Makes Sense - with Dr. JC Doornick - Noise Dissociation – The Cure for Impostor Syndrome - Episode 116

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Make Sense with Dr. J.C. podcast. This podcast covers topics that expand human consciousness and performance. On the Make Sense podcast, we acknowledge that it's who you are that determines how well what you do works, and that perception is a subjective and acquired taste. When you change the way that you look at things, the things that you look at begin to change. The Make Sense podcast is sponsored and primarily funded by the Make Sense Academy. Our private community, where open and curious seekers of growth and expansion, apply the Make Sense principles and systems to move from simply going through life to growing through life.

Starting point is 00:00:41 So check out the Make Sense Academy, risk-free, for less than you'll spend today on shit that you don't need. Welcome, my friends, to the uprising of the sleepwalking masses. Welcome to the Make Sense with Dr. J.C. Dornick podcast. Makes sense. All right. Welcome to the House of Dragon. Great morning, everybody. I have some interesting thoughts about sleep.

Starting point is 00:01:07 On a health basis, I know that it's important. You know, nature's nurse, and there's a lot of studies to show how important it is. But in the spirit of what we do in our podcast and in most of the work, the idea of reframing things, because sometimes you don't get sleep. I didn't get sleep last night. I just had so many creative ideas, and I stayed up since about two. Got a lot of work done, but I didn't get sleep. So you have to reframe that or else you'll be a victim all day of this.

Starting point is 00:01:31 I didn't get enough sleep. I used to say plenty of time to sleep when you die. But my reframe with sleep is an important step that I take sometimes in the morning when I don't get sleep because I have to turn it into a positive. And the reason why I didn't get sleep last night is not because I was a victim of circumstance. It was because there was something that I wanted to do that was more important than sleep. So that's what I convinced myself this morning. So I did a lot of writing and I'm trying to finish my book.

Starting point is 00:01:58 We're launching it in February of next year. so there's a lot of steps to that. So anyway, I don't know what your thoughts are in sleep. So if you're new here, this is not just a podcast. We're taking a deep dive into this other realm, but while you're with me today, you're going to be in the neocortex, your prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain that you actually control. And you're going to think, because I'm going to give you some things to think about. So that's the main value of our time today. We're only together for about 30 minutes. You're going to have the opportunity to think. So if you enjoy conversations like this and want to deep dive a little bit more, I encourage you to reach out and consider exploring or joining what we call

Starting point is 00:02:38 the Make Sense Academy. It's our sense making community. And that's like a psychological safe haven that I've created where we foster things like growth, self-development, mentorship, coaching, and connection. I've taken everything that I've done. I'm 54 and I've coached thousands of people and I've done a lot of interesting things. I've put it all under one roof for less money than you'll probably spend on food over the next couple of days. Inside, you'll find things like courses, live masterminds, and practical tools to help you filter out the noise and tune back into that home base of you that we call the signal. All right, let's make sense of imposter syndrome. And I just want to give some credit to the amazing Tracy Edwards, along with Mark

Starting point is 00:03:22 Willis. They're the ones that inspired me to talk about imposter syndrome. On Substact, very often, we do some collaborations. After reading Tracy Edwards, let's get unstuck substack. She wrote something on imposter syndrome, and sometimes when you read something, just kind of stirs me. Just like I'm reading a book.

Starting point is 00:03:41 If I read a book, even if it's a great book or a not-so-great-book, something inside of it usually stirs me. Do you understand what I'm saying when I said that? It reminded me that this voice that lives inside our head is not something that lives quietly in a one-bedroom apartment inside our heads, you know, this negative voice. It's actually something that the world is amplifying and using like a megaphone to amplify the feeds of things like opinions, expectations, and we just seem to not be able to avoid them.

Starting point is 00:04:15 And I say that because in our house, we kind of avoid TV and news and doom scrolling. And we still find out about stuff, you know. So this idea of... of this voice that was giving you this imposter syndrome. It doesn't live in a one-bedroom apartment, right? It's quietly in your mind. It's being amplified everywhere. So be on the lookout today. And I just thought myself, man, what a crazy world that my kids are growing up in, you know, and I wonder what the future holds. So Tracy's words inspired me to look at the idea of imposter syndrome differently, but we're going to do it through something that I call noise dissociation.

