Makes Sense - with Dr. JC Doornick - The Humbling: The Science of Post-Traumatic Growth - E198

Episode Date: August 21, 2026

Everything you're stressed about today? Most of it is about to become worthless. Not because you'll fix it. Because something bigger is about to make it look small. I'm Dr. JC Doornick. I was recently diagnosed with cancer, and what happened next wasn't just fear. It was the fastest reordering of my priorities I've ever felt. Things I obsessed over for years, gone in a week. Research on post-traumatic growth says most people go through this exact shift. By the end of this episode, you'll know what you're getting wrong about your own time. This is The Humbling.   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 0:25 - Intro 1:18 - The Humbling - The Science of Post-Traumatic Growth 2:45 - GREAT MORNING WORLD 3:51 - The Most Profound Change that took place after my diagnosis 6:03 - The Humbling - To be Humbled 7:48 - Humbling vs. Humiliation 16:56 - The Humbling corrects the price tags we place on things in life. 20:09 - Steve Jobs - Decision Making Filter 22:12 - Randy Pausch - The Last Lecture 24:52 - Normalizing Miracles 29:18 - Caring Less 33:05 - Life Currency 33:51 - Post-Traumatic Growth 35:54 - Ego Death and Near-Death Experiences 38:58 - Knowledge vs. Knowing 40:38 - Do We Have to Wait to Be Humbled?   Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What if you acknowledge everything that you're stressed out about today and recognize that a surprising amount of it could become completely irrelevant in just an instant? And that's not because you fixed it. It's not because it just like poof went away. It's more because something bigger entered your life and suddenly put it into perspective. 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. Makes sense. So today is an interesting one. And it stems from the answer that I give at this time when people ask me how I'm doing. I always found that to be an interesting and loaded question when you say, how are you doing? I prefer to ask the question, what's new and exciting? You know, it's nice to know what you'll say and have it be something meaningful when people

ask you how you're doing. So I call this the humbling, the science of post-traumatic growth. And it starts with this idea. What if you acknowledge everything that you're stressed out about today and recognize that a surprising amount of it could become completely irrelevant in just an instant? or as in my book I call it just in a snap. What if the things that you're stressed out could in an instant, like right now, become completely irrelevant?

And that's not because you fixed it. That's not what we talk about here. It's not because it just like poof went away. It's more because something bigger entered your life and suddenly put it into perspective. And I think everybody here knows about that. What if something just disappeared that's been bothering you because it became irrelevant? And something happened in your life for you, even if it's good or a bad thing, that put it into perspective.

So great morning world, great morning humans. For those of you that have never met me, my name's Dr. J.C. Dornick, otherwise known as the dragon. And if you could see my desk here in my studio, I have just so many dragon things all over. the place that people send me. It's just so crazy. I got a lacrosse jersey there sent to me of a lacrosse team called the Dragons. You know, it's like everywhere. And I'll also remind you that people told me over and over and over again not to call myself the dragon. And I'm like, but I am. So I'm happy I followed through with that. But that's what I go by. And I want to welcome everybody to the Make Sense with Dr. J.C. podcast, another edition, the live edition. And I also

want to welcome you to what we call the uprising of the sleepwalking masses. As many of you know, and I say this, not to make it about this, but as many of you know, and some of you don't know, I was recently diagnosed with cancer. And we're going to look at that in a different way and look at your version of that, whatever's going on in your life in a different way. One of the most profound things that have happened since that diagnosis is actually not fear. Strangely enough, I'm not scared. You know, I was telling my kids this, and I'm not afraid of what might happen.

I wasn't afraid of what might happen before the diagnosis. I'm not scared. But what happened is something I can only describe as the fastest reordering of my priorities that I've ever experienced in my life. That's the most profound thing that's happened as a result of receiving this diagnosis. And you'll see that you don't have to receive. receive a diagnosis per se to have this happen. But I just want you to know that when somebody says, how are you doing? And I kind of like go through my filing system, that's what I'm thinking about,

is my priorities have been completely reorganized, completely reorganized. Things that used to piss me off don't have the same power. Just happen. Don't have the same power. Things that I want to control don't seem to require much controlling. anymore and that's a great feeling. People I wanted to have understand me, like, you know, those people out there that I just feel like didn't get me or people that I was trying to get to understand me, I'm okay with the fact that they don't. And situations that I thought needed to be resolved immediately, well, it turns out a lot of them don't. Don't get me wrong. I'm not like this guy that has no issues or doesn't ever fly off the handle or anything like.

