Stephen Pressfield taught me that one too. And that doesn't mean that I'm being foolish.

It means that I'm being focused on what I want. Because one thing I can tell you guys, the hardest part of this whole cancer thing is not surviving. It's dealing with everything that comes to you from the outside, the fear, the fixers and all of that stuff. And the bad news, the bad stories, the stories that include people that never take care of themselves, all of that stuff. That's the only challenging thing. If I'm left to just fight this, I will crush this. So yes, I'm living in complete denial of that other side.

So I'm going to be documenting our entire journey. You know, every fear, I've been doing it already and sending it to my team, every fear, every wince of pain. I fell this morning and my wife was all worried about it. It wasn't because of this. It was because of cat. But every discovery. So I'm going to do.

do it for Mika. I'm going to do it for Lexi. I'm going to do it for the boys. And I'm going to do it for the guy that's sitting at a bar late at night who is completely falling apart because he has nobody to tell about this. He has the same thing and he has nobody to tell. So I'm doing it for him too. So for those of you that want to follow the journey, that's going to be on my YouTube page at Dr. J.C. Dornick and most likely my Instagram page, the same at Dr. J.C. Dornick. And I just want to say that my lovely wife and friends are going to be hosting a fundraiser, you know, because there's money. Money is a big stressor in this thing too. But Mika and some of our amazing friends are hosting some fundraisers or doing live ones as well to pay for the astronomical bills. Because the truth is,

is that because of our five years, we've got a really interesting story. We kind of foregoed having good insurance because we were so healthy and this was not part of the plan. Right. So our insurance is not going to pay for just but a fraction of this. And we're going to have a lot, a lot of bills. So please, if you want to support us, you can support there in any way, shape, or form. But before you ask or consider what you need to add to your life, this is the message that I want to leave you with, before you ask or consider what it is that you need to add to your life to fix it, I'm encouraging you today to ask what you need to remove first.

pull those weeds before you plant those seeds. Healing isn't just in the planting. It's in the clearing and the preparing of the terrain and the soil. And if you're somebody like me that's been going after your health for a long, long time and you look good and you feel good and you're symptom-free and all of that stuff, I can't tell you how important and valuable that is because it's preparing you for something else. Make sense? That's it for today.

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