Starting point is 00:04:50 So that's going to be kind of like my offering and gift to you today is this concept. called noise dissociation and put it in your pipe and smoke it. So this is how I've learned, this concept of noise dissociation and it's very much correlated to the work I do with what's called the interface response system. This is how I've learned to step back, observe the noise of the world, which is where the problem is coming from, without feeling compelled to participate in the noise. There's this shift where you can just allow yourself to observe things, including the thoughts and feelings in your head, including the negativity you get from the outside in, you're allowed to just observe them and kind of like you're in a movie theater eating popcorn

Starting point is 00:05:32 as a movie, but not feel compelled to buy into them and participate with them. And what happens is, is that gives us the ability, the safe passage to kind of return back to that clear signal of who I really am for the day. Wouldn't you agree that we just get caught up in versions of ourselves that are not true to ourselves and they can kind of hijack our day. So here it is, my making sense of imposter syndrome. I call this noise dissociation, the cure for imposter syndrome. So here's the way it began. I caught myself the other day. It was in the morning and I was just staring at the glow of my phone. Have you ever done that? I was just staring at the glow of my phone. Thumb scrolling on autopilot. I just remember kind of smirking because the muscle under my thumb, it's called the Thenar muscle,

Starting point is 00:06:20 was hurting, and I thought it was funny, right? Have you ever, like, poked fun at your insanity? I was like, ah, you're doing too much phone. That's silly. Honestly, to be completely transparent about this moment, I wasn't even sure what I was looking for on my phone. News validation, maybe just something to feel that wasn't my responsibility, like something to feel other than my responsibility. I kind of caught myself. And that's part of the work that I do. It's okay to be doing silly things or thinking silly things. But you want to try to make it a point to identify them. It's called drifting and shifting. You have to catch your drift before you can shift. A lot of times people don't even take the time to recognize they're doing things. So I don't beat myself up when I catch myself doing

Starting point is 00:07:03 stupid things. I say, oh, look at you. You're doing something stupid right now. So 10 minutes into this, those 10 minutes just vanished. And I don't think that I even took a conscious breath during those 10 minutes. Now, I know I was breathing, but I wasn't aware of it. And here's where it hit me. And this is a big one. This is one you can take with you today. It struck me in that moment that I was searching for myself in the very noise that made me disappear. I want to say it again. In that moment, I was looking to distract myself from myself, most likely. In that moment, I was searching for myself in the very noise and vortex that made me disappear. You want the definition of insanity. I was looking to find something in a place that I was getting lost in. So the noise of the world is louder than ever,

Starting point is 00:08:03 isn't it? And I'm not just talking about the sound aspect of it. I'm talking about the over-stimulation. That's what I mean by the noise, right? And the opinions and the expectations and all that stuff. Every scroll, ping, and headline fractures our attention into smaller and smaller pieces until our nervous system actually forgets what stillness even feels like. I see this very predominantly in children, but adults are experiencing this too. Our nervous system doesn't even know what stillness feels like because we're always doing something. We're always on our way somewhere. And I always say that we've lost the ability to just be.

Starting point is 00:08:43 bored. And it's interesting because when we're bored or we're wandering with our mind, that's where creativity is really, really fertile. We justify this kind of behavior by calling it being informed. You've got to be informed. And I don't want to miss a thing. It's more like we're sleep blocking, isn't it? Our nervous system has been hijacked by notifications disguised as necessities. Have you ever disguised a notification as a necessity? I looked at my substack this morning and there was like over a hundred notifications and something in me told me that I had to go check them right now I got to check them at some point because there's some great conversations in there but it wasn't a necessity over my meditation or something like that so we forget to ask

