Makes Sense - with Dr. JC Doornick - The Gratitude Trick That Rewires Your Brain by 9AM - E196

Episode Date: August 14, 2026

Your brain already ran its program this morning — before your feet hit the floor. That's not a metaphor. Neuroscience shows your brain boots up yesterday's emotional patterns automatically, the same way an AI model repeats whatever it was trained on. So here's the real question: who's writing the code today — you, or the world? In the next few minutes, I'm going to show you why a two-word gratitude practice is the single most powerful override for your morning routine — and why it's not sentimental; it's strategic. Makes sense? Good. Let's get into it.     Follow Dr. JC Doornick and the Makes Sense Academy:► Makes Sense Substack - https://drjcdoornick.substack.com ► Instagram: / drjcdoornick ► Substack: / drjcdoornick ►Facebook:  / makessensepodcast ►YouTube:  / drjcdoornick     MAKES SENSE PODCAST Welcome to the Makes Sense with Dr. JC Doornick Podcast. This podcast explores topics that expand human consciousness and enhance performance. On the Makes Sense Podcast, we acknowledge that it's who you are that determines how well what you do works, and that perception is subjective and an acquired taste. When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at begin to change. Welcome to the uprising of the sleepwalking masses. Welcome to the Makes Sense with Dr. JC Doornick Podcast.   SUBSCRIBE/RATE/REVIEW & SHARE our new podcast. FOLLOW Podcast: You will find a "Follow" button in the top right. This will enable the podcast software to alert you when a new episode launches each week. Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/makes-sense-with-dr-jc-doornick/id1730954168 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1WHfKWDDReMtrGFz4kkZs9?si=003780ca147c4aec   Podcast Affiliates: Kwik Learning: Many people ask me where I get all these topics, which I've been covering for almost 15 years. I have learned to read nearly four times faster and retain information 10 times better with Kwik Learning. Learn how to learn and earn with Jim Kwik. Get his program at a special discount here: https://jimkwik.com/dragon OUR SPONSORS: Operly - Take Back Control of Your Work Day and Get Rid of All Your AI Apps - Welcome to the new world of Time Freedom and Unlimited Scaling and Success with Operly -  https://go.getoperly.ai/video?ref=jean-claude-claude-d-2a95 Blue Blinds Bakery - Handcrafted with all-natural ingredients - www.blueblindsbakery.com   0:00 - Teaser 0:23 - Intro 1:30 - GREAT MORNING - Cancer Check In 5:56 - Not All Storms Come To Disrupt Your Life 7:53 - Gratitude is the Launch Pad For Your Great Day 8:21 - The Often Misunderstood Topic of Gratitude 10:25 - AI vs HI 12:15 - Is yesterday's program sufficient for today's plans? 13:11 - Your brain is always learning about you. 16:59 - That which we consume we assume 18:37 - We become efficient with being ourselves 22:00 - Your Brain is like a Search Engine 25:41 - The Two Most Important Words I Use Every Day 30:45 - Toxic Positivity 31:36 - Whole-O-Graphic Vision 40:23 - The Four Stages of Competence 45:48 - Close   Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Sometimes I like to talk about topics that I think are misunderstood. What it means to be misunderstood is it doesn't mean that you're wrong. It just means maybe there's another way of looking at things. You know, one of the most powerful things we can do is allow ourselves, permit ourselves to become open and curious today and see things from alternative vantage points. So that's what I mean by misunderstood. So this would be a topic that I think is terribly misunderstood and that is gratitude. And I think a lot of people miss the value and power of practicing gratitude.

or being in gratitude because of that misunderstanding. So I think it's worthy of discussing. Have you noticed that the world that we live in has been doing most of the thinking for you? That your beliefs, perceptions, reactions, fears and doubts have been shaped by unsolicited outside noise? How easy it's been for you to slip into that default sleepwalking mode and label it as life and reality. Yeah, that ends here. Welcome to the Make Sense with Dr. J.C. podcast. This is your opportunity to start thinking for yourself, reclaim control, and step back into that role as the shock caller and dominant force of your own reality.

It's when you change the way that you look at things, that the things that you look at begin to change. So let's wake up. Let's rise up. And let's make sense of why and how shift happens. Hmm. Makes sense. Great morning, everybody. Great morning.

So let me just, before I start, let me just give you a quick catch-up on what's been going on with all things, Dragon and cancer and stuff like that. So things got pretty bad. And when I say bad, meaning it's been a very humbling experience.

