Makes Sense - with Dr. JC Doornick - Right vs. Kind - What do you think people think about you? - Episode 117

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. So check out

Starting point is 00:00:42 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. Great morning world. Great morning. Morning friends. This is your friendly neighborhood dragon, Dr. J.C. Dornick. Welcome to another rise up. First of all, it's such an honor to be able to share space and share some insights and distinctions that I make and help you make sense of things. And by the way, the reason why I say great morning all the time and I've been doing that for, I don't know, like 16, 17 years now.

Starting point is 00:01:23 I just realized one day, like, why are we so programmed to just say good morning? Let's move from good to great. Because the truth is, we're in the beginning of a day. And if we can, learn how to take control of our thoughts and our feelings and command them, say, you will do this today. We will move in this direction. This will matter and this won't matter today. Then we become the dominant forces of our lives, the shock callers of our reality, because it's who we are that determines how well what we do works. So who are you this morning? Because that's going to play a big role in how well what you do today works and the halves that we want that we need that we must have that are on the other side of a big pile of poop all the time because we're poop navigators.

Starting point is 00:02:08 Our navigation ability has a lot to do with who we are this morning. And then the second tenant is that it's when we change the way we look at things, that the things that we look at change. That's what needs to be done. If you're working hard and you're doing all of these things that you're. you think that you need to do to have the things that you want to have. My intention, my purpose with my rise-ups is just about recognizing that we live in a world that, for the most part, is doing the thinking for us. We're all in some sort of an algorithm. And then we come into this world to this

Starting point is 00:02:42 day to day with our programming from our mother, father, teacher, preacher. Society is supplying us the support for whatever it is that we thought. For the most part, what we do as humans is cognitive bias. You know, we, we kind of like hang out with the people and hang out in the environment and do the things that support what we think and believe. And we have this ability to label and judge and separate ourselves from anything that is different. On this show, what we'll do is we're going to take advantage of your brain is what we're

Starting point is 00:03:12 going to do. We're going to brainwash you. And that doesn't mean to convince you to think one way versus the other. But we're just going to scrub your brain and wash it and. and create a blank space and a blank canvas for your thoughts and feelings today so that you can choose them. Remember, our brains are processing 40 to 70,000 thoughts all the time. We have this really interesting ability to just pick like two or three of them and call them reality. I'm going to give you the opportunity to question things today, to ask questions like, well, what else might be

Starting point is 00:03:45 true, Dragon? Or maybe use one of the most powerful words in the world, and that is maybe, or Or what if? One of my favorite questions to ask when I think something is, well, what else might be true? So, great morning, everybody. It's just an honor and a privilege to be here today. It's an honor and privilege to be alive, you know? It's pretty amazing. I don't know if anybody noticed that this morning when you woke up, that you're alive,

Starting point is 00:04:09 which means your potential is limitless. I was away for a week. I was in first Utah, and then I was in Tennessee. I went to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and that was an interesting place, very touristy place. but I saw a lot of bears. Let's get into this today. One of my favorite topics, so let me just give you a little bit of an overview and an insight. This is called Wright versus Kind. This represents a chapter from my book, and it's a question that I set my inner hostage free. So today, you're going to have the opportunity to set your inner hostage free. And what a hostage is is somebody that's being

Starting point is 00:04:44 kept as a prisoner against their will. Most people don't realize this, but our obsession with being right is just a cry for validation in disguise. So I learned this the hard way. That's the way the dragon learns, by the way, the hard way. The day that my first ever mentor, and I'm going to share a story with you about that, looked me in the eye and asked me a question that just took down my whole house of cards at the time, which I didn't even know I had erected. He asked me, what's more important to you, J.C., to be right or to be kind? Now, that question basically dismantled my ego and set my inner hostage free, which is what we're going to do today.

Starting point is 00:05:28 This week's episode of The Make Sense with Dr. J.C. podcast is going to explore what happens when we stop trying to win and we start trying to simply understand. And it's one of my favorite topics. This is an abbreviated version, by the way, of my book is coming out in, a big event in Chicago in February, 2006, and that's the Makes Sense book, and it's eight years of work, and I'm just so, so excited to get it out and put it in everybody's hands. It's going to be a yellow cover with my glasses on it, and we've got a forward by Jim Quick and a bunch of contributions from some really, really big people and authors and stuff like that. So I'm really excited about that.

