Makes Sense - with Dr. JC Doornick - The Super Power of Unavailability - Why Successful People Don't Answer Every Text - E-172

Starting point is 00:00:00 is probably going to sound like a little bit controversial to some of you because of the way you've been programmed and conditioned, but may actually become one of the greatest superpowers in your whole life. And that is this idea of gaining this ability, working on this superpower, of becoming unavailable. 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 sleep walking 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

Starting point is 00:00:49 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. Great morning, great morning, world. Welcome to another edition of the Make Sense with Dr. J.C. podcast. This is our live edition. So let's get started.

Starting point is 00:01:20 I refer to this session that we're going to do today is the superpower of unavailability. So I want to invite you into a space where you're going to become aware and conscious, going to arm you with the weapon of awareness of how you might be too available for things and people, current events. It's an interesting perspective to look at this idea of like wasting time and being distracted and stuff like that. We're going to look at it differently today. We're going to look at it from the perspective of, are you just making yourself too available to those things? And we're going to entertain the idea of becoming unavailable and looking at it as a superpower, whether you have it or not. So I want to honor all of you for making yourself available. I've made myself available to you today, too.

Starting point is 00:02:09 But as soon as you think that this is a session that is not serving you, get out of here. I want you to make yourself unavailable to anything today that doesn't serve your goals and your dreams and the things that matter most, that doesn't support the things that matter most to you. So why successful people don't answer every text? So think about the last time your phone buzzed, you know, if you have your phone on buzz, or rang. Did you stop what you were doing to answer it? Are you the person that always stops what you're doing?

Starting point is 00:02:41 Even though you might have been exhausted at that time, even though you were finally having some sort of a peaceful moment, I find that interesting, where we finally find some sort of a break in the action and some peace, and we still go and answer that. phone. Deep down, you didn't even want to respond. You didn't even want to answer it, but you did it anyway. Hmm. Now, as a reminder, hmm, is just my way of saying, hey, that's interesting. I don't know what I think about it yet, because on this show, we allow ourselves to be open and curious and acknowledge alternative perspectives and vantage points. And the reason why that's important is that's how you get in the prefrontal cortex of your brain,

Starting point is 00:03:26 which is the only part of your brain that you're actually conscious of. Everything else is run by the lower parts. So if you say, hmm, and you think about things, and it's difficult because we live in a world where people want and demand certainty in an immediate rapid response. But when I thought of this, this pattern that we have, where we just always answering, even if we don't want to, or even if we have some sort of a peaceful moment,

Starting point is 00:03:50 we answer the phone. So one of the challenges is that we're more connected than ever today. We learned a lot about AI and efficiency and all of this great stuff. But if you back away from it and say, hmm, we're more connected than ever today. Yet somehow people at the same time that we're more connected and we have all of these amazing tools, somehow people are feeling more burnt out, overwhelmed, distracted, emotionally exhausted, and disconnected. How funny is it? that we're more connected than ever and people are feeling increasingly disconnected from what

Starting point is 00:04:27 themselves more than ever so put that in your pipe and smoke it so what if the problem is not that you're too busy i think a lot of people express overwhelm and we're too busy what if the problem isn't that you're too busy what if the problem that we're looking at today if we looked at it as a problem is that you've become too available what a different way of looking at things if you're and curious to changing the way you look at things today, well, some of the things in your life might begin to change. So today, I want to talk to you about something that is probably going to sound like a little bit controversial to some of you because of the way you've been programmed and conditioned, but may actually become one of the greatest superpowers in your whole life. And that is

Starting point is 00:05:11 this idea of gaining this ability, working on this superpower, of becoming unavailable. Now, I don't mean becoming cold or selfish. See, that's one of the challenges with making yourself all the sudden unavailable, especially if you're always available. If you all of a sudden become unavailable, you might think that that's going to make you cold, selfish, or even arrogant. But I'm not talking about that. Not cold, not selfish, not arrogant, but intentionally unavailable to things like chaos, distraction, emotional manipulation. Are you making yourself a to emotional manipulation, to unsolicited criticism? Unsolicited criticism, a lot of these things, noise, does not require our permission to come