You know, my mindset is in the right place and I'm fully, fully, I'm fully in command using all of the tools that we talk about. But it's been very humbling in the same. sense that the pain and discomfort of the treatment is way, way more powerful than I thought it would be. When I first started this and I'm like, I got this, I got this, no problem, you know, I can do anything. I knew what I was doing there as I was programming my brain, right? But then when the

symptoms really came on, you know, they were bad, but then like two weeks into it, they came on. What I learned is that the symptoms from the first treatment two weeks later kicked in. So what was happening is that I was not sleeping and literally brought me to my knees. And I was coming into these mornings, these past couple of ones that we had to cancel. This episode has been, we've been trying to do this episode for two weeks, but I just, I couldn't even talk. I mean, I had no voice. It was like I had the full-blown flu and just barely could lift my limbs and things like that. And migraine headaches, too, which I've just become acquainted to. And let's not forget the hot flashes and all that. So it's not like I was dying, but I was incapacitated. And like I said, it brought me to my

knees. And we'll talk a little bit about this today, because we're going to talk about gratitude today. What's interesting about being brought to your knees is that when you're on your knees and, you know, you're just at the end of your rope, you still have the opportunity to look up and see God. Isn't that interesting? Sometimes we have to be brought to our knees. to see things. So even in the deepest and darkest of despair of that experience, I was able to find the other side. We're going to talk about gratitude today. I was able to acknowledge what I was grateful for, just like as simple as being alive today and things like that. So another interesting thing about it is that it once again kind of brought me to this next level. Now, the reason why I'm here today and I'm looking like

I'm not so bad, is the doctors gave me like a beta test. See, I've got work. I've got a work. I've got a podcast. But also I'm emceeing Jim Quicks event in September Limitless Live. That's just here in Greenwich, Connecticut. That's going to be an extraordinary event. And got an advanced copy of his new book, Limitless Daily, the only one. First copy ever signed by Jim as well. And I just want to say that this book has played a massive role. You can pre-order it right now. I think it's available on September 8th, right before his big event. But anyway, this book right here, you read for like three, five minutes a day, and it's as if he's talking to you. This book, I started it on my birthday, July 17th, and I read it

every day. And it's just unbelievable how what each reading says and how it feels like. So please, this is like a book that he wrote for you. And it's just unbelievable how what each reading says and how it feels like. So please, this is like a book that he wrote for you. And it really, really has helped me begin my day as it has this morning. What I was going to say is the doctor's beta tested the idea of getting me off the meds for a couple of days. So you're seeing me right now four days off the meds. I had a full night's sleep. I didn't have to sleep on the couch. There was no begging on my knees. Zero pain, zero discomfort. So I'm going to go back on the meds today. But it's just really nice to know that this is there. Like I could go on the meds for two weeks and then take a break. So I didn't know that before.

So I come to you today feeling very much myself, you know, very, very grateful for that. But also strangely excited to get back on the meds because I know they're working as well. So there's a difference, you know, if you know that something is going to change and not like get this idea that you're going to feel miserable forever, that plays a big role in this. I've got this quote for you guys today that I think really is relevant. And this has to do with how we look at the challenges and the storms that come in our life. It says not all storms come to disrupt your life. Some of them come to clear your path.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it. So we're going to get started today. And remember, this is being recorded and this will be dropped on this Friday of this week. For those of you listening to this live. And I welcome you to become part of the conversation. And what I mean by that is ask questions. I've got you guys on Substack here and I've got YouTube here. Ask questions, make distinctions, join the conversation.

And anything that is pertinent, relevant, and valuable will end up on the show. And we'll give you a little bit of a shout out. And that goes out to quite a lot of people. So, oh, and also, you know, my wife and I were in like the last final two or three weeks of this competition of America's favorite couple. Thanks so much for everybody that's voting for us. We have got a beautiful story, and obviously there's an interesting addition and component to the story right now.

But it really means a lot to us to win this, not so that we can be winners, but also even more powerful than that. Our story. And if you listen to the last episode of The Make Sense with Dr. J.C. podcast, you can hear our story because we were interviewed on another podcast. Shout out to Jenny Droninger at Second Chance on Love. And she was the prior winner of this competition and she interviewed us. It gives you a little bit of an essence of our story.

And we just feel like this is a world that needs to settle back into love and basic stuff. Anyway, go on over to Instagram at Dr. J.C. Dornick, click the link in the profile. And then you can vote for free. And you can also make tax deductible donations to their charities, Oceana and the Los Angeles Food Bank. And whatever amount you donate, you'll get that many votes. So this is gratitude, is programming your brain, and also acts as the launch pad of your day. So great morning humans, great morning world. I am Dr. J.C. Dornick, otherwise known as the dragon.

And I want to welcome you to another edition of the Make Sense with Dr. J.C. podcast and also welcome you to the uprising of the sleepwalking masses. And this is a community where confusion dies and progress thrives. Sometimes I like to talk about topics that I think are mis-onizing. What it means to be misunderstood is it doesn't mean that you're wrong. It just means maybe there's another way of looking at things. You know, one of the most powerful things we can do is allow ourselves, permit ourselves to become open and curious today and see things from alternative vantage points.