Starting point is 00:06:08 For those of you that are in California on the West Coast, Jim Quick, who's one of my all-time best friends, He's having his huge limitless live. I don't know if there's any Jim Quick fans out there, but he's having his huge limitless live event, which will have thousands of people live there in the audience, but it'll be simulcast to like up to 20,000 people live. So yours truly is going to be the MC for that event. So that's going to be a lot of fun. But what I'm about to share with you is an abbreviated story and lesson from this soon-to-be

Starting point is 00:06:37 published book makes sense. And it's going to hit the shelves February, 26 at that event in Chicago. This is right versus kind, the question that set my inner hostage free. So this is the moment that I stopped trying to win, and I started to try to understand, and that was a big shift. So I always like to open up my live speaking engagements, especially in front of a big crowd like this. I always say, hi.

Starting point is 00:07:00 My name is Dr. J.C. Darnick, and I'm a recovering bullshit artist, and I've been clean for almost 19 years now, and everybody answers, and they go, hi, J.C. That's how the story begins. So not as a confession, but as a realization that for the greater part of most of my life, I wasn't responding to people. I was reacting. And I was reacting to protect my ego. Can anybody relate to that?

Starting point is 00:07:24 The difference between responding and reacting. I was reacting most of the time in my life as a means of protecting my ego and the fact that I didn't really like myself. I thought I was leading. I thought I was teaching. And I also thought I was helping. I thought I was helpful. but underneath it all, I was just trying to be right. So during this phase, this is kind of funny,

Starting point is 00:07:47 but sad at the same time. During this particular phase of my life, I don't know if you can relate to this, but I was what you call an asaholic. Does anybody heard of an assaholic? Well, that was me. So let me define what assholeism means. So assholism is the unconscious art of speaking without considering the impact of your words. So there's two types of assholes, by the way. And one's much worse than the other, but they're both assholes. One is the conscious asshole, and that's the one that knows that they're an asshole, and sometimes they even own it. They kind of like peacock their assholes. And the unconscious ones, that's the other type, those are the people that are entirely blind to their assholeism. They're blind to their own reflection in the mirror, meaning they can't

Starting point is 00:08:36 see their true selves in the mirror. In fact, they couldn't in their wildest dreams, the second, the unconscious asshole, can't in their wildest dreams take ownership for their assholeism, yet can readily point others out with the disease. So unfortunately, my friends, during this phase of my life, when this story happened, I was the latter. So I want to apologize. Forgive me for I knew not what I did, but I want to apologize to all my friends and family and anybody that ever came into the space of JC during those days, they had the asshole. So let's talk about this story. I call it the mentor and the mirror. So early in my chiropractic career, I was a chiropractor for about 17 years. I met a man that would end up being my first

Starting point is 00:09:23 mentor. His name was Dr. Larry Markson, an incredible man, and I still talk to him this day. I'll never ever finish thanking this guy for what he did for me. He was a man whose confidence filled every room that he walked into. But as an asshole, I judged him first. When an asshole meets another perceived powerful person, they automatically judge him. So I judged him at first. I labeled him as cocky. Maybe even labeled him as an asshole. That guy's an asshole. Remember, I didn't know I was when I was unconscious to it. But something in me knew, I needed what he had mastered. I was watching mastery take place. I guess I kind of unconsciously probably knew that I was an asshole at this time of my life. Seeing another asshole command the respect of a crowd of thousands of people and succeed at the

Starting point is 00:10:11 level of his success, just remember saying, I want to know his secrets. I want to know everything I can about this guy. So fast forward, remember, this is the revised version, you get the whole story in the book. Fast forward a few months after this crazy sequence of events, you know, of just me having no money at all and trying to weasel my way in and pretend. that I was successful and work with these people that charged a lot of money. So the sequence of events happened and you've got to read the book for all that. And I find myself later on at his private, high-level retreat in Montana. It was called the Cabin Experience. It was one of the most extraordinary retreats that I've ever been to. And interestingly enough, for those of you, you never know who

Starting point is 00:10:52 you're going to meet at these places, but I met this guy. I was like, oh, what do you do? He says, I'm an author. I said, oh, what have you written? And he says, the monk who sold my Ferrari. And I said, I'd ever read it before. It was Robin Sharma. So I got to, like, be at this thing with Robin Sharma, and it didn't even know who he was. So fast forward, I'm at this amazing high-level retreat, and I had finally earned a seat at his table, because this is, like, for his high-level people, and I was a total imposter there. I didn't have the money or anything, but I was, I was pretending to be successful and worthy of it. But I had put everything on the line financially, and there's some valor to that. I just remember thinking at this phase, like, hmm, did I really

Starting point is 00:11:31 earn a seat at his table, or did I just pay for it? Because I thought I was special for being at this event, but I just paid for it. It was expensive, and I paid for it. At this retreat, which was extraordinary and terrific, I learned a lot, and because of my status there, because I paid for it, I was offered the opportunity to establish a one-on-one coaching relationship with this guy, Dr. Larry. Now, that's what I wanted. That was my agenda. I wanted him to myself, and I wanted him to teach me the secrets because he was extremely successful in a high, high level communicator and public speaker. I remember it costing about $1,200 a month, and that would allot me to like one hour a week, right, is that typical coaching thing. I remember I had what's called a laughing wallet at that time.