Starting point is 00:05:59 into our life, but it does require our participation to stay, which would mean that you've made yourself available to it. Chaos, distraction, emotional manipulation, constant overwhelm, and every demand fighting for access to our energy. We're going to talk a lot about access. See, when you make yourself available, you're providing access to your energy. So let's collectively refer to all that stuff as bullshit. A lot of times you'll see me wear my shirt that says,

Starting point is 00:06:29 Breaking News, I don't care. Now, I do care, but I don't care about bullshit. I don't make myself available to shit. Okay? So all highly successful people eventually learn something that most people never do. And that is this. If you don't protect your peace and your energy, the world will consume both peace and energy from you. So that's the difference between you controlling this day, you pushing this day around and the day pushing you around. It's a choice. So in this episode, we're going to dive deep

Starting point is 00:07:05 into setting healthy daily boundaries. Boundaries are important. How to say no without guilt, not an easy thing to do, especially with our programming. We've been programmed to feel guilty about saying no. And how to stop being available to everyone. Take control of our time. Anybody want to take control of your time? And why protecting your peace may be one of the most important self-care habits in the modern world. So the next time you explain to people your strategies and your systems for self-care,

Starting point is 00:07:37 you can add this one in there. So you can say, you know, I do cold. plunges and I meditate and I nourish and I drink lots of water and all that stuff. But now you can say, and I protect my peace as a form of self-care. And by the end of this conversation with hope, you may never look at your phone the same way again. Now, I'm not trying to boycott and eradicate phones. I have a phone. I'm talking to one right now.

Starting point is 00:08:04 I love my phone and I'm able to connect with a lot of you guys here. But I'm saying you're going to look at it differently. Remember, if you change the way you look at it. at things, the things you look at change. And it's who you are that determines how well what you do works. So if you're out there doing the do and you're not getting results, it might be the who. And how do you change the who? Well, you have to change the way you look at the who and things. So that's all we're doing today. You can leave here and go right back to your default mode program. But what we're going to do is we're going to allow ourselves, this is a power move,

Starting point is 00:08:38 to look at things differently from alternative perspective. Now, for those of you that have read my book, makes sense how to rewire your mind and transform your life. I teach something called the Interface Response System. We might hit on that a little bit today. But that's a four-step system to do this. Because I can say you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

Starting point is 00:08:57 But if you can't execute on that, you're just going to go around saying, I know, I know. And those are the people that say, I just got to get out of my own way. But knowing and learning things in the absence of action, as you know, is just another form of distraction. So we're going to execute today. So today we're talking about the superpower of unavailability. And it's a burnout, if you think about it, it's a burnout that nobody really talks about.

Starting point is 00:09:25 We live in a very interesting culture here. So ever heard of this one before? Help yourself by helping others. Now, I was a humanitarian. I did mission work. I was in Haiti for the earthquakes, and I built orphanages and all of that stuff. And I used to teach people this concept called give and receive. And I would ask you right now, what's more important to give or to receive?

Starting point is 00:09:47 99% of people would say, well, it's more important to give. And you also feel better giving. Nobody likes to go out there and just receive, even if you are just a receiver. So we've been taught, help yourself by helping others. Now, that's kind of a selfish thing, because what that says is help others to help yourself. So everything gets sticky here. But when you say help yourself by helping others and it's part of your programming, what it's doing is, is it's building the illusion that giving is receiving and that by being

Starting point is 00:10:19 useful to others, you receive the greatest gift of all. And that is to be useful. I don't think there's anything better than feeling like I'm useful to somebody else getting what they need. If you ever meet somebody like Mother Teresa, those kind of people that have dedicated their lives to helping others, you got to ask why. That might be a good time to throw a, hmm, which remember, stands for haven't made up my mind. You don't have to make up your mind so fast. We talk about that a lot here.