So that's what I mean by misunderstood. So this would be a topic that I think is terribly misunderstood and that is gratitude. And I think a lot of people miss the value and power of practicing gratitude or being in gratitude because of that misunderstanding, so I think it's worthy of discussing. And hopefully I'm going to be able to show you a different aspect of it that'll increase its value, but also make you understand that it's a lot easier to achieve than you think, even in the darkest of hours. So before you roll your eyes and think, oh, great, here's another guy telling me to keep a

gratitude journal and write down three things that I'm thankful for. That's not where we're going to go today, obviously. You know, I wouldn't do that to you. I'm not here to, you know, embellish on something that you already know. I'm here to point something out and say, hey, what about that? Have you seen this? You don't have to buy into it. I always like to say that I'm here to brainwash you.

And that doesn't mean convince you into thinking in a certain way, but actually wash your brain to a state where you can be open and curious to other things. Because I don't think gratitude is simply something that nice people do, by the way. Mean people can have gratitude. I don't think it's like some sort of a mood. I don't think it's a cute little spiritual space to sit in and meditate on. And I definitely don't think gratitude is something that you're supposed to wait to feel when life finally starts cooperating with you or when you organically.

This is a funny, I love that word organically. I'm just going to organically let it happen. I understand that and that's trusting in the process and letting things flow, but you have a role in it, like responsibility in things. But it's not something that we feel when life finally, starts cooperating with you or when you organically start appreciating things. So think about it. In this fast-moving world of AI right now, I like to use AI as an analogy because everybody's kind of aware of it. I believe gratitude is one of the most powerful forms of H.I. Human intelligence.

And a lot of people are so impressed with artificial intelligence that I think that they forget how impressive human intelligence is. I mean, first of all, artificial intelligence. requires human intelligence. But there's a lot of powerful forms of human intelligence. We're talking about gratitude today and programming that's available to us. Just like in chat GPT, there's like a feature like you could create an image or something like that. And everybody gets so excited. What about the feature of gratitude that's already inside of us? And we're not really using it. In fact, it's a prompt. It's a command. It's a filter. And it also can act as a disruptor. And when you use gratitude intentionally, it can become the launch pad, like I said, in the title of your entire day.

It's one of my greatest secrets of how I can just be right in the middle of a shipstorm and still say, hey, with all this ship, there's got to be a pony somewhere. And that's a power move for your day. That's a power move. Think about it. Your brain already ran a program this morning when you woke up before your feet even hit the floor, if they have. Yesterday was already waiting for you when your brain booted up this morning, just like a computer. Your worries were there, your responsibilities, your unfinished conversations,

the bills that you are letting stack up, your health, your health goals, your mistakes, business, your kids, your problems, all of those things when you rose up this morning were sitting there waiting for you. And they were ready to reload and pick up from where you left off yesterday. So here's the question. Is yesterday's program? Think about yesterday's program. Yesterday's problems, yesterday's victories, yesterday's program. Is yesterday's program appropriate for today's schedule? People don't think about that too often. And the real answer is, is I don't know. I don't know if yesterday is still relevant for today. I don't know if the way that I looked at things and my mood and things like that are going to be effective today. They were for yesterday, for whatever reason.

In thinking about that, who's writing your program today? Is it you or is it yesterday? Is it you or is it the world that is about to come and have a chat with you and direct you? Because if you don't consciously and voluntarily participate in the programming of your mind, something or someone else will sit with that. So let's get into this. This is about your brain and how it's always learned. about you. Another interesting way to look at your brain activity and just acknowledge that your brain

is always learning. It's a large language learning model. It's always trying to learn about what about you. So I've been thinking a lot about artificial intelligence lately because it's funny how human intelligence is creating artificial intelligence. And I always kind of wonder if humans are just so naive to not see that we might even be artificial intelligence created by another higher being and so on, turtles all the way down. But I've been thinking a lot about artificial intelligence and I'm talking about what we call large language models mainstream. You would know that as like Chad TPT or like Claude or Gemini or something like that. So one of the things that I find fascinating about artificial intelligence is that we can train them not only to respond and give us information,

and give us answers, but to do so in a certain way and even with a certain perspective or attitude. Like, you could take a step and not only prompt chat GPT with a question or write me this or do this, but you can say as Leonardo DiCaprio or take your favorite author like Jim Quick and say, I want you to write this as if you were Jim Quick, as if you were actually Jim Quick. And you'll see that it'll change the way that it comes out. So we learn to work with chat GPT by creating what's called a knowledge center, a knowledge base. A lot of people don't understand this because they think it's like a Google thing. But you can actually repetitively teach.