that. You know, I can say I'd do it a lot less, but there are still things there, you know, and there's still some things that are connected now to the things that matter most to me that I still will stand for, sometimes even foolishly. But most everything else, I just don't care about them the same way anymore. And this is what's happened. This is what's happening. In fact, in many cases, I don't care about a lot of things at all anymore. And remember, this is the most profound thing that I'm thinking about when somebody says, how are you? So I've been searching for the right words to describe what's happening to me. The word that I came up with, and this is how I answer is, is humbled. You know, whenever somebody says, how are you doing, I just say, I'm extremely

humbled by this experience. And we're going to kind of explain what that means. And I'm going to challenge you to kind of look at that in your own way today, this idea of like what it would take and what it would feel like and what it would do for you if you got humbled. And there's some tough ways to get humbled. I sure found one. But there's also just some eye-opening recognition in life that will humble you. It's like even just looking at that picture. I remember looking at that kind of picture that we see.

It's like a meme where you're looking at like planet Earth, which is like this teeny little speck in the galaxy of the universe, seeing all the unknown in an arrow it says, remember, you are here, right? And you realize how insignificant you are and you get humbled. So that's the way it could happen as well. The goal today, I want to make sense of something that I'm calling the humbling. And I love that name. And what that is, is that's what happens to a human being when life hands them something big enough to challenge their illusion of control. Why can an encounter with mortality? Why can an encounter with mortality? Why can an encounter with mortality, so dramatically reorganize what matters. And also we're going to look at the idea that

maybe, most importantly, do we really have to wait for something catastrophic to happen before our lives can start to change and see things and live clearly? What does it actually mean to be humbled? This is important. I think there's an important distinction between being humbled and being humiliated. Humiliation says this, I am less. Humbling says, maybe I'm not as important, certain, permanent, or in control as I thought I was. Humiliation can diminish your sense of self-worth. Humbling corrects your sense of scale. And that's a beautiful correction, isn't it? So we all walk around with some sort of a model of reality. I talk a lot about mother, father, teacher, preacher. It's not really your model. It's the one that you were taught. It's the one that you're going

with right now. It's not the model. It's your model. That's why we meet people all the times that have different models and we kind of like either fight them or just say, hey, that's cool. Everybody gets a model. But we all walk around with this model of reality and that is our operating system. This is who I am. This is what's important. This is where I'm going. And this is what should happen. My body should work this way. People should behave this way or that way. And my plans should work out. Think about what the should means. It's kind of like a little sense of entitlement. Like who are we to say the way things should go? We're just regurgitating what we've learned. That's our operating system. Underneath it is an assumption of something we rarely acknowledge, and that is the assumption that we have time. This is an inflection point of this discussion today is just to acknowledge. where you stand with how much time you think you have. I'll make that call later. I'll take that trip someday. I'll forgive that person eventually. I'll stop worrying so much when things settle down. When are things going to settle down? I find that by the time things settle down,

other things have settled up. I'll take better care of myself next month. I'll be more present when I get through this busy season. Busy season. Isn't it always a busy season? If it's not a busy season, it's just that we're not busy with the season. It's not the season, is it? I'll straighten that out with my wife and my kids tomorrow.

Or maybe I'll just wait to the end of the week. It's been a crazy week. Someday, you know, a better time. That's what we say. And then occasionally life introduces something so, profound and powerful that it's enough to challenge that entire operating system. Now remember, the idea is, do we need to wait for something reactively in life to happen to challenge our operating system or can we challenge it ourselves? That's what I'm hoping for for everybody today

and me prior to my challenge. So occasionally life introduces something so powerful, powerful enough to challenge the entire operating system. So for me, as you know, I'm just using this in context, it was cancer. And I was a pretty humbled guy, but I never had something that big happen that humbled me. This was a big thing. That's what I mean when I say the humbling. It's when reality becomes bigger than the model that you've built on reality. It's not fun to get humbled all the time, but ooh, is it valuable and necessary? So the question is, how am I? Dragon, how are you? People ask that all the time now. They say, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, what's going on.