Starting point is 00:10:48 Okay, so here's another concept behind this idea of help yourself by helping others. Giving to others and making yourself available in service to others, which is a noble thing to do. I am a servant. I am a servant to mankind. Serve mankind. If you look at the hierarchy, there is no higher form of self-actualization as a human being than serving mankind. But here's the illusion. If I serve mankind, if I'm in service to others, the idea is that it will naturally make them available to you. Well, it doesn't always work out like that, does it? So we're focusing right now on those of you, most of you, that might, be making yourself too available. You're still going to be available, but we're going to become

Starting point is 00:11:35 selective. We're going to use selective availability today. So I think one of the biggest causes of modern burnout right now, and also modern burnout recovery, it's not the workload that we have. It's access. So there's another word. By making myself available, I'm providing access. So everybody has access to everybody right now. And this is one of the this interesting things to note, good or bad, I don't know. We need them both. But everybody has access to everybody right now via text, notifications. If you have like closed the door of access to me, all I have to do is make sure you get a notification. As a matter of fact, I'm getting notifications on my phone right now. I'm getting notifications on my computer. So if I'm having a

Starting point is 00:12:22 nice peaceful moment right now, those things are popping up. So I might want to consider turning those down. We have emails, DMs, group chats, work apps. I'm in a new chat with my inner triangle friends, but that's in WhatsApp. My phone, because everybody loves each other and it's enriching, and I like making myself available for those people. But are you in a group chat that you shouldn't make yourself available to? So you get to choose. You get to choose. So that makes me say, hmm. So social media is a very, very interesting thing if you change the way you look at it. So we've trained ourselves to be emotionally on call 24-7. Now, I don't know what your work hours are. You know, say my work hours are nine to five, and you know, you guys have scheduling. And some of you work too much. Some of you work too little.

Starting point is 00:13:10 But we've trained ourselves as far as access and availability to be on-call 24-7. You might not even know this. And somewhere along the way, many people started believing, try to grab this, Many people started to believe that immediate responsiveness equals a good person. If somebody asks me a question and I don't respond, that's sending a message, especially if they see that I saw it. I call that seesaw. They see that I saw it because it says red. There's another access and availability.

Starting point is 00:13:46 You might want to turn that sucker off, right? The idea is that if I don't rapidly respond or I don't give an appropriate answer because sometimes my answer is just, hmm, and I leave it at that. Does that make me a bad person? Or have we just been programmed to think that availability and constant access makes you a good person? What if constantly answering texts instantly is actually training your nervous system to remain in a perpetual state of reaction? Think about that. What if your constant rapid response, which makes you a good person is actually training your nervous system to be in a constant state of reaction. Now, what we like to talk about with the interface response system is like, we like to move

Starting point is 00:14:33 from reaction to response, which means that there's some thought into that. True North says that's some good shift. That's the name of my newsletter, because it is some good shift, right? What is good shift? It's when you say, hmm, I never looked at it that way. Interesting. You want a power move for the day, allow yourself, give yourself permission to become open and curious. So what if your exhaustion has less to do with hard work and more to do with emotional overstimulation, which is a byproduct, a side effect and a symptom of making yourself available and providing too much access? Emotional overstimulation. There's that nervous system. It's like the reverse neuroplasticity that you don't want.

Starting point is 00:15:19 Hypersensitivity to things that don't fucking matter. They don't support. You didn't take the time to think about it. Because every buzz pulls your attention. Every notification fractures your focus. Every unnecessary conversation drains your psychic energy. Did you ever think about that?

Starting point is 00:15:41 I know that sometimes you talk to people and you go, oh man, inside your brain you're saying this is draining me. We call them energy vampires. In our makes sense ecosystem, we call them flow burglars. Some people just try to burglarize your flow. They're draining your psychic energy. And you have no more psychic energy. You lose your creative process.