Starting point is 00:09:29 who's actually calling the shots these days because we're not really sure that we're doing that too often these days are we we probably want to stay away from that so here's the reframe anything makes sense. My podcast, Make Sense Academy, my book, my substack are always going to offer a reframe, but a reframe changing the way you're looking at something. It's also entertaining looking at it from a different perspective, which is kind of the same thing. So that's what I mean by reframe. So in psychology, the word dissociation is often seen as a defense mechanism. It's some sort of a retreat from consciousness, and it's there to kind of protect us from pain. Dissociation. It's actually a diagnosis. Dissociated. It's not looked at it as a good thing. But what if it had a higher form? I thought about that and I was like, hmm, I haven't made up my mind. I like taking words like selfish and overwhelmed and words that have negative connotations to them and reframing them into positive. So what if dissociation could become a conscious, proactive practice not to escape life, but actually to reclaim it? So that's going to be my take on imposter's

Starting point is 00:10:41 syndrome. This is what I call noise dissociation, which is a deliberate act of disconnecting from external noise that distorts perception and drags us out of presence. This is when noise causes the dissociation. It's a deliberate act of disconnecting from external noise that distorts perception. So we're actually proactively recognizing the noise and dissociating from it. Kind of like cognitive distancing, right? It's not a withhold. draw from life. And this is one of the reasons people won't do it. It's like some form of quitting. It's a return to the space where truth resides. That's what makes it proactive. So when you practice noise dissociation, what you're doing is you're stepping away from distortion and reconnecting

Starting point is 00:11:29 with your signal, coming back home to the frequency of your awareness. That just absolute awareness before it's been persuaded and led in a certain way. It's that, frequency where things like awareness live, your values, your purpose that we very often forget because we get associated with the noise. And that signal, that frequency where these good things live are always broadcasting, but it's happening beneath the static. So you have to proactively take an approach. So let's just look at the science of noise a little bit here. Neuroscience tells us that the brain is wired by repetition. Hebbians theory says that neurons have fired together, wire together. And that makes a lot of sense. You know, if you do something with repetition,

Starting point is 00:12:13 that's how you build a habit, good or bad. So we live in a constant state of unconscious reaction. So let's look at the behavior that we're doing with repetition. We live in a world where we're in a constant state of unconscious reaction. And that includes things like doom scrolling, unconsciously, comparing and judging. And we strengthen the very networks that keep us anxious and distracted. So just take a pause there for a second. And just a acknowledge what you're doing with repetition. And remember, you might have wrapped it into a gift and called it necessity. You'd have to stop and look at it and say, hmm, and not make your mind up about what you think about it first. But what we're doing with repetition, which is wiring our brains,

Starting point is 00:12:56 the way it is, is not always something that's in support of our goals and dreams. One of my favorites, Dr. Joe Dispenzo, we went to the same chiropractic school, calls this being wired for the environment. Are you wired for your environment right now? Think about that for a second. Being wired to this environment, knowing what we know about it, doesn't sound like an ideal setup for peace of mind, does it? So Dispenza teaches that transformation begins when we transcend, kind of like bypass right? We transcend and bypass the body, the environment, and even time itself, and we step away from those things, even if it's just temporary and all of that sensory addiction that we're involved in right now, and you'd have to point it out, you might not know it until you say, hmm, and return

Starting point is 00:13:46 to the seat of our creative consciousness. Think about what that means. What would you need to do to return to the seat of your creative consciousness? You'd have to move away from the outside in persuasion, that place inside of you that is just doing the gazing and just is aware, before your sense-making machine that's programmed from the repetition, starts telling that inside voice of yours what to see. I'm talking about going back to the seat of your own conscious creativity where you decide before you're persuaded by all of that stuff. So each time you stop feeding the noise, because the noise is actually eating, it's consuming your energy. Each time you stop feeding the noise, you interrupt the old wiring and it's a win. Each time you stop feeding the noise,

Starting point is 00:14:35 time, even though it's not done, you have to do this over and over and over. That's what repetition's all about. But each moment of silence that we capture becomes a small act of a rebellion. I love looking at self-development and personal growth as a rebellion against what are programmed and conditioned mind. Modern neuroscience backs this up 100%. There's something called the default mode network that we all have. That's the circuitry that activates when we we're not focused externally. That's the baseline, but it's been affected, right? It's responsible for things like your imagination, self-reflection, and construction of your identity, your default mode network. Now, whether it's a healthy one or not, that's where those things are being created.