You know, how are you doing? How are you? And my answer, as I said, is that I'm incredibly humbled by this experience. And I love that answer. And I love the conversation that ensues after because it has the person walk away and say, how are you doing with your experience as well? Is it humbling you or are you just comfortable and putting up with a bunch of shit? I tell them I'm not scared and I'm really not.

But I will tell you that the physical experience of what I'm going through, specifically with my treatment, I don't think cancer kills people. I think the treatment does. So that's a reason to really take care of your health. That's why I became a health coach as part of my offering is I always want to make sure that people start with their physical health, their chemical health, because some shit's going to happen one day. And it's how you navigate that shit and handle it. Do you handle it with grace, or does it handle you? So this physical experience that I've been going through with my treatment, and it's happening right now. I could give you a host of things that I'm feeling. I'm a little nauseous right now. I'll tell you that. And it's not because I'm nervous. It's because I took these

meds this morning when I've got this patch on my arm that every three hours gives me like a surge of something that handles the pain that the meds go through. So the physical component of this has brought me to my to the point where I've had to go through massive periods of discomfort where I've been incapable of getting myself off the couch. I don't share that stuff. It's not easy for me to come to this mic as much anymore, which makes it, remember I said before, which makes it that much more valuable to be here. Really, really important. There's been some sleepless nights.

I don't know how you guys feel about sleepless nights, but you know, you can't have too many of those. There's been some frequent, I think three now trips to the ER for emergency. emergency pain management, you know, extreme fatigue I've been feeling. And moments when my mind says, let's go. That's what my mind says, let's go. But my body says, you're not going anywhere. So that'll humble you when you're this guy that always goes and your body says, I don't think so.

Physically, you can't get up. If you're this guy that's like, but I study Marcus Aurelius. I've read every book, you know, on pushing forward anyway. And I'm a fan of David Goggins, you know. You can try all you want, but if you can't get up, you can't get up. The other day I was experiencing vertigo. Like the whole place was spinning. Like, you know, like, it's not easy to like walk around when you're feeling like that.

So I'm somebody, and I've recognized this, and I want you to self-reflect here, I'm somebody who is accustomed to moving, quick moving, you know, working, training, creating, solving problems, and figuring a lot of shit out. That's who I am. That's my identity. I don't know about you, but I like agency. It's not that I want to control others, but when it comes to my life and saying I'm going to do something and then following through, I like agency.

I like control. I like being able to identify a problem and say, okay, what are we going to do about it? I love saying, I got that. I love telling my loved ones and people I care about. I love saying, I got that. I like to tell people, let me handle that. For those of you that know me, you know that about me. But then suddenly, my body reminds me, hey, by the way, you're not completely in charge here anymore.

And I had to surrender to that. And I know you guys have your own experiences with this. And maybe some of you think you've gotten through that experience and think that you're not going to have another one. This is an awakening. Remember, we're looking at things from an alternative perspective right now and waking ourselves up, not to be scared, but to be empowered. become equipped. I'm not surrendering to my desire to be well and to heal when this stuff happens. I'm not surrendering my responsibility or the things that I can control. I'm not surrendering those things. I'm surrendering the exhausting belief that I should somehow be able to control everything.

That's what humbling has done for me. I'm surrendering this belief that I should be able to somehow control everything. Something that I believe I've been trying to do for a long time in my life is let go of trying to control everything and everyone. I've been working on that and studying and practicing and doing all these things and my morning routine for a long time. Well, I'm there. My attention, my energy, my concern, my care, and especially my time. I no longer try to control my time. Like I love teaching that lesson to my kids right now. Just wait. Just wait a bit.

Wait it out a little bit. How you feel right now. I love when I'm in a conversation and I can see that somebody that I love is upset and really struggling with something. It's just saying, give it a bit. Give it a bit. You know, I got to twist it up about something yesterday. And I love that I consciously know that I'm just going to take a little time.

we're so worried about wasting time. I want you to go look at a clock if you can find one that has a minute that goes around and just stare at it and consciously acknowledge how long it takes for a minute to transpire, 60 seconds. I did it right before I came on with you. It's quite a while when you focus on it. And it's yours. It's your time, you know?