Starting point is 00:16:00 And you lose that ability to be the dominant force and shock hauler of your day when your psychic energy is drained. And most people don't even realize how much of their day is being stolen or burglarized by constant accessibility. This is why so many adults today feel completely overwhelmed. And I would say kids too and teenagers. This is why they feel so overwhelmed. Not because they lack capability. In our ecosystem, we say we feel that everybody here is highly capable, just scattered. That's why we say clarity before action. That's what we teach at our Make Sense Academy and our podcast Academy and in this ecosystem. clarity comes before action. So if you're in do, do, do, do, do, do, you revert back to the who because it's who you are that determines how well what you do works. And how do you figure out

Starting point is 00:16:54 the who? Clarity. So let's talk about this idea of taking this radical step in a world that says that this is not cool and it makes you a bad person. Let's talk about this idea of stopping this constant accessibility and availability to everyone. So one of the hardest lessons in personal growth valuable but hard, is realizing that saying yes to everybody eventually becomes saying no to yourself. If I say yes to everybody, I'm saying no to myself. I struggled for years, years and years. And I never really got the return on that investment. I was a humanitarian. I mean, I was like trying to save the world. But I never saved myself. I went through a divorce. I never saw my kids. What's up with that? Houston, we have a problem. So how many times have you answered a text immediately

Starting point is 00:17:47 while ignoring your own peace? Remember, there's that other form of self-care. Heck, just acknowledging the text, the notification disturbs our peace. If you're having a peaceful moment, like meditating, or you finally find a break in the day and you're just going to allow yourself to be bored and do no thing, but you have the notifications on, that's robbing you of your peace. It's kind of like a needy child that's in the back of the car while you're trying to have a conversation with your partner tapping you on the shoulder and just saying, are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Now, I'd rather have my kid do that than my phone. But it's the same thing. How many times have you participated in conversations that you didn't even want to have? Because somewhere inside of you,

Starting point is 00:18:32 you felt guilty not responding. Tell the truth. I've been in a lot of conversations where pretty quickly, I said, I don't want to be in this conversation. It's not interesting to me. I don't know how to get out of those conversations. Anybody have any ideas for that? It's not interesting to me. It doesn't align with me. It's agitating me. I'm frustrated by it, but I just fucking listen. Why? Because I feel bad. I feel bad. How many times have you participated in a conversation that you didn't want to be in because you felt guilty about it? Oh, God. Let's come up with a way of getting the hell out of there. I was thinking about it.

Starting point is 00:19:12 It would be totally rude, but if you're having a conversation with something that you don't align with, what's the worst thing that can happen? You don't become friends with that person? What would happen? What are your thoughts on this? What would happen if you said, I got to be honest with you? I don't align with this conversation, and I'm not enjoying myself. And frankly, I got a lot of shit to do.

Starting point is 00:19:33 I'm going to back out of this conversation. That wouldn't go well. What it? there's a little bit of an interesting correlation between approachability. So if I make myself highly approachable, right now I'll give you God's honest, transparent truth. Ever since my podcast got very, very popular, we're getting pitched on so many people wanting to come on it, including friends, people feeling entitled to come on, even if they don't

Starting point is 00:19:59 meet the quality control that my team looks at. So you have to close down approachability sometimes. Approachability can be a good thing, but it could also be kind of a disguised form of availability. This is where people pleasing quietly destroys people's lives. How could that be? People pleasing destroys people's lives. And the reason is, is because most people aren't addicted to helping people. They're addicted to avoiding discomfort.

Starting point is 00:20:28 What I mean by that is avoiding things like rejection, avoiding disapproval, avoiding being misunderstood. So we're trying to avoid discomfort. We don't want to go through the feelings of rejection, disapproval. I gave you that scenario before. I don't want somebody to think that I'm an asshole. I think, you know, somebody said this to me the other day. We all agreed that we're all assholes.

