Makes Sense - with Dr. JC Doornick - THE PAUSE - Step Two of the Interface Response System - Episode 8

Episode Date: March 31, 2024

Moving right along. Welcome to  STEP TWO of the 4 step Interface Response System called PAUSE. This powerful tool teaches us how to place our often problematic, knee jerk perception and response on a temporary pause in order to allow ourselves to step into the space between tthe stimulus and our response, to evaluate the situation with an untainted, open and clear mind. Welcome to the eye of the storm.  Thank you to our sponsors Makes Sense Academy: https://www.riseupwithdragon.com/makes-sense-academy  ResourcesConnect With Dr. JC Doornick-  https://zez.am/makessense - Website: https://www.riseupwithdragon - Talking To Yourself is not crazy - Larry Markson -https://amzn.to/3PIGffX - Viktor Rankl's A Man's Search for Meaning Book - https://amzn.to/3J6liYB  - Brandi Carlysle Song "The Eye" - https://open.spotify.com/track/0Plf9mewMoYkwEvncCjfxS?si=57680f6b9c89440f - Jim Kwik Online Courses - www.kwiklearning.com  Timestamps(00:00:00) Introduction (00:02:15) Recap of Step One Brain Awareness Perception (00:8:45) Its you that has the idea to change your program, not your subconscious mind. (00:10:25) Cognitive Dissonance, Cognitive Bias, Cognitive Distancing (00:13:36) Sponsor - Makes Sense Academy (00:15:00) The Illusion Of Agency and Paul Conti (00:14:40) The Space Between the Stimulus and Response - Viktor Frankl (00:15:46) The Eye of the Storm (00:19:08) The Disentanglement of Consciousness (00:23:22) HMMM?  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Make sense. Great morning, friends. Great morning, humans. This is Dr. J.C. Dornick, aka. the dragon, and welcome to another episode of the Make Sense podcast with Dr. J.C. Always interesting to look at the idea of doing a solo episode. And the reason why I find that fascinating is kind of one of those moments that I just kind of stop and go. Is the very act of doing it by yourself?

You'll notice that the interviews will be coming soon. After we get through the four phases, this is, Step two of the interface response system. Just taking a little break to speak to you right now. When we're doing interviews, it's just such a fun, organic, simple thing to do because it's reactive, you know, where the conversation is just organically moving in direction. And we've got some amazing interviews coming for you. But when I do a solo episode, although I love these topics, just fascinating to talk to yourself.

One of my mentors wrote a book, his name is Larry Marks, and he says, talking to yourself is not crazy. I can tell you, it sounds crazy every now in that. So great morning, everybody. Today we're going to make sense of step two of the four-step interface response system, and that would be the pause. I like to say, now that you know, and that's everything that you have just learned, now that you know, we must learn to take things slow.

So let's just take a moment and just give a quick recap, just to face place you. I don't know where you're at. If you're just starting to listen to my podcast and this is your first stop, that's fine. You'll love it. But I'm going to encourage you to start from the beginning. You kind of are privy to being in the early phase of this podcast, but this is part two of a four-step process that wouldn't really make sense or be of value if you didn't go to step one. That's what I'm going to encourage you to do.

At least go listen to step one. The podcast episodes that we've had building up to even step one were about laying the foundation and language and some of the philosophies and concepts that are necessary for you to understand my language, my way of transatlantic. translating and interpreting things, but also the kind of the what and the why behind all these things we're talking about. So let's get into making sense of step two of the interface response system, the pause. But the last episode was about phase one. And we called that brain awareness perception. Just to kind of quickly recap that. That helped us unveil, but more importantly, validate the very

reason that we'd want to begin challenging and disputing our thoughts, feelings, perceptions of whatever. Remember, we can have perceptions of things from the outside or perceptions of things going on the inside, like our thoughts and feelings, even our opinions, things that manifest like opinions, and also these prompted or suggested responses in acknowledgement that they may be the ideas of our programmed brain and not necessarily our own. So in a nutshell, last episode, brain awareness, perception is just about this idea of becoming aware of how your brain works and how it has a propensity to do its thing. We shared like one example of that, how we just acknowledge. We stop participating with our thoughts and we just say, oh, that's my brain thinking. That's a Buddhist philosophy. So that's a crucial, crucial step. Brain awareness perception. And that kind of unveiled a lot of other awareness perceptions like the awareness that our brains are not only doing what brains do, but our brains have been programmed in large part by outside forces. We got to this place where we are right now where we know what our brain has a tendency of doing,