Starting point is 00:12:17 A laughing wallet is a wallet that you open up and it laughs at you because you have no money. But I had credit cards, right? So I paid for this $1,200 a week because I wanted, I knew that this guy had what I needed. What's funny is I was walking into this blindly because I was an asshole and this guy was an extraordinary communicator. So on our first one-to-one call, here it comes. I did what any insecure asshole does best. I started talking and I overcompensated and I began yapping and yapping about how amazing I was and how powerful I was just trying to let him know how important I was because I didn't think I was important, right? How powerful I would once become if I just learned the secret pattern.

Starting point is 00:12:58 password to opening the door to success. And I'm just telling him. I have an hour with this guy. I'm spending money that I don't have. And I'm just trying to convince him that he has just met the Antichrist. And 10 minutes in, 10, 15 minutes into this one hour that I have, which ends abruptly, I'm sitting there listening to all my accomplishments, explaining everything that I think that I already know.

Starting point is 00:13:21 And he interrupts me, thank God. This is on a phone call, by the way. There was no Zoom or anything like that, FaceTime or anything like that. FaceTime or anything like that at this time. He goes, whoa, whoa, whoa, just like that. And that's what his voice sounded like. He goes, can I ask you a question? And I said, what?

Starting point is 00:13:36 He goes, is it my understanding that you hired me to help you? And I said, yes. And then he looks at me. He says, well, then shut the fuck up and listen to me talk for a second. Now, I had never had anybody say that to me. And if you're an asshole, you don't like that. But this guy had what I didn't have. So I shut up.

Starting point is 00:13:55 And it was the first time that I'd shut up. in my life. So that was one key right there. Nobody was ever brave enough to do that because they knew that there would be a backlash, but in this case, I shut up. So then he asked me three questions that would change my life forever, and that's what I want to share with you today. The first question he asked me was this, and I want you to ponder what you would say. And you can answer in the chat, because remember, this is going to be shortened for a podcast episode on the Make Sense with Dr. JCP podcast. Here are the three questions he asked me. First, he said, what do you think people, think about you? How would you answer that question? Well, I replied because of who I was,

Starting point is 00:14:32 I said, well, I'd say half the people I interact with like me and the other half don't. That was my answer. And then he said, question number two, what do you think about the ones that don't like you? Think about this for a second. So as you can imagine, I was a very insecure. I didn't know I was insecure. That's why I was exhibiting my acerolic behaviors. But as you can imagine, in that insecure self-love struggling state, I said they can go fuck themselves. That's what I said. And once again, I apologize for the swears, but I'm just telling you exactly what happened. They can go fuck themselves. And I remember hearing him in response to that laugh. You know, he laughed at that response. And the laugh was indicative of somebody that kind of both knew that I was going to say it. He wasn't

Starting point is 00:15:19 surprised that I said that. And also recognizing the fine mess that I was. I mean, he kind of like, it was obvious that he was like, okay, I thought you were a mess, but now I know. So he replied, and he says, I thought you'd say that. So here it comes. This next question, which I've already kind of shared with you, changed my life forever. Because there's certain questions that we can ask. And that's a big part of my book, by the way, is these insights where we think we know something. And then somebody asks an effective question.

Starting point is 00:15:50 And it gives you the ability to look at yourself in a way that you've never looked at yourself and say, Oh my God, I don't know. So here's the third question. He says, let me ask you, what's more important to you, J.C., to be right or to be kind? The way I can explain that best is that question didn't just land. It detonated a nuclear bomb inside my brain. It was like a detonation, that last question. I want to talk about this interesting need to be right.

Starting point is 00:16:19 Now, you don't have to be an asshole or a pompous kind of a person to just need to be right. This is something that's programmed into a lot of us. So let's talk about this need to be right. It's not a bad thing. It's a bad thing if you don't know it. Because if you can't catch the fact that you're drifting into that world, well, then you'll never have the opportunity to shift. So I saw it for the first time.

