Makes Sense - with Dr. JC Doornick - Makes Sense Mondays - The Strive for Relevance - Episode 32

Episode Date: June 17, 2024

It is a hidden force that drives most human behavior and is the root cause of your suffering. Your strive for Relevance. Lets make sense of Relevance and equip ourselves to become the dominant force in ur life. This Podcast episode is available on Apple and Spotify. Welcome to MAKES SENSE MONDAYS with Dr. JC Doornick "Dragon" where we makes sense of the things that make you go Hmmm? Start your week off the right way by reclaiming control of your Great Morning. This Podcast episode is available on Apple and Spotify. LIVE STREAMED on Facebook, Linkedin, and Youtube MAKES SENSE PODCAST SUBSCRIBE/RATE/REVIEW & SHARE our new podcast. FOLLOW the NEW Podcast - You will find a "Follow" button top right. This will enable the podcast software to alert you when a new episode launches each week https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/makes-sense-with-dr-jc-doornick/id1730954168  Click this link to SUBSCRIBE/RATE/REVIEW - https://ratethispodcast.com/makessensepodcast Thank you for your support a we look to remove the blindfolds from the sleepwalking masses and help place people back in the drivers seat of their lives. OUR SPONSOR: Enjoy the show and consider joining our psychological safe haven and environment where you can begin to thrive. The Makes Sense Academy. https://www.skool.com/makes-sense-academy/about Highlights  0:00 - Intro 03:16 - Something Happened TO ME 08:36 - Your two choices of how to respond? 14:43 - Reclaiming Control of your perception and responses 16:27 - Uncovering the hidden desire of relevance 21:58 - The decline of our relevance as we age? 24:41 - Can the decline of relevance exist in the absence of its perception? Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hmm, makes sense. Great morning world, great morning friends. Welcome to Make Sense Mondays, the live Monday edition of the Make Sense with Dr. J.C. Dornick podcast and a very great morning to all of you. Today we're going to be making sense of something that I find very, very interesting. And that would be this hidden desire that rests in all humans, whether they know it or not. And that is this desire to strive for relevance. We've been talking a lot lately on the Make Sense podcast,

as well as within our community, the Make Sense Academy about this idea that when Buddhism, they say that the catalyst that's connected to suffering is desire. The idea that if we are desiring something or wanting something, it sits in the future. And that's the catalyst for suffering. The idea is to be able to celebrate where you're at. a big key point of today's rise up. When you look at any form of desire, especially the hidden ones,

isn't that an interesting thing to uncover just this idea of this strive for relevant? I'm just going to offer you the ability to take a, take a moment and just identify what relevance means. You know, what does it mean for you to be relevant? It's very, very fascinating. And it's based on this really big breakthrough that I had the other day. So excited to be here with you and just really, really feeling a lot of gratitude and feeling blessed for the state that I always find myself in when I come to you at this time, usually about 8 a.m. Eastern. And the reason why I have gratitude for it is because I've just come out of my morning structure. I just want to give a big shout out and high five to the morning structure. If you're somebody that finds yourself kind of twisted up and by 8 o'clock in

the morning your time, or maybe you're just rising up out of bed in the West Coast right now, and and you're kind of feeling like your brain is booted up and whatever it was that you were worried about yesterday or what you're worried about in the future today or tomorrow has already kind of taken control of you. There's a different way to start your day and really learn a structured system, a routine that you'll have to practice with consistency that will help you become the commander, the commander in chief, the architect, dominant force and creator of your life. So if that's interesting to you and you're somebody that's been following Make Sense Mondays, just always an open door, open, open opportunity to just send out the words. It could be your, it could be an SOS signal or it could

just be a, I'm ready, the words makes sense in the comments. And I do that a lot on my Instagram channel at Dr. J.C. Dornick. And we will send you an invitation, risk free to come check out the consistent conversation that we have every morning in the Make Sense Academy, which is live where you get mentorship and support and inspiration and collaboration amongst so many other things, all of our online courses and business strategies and also the mental health component. This is a brainchild of my wife, Mika, aka The Chicken. Just remember, wave that makes sense flag and we'll send you an invitation, as I said, risk-free.