but we also know that our brain has been very, very much persuaded and influenced by outside forces that don't necessarily have our best future in mind. So what's phase two? The pause. In acknowledgement that our offline subconscious mind, for the most part, is calling all of the shots, as well as the fact that we acknowledge that it's us that want to reclaim, control of that shock. That's what phase two is about. It's like you got to have, we spoke about this last time. You got to have a reason for wanting to do something. If we're going to start

inserting a pause and slowing things down, we got to have a reason to do that. And the reason that validates that idea of pausing things is this idea that we're aware now, brain awareness perception, that our brain for the most part is working offline. Do you remember what I shared about the, about the sleepwalking fact that our brains don't really need us to perform? So in my book makes sense solving the mystery of why shit happens. The chapter on step two of the IRS, the pause, opens with a powerful quote from a famous Buddhist author Pima Kudron. Only in an open non-judgmental space can we acknowledge our feelings.

Only in an open space where we're not all caught up in our version of reality. Can we see, hear, and feel who others are, which allows us to be. with them and communicate with them properly, Pima Kudra. So I just love that. Only in a non-judgmental, untainted space can we learn to acknowledge things. So as I said before, the idea here is now that you know what you know, it makes perfect sense to take it slow. There's a fine line between the need for our stress response system to get us out of trouble and it getting us into trouble. So this step is about taking a voluntary step to move our brains from offline or unconscious back to online or conscious so that we can start having a say and hopefully do this with enough consistency where we begin to

reprogram that offline. Remember brain awareness perception is very much talking about the fact that for the most part our brains don't even need us. Our brains are self-sufficient. So this is about a voluntary step that we're going to take to start interrupting and disputing that, but with the hopes of one day reprogramming our offline automatic subconscious mind to work in favor of our desired goals. So in order to do this, we must take a look at this thing called the power of the pause. So the idea is simple, yet the results are massively profound. Now that we have this brain awareness perception, we have a reason to dispute and hold off on handing the keys of trust over to our programmed operating system. Now, just as a little disclaimer, this is also based on the

acknowledgement that it's been highly, highly proven time and time again that that system that we're looking to dispute is also highly effective at getting us to jump out of the way of a speeding car or quickly retracting our hands from fire. Yet we're acknowledging now that in many, many ways, it is also at the same time highly ineffective. Interesting reference here is the movie inception where Leonardo DiCaprio gets hired to travel deep into his target's memory. He's some sort of memory shifter. And what he does is he's got this system and the technology to plant a new memory so that the target wakes up and has a completely different perception of reality. This is a fascinating example of both the power of our program minds as well as how we will

eventually rewire our brains to support where it is that we want to go rather than where it is going right now. I don't want to just pass over that. The idea of that movie reference is that the idea of rewiring your brain by doing something like this pattern interrupt, this disputation, this pause of our programmed mind, right now we're going to consciously do it. But remember what a habit is, is it's something that happens without you knowing it. And we know that 95% of our day is running like that. Just want to make sure you grab this idea that what we're really looking to do in rewiring our brains is set it up where we no longer even know we're just automatically unconsciously doing things that are good for us like thinking before we act as you can imagine there's a challenge associated with this

as with everything before we move any further it's important to take note of some powerful forces within the realm of this new practice of brain awareness perception i know that we're beating a dead horse there but so important to acknowledge all that but also bring it fresh into your mind right now the ultimate goal of step two is to distance yourself from your automatic knee-jerk program response in acknowledgement that it has not only been tainted and persuaded by our programmers, remember our mother, father, teacher, preacher, and then society and evolution, but also acknowledging as well how it doesn't know that it's faulty or inefficient. This idea of us consciously knowing and identifying that our programmed response system

and perception-making and sense-making system. We're the ones that are acknowledging it as something that is faulty or inefficient. That's a conscious thing. But remember, from the subconscious mind, it doesn't think it's doing anything wrong. It actually thinks it is always right. As a matter of fact, when you try to get in its way