Starting point is 00:15:22 So if you're struggling with your identity or your ability to be creative and self-reflect, you have a bad relationship with yourself, you probably have an unhealthy default mode network, meaning you've been doing some ineffective, unsupportive things for quite some time. But your default mode network is the fertile soil where creativity and originality are actually meant to sprout. It's like the stem cells of your creativity. But remember, in this overstimulated world with our overstimulated mind, that same network turns against us.

Starting point is 00:15:57 Remember, we're talking about imposter syndrome here. We're going to get into that in a second. But what I'm talking about is what's upstream from it. You're not born with imposter syndrome. This is something that's being developed, and I'm just pointing out where. I like a proactive approach. This overstimulated mind of ours, the same network turns against us, looping endlessly through worry, doubt, and comparison.

Starting point is 00:16:18 So feed that data into a large language model, like human GPT, large language model of your own mind, and what it generates is, drum roll please, imposter syndrome. Now, that can show up in so many different ways. So I like to call it the imposter illusion. Here's why. Because it gives me the opportunity to acknowledge that it might be an illusion. Because if I say imposter syndrome, I embrace it.

Starting point is 00:16:48 I like to call it imposter illusion. It says, maybe I don't know what the hell I'm talking about it. Maybe it's just a fogazi. Maybe it's just an illusion. Maybe it's a simulation, right? Noise is like an all-you-can-eat buffet for imposter syndrome, meaning imposter syndrome requires noise. Get rid of the noise, there is no imposter syndrome. It's the byproduct of what's called noise association, the opposite of noise dissociation,

Starting point is 00:17:16 or another way of saying that is noise participation, becoming so entangled with external feedback and expectations that we start mistaking them for our identity. we start mistaking external feedback and all of these expectations of the world as our own identity. Isn't that what imposter syndrome is? Letting these outside forces actually rewire your identity. That's not who you are. So the more we consume, that which we consume with regularity becomes what we assume with regularity.

Starting point is 00:17:50 The more we consume, the more the mind wires false beliefs. And it sounds like this. I'm not enough. I don't even like to say this out loud, but I'll do it for you. I'm not enough. I'm behind. I'm pretending. But imposter syndrome is not proof of inadequacy.

Starting point is 00:18:07 It's evidence of disconnection. Now just sit with that for a second. Because in the heat of the moment when you're having imposter syndrome, you're feeling inadequate. And believe me, I speak on big stages and I have some big events coming up, even here right now. You know, I have little glimpses of imposter syndrome. I'm like, why the hell would anybody want to listen to me? And when my numbers go up in the podcast, all of that stuff happens.

Starting point is 00:18:32 I very often say, I don't know why, you know. I was awarded a humanitarian of the year for all the work I did over in Haiti and stuff. I just didn't know why. I thought they made a mistake, you know. So that's imposter syndrome. Noise dissociation, by the way, which is the solution, does not fix the imposter. It exposes the illusion. This is why I call it imposter illusion.

Starting point is 00:18:55 the bullshit. When you can observe the noise without obeying it, the voice of self-doubt begins to dissolve into what it's always been, an echo of something else with no source, no validity. It's like overhearing a conversation between two other people that has nothing to do with you. That's what you're hearing. And it's no different until you give it meaning. So we're going to call it imposter illusion. So you don't defeat imposter syndrome, by the way. way. You can't erase clouds from the sky, but what you can do is dissolve it by disconnecting from the frequency that created it that's happening in your brain. By tuning out of that broadcast and tuning back into your signal. This is why things like meditation are so valuable. Why we have to protect our

Starting point is 00:19:46 goals and dreams by removing flow burglars, energy suckers from our lives. I actually like adversity. So when people have like negative things to say, I enjoy just observing human behavior and I have this way of not taking it personal. But I do have to be careful how much of that I expose myself to because I'm human. Even though I'm a dragon, I'm a human dragon. So I saw this guy comment just with a real, real racist. I mean, I could totally understand where this guy's coming from, hurt people, hurt people. But it was like really, really low and unnecessary. You know, like a hundred comments, beautiful insights and everything.