So time is a big part of this. Now, I want to share something with you that popped up on my, radar that is really cool it's kind of an analogy but it'll really help you I believe and that is this idea that the humbling this idea of being in the humbling corrects the price tags that we use in life so this may be my biggest revelation that the humbling corrects price tags and here's what I mean by this human beings are terrible appraisers and what I mean by that is we put like 10,000 dollar price tags on things that are worth 12 cents in life and and 12 cents price tags on things that are absolutely priceless. Consider that. And I think that we all

know that this is true. We make being right very expensive, don't we? We spend a lot on that. Other people's approval becomes very expensive. Winning arguments becomes very, very pricey, very expensive. Our status, recognition, comparison, and proving someone wrong and worrying about situations that are outside of our control, we'll spend hours of our lives making purchases on those, don't we? We'll lose sleep over these things, these 12 cent items that we put $10,000 price tags on. We damage relationships over insignificant things. We compromise our peace over them, but then, once again, something happens that just simply makes us look again. And how could we say that's bad. And suddenly the simple act of maybe sitting next to someone that you love becomes

priceless because of this thing that happens. Your kids laughing becomes priceless. My daughter competing, priceless. Sleeping through the night? Holy shit. Priceless. When you get a good night of sleep, a conversation, a hug, your body functioning. I'm so jealous of people that can go to the gym right now. without feeling sick, without feeling nauseous and having energy and having no pain. Like right now, I'm still going to go to the gym, but I've got this shooting electric pain down my arms from the time that I spent in the hospital. That makes working out harder. And I look at these people that don't have that and I'm like, oh my God, I'm so jealous.

Or just waking up on an ordinary Monday like all of us have done right now and greeting the blessed gift of another day with those powerful words that we shared on the other episode on gratitude, thank you, that becomes priceless. I take this moment right now because of my humbling and I'm living in the humbling, I take this moment right now and that those two words that I utter, first two words out of my mouth means so much more because I've been humbled. I just want you to know that all of those things that I'm now reacting to differently and honoring these simple things, those things that should have $10,000 price tax,

they've always been valuable. They're not just all of a sudden valuable now because of my humbling. They've always been valuable, but I just never took the time to look again. So the humbling just made their value impossible for me to ignore. Steve Jobs expressed something similar after confronting his own mortality. As you guys know, Steve Jobs had a tough ending. In his famous Stanford commencement speech, for those of you that haven't seen it, you can see it on YouTube, he described using the awareness of his mortality, his death, as a

decision-making filter. This is super cool. He would say things like, if today were the last day of my life, would I want to spend it doing what I am about to do? He started asking that question because he was humbled. And if the answer was no, a couple of days in a row, he knew that something in his life needed to change. How many of you were living like that? Or how many of you are tolerating things. And remember, if you're tolerating things, you have a weird relationship with time and mortality. There's an assumption that you have time to sort that out to get through a season. You're not humbled yet. And you will be, and that's not a threat. It's a blessing. I look forward to it for you. When somebody comes to me right after they've been humbled by something in life,

I'm excited for them. I mean, I don't say that because I don't want to get punched in the face, you know. We start to say, does this actually matter? when we look at things through the mortality filter. Does this deserve my attention? Is this how I want to spend today? Could I care less about this? Which is what my new book is about. Because eventually the answer to,

what if this was my last day, will actually be yes. Okay? We just don't know which day. And what I mean by that is, you're going to say, this is my last day. What do I want to do with it?

If you're blessed with like even knowing that. Sometimes that comes unexpectedly. We just don't know which day. I love this visual of people on a line in a field, and then you can see that the person at the front of the line is getting catapulted up to heaven, and everybody's waiting online. But the way it works is we don't know what number we are online. We know that we're going to be at the front eventually. Does anybody remember Randy P-A-U-S-C-H, renowned computer science professor, virtual reality pioneer. A lot of people didn't know that about Randy. This is a guy that experienced something similar when he had his famous last lecture. He received a terminal pancreatic cancer diagnosis. Terminal. Like he knew he was going to die. And what made

his message so powerful wasn't that a dying man talked about dying. That wasn't what it was about. He actually wasn't talking about dying. He was talking about living in that. If you You never seen that. The last lecture, go look it up. It's not sad. It's beautiful. Childhood dreams, curiosity, relationships, helping people, making something of the time that we're given. His diagnosis didn't start the clock for him. It made the clock visible. That's what the humbling does. Do you remember Randy? Do you remember him now? Because we have a tendency of forgetting things like that. Most likely you do remember his famous last lecture. Did you know that Randy actually died at 48 years old. He only lived for 48 years. And that sounds tragic, no. So what I find tragic is that