Starting point is 00:20:52 Is everybody here willing to agree that somewhere inside, you're an asshole? You might not let anybody know it. Hi, my name's J.C., and I'm a recovering asshole. And it's still inside of me. Sometimes I want to be an asshole. But I don't. Why? Because I want to avoid rejection, disapproval, and I don't want people to misunderstand me. Those are high values. And because of that, people stay endlessly accessible. This is why we do it. Why we allow ourselves to become approachable. I've actually been

Starting point is 00:21:22 taught to become approachable to build my business and things like that. But without knowing it, I became too available. I want you guys to look at your availability. If you would rate your availability to everyone from a scale of one to 10, 10 being the ultimate extreme of availability, one being like unavailable. In general, what would you rate yourself? What would be your score? I've been at 10, but right now, I would say I'm like a healthy four or five. And one of the ways that I do that, I'm approachable in this sense that people feel comfortable to come up to me and say something, but I don't engage in their conversation. Remember, people don't require your permission to show up.

Starting point is 00:22:08 They require your participation to stay. So there's an interesting thing. Like, if I just listen and I don't engage and I give them the honor of listening, just like a cloud, I pass on by. I pass on by. Because what people are really looking for is the response, right? They're not just looking for a response. They're looking for the response that they're hoping for.

Starting point is 00:22:30 They bounce a ball to you with a question. They're hoping you get a bounce back with the answer that validates their point. Why? Because everybody wants to be right. Everybody wants to work on their identity and their self-value by being right. Oh, man, we could go into this. We could go deep into this. Successful people eventually learn how to say no.

Starting point is 00:22:51 I want everybody to say no. No. And here's another one, three words. I don't know. I love those three words. When somebody asked me a question, and I'm not like some sort of an expert or guru or I legitimately don't, like for real, no. I just say, I don't know. Not because they hate other people.

Starting point is 00:23:10 This is an accessibility and an availability thing. It's because they value their energy. Do you value your energy enough to say no? So they understand that attention is a currency. Folks, I want you to look at your attention as a currency today and everybody's vying. for it. You might think that people are trying to get you to spend money. That's the easy part once they have your attention. God, we just learned about AI and algorithms and all sorts of stuff. What are we doing? We're learning how to grab people's attention. Now, I hope that you're going to

Starting point is 00:23:45 grab people's attention. And that's what I'm doing right now with quality stuff that I can enrich and change people's lives. But attention is a currency. And every unnecessary emotional interaction costs you something. Your focus, your clarity, your peace, your nervous system, the wiring, the reverse of what you want with neuroplasticity. And you know what else it robs you of? Your creativity. When we lose our energy to a flow burglar or an energy vampire or we make ourselves available to something that we shouldn't, it takes us out of the creative process, which I think is one of our unique gifts that we have. So this is why setting, boundaries, as I said before, is not a selfish thing. Setting boundaries is a survival thing.

Starting point is 00:24:36 And guess what happens when you do it right? Survival breeds Thruvival. Now that's a word I made up. Thruvival. So survival breeds Thruvival. You don't want to always be in survival mode. But, you know, it's funny. I'm thinking about Richard Dolan today, who was one of the speakers at this mastermind. And he says, you know, you've got to learn. learn how to use your hands when you're speaking. And I just caught myself using my hands. And so, survival. It comes first by surviving and then you begin to thrive. And one of the greatest mind shifts that you can make today or in your life is realizing that you do not need to explain every boundary you create. Isn't that funny how when we create boundaries, we feel like we have to explain them? We live in a world where if somebody asks you a question,

Starting point is 00:25:27 You're not allowed to just ignore them. Maybe if you're walking in the street and somebody who tries to hand you something, that's different. But if somebody walks up to me and says, hey, dragon, what do you think of this? And I just look at them. I'm immediately typecast as a cold asshole. Why? Why?