And I know that a lot of you know this. ChatGPT will start to talk like you. It'll answer a question or write something like you. They all have what's called a knowledge center. And if you're smart and you want to use it effectively, you'll teach it things. You'll say whenever I answer this question, this is the way I would typically do it. or here, let me let you read my book and you can see the way that I look at things and the way I interpret things. So that's because these things have what's called a knowledge center or knowledge

base. And those are there for us to train them. It's there for that, and in their sense, to learn and give a system information about how you want it to look at things, how you want to, I can take the interface response system and say, before you answer any question, before you write anything, I want you to go through the four steps of the interface response system. And I've just trained my chat GPT to not only think inside of its box, but outside of its box. Look at it from different vantage points, right? And just gather information, patterns, languages, examples, associations between things, feedback over and over again. And we do it with repetition, just like we build habits.

And eventually, it becomes increasingly capable of generating outputs not only based on facts, but also based on what it's been trained on thinking facts are. So sometimes the answers you'll get, especially if you train it, just like you can train the human brain and experience cognitive bias and believe something, even if it's not true, sometimes facts are not required. And I think you all know what I'm saying there. Winky, winky, winky.

I mean, how many times have you or somebody you're talking to claim something to be true, that it's just not true? you know, what's the Mark Twain quote, you know. Now, conversely, think about human intelligence. Remember, we're talking about gratitude today. So I'm just kind of laying the foundation. Think about your brain in the same light, having a knowledge base and having a trainable, learnable, reprogramable knowledge base, just like artificial intelligence.

And then look at your daily activities. Really take a look at them. Look at your daily activities and what and who is providing you with information. and the way you would do that is not look to blame other things or outside forces, but look at what you consume. Look at what you're consuming on a regular basis, who you're consuming. You know, what books are you reading? Do you understand why I make sure that I read this every morning?

Like I'm telling all of you, you guys should do really. Go get the pre-sale on this book. This is a fantastic book because I'm controlling what I consume. So look at your daily activities and what and who are providing you with information. What have you been training your human intelligence on? Remember, what we consume ends up becoming what we assume. Are you making assumptions? And if you are, and you are, you can always trace it back to your consumption.

Consumption equates to assumption. So you've been feeding your human intelligence, selected thoughts, reactions, interpretations, beliefs, stories, emotional patterns, and repeated behaviors. eventually, just like chat GPT, the things that once required conscious thought start happening with less and less conscious effort, meaning they become habitual. They go on autopilot. So that's one of the beautiful, but at the same time, dangerous things about being human. And this is the whole God has a sense of humor thing.

And when you're in the shitstorm, like I've been with the cancer treatment, this stuff is really important to know about. And you might not have cancer, but you have your own version of cancer in life, your belief systems, your concepts, or how you let people walk all over you and how you perceive the world, right? It's all cancer. So we become efficient at being ourselves. Whether you know it or not, whether you like it or not, you're very comfortable and efficient at being you, whether it's helping you or hurting you.

And that includes the parts of ourselves that aren't serving us, right? It's no different than someone who has been brainwashed. there's that word again, to think that believing things in a certain way are the way. This is why we believe in things in a certain way. And we have our belief systems. It's because that's the way we've been programmed. Good or bad. I'm not telling anybody to change.

I'm just telling everybody to just maybe take note of that. This is the whole reason I wrote my book because my book was written because I experienced the darkness and darkness of despair and I didn't like it and I didn't want to do it anymore. I wanted to come up with a system that would acknowledge how that happens and how we can slip away and fall off track and how to recover, how to turn things around. That's the whole essence of me writing makes sense. So you get the idea. That's why I wrote the book. And that is to take command of this stuff that's happening whether you know it or not. In fact, this reminds me of one of my favorite talks that Joe Dispenza does. He talks about breaking the habit of being yourself. Any Joe Dispenza fans out

there. If you ever get a chance, you know, before you meet your maker, you need to go to Joe Dispenza retreat, like the full week retreat. Best money you've ever spent. Because what he does is teach you how to break the habit of being yourself, but then also take command of your brain and your healing and the way you look at things. I think Joe would love my book. So think about driving for a second. When you first learned how to drive, everything required your attention. My daughter's learning to drive right now. She's got to pay attention to everything, get the big picture and all that stuff. Mirrors, brakes, gas, steering wheel, other people coming, you know, speed, all that stuff. Then all of a sudden, you realize you can drive somewhere familiar, pull into a parking lot and barely remember

portions of the drive, right? What I'm saying is sometimes we have to spend a lot of time learning and being attentive to things like driving, but then all of a sudden we can go 10 minutes and drive perfectly without even thinking, like, oh my God, right? So your brain learned the pattern. So what happens when that pattern that your brain learned is something like, wake up, grab the phone, check email, check messages, check social media, remember everything that's wrong from yesterday, being worried, begin comparing yourself, comparative realities and all of that stuff, begin reacting. All of that stuff that's programmed, all of that stuff before you've even taken a pee. So in other words, what we do is we wake up and we wait for our orders.

that in that structure. If you don't have something that you do, and I'm going to teach you something really simple, you're going to just take orders, especially if you look at your phone and you check your text or email. What if somebody says, I don't like you? Hey, by the way, you're fired.