Randy lived a bigger life in 48 years because of the fact that he was humbled and he came to this conclusion than most people that live 30 to 40 or even more years more than him. He lived a bigger life. Hmm, which would I choose? Which would you choose? Would you rather have a mediocre life where you never really get your priorities together, but lived a long life or one like Randy. You might jump on an answer right there, but put some time and think about that. Because who's to say that you're not like that? I'd already be dead if I only lived 48 years. I'm 55, but I'd take it. I would take Randy's moment of being humbled and lived, then live a long, long life and never really get my shit straight. Most people would take the longer life, I'm sure. And that's because they're

assuming, there's the word again, that they would figure things out eventually. Maybe they'll hear another podcast episode and it'll stick. So that's a distinction that I can't stop thinking about. Cancer didn't suddenly make my life temporary. That's not what it did. It reminded me that it always was. That's what the diagnosis did, is it reminded me, it made me look again. It made me look again, and it reminded me and it humbled me. That's why my answer is I'm humbled by the experience that it always was temporary. And we have this tendency of normalizing miracles, and I want to talk a little bit about this. That's one of the strangest things about being human. We normalize miracles, wake up thousands of mornings in a row, and eventually waking up stops seeming

impressive, because we always do. But it's a fucking miracle. And you know that. You know that. but we have this tendency of normalizing it, like a book on the shelf. I can read that book tomorrow. Someone that you love is there every single day, folks, somebody that you really care about that's really, really deserving of your care and your attention. You know, there's a lot of people that think that they are, but there's a lot of people around you, and I've learned a lot about this with this diagnosis, because all these people are reaching out to me that I thought, don't give a shit, you know, and that I cared about, but I don't know what happened to them. And they're all coming back to me because they think I'm going to die.

Isn't that interesting? So somebody that you love, folks, is there every day. So their presence becomes expected. We normalize that miracle of having somebody that we love. Your legs work every morning. So walking across the room doesn't feel miraculous. Go ask our friend and guest on our show, Amy Purdy, about that. You know, she woke up one day and found that.

that she had this terrible disease and had to have both of her legs amputated. She doesn't take that for granted. Your body and your brain performs millions of processes without you consciously knowing or participating it. And meanwhile, you're furious because someone screwed up your fucking coffee order. And that's not me yelling at you. We're all like that. Ask Jim Quick about that. My buddy Jim Quick, go get his new book, Limitless Daily. It saves my life every morning. It's on pre-sale. It's on pre-sale. right now coming out in September. If you don't get that book, shame on you. I mean, it's just the greatest thing. I read this little three to five minute thing every morning and it just sets the tone for my day. Please go to Amazon and pre-order his book, Limitless Daily. It's purple. But ask Jim quick

about this idea that all these things are happening, these millions of processes. As a kid, he fell off of a chair in a classroom, injured his brain and lost the capacity to learn. He lost the capacity to process all those things. So we're not bad people for taking things for granted. I want to make sure that we note that we're human. It's one of the cool things. The brain adapts. And thank God it does. Familiar things fade into the background of our lives. The extraordinary very, very easily becomes ordinary. In fact, we call that a habit when something goes on autopilot. And that's actually a goal to become unconsciously competent at something. You don't even know you're good at something. This goes into the background. That's a good thing, right? But this happens with

everything. And maybe one of the functions of the humbling and the values of the humbling is to make the ordinary, extraordinary again. That's what's happened in my life, is the ordinary has become, once again, extraordinary. Shout out to Patty from New York, Miss You Graham. She says, so amazing. I just had a workshop in reference to the book, of course, in Miracles. Yeah, that's on my shelf. We've got somebody in the Make Sense Academy that is an expert coach.