or steer it away from its regularly scheduled program, it actually then considers you or your conscious mind, which is what I mean when I say you, the enemy. and it will initiate a contingency plan to deny your request for a pause. Now, I'm sharing that with you because it's not easy. You can't just like say, okay, I'm going to start pausing and thinking, and I've got a strategy for you. But just remember, this predominantly subconscious mind that's calling all the shots actually

has a contingency plan for when you try to do something different. We have discussed the facts that our brain will trigger contingency plans. The likes of using things like cognitive dissonance, cognitive bias, when it acknowledges anything that is irregular or contradictory to what it is considering normal. I gave that analogy of the oil tanker. Your 120,000 tonne oil tanker is cruising along, and all of a sudden, your perceived conscious mind has this idea, makes a move to suggest, hey, let's stop everything and think for a second.

So this triggers an alarm system. Subconscious mind says, enemy, enemy, intruder. This triggers an unsettling feeling of conflict in the program mind. It notices how this is contrary to popular belief in practice, programmed popular belief in practice. This is called cognitive dissonance. When it notices that conflict, that's what cognitive distance is. Like, hey, what's going on here? That's the first thing that happens.

And once again, happening without you knowing it. It's part of your program. While in this uncomfortable state, the attorney that's been hired to defend your programming does some quick work to not only recall the files and events that validated why the oil tanker is going in the direction that it is. Here you are. Your conscious mind is saying, hey, I've got an idea. Let's do things different to get better results. You've got this whole system that just says, hey, wait a second, this is not normal. And it recalls all the reasons that you're moving in the direction and do the things that you do, perceive the way you do and react

the way you do. Faster than GPT comes up with also a laundry list of reasons to validate and discredit your new idea. So that's what cognitive bias would be, is once cognitive dissonance happens and it realizes it automatically once again without you starts to come up with a plan, a contingency plan, to discredit what you're saying and validate that it's right. So think about any time that you've decided to do something that's logical and rational, but then all of a sudden didn't follow through. Maybe you had a little glimmering moment with some motivation and excitement about it with clarity, but then all of a sudden you back off of it. Maybe that's not you backing off of it. Maybe that's your subconscious mind calling that shot.

remember, it's the shock caller. So even in the absence of your suggestion being right, or even proven by fact or logic or rationale, no is no and that's final. So I don't care to listen to what you're saying is what that high-powered attorney says. This is called cognitive bias. So cognitive dissonance and cognitive bias is important for you to understand because you're most likely going to fail at this first. Remember the term practice, it means practice being in action. It takes time. And the very way that you created the direction for that oil tanker, that took a lot of time too with repetition and consistency. So just be cognizant of that right now because when you fail, that's normal and you have to keep on doing it and doing it. Remember Hebs theory, neurons that fire together,

wire together. So you have to keep firing those neurons and just do better and better and better. And then all of a sudden, you will not know you're doing that. And that's the goal. So I share this to add to your practice of step one, perception, so that you have a chance of a observing your mind initiating these biased thoughts and feelings, disregard them and complete the execution of the pause, actually complete it, rather than just go back into your regularly schedule program. Thus, distancing yourself from the stimulus, or whatever it is, remember, the stimulus can be something from the outside that you're perceiving or your own thoughts and feelings or event in question, and your program needs your well-supported perception and

suggested response. We're looking to create space between the thing that's happening, the stimulus and our perception and response. So this is called cognitive distancing, different than dissonance, cognitive distancing, which is what the pause is there to do. Let's take a quick break to hear from our sponsor. The Make Sense podcast is sponsored by the Make Sense Academy, co-created by both myself, Meeker, aka The Chicken and The Dragon. The Make Sense Academy is a live interactive community where like-minded, solution-focused, curious seekers of expansion, gather daily in a mastermind setting with both chicken and dragon, where they have access to premium content, online courses, and powerful collaboration and networking, all for $24

a month. The Make Sense Academy and its members are solely responsible for funding the Make Sense podcast. So feel free to reach out to us at www. and check out the Make Sense Academy, risk-free, with a money-back guarantee. Now, back to the Make Sense podcast. His amazing book, one of my favorite books in that sense to thank my friend Jim Quick, who taught me at a speed read. So shout out to Quick Learning.