What a great way to not take command of the day, but let the day take command of you. So that's the programming, that's the consumption. And eventually your brain starts running that program without even asking you. And that's what's kind of nice about the brain. We don't have to think about thinking. It just does it.

And we just kind of assume that if we think and we see something and we think something about it, that it must be right. A lot of you have heard about what's called the RAS, the reticular activating system. This is a feature of your operating system. It's simplifying something much, much larger, a much larger neurological process. But one useful way to think about it is that your brain's filtering and has like an attention machinery component to it. And we're going to use RAS to kind of acknowledge. this filtering and attention machinery that's in our brain processing things all the time.

So your brain is constantly being bombarded with information. If you consciously processed everything available to you, you would be extremely overwhelmed. Now, this is an important distinction, is to acknowledge that if you were to process everything, truth, non-truth, you know, fact, no fact. If you were to process all of it, you would be so, overwhelmed that you had shut down. The brain was not engineered to do that. So your brain filters things. And just think about the rulebook behind the filtering of things. Your brain filters things and it prioritizes things and it essentially asks and your repeated focus helps teach it what it is that deserves your attention and what it doesn't. But you've experienced

this. You decide you want a certain car, for example, here's the RAS and suddenly the car's everywhere. And everybody thinks that's such a cool phenomenon, you know, where attention goes, energy flows. And we just all of a sudden, if I think of a red VW bug, all of a sudden I start seeing red VW bugs, as if I manifested them. Did everybody buy a red VW bug yesterday? No. So where are they all coming from? The cars were already there, the red VW bugs. They were already there. The only thing that changed was you. You changed. your attention and your focus by thinking about them or thinking about buying one or for whatever reason taking note of them or saying, hey, that's cool. I've always wanted this. So what we're looking

at is there's some powerful stuff going on when you intentionally say something or think about something. That's how it fits into this conversation. So if the first thing that you repeatedly ask your brain in mourning was, what's wrong? What's missing? What am I behind on? What's in store for me this day? what should I be afraid of? Well, then your attention becomes very good at going to work on those things, just like the RAS and the VW bug. And it will go to work at locating evidence for those questions. That's how that works.

You can look at that and say, oh, those motherfuckers. Or you could say, I wonder if I can control that system. So then we say something like, see, I knew today was going to suck. So you gave your brain a search query. Think about the artificial intelligence or Google or something like that. You ask it questions. and it goes to work on that question. Your brain works the same way.

You just don't have like a space bar, a search bar. It's much more advanced than that. You don't need it, right? You gave your brain a search query, and it went to work looking for evidence on that. Because you can't acknowledge everything, it would be too overwhelming. So the search queries, the prompts that we give our brain

are very important because we direct it to focus on things that are in support. So what if you change the question and the first question of your day was something like, what am I grateful for? Human intelligence in the search bar of your brain. You just said, what am I grateful for? Well, your brain's going to go to work on that. And it's going to figure it out. Isn't that cool?

This is the whole concept of being the launch pad of your day. So now we're getting somewhere. So I want to talk to you about the two most important words that I've ever, ever discovered. So I've incorporated these into what I consider to be a life job. changing morning structure, which I'll share with any of you. There's a podcast episode on it. If you've bought my book, the assets for the book, you'll see are in there. So you can go find that stuff anytime. But this is what I call my great morning rise up routine, which I've already done. And it's just ridiculously simple. It's just two words that I say. But it's when you say these

two words, it's important. So before the world greets me, before the world greets you in the morning, before the phone pings for my attention, before responsibilities hit me, before the dragon, gets a chance to start like narrating his life. There's this moment when we go from unconscious to conscious, from offline to online. And you'll know it. You can always identify when your eyes first open in the morning. I do it every day. And that's when your computer is kind of like booting up.