Her name is Monica DuBay on that. Love it. Poppy Jack says, The Doobie Brothers put out an album called Once for Vices, Now We're Habits. Yeah, beautiful Doobie Brothers. That's going on the podcast, Poppy Jack. I love it.

So maybe one of the functions of the humbling is to make the ordinary, extraordinary once again. Let's do that. today. It's also changing the way that I think about gratitude in general. Maybe gratitude isn't simply saying thank you for good things. Maybe gratitude is the practice of preventing miracles from becoming ordinary. Maybe the practice of gratitude is to help prevent miracles, like right now and now, from just simply becoming ordinary. That's very different. So this causes this. this chain reaction, and this is what my new book is about, to just consider what do I actually

care about and what could I care less about? All of this stuff that's happening, blessing, blessing, blessing, blessing. Cancer? It's also deep in my understanding of something that I've talked about for years, you know, and I wear that shirt. I've been wearing it forever. That says breaking news, I don't care. I couldn't find it this morning. I was going to wear it. But it's just about caring less. You know, caring less about things doesn't have to mean becoming careless or indifferent about things. It's about priorities, right? It means becoming radically selective about what earns your care so that you can have more of yourself available for what actually deserves it. See, what happens is go back to that Steve Jobs filter. If you have a filter, and we teach this in the interface response

system in the book makes sense, get that book as well. In the interface response system, we teach something called the sorting filter. What's the sorting filter there for? To become radically selective of what gets into our nightclub. I'm the bouncer. I'm at the door, and I can either check IDs and have a line and have a guest list or just fucking let everybody in. And that's a tough job as a bouncer, because then you've got to go through the bar and start kicking people out, much harder and organizing your entry. And that's exactly what's happening to me right now. I'm not caring less. In fact, I'm caring more than ever. I'm caring more than ever.

I care more about my wife than ever. And today I'm going to care more about her than ever. I care more about my children than ever. My daughter said to me yesterday, we were there for nine hours yesterday because she did so well. We had to be there. And she said, thank you so much for being here. And I looked at her and I go, I could care less about everything else in life. This is the most important, valuable thing that I could do with my time to.

day to just be here in support. And I felt like shit yesterday. So care more about my children, more about my friends. More about my friends. Thank you, my friends. Thank you to those of you that support us on America's favorite couple. Thank you to those of you that reach out to me when it's inconvenient for you and just all the messages like, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. I care so much about that. And I hope I translate that in my messages. I care deeply about those things. I care more about my body because of the humbling and what I put into it than ever. I don't have to like say no to things. I say yes to things that serve me because I've been humbled. More about meaningful conversations and more about, I care more about listening.

I care more about understanding people, even though whack-a-doodles, I love listening to the them. Say that again? What was that? I'm sorry, say that again. I didn't understand that. When everybody else just says, I got to get out of here. I care more about just simply sitting outside. Just sitting outside and looking up at the trees, noticing a bunny rabbit, just looking at the way that nature works and it's all coming from below us and all that kind of shit, that's got a $10,000 price tag on it now. More about laughter, more about my work. I care more about about this moment that we're having right now, this moment right now. I care more about that than I've ever cared about it before.

And because I care more deeply about all of these things, I'm becoming less willing to squander myself on things that I don't control, which is a big part of the interface response system. This is because I've been humbled. The question is, can you humble yourself, right? You know, all of that shit that never really matters that we try to control, the uncontrollables, I don't care about that stuff. Oh, I don't control that.

Sorry, I don't fucking care. I don't fucking care. I realized something during this experience that I don't think I'm going to ever, ever forget. Everything that you care about is being purchased with minutes of your life. That's called life currency. Every unnecessary argument, every resentment you keep eating, every hour of obsessing about somebody's opinion, every imaginary future catastrophe that, that you're rehearsing in your brain, I went through a lot of that.

You're paying for it. With what? You're paying for it with your life. And cancer didn't make the minutes in my life valuable. They were always valuable. Just made me start noticing the exchange rate that was taking place. That's why I'm smiling while I feel like shit. Because I'm grateful.