Starting point is 00:20:26 And here's this guy, right? I had to cut them loose, you know, and to block them. So we've got to protect our goals and dreams. Let's put this into practice. For me, and this is crucial, learning is another form of distraction in the absence of action. You're in a jacuzzi right now. There is an illusion right now that you're doing something because you're listening. And if you're making some kind of crucial insights right now, your brain is under the illusion

Starting point is 00:20:51 that you're moving forward right now. You're not. You have to take action. So let's put this into practice. For me, noise dissociation isn't just an idea. It's a ritual. It's ritualistic because I have to do it every day for the rest of my life. So every morning before the world gets a chance to label me,

Starting point is 00:21:10 and it starts when I crack my eyes open, I go from offline to online, and I have a whole process. I practice what's called the Great Morning Rise Up Routine. Now, if anybody wants to get, get a copy of my great morning rise up routine. Just ask for it. I look at my morning routine, not only as a protector of my goals and dreams, but I look at it as a fighter jet that deploys those flares to distract the heat-sinking missiles that the enemy is shooting at it. Isn't that

Starting point is 00:21:39 cool? When I do my morning routine, I'm acknowledging that there's some heat-sinking missiles of noise coming at me. So my morning routine is like this defense mechanism to make sure that they don't get in. So I protect my goals and dreams. And here's the butter on that role. It's called meditation. And now my meditation of choice, which I'm getting certified in, is transcendental meditation. It's just what I vibe with. I've been doing that for a long time, twice a day. And I will not give that up for anything. If you ever hear that I didn't do my meditation, I most likely have died. TM, Transcendental Meditation, is a simple, effortless technique that uses a silently repeated mantra to help the mind settle inward and access a state of deep rest and expanded awareness.

Starting point is 00:22:30 I kind of do it a little bit different than the traditional way, because I'm the dragon. This repeated mantra to help our mind settle inward and access a state of deep rest and expanded awareness. It's not about forcing silence. A lot of people don't think they're good at meditation. It's work. It's not about forcing silence. it's about transcending the noise. You're moving away from the noise.

Starting point is 00:22:53 That's why I found TM because it was called transcendental. It just made sense to me. So as I focus on the mantra when I'm meditating, the chatter begins to dissolve. I forget about the chatter. So reach out to me if you want to have a jam session on that. So as I focus on my mantra, the chatter dissolves.

Starting point is 00:23:10 I drop into stillness like sitting on the ocean floor, watching a movie screen that has nothing projected on it. That's kind of what I see. Calm, weightless, infinite. It makes no sense. This is what it's so funny. I spend all of my waking time making sense of things. It's the one time of the day or the two times a day.

Starting point is 00:23:29 I don't need things to make sense. So from that space, my nervous system resets. Now remember, we're talking about a proactive approach to deal with things like imposter syndrome. What we're doing is we're going and attacking the upstream cause. We called it noise. Emotional mismanagement. and noise. From that space, my nervous system resets. My neocortex, that frontal part of my brain that I actually

Starting point is 00:23:54 control, detaches during meditation, detaches from my subconscious influence, the lower leveled program, conditioned, programmed mind. It detaches from that influence and reclaims control as the CEO, chief executive officer of my mind. My heart synchronizes with my breath and poof, Shazam, I'm back online and tapped back into my signal. You might want to check that out. It makes no sense, right? It's funny, I'm really into working with plant medicine. I'm going to Machapitoo at the end of November.

Starting point is 00:24:29 I've been doing that for about five years. I'm really into not needing to know, not needing to be right, and not needing things to make sense. So that's why one of my phrases from my book that I teach people is, hmm, m m, which stands for, for haven't made up my mind up about anything. There's something so freeing about not having made your mind up about something. I know that that's scary as hell, but like, I mean, is anything actually a fact, right?