You have like a 30 second window to acknowledge it. And I just want you in that moment, before you've decided anything, before your yesterday program has booted up, I just want you to say the two words, thank you. That's it. Thank you. And I'm not saying thank you because everything is perfect, by the way. I want you to mechanically say the words thank you. Remember, this is a query. This is a prompt. It's not because everything's perfect. I'm saying thank you because I woke up. That's it. Thank you. And especially now with this whole cancer thing, very, very grateful for waking up, you know. There's another day. You've just been given another 24 hours

of opportunity, potential, another conversation, another sunrise. another chance to love somebody, another chance to create something magical, another chance to screw something up and learn from it. Grateful for that, right? It's another chance to participate in this bizarre, beautiful experience called being you, being alive. Also acknowledge that it might be our last chance. Very easy to do when you get a diagnosis. The guarantee of the illusion of tomorrow goes away. So you're very, very grateful for this present moment. So there's some work to be done there. But those two words are not like the conclusion of practicing this. They're a launch pad.

They're a starting point. Because now what you've done, because if you say thank you right off the bat, your brain doesn't really know what you're thankful for. So just like a search query, it goes for what? And you know what it does? It goes to work on it. Your brain starts to figure out what you're grateful for, what you're thankful for. The boss just said thank you for what?

For what? I don't get it. It doesn't make sense yet, but it goes to work on that. And putting your brain to work in the morning is the secret. Because whatever you put it to work on, it's going to go to work on. And that RAS is going to show up that day. So think about it. This is the way we're starting our day.

So people think that gratitude, and this is the misunderstanding, that it means I'm happy with everything, so I shouldn't want anything more. You are so lucky to have what you have. You should not want anything more. That's not what it is. I think that's bullshit. And it's lying to yourself. And it's not going to help anybody.

Gratitude does not extinguish ambition. Remember I was saying nice people, kind people, mean people. Everybody can experience gratitude. It does not extinguish ambition. What it does is it fuels it, it prompts it. I can be grateful for my health and still improve it, right? I can be grateful for my marriage to my lovely wife. become a better husband. Grateful for my business and still grow it. Grateful for my body and still

train it. Gratitude doesn't say I have enough, therefore I should stop. It's not what it says. Here's what it says. It says, look at everything that I already have to build with. Look at my starting point of potential today. That's called leverage. Remember, we're talking about a launch pad for your day. And by the way, it doesn't have to just happen in the morning. If you missed it this morning, you can have a launch pad right now. You can put a search query into your brain and put it to work. Now you understand once again why what I consume in the morning ends up being what I assume.

So what I read this morning from Jim's new book, remember you can pre-sale this on right now. This is the only copy that's ever been given. And he signed it. He goes, J.C. Dragon, we have breakfast every Sunday. And it says, my first signing, he's going to sell millions of these copies. He says, I wrote this for you. Isn't that amazing? I read that every day. So look at everything that I already have to build with. Look at my

starting point and my potential. That's called leverage. You are not starting your day from nothing. You're starting your day from the abundance of what already is. And don't be mistaken, gratitude is not positivity. A lot of people think that it's like a positive way to go through life. Not everything that I have is great, but it's mine and I have it. And it's a starting point. This is really important because I'm not interested in creating what I call toxic positivity. Look that up. I don't want to pretend that painful things are not painful at all. Some of the greatest lessons in life come from shit. I don't want to smile when my house is burning down saying, I'm so grateful for the warmth. That's not what this is about. Or pretend that I'm happy

and healthy when these cancer meds bring me to my knees in just pain and discomfort. That's not awareness, that's denial. Gratitude isn't about denying reality. What gratitude is about is expanding your ability to perceive reality. Think about that. So two things can be true. Something can absolutely suck like when I was just miserable on these meds, but at the same time, there can still be something available to be grateful for. So that's the practice in my book, in the interface response system. I teach something called holographic vision in my book. And it's just a simple, idea of looking at the idea of a hologram and just choosing to look at things from all sides. Take a walk around something. Step to the right, step to the left. Look at things from a different

vantage point, holographic vision. You can learn about that in the book. So that's a big part of the interface response system that I'm always talking about. Specifically, phase three, you know, it goes perceive, pause, process, and then proceed. So in phase three, we call it process. and that is to consciously access all aspects and vantage points of your reality. So perceive, pause, process, proceed. So the unconscious human, the sleepwalker, I've all been there. I've spent most of my life like that. The unconscious human perceives an event and immediately becomes the event.

So it's an outside in thing. Bad news? Reaction. Argument reaction. Diagnosis, reaction. Pain, reaction. So the interface response system is about creating space and entertaining alternative perspective. Step one, perceive, recognize the fact that your brain is programmed if you let it just boot up, that computer, to see things the way it's been conditioned to.

Yesterday, mother, father, teacher, preacher, society, evolution, everything that's going on. It's programmed to see things based on that. Those are the prompts. It's not necessarily necessary. Right? But step one is to just acknowledge that's the way the brain works. Step two is to consciously, as a result of that, say, hmm, and pause. Create the space.