And there's science behind it. Psychology has studied something called post-traumatic growth. and that is positive psychological changes that somebody goes through or somebody reports after struggling with profoundly difficult circumstances. And I want to be careful here because I don't like the idea that everything terrible needs to become some sort of beautiful inspirational story. I'm not saying that, right? I don't want to be one of those guys. Trauma doesn't automatically make you stronger. Cancer doesn't automatically make you smarter and wiser. Sufferer isn't inherently a good thing. People can experience tremendous fear, grief, anxiety, and

post-traumatic stress, right? And it could be terrible. Growth and suffering can even exist at the same time. So I'm not saying that those things don't suck. I'm just challenging all of us. Like I challenge myself when I can't sleep and I'm on my hands and knees in pain to say, can I grow from this at the same time? And researchers have repeatedly identified certain changes that can occur after major adversity. Greater appreciation of life. That's a great one. I'm experiencing that. Change priorities, deeper relationships, recognition of personal strength, your own personal strength, new possibilities, and spiritual or existential change. So that fascinates me because I'm living some of that stuff right now. Are you? Is anybody living that kind of stuff right now?

Or is anybody coming to terms with it right now as we're speaking? Meaning making seems like an important part of the process. The way that our meaning making machines are working. This is why I think that the work with the interface response system is like something that just everybody should know about if you want to reclaim control. So what does this mean? That's what our brain say. What does this mean? Who am I now? What actually matters? How do I want to live? How do I want to live? from here. Those questions can reorganize an entire person. And there's some interesting parallels with people who have had near-death experiences. Some report greater appreciation for life, reduced fear of death, increased compassion, and less emphasis on material concerns. You even see

an interesting family resemblance in research around profound psychedelic experiences and what people call ego death. You guys know that I speak very openly about my extensive work with plant medicine. And I still do. We get this feeling of ego death and that's a temporary loosening of our ordinary sense of self. I've been humbled by that stuff too. Now, I want you to know that these are absolutely not the same experiences, all of them. They're just examples. Because remember, I don't think you need to get cancer and you don't need to go to the Amazon jungle and drink ayahuasca to do these things. I'm just giving you different examples. Cancer isn't like a psychedelic experience. I'm not comparing those two. A psychedelic experience really isn't a near-death experience, and none of them automatically produce enlightenment. But there's an intriguing common thread behind all this stuff. And that's what I'm trying to point out. Something becomes bigger than the original ordinary self. Something becomes extraordinary when these things happen. And that's kind of where the humbling fits.

gets in. And when the ordinary self, when your ordinary self, which is kind of like your program self, when your ordinary self stops being the center of the universe just for a moment, some of its problems suddenly return to their proper size. Some of the price tags go to their proper size. And that's why I've almost jokingly thought of this experience as ego death without psychedelics. That's what I've experienced. When you get humbled, your ego doesn't disappoint. here, but it gets put in its place. Like I used to say breaking news, I don't care. I kind of look at myself sometimes and say, interesting what you're thinking about, JC, what you think, what you claim to know, but I don't fucking care. I don't care. Because cancer has challenged

like so many pieces of my identity that I didn't even realize that I was protecting. And that's another thing about humbling. Remember, they're all on autopilot. I'm the doer. I'm the fixer. I'm the productive guy, right? Those were on autopilot. I'm the guy who figures things out. I'm the dragon. But then all of a sudden my body and this experience said, today, big guy, you're just going to lie on the couch and have nothing to say about it.

Hmm. Who's J.C. when J.C. can't do stuff that J.C. does? Who are you when all of a sudden you can't do stuff that you do? Who's the dragon when dragon can't breathe fire today? humbling. Who are you underneath all of the performance that you're exhibiting? That's a humbling question. And that's something that doesn't require a diagnosis. And I always knew this, but I didn't know it. Right. It's very interesting how we all kind of know this stuff. And if you study gratitude like I have, you know, and I've taught presence and talked about control and caring less. And I do a lot of meditation.

and I'm very into stoicism and Buddhism and all that stuff. I've had profound experiences in the jungle, all of that. And I spent years talking about awareness and becoming. And that's all stuff that just like you, I already knew. I already knew. But there's knowing and then there's knowing. You can understand intellectually that time is precious, and then you can feel the preciousness of time.