In his amazing book, A Man's Search for Meaning, author and Holocaust Survivor, Victor Frankel, shares his story of how he was able to forgive the monsters that committed those atrocious acts of inhumane violence on his. his family, his friends, and millions and millions of Jews. The big takeaway, though, from the book and the story was how Frankl found his way to forgive these monsters by stepping into the space. So Frankl talks about this all the time. You say, God, how did he do that?

And he said he did it by stepping into the space between the stimulus of what happened and his automatic knee-jerk response. So stimulus being the terrible acts of violence and the response being the natural feelings of hatred that anyone would have and desire for reciprocity and revenge. So he stepped into the space and allowed himself in that space to collect his thoughts and evaluate the situation with a level head and the practice of logic and rationale. Seeing things from all angles, which he wouldn't be able to do unless he was in the space, validating the pause. So how is this possible? It's just an example of how powerful the space between is. And I actually call this the eye of the storm. I'm going to

give you a great analogy on that eye of the storm. Now's a good time to say, okay, so we're validating the reason to pause. Brain awareness perception, program awareness perception, sense making awareness perception. All of those things that we know have a lot of issues. We're going to pause and step into this space. But if you can look at it, the goal is the space. You want to be in the space, because in the space between the stimulus and your response and your program, that's where you can find clarity. And another way of looking at that is there's a little bit more time in the conscious window where you're actually able to look at things untainted. So a great analogy of what this means to step into the space is something that I call the eye of the storm. I don't know if you know what the

eye of the storm is, but one of the main, main reasons I came or became very passionate about the eye of the storm is one of my favorite recording artists is Brandy Carlisle. I don't know if you know Brandi Carlisb, she's just amazing country singer, but she sings a song called The Eye, one of my favorite songs. You never heard it. Great, it's a personal growth lesson as well. But there's a line from it. It says, you can dance in a hurricane, but only when you're standing in the eye. So have you ever experienced what it's like to be in the eye of a storm? It's actually a fantastic phenomenon where you move from experience the raging wrath of a hurricane and its rain, its destructive winds, to the extreme opposite of that.

that. In the eye of the storm, in the middle of that raging spiral, you not only perceive that it has subsided, but it's actually pristine and beautiful. It's abnormally beautiful and calm in the eye of the storm. The sun comes out, the wind is light, and you experience what we can call near perfect weather. It's the best way to describe what it's like to experience the clearing of what I used, what I've referred to as snap moments. You know, it's like that moment where everything just pulls files from your brain and it's just you get ultimate clarity and everything just makes sense. That's because you're in this conscious moment. So you move from the dark into the light. However, reality very soon sets in and you know that it's merely the eye of the storm. So you must take

advantage of it to get supplies batten down the hatches and prepare for the inevitable return of the storm. Buddhism refers to this as the still point. Now there's many, many references to this. Buddhist referenced this as the still point in the middle of the spiral where one can see all things infinitely. I love this analogy as it describes what happens when we enter the space between. One thing I'd love to share just quickly that is very relevant to the space between is my experience during the terrible things that transpired during 9-11. I was actually in the city and I won't get into the whole story, but I was one of the people running from the smoke, the plume when the buildings collapsed. What's really interesting about that is right before this, and anybody that was in the city,

that day will tell you right before one of the most terrible tragedies ever. I mean, I can't even just, I'm getting anxiety just thinking about it because I saw all that happen. I lost a lot of friends. Before all that happened, I came out of the subway and it was actually a remarkably beautiful day. That's all I can remember. It was like the weather was perfect. The sun was out. Everything was perfect right before it. So in that space right there, my perception was that everything was great. These are just analogies to show you what it's like to be in the space. I came across this beautiful concept that best validates the importance of pausing and creating this space between the stimulus and our response.