So this began with something that happened the other day. What's interesting about happenings is even though I understand that happenings either happen to me or for me, I'm very, very much aware of the fact that the first thing that happens when you experience something in life is that it happens to you. There's this space and we teach that in this four-step system called the Interface Response System, once again in the Make Sense Academy, and that's coming out in my book. We teach you how to reclaim control, but if you think about it, your knee-jerk first reaction to something that happens, whether it's good or bad, is that it's happening to you. The goal is is to learn how to chill out and pause and give yourself the opportunity in the space between

some time to come up with a more reasonable reaction and response. So I look at this story that I'm about to share with you as something now that happened for me, but I want you to know that as I share the story, you'll feel in your own ways because something like this has definitely happened to you as something that happened to me. It always happens to us first. That's a very, very big power move today for you to understand. It's like if you're on a personal growth journey and you're looking to become unfuck withable, right, and to become the dominant force of your life, the shock caller of your life, which indicates that you, you decide who affects you and who doesn't, what gets into your life and what doesn't, what you allow to distract you from other things and not, it's very important

to recognize that the first thing that will happen when you experience a destructive desire or something that happens in occurrence, you can't avoid the fact that your human nature will always reproduce that stress response system. When that happens, if you have the ability, this is a little side note, we'll get to it later, you have the ability to say, oh, that just happened. And I know that that always happens, but I'm going to pause it. That's where the win is. I'm very intrigued with relevance this morning. And that's because I experienced what I guess I would call an unpleasant thing the other day that left a pit in my stomach. So do you know what it feels like when you have a pit in your stomach? That's part of the stress response system. If you didn't get a pit in your

stomach, you wouldn't know how to defend yourself from danger, right? So there's there's the conscious acknowledgement of my unconscious autopilot mind. So I had a discussion the other day with some individuals that I care deeply about. I wouldn't be having a conversation with people if I didn't care deeply about them. I would say young entrepreneurs and things like this. And I do this all the You know, so I'm always in conversations with creative people because I'm very fascinated with it. And what we were talking about was discussion of a project that we're mutually interested in. And so in the midst of this discussion, however, and this is what I think you'll be able to relate to, about future plans and strategies.

I'm 52 years old. And I've done a lot of interesting things, whether it's public speaking or, you know, hosting retreats and, you know, doing mission work. podcasting and writing books and all of that stuff. So, you know, I don't need to broadcast that. It's interesting how if somebody's actually done something miraculous in life, you'll find that they don't broadcast it. But I know that stuff about myself, you know. What happened in this conversation, and this is the part that I think you'll, you'll relate to, is all of a sudden, the energy in the conversation shifted. How could I explain that? It shifted from one of a mutual conversation where, you know,

It was like a ping pong game where there was an equal hit from both sides. But all of a sudden, an unpleasant feeling arose in my body. It was a familiar feeling, unfortunately, that I knew all too well from earlier days when I had gone through a period of my life where I had allowed my ego to run the show. You know what I'm saying? It made me kind of like all of a sudden find myself. Remember, I'm being conscious of this. Find myself on the defense.

It was an unpleasant. I started to get a little bit defensive. So what's interesting about that is that's how I noticed that something was happening to me and I started to feel my body. This is my gift to you today. When you feel like I'm explaining right now, before you even know what's happening, because your stress response system is an automatic response system, right? It's not supposed to be something that you plan. That's how you jump out of the way of a speeding car or evade somebody throwing a rock at your head or something like that. But if you have the ability to observe how you're feeling and your stress response system,

you know, I mean, obviously jump out of the way of the car. What you'll notice is that it's normal. So, you know this feeling? Have you ever felt that feeling? Like, I refer to it like as an icky feeling. So it infiltrates your whole body and it places you in this naturally victim-like status and defense position where you can feel your programmed and inherent stress response system rearing up, as it's supposed to, in defense, but also in preparation for a protective counterattack.