Am I right? You feel me on that? Does that make sense? There's a difference. there's teaching control the controllables and then there's having your body present you with something that you cannot immediately control that's humbling there's talking about living in the present moment do a lot of that and then there's lying awake in the discomfort at three o'clock in the morning and realizing this is the present moment too and that's a good thing it's not just the beautiful present moments

It's that one too. Maybe that's another thing that the humbling does. It converts knowledge into knowing. I love that. I'm not telling you to go out and get humbled, but maybe this conversation is humbling you. Maybe you've had a big event happen. Or maybe you're going through a big event and you didn't know that it was just a blessing of humbling. It converts knowledge into knowing. And that leads me to the question that I can't stop asking. Did I need cancer to learn and earn all of this stuff? Do we really have to wait. Maybe there's two forms of humbling. One is involuntary, cancer, lost, death, failure, divorce, illness. Life walks into the room and says, hey, you, shut the fuck up, sit down, we need to talk. But maybe there's another path. Maybe there's something that we can call voluntary humbling. Meditation can humble you. Am I right? Breathwork can humble you. Nature can humble you. I know a lot of you walk out in nature and you're humbled by its beauty and its power. Listening to someone without talking for a change can humble you. Serving others can humble you. Gratitude can humble you. Contemplating mortality can humble you.

Holding a newborn baby and looking deep into its eyes, open and curious eyes can humble you. Looking into a night sky and seeing all the stars and the vastness of it can humble you. A lot of things can humble you. even sincerely just saying, I don't know. I challenge you to say those three words today when somebody asks you a question and you don't know. Say, I don't know. That can humble the hell out of you.

Because here's a question. Why do human being so often wait until life becomes fragile before recognizing that it always was? Why does someone like Randy Posh or Steve Jobs have to face death or J.C., have to face death? death, get a diagnosis to start living. Why does somebody have to lose a parent before wishing that they'd call that person more? Why does somebody have to get sick before appreciating their body?

Why? Why does the entrepreneur have to lose the marriage before realizing the business wasn't supposed to cost them their family life? The clock was always ticking. Mine was, yours is. That's not morbid, that's beautiful. Maybe mortality doesn't make life less meaningful. Maybe mortality is precisely what gives life its value. Think about the sunset. Go look at the sunset. The next time that you look at the sunset, recognize that what makes it so beautiful is that while you're looking at it, it's disappearing while you're looking at it. That's what makes it so miraculous. If the sunset lasted forever, eventually you'd stop looking. Yes or no? maybe life works the same way.

Impermanence is not necessarily the flaw. Impermanence creates the value. This is something that you find when you're humbled. Here's the invitation. I don't want this episode to be all about my cancer and my humbling. You know, this episode, I want it to be about yours. And hopefully, maybe experiencing a little bit of mine and this discussion means that you won't have to have something catastrophic happen to experience your own.

I would love that for you. So I want to leave you with two questions. First, what are you currently giving enormous amounts of care, attention, or life force to that simply does not deserve it? That's step one. Is there an argument going on? Is it somebody's opinion? Something outside of your control.

Something that happened three years ago. Something that hasn't even happened yet. What are you giving more attention than it deserves? And then the second is what priceless thing? in your life have you accidentally started treating as ordinary? What priceless thing in your life have you accidentally, it's not your fault, it's your operating system, started treating as ordinary? Your spouse, your kids, your parents, your friends, your body, your health, your mornings,

your ability to walk, your ability to call somebody today that you love, your life, you're alive right now, don't wait for something to be gone to discover what it was worth. So how do I answer the question? How am I? I'm humbled, deeply, painfully at times, beautifully at others. This experience that I'm going through right now, I'm growing through, and it's reminded me that I'm not invincible. I'm not in control of everything. In fact, not a lot. And I don't know exactly what's coming. I don't. So I can't help. you there. And I don't know exactly how much time I have. Neither do you. But strangely, I don't find that frightening. I find it clarifying because it shows me that where am I, I'm here right now,

right fucking now. That's it. And I get to decide what deserves me, my attention, my energy, my love, my care, my time, my life. And maybe that's what awakening actually is. Simply. Simply, seeing life accurately again and realizing, holy shit, I've been surrounded by priceless things this entire time. My encouragement to you is to just simply care less about what doesn't deserve your care so that you can care infinitely more about what does. Make sense? 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, 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.