Starting point is 00:25:46 It wasn't my idea for them to come up. So there's this like rule. There's this like fair game going on. So one of the greatest mindset shifts that you can make today is that you've don't need to explain yourself or your boundaries to everyone, contrary to what you were probably raised to think. So that one changes your life and it changes the lives of people around you. So why should we become unavailable sometimes? If my wife has an emergency, this show ends. If I see an alert on my phone that my daughter needs me or my two boys need me, this show ends.

Starting point is 00:26:25 but outside of that, I'm unavailable to everybody else but you guys right now. So there's priority, right? There's levels of availability. Let me clarify something really important. This episode is not about isolation. It's not about isolating yourself unavailability. It's more about disappearing from people that don't matter. It's about becoming selective with your access and your availability. Selective availability, selective access. You do this today, you're going to free up a lot of your time.

Starting point is 00:26:58 And you're going to have a better day and you're going to have more creativity and you're going to get more shit done and probably follow through with what you said you were going to do this morning. Here's an analogy. And I talk about this in my book. It makes sense. It's kind of like a bouncer that's standing at the door of a nightclub. Your life is the nightclub. And this practice that we're talking about is the bouncer. You know, this is about treating your access and your availability like a private party going.

Starting point is 00:27:24 on in the club and only people that are on the guest list get in. The next time somebody says something to you or an event comes up or you hear about some news, just check the fucking guest list. Check the guest list. Sorry, you're not on the list. Go to the end of the line. Maybe you'll end up on the list some other time. Check the guest list.

Starting point is 00:27:43 If you like that, there's a whole, and you have my book, there's a QR code and you can go through the whole exercise of creating what's called your sorting filter and you learn how to set up the bouncer. in your life as well. So when you're available for everyone, you eventually become unavailable for yourself. Isn't this what so many people are experiencing right now? Wouldn't you agree? Isn't this what so many people are experiencing right now? They've become disconnected from themselves because they're constantly plugged into everyone else, constantly reacting. Everybody's nervous systems are on reaction mode right now, constantly responding, constantly consuming,

Starting point is 00:28:24 noise. Remember something. What it is that we consume with regularity ends up being what we assume with regularity. If you're consuming noise, you're assuming noise. You're having a bad day. So it's becoming increasingly difficult to unwrap the present moment. Right now, if I consciously voluntarily sit myself in and unwrap the present moment, I am here now with you. and that's the only thing that's actually happening. The beginning of this conversation's over. The future, I have no idea what's about to happen. I have no idea what the next question or distinction is going to be,

Starting point is 00:29:05 and I'll get to those in a second. But it's about unwrapping the present moment, and it's becoming increasingly difficult. Heck, it's one of the primary reasons that this guy gets up at four in the morning. I get up at four in the morning no matter what. N-M-W. no matter what. Why? Because it's mine. Nobody else is up at that time, right? So I do things to protect myself. One of them is I get up in the morning and I get two hours of work done and I do my meditation and I do my exercise and all that and it is wonderful. I am extremely unavailable at that time. So the interface response system from my book, there's also podcast episodes on that on this show. The interface response system, which we also call the IRS, teaches us to first perceive. awaken, become aware, perceive, pause, hmm, and then process things.

Starting point is 00:29:59 We talk about the bouncer, the looking at things differently. We have this exercise called the sorting filter. Hey, if you get the book, makes sense how to rewire your mind, transform your life. In the beginning of it, if you didn't notice, there's a QR code that gives you the assets, which are these exercises that I'm talking about. The interface response system is there, perceive, pause, process, proceed, to save my life. Everybody knows my story. I figured it out and that's what I teach people.

Starting point is 00:30:27 That's the IRS. But modern culture skips the pause entirely. What does modern culture mean? The herd. The stampede. That's modern culture. Modern culture to me means at this time, people that are caught up in the culture versus themselves.