So that's what I felt. And I kind of know in general what causes me to feel that way, but at the same time, I didn't know yet because I was oblivious to it. I wasn't looking. I don't go through my days looking for problems. I know that my body has this way of, through my, my sense making machine has this inborn, intelligent operating system that picks up on that stuff. So I was in this position where I was left with the choice of allowing my ego to take over, like I said before, and defend myself with a counterattack and protect my position. That's what ego would do, is the ego would protect your position of being right and being valid. Or my second option was to practice what I preach, because I started off telling you

a little bit about what it is that I teach people and run my what I call interface response system. So, you know, I noticed what was going on and I started to run that system of recognizing recognizing it, pausing, thinking consciously, and this. So I'm proud to say that I chose option two. And I took note of the thoughts and feelings, like I said before, in my head and body and acknowledged them just as that. Thoughts and feelings. And I agreed to myself in that position that they were normal. If you think about it, do you ever put thought into, I know that if we meditate, we do, but do you think all day about like making yourself breathe or your heart beating or your blood pumping and things like that, right? We don't take a lot of notice of those things because they do what they're doing on autopilot.

That's the same way that your brain works and your thoughts. Remember, you have 40 to 70,000 thoughts a day and it's only when you try to consciously think about those thoughts and you handpick and tether to, you know, three or four of them and call them your reality. That's where things get sticky. So I was very much aware also of the fact that my stress response system that was feeling these feelings was one that's been programmed by what I call our mother, father, teacher, preacher, society, and evolution. MFTP, mother father, teacher, preacher, SE, society, what we consume all day. You know, you guys are consuming right now. I hope it's healthy for you.

And as well as evolution, what's been passed down from the cavemen, right? I then kind of like with a conscious mind decided to look at it and say, say, what happened? Like what actually happened and what does it have to do with me? And I wouldn't be able to do this if I wasn't conscious. I realized that I felt insulted. So how do you feel when you're insulted? When you're insulted, that's one of the number one alarm clocks that wakes up, you know, your amygdala first wakes up with an alarm clock before you even know it. But what your amygdala will do in a kind of a fun way is nudge your ego and say, hey, wake up. You know, we're being insulted right now, and that's where my stress response system was triggered. Does that make

sense to you? My knee-jerk response was kind of like coming up. So because I ran this system, and I took note of that, now I didn't know I had been insulted right away. I just was smart enough to know, and that's what I'm offering to you. I was just smart enough to know that I shouldn't always participate with thoughts and feelings and pits in my stomach, because I know that I'm programmed, to do that and it might not be beneficial to me. So before I even knew that I was insulted, I needed to stop and allow myself to say what actually happened. And that's when I realized that I had been insulted and I was able to pick it apart. A fun way to do this is if you today feel those icky feelings and you want to run this system, I mean, obviously if an object is hurling at your head

or a car is speeding at you, you know, I'm not going to tell you to run your interface response system. You know, that's when these things are great. But if you're just in a conversation with somebody or one of those things where you're saying you're having a bad day or it's a tough day or something like that, I'm going to encourage you to just not participate with those thoughts and feelings right away and observe them. What it is that I did is I gave my knee-jerk feelings, thoughts on all of those things. I gave it a break. I said, hey, I might come back to you. I appreciate what you're doing, but, you know, take a lunch break. And what it did was is it separated me from perceiving this solely as a threatening stimulus. And it allowed me to step into a space where I allowed myself to become an observer,

like a detective almost, check the facts. I like to look at the way a scientist moves through life. You know, what's interesting about scientists. Is scientists, unlike most humans, don't care about who's right or wrong. They just seek the most current and relevant and results-driven scientifically proven facts. If you look at a scientist that's posing a theory and another scientist that's posing an objective theory, they will both openly and curiously listen to one another to find the better theory.