That doesn't seem like a smart way to look at things, or it doesn't seem like the only way that I could look at things. Hang on a second. Pause. I'll get back to you. That's step two. So here's step three. Asking questions now that you've paused.

What's in my control? What's out of my control? What meaning am I assigning to this? And then we proceed. So that's the process that I do in the morning by saying thank you. And putting my brain to work on what I'm thankful for. My brain always responds when I say thank you and goes, for what? And I go, well, let's figure it out.

Let's start our day like that. Hold on, computer. Hold on yesterday. We don't need you yet. Pause. We're going to work on gratitude right now. Who do I choose to be in every response today? I want to start from that launch pad.

Gratitude lives beautifully inside that pause, okay? Because gratitude forces you to look at what is. And it can interrupt the automatic program. So that's that disruptor of it. And I know this because I recently had to test it, right? Not in a seminar or a book in real life. The universe and God tests us. As many of you know, I've got this diagnosis of cancer.

and there are moments in life for all of us when all the personal development shit that you learned that we talk about on this show is kind of like put on the witness stand. You can think that you're indestructible and you are, you know, everything's survivable, but you can think that all you want. But when you get put to task, when you get put on the witness stand and it goes, oh, really, how about this? And it drops a boulder on you, right? So it's easy to talk about gratitude when business is booming.

Oh, I'm so grateful. Or the kids are healthy. The body feels good. And life seems to be cooperating, as we said before. But what happens in life when something happens that you didn't order from the menu? Or that wasn't part of the outcome that you desire. That's the test. That's the witness stand.

So I've had that recently. You know, when I got this diagnosis, I had choices still. My choices didn't go away. the direction I was moving didn't go away, but it was like a big boulder being dropped in my river that was on its way somewhere. But I had choices. Not about whether or not the diagnosis existed, it did. It does. I don't want to pretend that it didn't. I mean, when I'm in pain and discomfort, I don't want to pretend that I'm not. It's just part of my new thing, right? Those things are out of my control, but I had choices about my relationship with it. And this is still around gratitude.

It always starts with gratitude. I could, allow cancer to become the organizational principle of my consciousness, wake up thinking cancer, go to sleep thinking cancer. I could easily do that if I just hand the keys of trust and control over the universe, right? So I'm just going to go with the flow. I walk through every conversation that I have thinking about cancer in the back of my mind and just fear shows up, you know, and fear showed up. Of course it did. I'm human. But at the same time, gratitude showed up too. that's the thing is not denying and being naive and pretending that fear didn't show up, but also recognizing that gratitude's always there.

Remember, I said it was when I was brought to my knees that I was able to look up and see God. Couldn't see it before. Gratitude didn't tell me, don't be scared. It said, look again. That's what gratitude says. Look again. What else might be true? Look at your wife.

Look at your children while you feel like shit. look at the people reaching out to you while you're having a bad day. Look at the doctors. Look at the modern medicine that is just so incredible. A doctor said in a funny way to me, it's never been a better time to get cancer because of the modern medicine. So look at your body fighting for you, even when you're in pain. That's your body fighting for you.

Look at your morning structure. Look at your 24 hours. Look at the fact that you're still here. Look at the moments that you used to rush through that suddenly feel sacred. look again. And that's what I began realizing. Gratitude doesn't necessarily change the thing that we're looking at. It changes the person doing the looking, to be in gratitude, to practice gratitude. And keep in mind, I'm putting value on letting those first two words ring out in the morning. Thank you. That's all this is. Cancer was still cancer, but I don't have to become cancer. My diagnosis could become part of my

experience without becoming my identity. Right? That's the power, not denial, not delusion, just simple awareness. At the end of Joe Dispenza events, people always ask them, what do I do now? What's the first step? Just like you could ask me right now. And I would just say, allow yourself, permit yourself to become more aware. Hello, the Silver Knight. Elizabeth, great morning. Great morning, Edwin. Good to see everybody on Substack and on YouTube. Great to see everybody. And some of the deepest gratitude that I've ever experienced has happened during one of the most challenging seasons of my life right now, which means I'm saying that cancer has been a blessing and a gift because it's placed me in such a deep form of

gratitude. And that's what it does, is it forces you to stop thinking about yesterday and tomorrow, forces you to, or invites you to stop giving a shit about stuff that doesn't matter. I don't care. I don't know. I don't need to know. I'm just sitting here in gratitude. And what that means is that gratitude cannot be something that's merely like a reward for life going well. In fact, sometimes it's like the very thing that allows us to navigate when life doesn't. That's what I'm interested in. I'm interested in handling adversity with grace, because from what I can see at 55, it's pretty prominent.