It's called the disentanglement of consciousness. Fascinating. You're going to love this. And all of these references where I got this information will be in the notes. It reminds us that our primary goal is to take our entangled perception of reality and disentangle it. Think about it. While most people fight to become more. conscious. Got to become more conscious. I'm working on becoming more conscious. They often remain

unconscious of how entangled they are in their existing programmed mind. That's right. You may perceive that you are stepping into consciousness, yet without knowing it, even that step is very often triggered, controlled, and prompted by your subconscious mind. So what an interesting concept when you look at disentanglement of consciousness. What I'm saying now is you might have the perception that you're making a voluntary conscious thought or stepping into the space. But if you don't acknowledge the entanglement of your program mind and understand that we have to disentangle it, you might just be downstream from your subconscious mind once again, thinking your conscious, very complicated. Personal growth is exhausting, my friends. So what's challenging about your program mind is that your belief system is

written into the program. When your oil tanker is set its course, your belief system is built around it. and that's your ego and that's your protective mechanism. That's the bouncer of your subconscious mind that's checking IDs. Your belief system is the mortar that holds together the brick wall of your current perceptions of the world. Evaluate the very idea of you expressing belief or disbelief. Can you see that they are both manifestations of your program mind? Whatever you believe or disbelieve are manifestations from your program mind, always on the

ready to spring into act. Once again, part of that contingency plan. So in step two, we're going to learn to place that trigger-happy system on safety. There's an interesting word, safety, rather than stop. When I push pause, it means that there's also a chance that will continue listening. The idea of putting it on safety, if you put a gun on safety, the gun still can be removed off of safety and shot. So you're not saying we're never going to listen to you.

We're just putting it on safety. And we're pausing it. That's an important thing because your subconscious mind is not going to like nor allow you saying no, no, no with an exclamation point. But we're going to put it on safety and create a space to free up that conscious mind. Give it a little bit of space and time that's been held prisoner by your program. Make sense? Put it on safety. The idea it isn't easy.

Trying to tell someone living an unconscious reactive life about the existence of this space is like trying to tell a fish about the presence of water. They just don't understand that it's a thing. Water, says the fish, what's water? This is just where I live. Or a human telling them that there is a new and different pocket of air over there. There's nothing else to cross-reference it with. And that's what's going on. So there's part of the challenge as well. However, when a human goes underwater, their VR suit can identify that something is now existing in the space between us. This something exists. above water too. It's an opportunity called consciousness. Now, there's a whole other discussion and we'll get into it when we go over some of the themed episodes on consciousness. We've got some great interviews in that.

But consciousness is something that is very, very confusing. It's not something that we can measure or see. We don't even know if it's something created in the brain or in the space between. There's an example, like the water with the fish. It's very, very difficult to understand that there's a space between. So there's a lot of things at play here. It requires a voluntary action step, cue, word, or something to dispute the programmed perception and response to place it on hold. Hmm. I wonder what a good word would be to execute that pause.

Now, we hear me say that all of the time. As a matter of fact, the subtitle of my podcast is, things that make you go, hmm. And I'm very often putting pictures of myself, holding my chin and saying, hmm. So let's talk about that sound because it could save your life. It sure helped me. Hmm. It's not a word. It's actually a sound. It's spelled HMMM. There's three M's in it. Type that into your phone sometime and you'll see that little emoji of the thinking person. So it's not a word, but it's a sound, but it can change your entire life. I always felt like it made sense to slow down our program knee-jerk response and allow ourselves to collect our thoughts and look at things from a

rational, logical place. But I never know. never knew how far back this practice went. The therapists that were involved were actively treating various mental disorders with something called cognitive distancing. I never knew what cognitive distancing was before I knew about it. I happened to marry a licensed professional counselor. My wife, Mika, aka the chicken, this is what she does. She's explaining to me that therapists actually, you know, this goes back to therapist and stoicism as well. Therapists have actually been educating their patients to practice a mental intervention or coping technique, as she says, called cognitive distancing. What it refers to, and this is what the pause is. We're entering this place where I'm going to

teach you this sound. Hmm. It refers to a process or technique that involves creating psychological distancing from one's thoughts, emotions or cognitive patterns, I call that your program, and the stimulus. It's used to help people gain perspective on their thinking patterns, challenging automatic, thoughts and develop a more objective view of their experiences. In therapy, cognitive distancing techniques may be like cognitive reframing, actually giving them the opportunity in the space to take a moment and reframe things. A specific treatment technique used in cognitive behavioral therapy, otherwise referred to as CBT, that involves teaching people to recognize and confront distorted thoughts or cognitive biases

that can cause emotional distress. By stepping back from their thoughts and emotions, people can gain a more objective perspective and assess the accuracy or usefulness of their cognitive models. This is the way it's interpreted in that world. What I'm saying is, hmm, I understand why I need to throw this pause, and I understand my goal is to step into this space for so many, so many reasons. But what I just shared with you is that therapists for years and years and years are actually doing their work and helping remodel and reshape and reframe where in the space.