That's what's cool. So I look at life as a scientist. As always, choosing options, you know, one or two are a very, very crucial part of this system. There's a great Buddhist story called the story of the two arrows. suffering. And what it tells you is that the first arrow that is shot at you is what happens. And as we know, by the bumper sticker, shit happens, we can't really affect what happens, right? We can only affect our response. So the first arrow of suffering represents the thing that happened. And you can't,

you can't avoid that. That's the arrow that's coming no matter what. But the second arrow is the one that you pull back yourself and shoot your foot because that's your response. So that reminds me of that. So as I write this piece right now, if I'm being 100% transparent, I haven't completely allowed my stress response system because of this event to completely neutralize. Like I still every now and then get that pit because my ego is something like, even though I give it a lunch break, it eats fast and it comes back, right? My ego has been around for 52, almost 53 years. So I just want you to understand there's no perfect science.

to this, but the perfect science would be in you becoming aware of the things that you're unaware of, typically, your subconscious, becoming conscious of your subconscious. So as I write this piece, I still have not responded. I have not rebuttaled and responded to that icky feeling. And I'm proud of that because I control the outcome of that scenario and how it unfold. So I want to offer that to you too. If something happens to you and you allow yourself to run a system like I'm sharing right now, you're reclaiming control. Do you know what it feels like when you're out of control? Well, that's the pit in your stomach and that's when you're a victim and that's when things are happening to you. When you reclaim control, it's not about getting rid of

the negative stimulus. It's claiming control of your perception of it and allowing yourself to have a say in what comes next. So that's the great feeling. I'm the shock caller. I'm the dominant force of my life. And I have found that the secret to my happiness, as a matter of fact, and fulfillment, lies with my ability to allow myself to just simply have time to think about these things. Let's take a quick break to hear from our sponsor. The Make Sense podcast is sponsored by the Make Sense Academy, co-created by both myself, Meeker, aka The Chicken, and The Dragon. The Make Saints Academy is a live interactive community. where like-minded, solution-focused, curious seekers of expansion,

gather daily in a mastermind setting with both Chicken and Dragon, where they have access to premium content, online courses, and powerful collaboration and networking, all for $24 a month. The Make Sense Academy and its members are solely responsible for funding the Make Sense podcast. So feel free to reach out to us at www.org.org. And check out the Make Sense Academy, risk-free, with a money-back guarantee. Now, back to the Make Sense podcast.

The insight that I grabbed from that, though, ironically turned into my finding of this thing that we call relevance. So I want to share a little bit about that because that's what this rise-up is about. It's about this hidden desire that we have. And we know that desires are very much connected to our suffering, right? If you didn't have any desires and you were just happy with. with who you were today and you weren't worried about yesterday, which is no longer relevant, and you're not worried about tomorrow, which is not relevant, because you don't really know

about it. And you were just able to sit in this present moment. You wouldn't suffer. There's no suffering in the present moment right now. The thing about the present moment that's challenging, for those of you that practice this, is it's so fleeting. If you look at an hourglass, it's very interesting to look at how fast the sand. If you just focus in the middle, let's call the middle of the hourglass, the present moment. If you look at the middle of the hourglass, you see how fast the grains of sand are going. That's the present moment. So it's hard to sit in the present moment because it goes by so fast. The present moment right now just changed into this present moment, right? It's not easy, but if you were able to do that, you would not suffer. So the insight that I

grabbed from the experience sits in a space of a human characteristic and behavior that sneakingly sits inside all humans, and it's sitting there on a hairpin trigger waiting to part partner with your ego, so this is about you becoming aware of something, waiting to partner with your ego and pounce at the first sign of trouble. And that is our program desire. This comes from the E in MFTPSE, mother, father, teacher, preacher, society, and evolution, what's been paid forward to us to strive for relevance. I think you understand what relevance is. I have the definition of it right here. It's defined as appropriate to the current time, period, or circumstances of contemporary interest.