Starting point is 00:30:47 They're not self-aware. So they miss it entirely. So the phone buzzes, react. Email arrives. react. Someone gets upset, react. And if you don't, shame on you. And the result is emotional exhaustion. So one of the most powerful self-care habits that you could develop is learning how to pause. Hmm. Guys, if I ask you a question, you're allowed to think about it. And you're also allowed to not answer. It was my idea. You're not a bad person if you have nothing to say. Sometimes it's the

Starting point is 00:31:18 smartest thing you could ever do. Pause before participation. Remember, noise doesn't need your permission to show up. It needs your participation to stay. So pause before you decide to use the currency of your availability and your access in participation. Pause. Just pause. And if somebody goes, wait a second, what's your answer? I love when people say, what do you think?

Starting point is 00:31:43 When I say, hmm, and I go, well, actually, I'm thinking. Is that okay? Not every message deserves our immediate access, right? It doesn't deserve immediate access to your nervous system. Not every conflict that happens deserves your energy, and not every opinion deserves your explanation. If I have an opinion about you, you do not need to explain yourself, justify, protect yourself. It's mine.

Starting point is 00:32:09 If I offer you a present and you don't receive it, who does the present belong to? Me, not you. Stop accepting gifts. All of them, right? They're wrapped for a reason. You don't know what's in it. It could be just a shitstorm, okay? Sometimes the healthiest thing that you can do is to protect your peace and energy by simply

Starting point is 00:32:31 not engaging and not being available. I know this is going to be tough for some people. And ironically, the moment you stop over explaining yourself, people often begin respecting your time more. This is interesting. Do you know anyone? I love to use Eckhart Tolle. So if you ever go to an Eckhart Tolle, you can go watch them on YouTube.

Starting point is 00:32:51 If somebody asks him a question, the dude like waits two, three minutes before he answers. He allows himself, he gives himself permission to think before he talks. I think it's the coolest thing in the world. And if I say something to somebody and they don't answer, and the dance is not going on the way I was hoping, which was my intention, that person just passes on by, right? I move on to somebody else. But I also find myself curious about that person. If I meet somebody that allows themselves to think, allows themselves to remain open and curious and think before they just react, I have high respect for that person.

Starting point is 00:33:29 You know, some of my friends, shout out to my buddy Jim quick, we hang out a lot. We appreciate and we respect each other's silence. If you have a good friend, they respect your silence. I know this is an important part of my relationship with my wife. We call her the chicken. Sometimes if she has nothing to say, respect it. I respect it. Why? Because I love her. Silence is a competitive edge, a competitive advantage. The modern world rewards right now noise. Efficiency, rapid response, certainty.

Starting point is 00:34:02 Everybody is trying to win arguments. Everybody is broadcasting opinions. Everybody wants immediate reactions. A lot of people use that as a strategy. Right? We ask questions on our podcasts. We ask questions on our posts. Engagement. engagement, engagement, engagement. But silence becomes rare. You want to become rare and unique? Be quiet. Be quiet.

Starting point is 00:34:27 And rare things become powerful. So have you ever noticed how uncomfortable people become when you don't immediately respond? This is really funny. Try it. Open up a Zoom sometime with a bunch of people and you're the leader of the Zoom and just don't talk for like a minute. Watch what happens to people.

Starting point is 00:34:45 It gets so uncomfortable. So uncomfortable. So when people know exactly how to trigger you, by the way, they can unconsciously control you as well. If you're someone that always rapidly responds and you're always available, you're actually training people to expect that of you. But when you stop reacting impulsively, that pattern breaks. If somebody's giving you shit all the time and it's bothering you, it's pissing you off, you want to break that pattern, become unavailable.

Starting point is 00:35:15 Become unavailable. It's not about ignoring. It's just about not responding so fast, not reacting. Okay? That's when the pattern breaks. So that's why silence in this sense is very, very powerful. Not manipulation, not manipulative silence, not passive, not passive, aggressive. That's not what we're talking about here.

Starting point is 00:35:35 I'm talking about conscious silence, conscious silence. The kind that says, I no longer need to participate in every emotional invitation. Can you say that? And this is one of the biggest life advice lessons that adults eventually learn. Your peace often requires distance from unnecessary noise. Got to say that one again. Your peace often requires distance from unnecessary noise. So this is how you take control of your time and stop feeling completely burned out.