Starting point is 00:16:42 In that moment, what I saw was a pattern. It loaded up in my head. Every conversation that I was carrying with anybody else had an exclamation point at the end, and I never knew that. not a question mark an exclamation point every sentence that i uttered was a declaration of truth and i didn't know it i thought i actually knew those things i didn't know that i wasn't open to anything else they were declarations of truth i wasn't seeking connection in conversations i was seeking validation and i was fighting to be seen didn't know i was doing that in that fight what i didn't know and a lot of us don't know

Starting point is 00:17:21 I made others feel unseen. Isn't that interesting how we spend so much time fighting to be seen and validated that we don't have the ability to see that we're making other people feel unseen? And they just want to get the hell out of that conversation. So I refer to that moment where he asked that question as the Vulcan Pinch. In the book, it's known as the Vulcan Pinch. Now, I don't know if there's any old school Star Trek fans out there. Anybody fans of Star Trek? In the old Star Trek days, Captain Kirk's sidekick, the Vulcan. His name was Spock. Spock had this combat move. It was played by Leonard Nimoy, if you didn't know.

Starting point is 00:18:00 He had a special combat move that he would employ when he was fighting some sort of alien from another planet, where he would just put the perfect amount of pressure. It was kind of silly, but I loved it. It was called the Vulcan Pinch. He would put an amount of pressure on your neck and it would render the person paralyzed. So that simple series of questions that he asked me, what it did was it took my ego and it rendered it paralyzed. Now, that was a tough thing to go through, but oh my God, it was the most important thing ever because I just couldn't see. You can only see what you can see.

Starting point is 00:18:32 So let's talk about the science of validation. So I started to research this stuff because this was pivotal for me. Obviously, there's more to it in the chapter in the book when it comes out. But psychologists call this felt validation. And that's that deep nervous signal in your body that says, I'm safe, I'm significant, and I'm understood. That's why we seek validation. People want to be seen and understood. People want to be significant. Does anybody not want to be significant?

Starting point is 00:19:01 Does anybody want to not matter in life? Maybe to different degrees, but I think we're all the same. So under normal circumstances, when people do feel validated, what it does is it helps them drop their guard down. It's a great feeling when you feel validated. like, oh, I don't have to protect myself anymore and prove myself. What happens in that moment, and you're in that moment with me right now, because you're in your prefrontal cortex because I'm causing you to think about things. Their prefrontal cortex when they feel validation,

Starting point is 00:19:30 and that's the part of your brain that is responsible for things like empathy, reasoning. They come back online. Trust begins in that moment, and collaboration becomes possible. So if you want to become a master communicator, you should be looking to validate others, not seek validation. There's a great way of saying that is a master communicator seeks to understand rather than be understood. I was not doing that. I was trying to be understood. So on the other side of that, though, when you're arguing to be right, when you're fighting to be right like I was as an as aaholic, the brain of the person across from you when you're arguing to be right perceives confrontation and danger. And what happens to them is they shut down and you lose the moment. And you

Starting point is 00:20:15 lose the moment, even if you win the point. It doesn't matter if you win the point. So if you're seeking to be right in a communication, in an interface with somebody, and you're arguing to be right, exclamation point, exclamation point, and there's no room for anything else. You point up at the sun and you say, the sun and the moon are the same thing. They just come at at different times. And the person's like, that's not true. And you say, yes, it is true. That person's going to back away because there's no room for negotiation because you're fighting to be right. So all of that running below the radar of your awareness, you don't know you're doing that. And everyone around you loses, including you. So let's talk about flipping the switch. So when I stopped chasing that rightness, because I was

Starting point is 00:21:01 humbled by this moment, when I stopped chasing that rightness and started choosing kindness, which is really just a matter of listening more than you talk, caring before you should. share and things like that. I had to force it in the beginning, but that's what I started to practice. But everything changed. I learned that kindness didn't equate to weakness. That was a concept. I thought that kindness meant that I was weak, right? And I didn't want to be weaker than I already thought I was. It didn't mean that I was surrendering in the conversation. It meant that I was remaining open and curious, which, by the way, is a power move. If you move through this world and you remain open and curious, you take the right protect switch off of your SD card and you leave it

Starting point is 00:21:44 open for other stuff? This is why I wear this hat. It's a cue. It says, hmm, and that's a cognitive distancing skill set, but what it stands for is haven't made up my mind. Why do we have to make up our minds about something? I was so compelled to make my mind up about everything and put an exclamation point. To be kind is a way of saying, I don't need to be understood. I need to understand. It's a flip of the switch. So it's a conscious shift from ego to awareness. As a matter of fact, much of the reason that I've spent my whole greater part of the last 15 years creating what I call the interface response system, which is a big part of the book, but also what we practice, a lot of you are in the Make Sense Academy, that's our private community. This interface response

Starting point is 00:22:28 system that I created, this was a big part of it because it was there to help me recognize that this conditioned and programmed mind, the nature of my conditioned and programmed mind and egoic ways as well, they needed to be placed on pause. You know, the idea of saying, we forgive you for you, no, not what you do.