So if you're seeking relevance right now in your life, just take note of the fact that you're not trying to be relevant as yourself. You're trying to be relevant in society, in the human race, and in the times. This is probably why in discussions people get pissed at me when I say, I don't watch the news. It's like there's this weird thing where humans just have programmed into them, this desire to be right about stuff that has nothing to do with. them, right? So relevance sits outside of us. So our program desire to strive and be relevant. So I say

programmed because striving for relevance is more associated with the inheritance that we've acquired through evolution to accommodate and equip us to succeed at what's called natural selection. So take note of that right there. Natural selection by definition is this idea of only the strong survive. Sometimes we're unaware of the fact that we're striving for relevance, and this is where comparative reality comes from. We're striving to be relevant in society. And you might stop and say, well, I don't care about society. I'm my own person and things like that. But why do we unconsciously fall into this strive for relevance? I have observed that it has everything to do with this natural programmed inborn thing called natural selection that we want to survive. Now, if you look at the

evolution of man, you can see how the alpha human is the one that takes us, whether it's brains or brawn or some sort of skill and talent, if you're the alpha of it, you lead the pack. So we have that inherent thing. And I think a lot of depression actually comes from this perception of a lack of relevance. You know, a lot of people are out there trying to find themselves. God, the personal growth and self-development industry would be at a complete loss if people didn't strive for relevance. What would happen if people never got lost or stuck. This is what I want to do with the Make Sense Academy and with my mentorship and my systems is I want to hand people the keys to not need me, not need to continuously hear the same

lesson and story. But if you don't understand these things like I have this hidden desire to seek relevance in the world, you might not ever get it. You might keep on thinking that what you're supposed to do is succeed in comparison in relation to everybody else. rather than just succeed at being your unique self. So natural selection means the evolutionary evidence that only the strong survives. So this goes beyond good looks, brain and brawn, as I said before, which are the typical metrics we measure of fitness points that Donald Hoffman, case against reality author calls them fitness points.

You know, if you're trying to stack up in society, you're trying to rack up fitness points by kicking ass and letting everybody see it. But there's a hidden metric that we place. too much value on and it's important to know and that's called relevance. So most people don't know this, but they have this deep desire to be relevant. This is another fun thing to look at. Much of the dangers and pitfalls experienced of comparative realities, you know, has to do with this desire for relevance. Research shows that, here's an interesting one, research shows that most humans peak at their creative and cognitive abilities in their 20s. Now, what that means,

means. I'm reading this great book. I actually have it here from strength to strength with Arthur C. Brooks as the author. Fantastic book. He's the one that I got this information from. But most people peek at their what's called fluid intelligence, their ability to create and come up with ideas in their early mid-20s. So as we pass our 20s into our 30s, 40s, and 50s, we start to lose that. So what is important about that is if you're anywhere past your mid-20s right now, there's a good chance that you're starting to worry about your relevance. And what I'm sharing with you right now is that it's totally normal that that peak of your brain activity and your creative juices, your fluid intelligence, is starting to wax and wane, right? So just imagine why as we age, we struggle

more with relevance. So, you know, I would assume that the young generation that are in their 20s that are suffering are probably just so overwhelmed by society and are paralyzed and don't feel that they're exercising their natural born desire and ability to be creative. So that's why it's so important to allow kids to just be creative, you know, just to start imagining and stuff. That's an interesting thing to take note of right now. I'm a father of three, and I can very much see how much my children are influenced from the outside in, way more than us. So this topic that I'm discussing right now is pretty friggin' relevant right now because we're also seeing that we're losing the ability to be creative. But if you're past your 20s, the chances are

is that your perception is that your relevance is being challenged, right? So for the sake of this conversation, rather than looking at our natural yet variable decline in cognition, and things like athletic ability, right? So that's some of the things that naturally happen. I mean, I run every day, but it ain't the same thing. You know, I play in a lacrosse. team and play in tournaments, but it ain't the same thing. I'm in the over 50s group now. Can you see that coupled with the decline in fast-paced world and in the rapid decline of relevance, right? So that's just an important thing to take note of. Or at least the perception of the decline of relevance. So there it is. Boom. Am I actually declining in relevance or am I just

perceiving that I am because of the way the world has taught me relevance works? Can I flip a switch in my brain and start to reclaim control of my relevance? well, yes, you can. But the only way that you're going to be able to do that is to change the way you look at relevance so that the way you look at relevance changes. You know, Wayne Dyer says change the way to look at things, things you look at change. So if I start looking at relevance right now as just me being relevant in the world rather than to the world, that's a big shift. So I just said, hmm, can the decline of relevance exist in the person that does not perceive it? Okay. Now, you might be feeling the effects of the decline of relevance and you hear this podcast episode

and you go, holy shit, that's a big thing. I didn't think about that. That's a power move to get to the first phase of what I call the interface response system become aware of something. Because that awareness of it gives you the ability and the power to say, I'm going to look under the hood of that. I'm going to pause my programmed response because now I know about this. Unprompted, involuntary desire to be relevant.