There's another way to enter the space is to go see a therapist. The challenge is real. Our brains emit what I call a thought thunderstorm. You might call it a racing mind. According to the world's leaning brain coach and one of my favorite people and one of my best friends, Jim Quick, he says we have 60 to 70,000 thoughts a day. But 95% of those are the same thoughts that we had yesterday. brain determines every aspect of your life.

And without your brain, there is no self and no awareness of the world. Inserting the sound, hmm, in between the stimulus or happening. And your knee-jerk response is the practice of cognitive distancing. Simply stepping back from your initial perception of the happening to collect your thoughts and see things more rationally. Give yourself a fighting chance. Cognitive distancing is a concept that helps us recognize that our thoughts. and emotions are internal experiences and should not solely dictate our actions.

That's the idea of your subconscious mind without you knowing being the shock caller. Cognitive distancing is saying no more, no more. Considering that external hardware such as VR suit, right, all of our senses and all the ways that we interface and interpret may not have been programmed with present time conscious thinking. Once again, validation, just saying my way of perceiving, is an extension of and in support of my program. It might not be valid anymore. It might not be programmed with present time conscious thinking.

It's essential to acknowledge that your program's sense-making machine influences the perception of the happening. You understand what that means. It means that my sense-making machine actually plays a role on what actually ends up happening because it's my perception of what happens that dictates what happened. You know, Donald Hoffman, best-selling author of a case of, against reality, he's got a great point where he says nothing actually happens. He says that space and

matter are non-existent in the absence of an observer. Interesting to think about the fact that nothing really exists, including what it is that you think is happening without your perception of it. And if your perception-making machine is tainted, well, then you're going to have an impact on what's actually happening. That's when we start telling our friends something that happens. I didn't see that. So that's beyond what may actually be happening. Another term for this approach is cognitive disputation. Cognitive distancing is creating that space. Distency?

Cognitive disputation is the act where a therapist might encourage you to question and evaluate or challenge your thoughts and feelings before letting them control your actions. All encompass in the subtle yet powerful sound of, hmm. Try it for a second. Make the sound. Hmm. Not the version of hmm that express. is enjoyment, that would sound like this.

Hmm. But the version that you'd use from a place of curiosity. Ask yourself for a second what that means to you when you say, huh. For example, if someone says something to you or an event unfolds, you respond with, huh. It says, interesting, not sure what it means, nor what my opinion is of it at this time. However, noted, thank you. I do that with my thoughts as well.

Noted, thank you. I'll take a look at that when I give a shit. By deciding to be undecided, you have just stepped into the space between the stimulus and your response, that eye of the storm. With the storm being the happening and your response, those are the things outside the space, almost like Moses in the middle of the split sea. Just imagine Moses standing there and this raging sea walls are next to him, but everything's chill and he's walking across that sea saying, come on, everything's fine.

Remember, your existing interface response system, the one that is already running, that we're trying to rewire and change its behavior, and its stress response system are still happening. It's happening right now. Your amygdala has still sounded the alarm, cross-checked it with the memories stored in the hippocampus, which offered the prefrontal cortex. The first time it comes online, it becomes, you know, something that you acknowledge with your conscious mind. It offers it the go-ahead to respond. That's a fascinating. aspect of conscious versus unconscious as well, is we recognize certain areas of the brain that represent our conscious mind. But what we know is in the stress response system, the conscious mind is very much persuaded by the unconscious mind. Idea of the amygdala sounding off the alarm, cross-checking memories with the hippocampus, and then offering the prefrontal cortex. This is where it first comes online, and you get this idea as if you came up with it, but it's been offered to you by a cross check of back memories and experiences, mother, father, teacher, preacher, society, evolution, all that.