Starting point is 00:24:57 Who knows? That's another one. The noise doesn't vanish. It just fades away into the background. My daughter would call this interpretation of noise, what she calls in her gaming world, an NPC, which stands for non-player characters. Insignificant background figures that only gain. power through the meaning that we give them. That's what noise is. Noise doesn't go away,

Starting point is 00:25:20 but noise is irrelevant and insignificant until we make it significant. So when I do this, my signal returns to center and it's clear, it's clean, and it's just lovely. That's where creativity begins and that's where awareness feels like home. So let's talk about coming home. Maybe we're not trying to escape society. Maybe that's not what we're trying to do with all these distractions. Perhaps we're evolving out of a version of it that forgot how to listen. The noise association heard. That's what I'm trying to remove myself from. I'm trying to remove myself from the herd, the masses that are participating with the noise.

Starting point is 00:26:01 That's why I wear these shirts very often that say, breaking news, I don't care. I want to let everybody know if they care about shit that doesn't matter. I want them to know I don't care. I don't know how you feel about that. When somebody comes up to me with terrible news, like it's unsolicited, terrible news, I just say, hey, I don't care, right?

Starting point is 00:26:21 It's not that I don't care. I just don't care about shit that doesn't matter, shit that I don't control all of that stuff. I don't know if anybody's with me on that. So noise dissociation isn't about silence, for silence sake. It's about remembering who you are before and after the noise. Who are you before?

Starting point is 00:26:41 or the perception of the noise. Who are you after it goes away? That's who you are. When you stop participating in the noise, you don't disappear. You reappear as who? You. So my final thoughts.

Starting point is 00:26:55 Imposter syndrome is just a distorted self-image trying to outshine your own personal truth. There's a delicious silence waiting behind that voice, and it's not absence. It's radical presence disguised. as stillness. Practice being bored today. If you want an action step to move from the jacuzzi experience and make to stay pivotal and become the shock caller and dominant force of your life, practice being bored today. Practice allowing yourself to have nothing to do, nothing to think about.

Starting point is 00:27:31 I know you've got to get some stuff done, but take a little bit of that time. Not even meditate. Just be bored. Somebody says, what are you doing? Say, I'm just bored. And they go, oh, I'm so sorry. No, no, no. I like it. That's where your truth lives and where the next version of you is waiting to be released. Remember something, everybody? If you learn something today, give it away. That's how it's going to stay. The highest form of self-actualization is when you take something you've been blessed with and you pay it forward and help mankind.

Starting point is 00:27:58 I want to thank everybody for taking your time to spend with me today. If this episode or these kind of conversations stirred something in you, if it helped you kind of pause and take a look at things with that prefrontal cortex from another angle. You see yourself a little bit clearer now. Share it with somebody that might be wrestling with their own imposter syndrome. And you guys have a tool right now. If you'd like to go deeper, learning how to practice noise dissociation,

Starting point is 00:28:24 strengthen your signal and reclaim authorship of your life, I invite you to join, and I have a seven-day free trial. Join the Make Sense Academy. Literally, it's like getting high-ticket business coaching and mentorship with everything that I've ever done and everything I will do in an environment with amazing people for less money per month than you will spend in the next two days on food. Why do I make it so cheap? It's a group format. That way I can scale it rather than charge $1,500,000, $2,000 a month for coaching. So just direct message me. The words make sense. It's like

Starting point is 00:28:58 putting the bat signal up there and I'll give you access to this free trial. You can also read the full written version of this in my substack along with reflections, videos, and community discussions, and that'll be coming out soon. Until next time, stay aware, stay open, and stay curious. And remember, you're not the noise. You are you. You're the signal, and you're a miracle. Have an amazing day. Love and appreciate you all. I'll see you next time. Makes sense.

Makes Sense - with Dr. JC Doornick - Noise Dissociation – The Cure for Impostor Syndrome - Episode 116

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