You know, life kind of does suck and then you die. So imagine if we learned how to embrace and enjoy the suck. So we have to move from sleepwalking to programming ourselves to become the programmers. So how do we make gratitude become something that goes on autopilot? How does it become automatic? Develop that automatic trait of having an attitude of gratitude. You can read about that, but how do we actually make that happen? Let's talk about it.

So this brings me to the four stages of competence. This is not something I created, but this is something a lot of people are unaware of or maybe they forgot. And this is kind of mapped beautifully for the interface response system. So the first stage of becoming competent at something to develop the attitude of gratitude is we have to start practicing. But stage one is when we're unconsciously incompetent. I lovely call this sleepwalking. We're just not aware.

That's why we want to practice awareness. You don't know what you don't know. You're waking up. You're checking your phone. You don't know. If you did that this morning, you didn't know. You're forgiven. You check your phone.

You're reacting. You're complaining. You're feeding your mom. mind with chaos, you're consuming chaos, chaos consumption, and you don't even realize that there's another way, because you're unconsciously incompetent. And then something happens in that moment. So there's value to it, because it is a starting point. Maybe you hear this podcast, this conversation that we're having, maybe life punches you in the face. Suddenly you see the pattern. Makes you go, hmm, that's interesting. And that brings on stage two.

and that is when you become consciously incompetent. That's a big step to just say, I don't know. Something's going on that is out of my control. You become aware of your incompetence. So now you know, that's a big step. That's what we refer to as drifting and shifting. You could be drifting without knowing you're drifting, and you're going to go way down the shore,

lose sight of your towel and your shoes. But it's when you realize I'm drifting, you catch yourself reaching for the phone. You catch yourself complaining. Sometimes you'll do something and you go, ooh, I don't know if I meant to do that. You notice yourself beginning the morning in scarcity and you say, hmm, pause.

Remember, perceive as step one of the interface response system is when we just kind of take a note of something, the way the brain works. And that prompts us to go, wait a second. That's the awakening, by the way. that's perceiving. And this brings on stage three. A lot of you should be in stage two or stage three or beyond right now.

Stage three is when we become consciously competent. This is where we practice. This is process in the interface responses. And this is where the work happens. The questions get asked. The alarm goes off. Your mind wants the phone and you consciously say, do I want to pick that phone up right now?

No. you know, no thanks and start asking, what am I grateful for? Hold on a second. What am I grateful for? So you practice it. You practice it now. You practice it tomorrow morning and the next day and the next. And maybe you even journal about it. I love to write about things. I find like it sinks in. Maybe you meditate on it. Maybe you simply lie there for 30 seconds and genuinely feel appreciation for something specific that you're grateful for. I like to do what's called a gratitude roundup, a thank you roundup. I just envision all the things that I'm thankful for rounding up around my head. And I laugh.

It's funny. And all of a sudden I say, what was I worried about? You're doing it on purpose. You're programming your new program in stage three, consciously competent. And then eventually comes stage four when you've practiced it long enough. And this is James Clear's stuff on habits and stuff. and Wayne Anderson's stuff on habits. You do it long enough that you become unconsciously competent.

You don't even know that you're good at it because it just happens on autopilot. And this is when people say, man, how do you always have such a good attitude? And you go, I didn't know it. Thank you. Thank you for that. Great morning, joy, great morning, Verocha.

Good to see everybody. Calpana says in Hinduism, we call it Chetna, the awareness. I love that. There's a word. I'm going to look it up. Thank you, Calpana. That'll be on the show. Chetna, C-H-E-T-N-A. So we become unconsciously competent. One morning you just wake up like I did this morning. Not feeling great, feeling a little shitty, which is better for me. And before you even thought about the exercise, the words appear. Thank you. Thank you. Automatic. To get to the point where somebody says something nasty to you.

and you don't overreact. And you almost internally say, thank you. I'm thinking about it. Oh, no thanks. Right? So now your interface response system is becoming highly, highly healthy and effective. Thank you. So that's when you know that you've installed something.

The voluntary behavior has become part of the automatic operating system, but it's healthy. Your human intelligence learned the program, just like ChatGPT. Remember that database? okay and now it runs so tomorrow morning i'm going to just simply challenge you tomorrow morning before you touch your phone before email comes on to the scene social media or the news oh or even talking to somebody before you allow the world to tell you what deserves your attention take simple ownership of your interface by just pausing acknowledging and just say thank you and then ask yourself Hmm, what am I grateful for?

That's it for today. To support the Make Sense with Dr. J.C. podcast, be sure to subscribe, like, and share, as well as follow the Make Sense substack for free daily quotes, live streams, and blogs. And remember, learning without action is just another form of distraction. If something hit home and you learn something today,

give it away. That's the only way it's going to stay. See you next time. Makes sense.