So you will feel the feels and think the thoughts that your sense-making machine produces. However, now you've become that friend that holds you back as you're about to get into a fight and says, hey, hold on a second. Before we fight, that power of the pause. Throw a T-sign to the ref and just say, hey, time out. Once again, acknowledging that we can make time come back on, right? We're just pausing. take a pause to see if there's a better way.

So meditation is another example on the practice of gratitude are effective methods to enter that space. Some refer to meditation, in fact, as the burning up of our patterns and preferences so that we can sit in the now. I love that idea. We must differentiate the feelings from our responses. When something happens, it triggers thoughts, feelings, and emotions.

That's the program, the automatic response. Therefore, thoughts, feelings, and emotions are, in essence, unconscious reactions. Many associate these feelings with the ego. They're neither good nor bad. The idea of slowing down this process and distancing yourself from allowing them to render into perception and persuade your perception and response

is the practice of being egosless. You have a fresh moment and a blank state when you are egosless, another thing that takes place in the space. Makes sense? So step two of the IRS is, about intercepting and pausing your program thinking and creating a space to access the reality of what's actually happening. To navigate the space between, one must improve their ability to manage emotions

instead of focusing solely on feeling better. When we focus on feeling better, we're just moving away from things that don't feel good. That's an unconscious thing to do. That's an automatic reactionary response. However, once again, challenging comes in handy when you're getting out of the way of the speeding car or taking your hand out of the fire. Well, we cannot control our feelings. We can, however, intercept our thoughts about them before they trigger a perception and response. I have found the sound to be the most effective tool in placing my response system on pause. Once you start playing with this, you'll become unconsciously competent at it, meaning you will no longer know that it's happening, it will become your new normal. So it's important to accept the fact that this does not get rid of

your program thoughts and feelings about events. This is not a way of getting rid of the things that we don't control. It's taking control of what we do control and that is our response. So your stress response system is part of your oil tanker and you're always going to have it and thank God you do. Also, your friends and family may pick up on your new strategy and not like it, by the way. You'll notice that happenings facilitated by events and people are not looking for you to stop and think about them. This is a fascinating thing. If somebody wants you to not think and just act and you think, you're going to frustrate them. And also events work that same way. They require an immediate response. This is an interesting observation to make when you start practicing saying,

huh, you'll notice that society will actually consider that abnormal behavior. How funny is that? We're sharing with you a technique in step two here that will dramatically improve your results in your response, a more efficient and effective response. And we're also sharing that society is not going to like it. To stop and think rationally or take your time to look at things from all sides. My suggestion is to forgive them for they know not what they do or perhaps share this book with them. You know, an interesting observation of one of my favorite philosophers and authors, Eckhart Tolley. If you ever look at Eckhart, he'll do these live sessions where he'll do some Q&A, and someone will ask him a question, okay, what's the meaning of life or is there a life after death?

And you'll notice that Eckhart will take like, almost like an uncomfortable two-minute pause before he answers. I believe that's what he's doing. He's stepping into that space. Now, I want to give a quick warning as we close out. When you use this technique, if you're married, husband, wife, partner, be prepared to hear the response, don't, huh, me. It's funny when all of the people in our Make Sense Academy that are practicing this stuff, you know, we're teaching a lot of headspace and communication skills on a daily basis in that environment, but they all know that they know it. So once your partners understand what this is,

now if they don't understand this, then there's no problem at all. It'll work gloriously. But when I say, to my wife, she always says, hey, don't hurt me. She knows what I'm doing. She's like, I want your response right now. A simple solution to that potential fun problem is to spice things up a little bit and add a description that gives them what they want. So you say, hmm, interesting. I hear you or I see or have them listen to this podcast episode and understand that you're looking to hold yourself back from a program response that might not be good for anyone because you love them that much, which is the truth. Make sense? So congratulations. Now that you've become aware of the inherent danger of your propensity to react.

and respond to things in an inefficient manner, you have a fighting chance now. By validating and executing on the insertion of a pause, you leverage your potential for a more rational, goal-supportive response system, or in other words, you 2.0. So let's move to step three of the interface response system now, assess, where we're going to learn to look at things through a new set of lenses and control one of the most powerful senses that we possess as humans, our perception. If you learn something today, give it away, that's the only way it's going to stay, and have a great day. Makes sense.