Starting point is 00:22:48 It means that you say things without thinking about them first. It doesn't mean you're a bad person. It just means that your conditioned program mind, which is survivalistic for the most part, is calling the shots. You're not, you think you're calling the shots because you trust it in that pause so I can validate that I should probably shut up a little bit.

Starting point is 00:23:08 Now I needed some help from my mentor. But in that pause, what happened was is I reclaimed my freedom. And in the kindness, I reclaimed my humanity. I became a human again. And that's when I could start saying, hi, my name is J.C. I'm a recovering bullshit artist, an asaholic. And I've been clean for so many days. So this is a big, big thing.

Starting point is 00:23:30 So there's something I want to share with you in this space called fundamental irrationality. If you've never heard that before, maybe write it down. Fundamental irrationality. As a result of my new obsession with all of this human behavior stuff, and I just read like every book, as a result of my obsession with human behavior and reading endless books on human behavior and the human response system, I learned something really interesting. I learned that we spend most of our time in our lives defending beliefs that we can't prove. Do you ever find yourself trying to explain something and defend your belief and your concepts about

Starting point is 00:24:07 it without any evidence or proof? Of course you do. This is what cognitive bias is. It's called fundamental irrationality. We mistake our programming and our conditioned mind for the truth. What that means is if you just let your knee-jerk reaction, react versus respond, if you let your knee-jerk reaction dictate and call the shots, your brain thinks. thinks that you're right because you have this trust and faith in it. So we mistake our conditioning

Starting point is 00:24:36 and our programming for the truth. And we protect our fabricated illusions as if they're facts. And we defend facts that don't even have proof. Do you guys see this happening everywhere in the world right now? I don't have an opinion about who's right and who's wrong. I don't have an opinion about anything. And if it sounds like I do, I will listen to another opinion. That's where I'm at now. It's been a while. I've been clean. I learned that real wisdom begins where certainty ends. I need to say that again. I learned that real wisdom begins where certainty ends. And Socrates once said this. I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing. Now, that's not a weakness. That's a superpower. To live by that principle is to stay open, curious, and kind. And we

Starting point is 00:25:28 what it does is it unveils the path of least resistance to stay open, curious, and kind. And all that might mean for you is to be open to the idea that you might not know everything. Are you open to that? When I'm on substack and I put up a lot of these quotes and I always ask people, make sense, or can you dig it or write about it without even knowing it? People share their opinions. Sometimes they get a little bit nasty. I love that, you know, because it's human behavior and that's my thing.

Starting point is 00:25:58 I never take offense to it, but this stuff is happening without us knowing. But right now, in this moment, together this morning, you're thinking about it. And there's a part of you that's going, huh, there's something to this. I don't know if I'm ready and willing to admit it, but maybe I don't know everything. So here's a couple of final thoughts that I have on this. Being right feeds the ego, but being kind feeds the soul. Every time you pause, instead of pounce, what you're doing is consciously choosing to evolve. Every time you choose kindness, you set your inner hostage free.

Starting point is 00:26:38 My inner hostage is free. I'll leave you with the same question that my mentor left me with years and years ago. Well, I'll give you two questions. What do you think people think about you? And what's more important to you, to be right or to be kind? Make sense? So that's it for today. Remember something. If you learn something today, give it away, because that's the only way it's going to stay. You know, the highest form of self-actualization and just enjoying the present moment, enjoying your life experience, is knowing that you're taking what you love and you appreciate and is helping you grow and sharing it with others, serving humanity. There is no higher form. That's why a lot of you write. When somebody reads what you write and it changes them, it feels good, doesn't it? Feels good. Do we need to be right all the time? The biggest lesson that I've learned

Starting point is 00:27:31 is that I try to listen more. That's why I love to see your comments and I love to read through them. I love that. It's my favorite part of my work is not what I write or what I say. It's what you say and what you write. So that's it for today. Have an amazing day. We've got some great live interviews coming on the writer's way on Substack. So have an amazing day. It's good to be with you. Bye-bye now. Thanks.

Makes Sense - with Dr. JC Doornick - Right vs. Kind - What do you think people think about you? - Episode 117

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