right? So that's powerful. But if you don't know anything about this, are you affected by it? Isn't that interesting? If you don't perceive something, do they exist? Perhaps that is where my future work should go, because I suffer just like anybody else. I'm just aware of it and I get to pick it apart. To voluntarily become ignorant to the forces and desires of relevance. Is that a strategy? I always say, breaking news, I don't care. But it's like breaking news, I don't care about my relevance. It's not important to It doesn't in any way, shape, or form support who I truly desire to be, to be relevant to a world. The only people that I want to be relevant to are my kids, my wife, the people that matter most to me in my life, right? And especially me and how I stack up in the world.

So through the programming and past traumas that we have received and experience connected to our roles as humans in society and friends and coworkers, as sons and daughters, husbands, parents, those are the things that I'm in, that I care about, but I also recognize that I have been putting a lot of pressure on myself to stack up in the eyes of others. I like the idea of saying, I don't care how I stack up in the eyes of others, but I do care about stacking up in the eyes of people that I care about. So maybe that's a strategy for you today. So you can see how we so easily judge ourselves and our relevance and how we stack up to what it is that society has labeled good or bad now. So you might be caught up in that. So just in closing, what does this mean for you and what can you do with this today? Because I want to give you an action step. If you become comfortable

in your skin, and all that would be about is like, it doesn't matter right now what's going to happen tomorrow or yesterday. And it also doesn't matter how you stack up in the world. Because you you are your own world in one way. You're one of a kind. You're completely unique. There's nobody else like you. There's nobody else that thinks exactly like you. Maybe a little bit like you, but you are one of a kind. So you don't need to fit into a world that's not like you, right? I understand you got to do what you got to do. But be comfortable in your skin. Learning how to celebrate who you have become right now. If you don't learn how to celebrate who you are and what you've accomplish to this point? What's the use of setting another goal, achieving it, and not celebrating that?

What will happen is, is you'll discover that you already are, in fact, relevant. You already are relevant. Say that. Say, I am relevant. I'm relevant to myself, and that's a great starting point. The only challenge you'll have is when you try to be relevant to others. So you see, you need not strive to become relevant to the world. Rather, realize that your relevance lies in the world. What do you do for the world? So to become the dominant force in your life is to become the force on the world. That's what it is. When you start to recognize that you move the world around, the world doesn't move you around.

Not a force of the world. The world does not dictate you. You're the dog that wags the tail. Hopefully something that I just spoke about resonated with you. That would make me feel great. So remember, if you want to learn about our Daily Master, minds and all of our courses and all of our content, which is extremely low cost, cost less than you probably spent on dinner last night per month for everything called Make Sense Academy.

Just comment, make sense, and I'll send you an invitation to check that out, risk-free. But if something resonates with you today, what I love to say is that learning in the absence of action is nothing more than a distraction. So if you want to put this in play and make it stay, right, give it away. I always say if you learn something today, give it away, share this with somebody in conversation or push the share button, pass it on to your social media, but be specific and share it with someone that you think might value this and they would have to be open, curious and ready. If you learn something today, give it away, explain what you liked about it and the distinctions about it. Go talk about it on your social media. Give it away. That's how it's going to stay. The person that

benefited from this lesson today the most would be me because I thought about it. I wrote it down and I shared it with you on this podcast and in the live video format. So I own it the most right now. So I'm going to offer you the ability to pay it forward to yourself in that sense and give it away and make it stay. Love and appreciate you. I hope to see you on the inside in our private community. This podcast episode will launch later today. Have a wonderful day. Thanks