Starting point is 00:36:10 And this is why many successful people don't answer every text, immediately, the name of this episode, that right there is why they don't answer every text immediately. They're protecting their peace and the things that matter most and their high leverage impact and they're impeccable to their word that day. You've got to block out the noise. You don't have to make yourself available because they understand that constant accessibility destroys deep thinking, emotional clarity, creativity, and presence. So we're talking about Choosing yourself first without guilt. Anybody suffer from guilt here?

Starting point is 00:36:49 So one of the most difficult parts of setting boundaries is guilt. People feel guilty saying no. Guilty of protecting their time. How funny is that? Guilty of becoming unavailable. Hmm. Why do we automatically assume self-abandonment equates to kindness? Why do we assume that abandoning ourselves means that we're being kind?

Starting point is 00:37:13 Put that in your pipe and smoke it. So why do we believe exhaustion, hustle culture, why do we believe that exhaustion is proof of love? Go out of your way to do things, right? Out of your way. Nothing about your way. Careful, I'm not saying being selfish. There's value.

Starting point is 00:37:33 My wife, her love language, is acts of service, but she's a high priority. And why is this? Because many people were conditioned to earn acceptance through availability. That hits home. But choosing yourself first, it's not selfish, my friends.

Starting point is 00:37:51 It's necessary, especially if you're dealing with constant overwhelm and your nervous system has been overloaded for years. You've got to start choosing yourself. And here's an interesting version of the truth. Now, I like to say that, version of the truth, because I don't really know the truth. It's just at this time.

Starting point is 00:38:10 when you become healthier emotionally, people will start accusing you of changing. Oh man, he's changed. If you go out and get healthy right now and you stop drinking and you start doing, stop doing all these things, people will be like, oh man, what the hell happened at JC? But maybe you didn't become cold. This is for you. Maybe you finally stopped abandoning yourself. That's different.

Starting point is 00:38:34 You want to stop drinking. You're going to get healthy. By the way, I'm a health transformation coach. I've held hundreds of thousands of people, lose weight, get healthy, reset their metabolism. So I work with a lot of people. If anybody out there is struggling, you're welcome to reach out to me. I've got a simple goofproof program. I lost 80 pounds 20 years ago and kept it off.

Starting point is 00:38:54 A lot of my clients stop abandoning themselves, right? And their friends don't want to hang out with them. Isn't that funny? So this is where healthy mindsets begin to form, by the way, when you start practicing this. Take little steps, little steps. I came up with this idea about the Nobel Prize. Let me see if I can get it right. You realize you awaken to this idea that you've been nominated with the Nobel Peace

Starting point is 00:39:18 Price, not Prize. So there's a big difference, being nominated by the Nobel Peace Price versus the prize. So here's what it means. You can love people without giving them unlimited access to your energy. Okay, we're growing towards the prize now. You can care deeply without carrying everybody emotionally. You can become somebody that cares deeply without carrying everybody emotionally. You can say no without being a bad person.

Starting point is 00:39:48 Did you know that? And you can protect your peace without apologizing for it. And that, my friends, is how you earn the Nobel Peace Prize versus the Peace Prize. I thought that was pretty cool. In closing, but first, becoming less available, feels uncomfortable. Okay? So if you're going to go out and do this, prepare to be uncomfortable, which is a good thing, because where does growth take place? They get the rest of it, right? Outside the comfort zone, outside the comfort known. So at first it's going to be uncomfortable. You're going to feel

Starting point is 00:40:19 guilty because this is part of your system, your programming, your conditioning. You're going to feel pressure and you're going to wonder why people are upset with you, the herd. Okay? But over time, and this is the bright side, over time, something incredible. happens. The noise starts fading. It starts dimming. The noise starts fading. Your nervous system calms down and your thinking becomes clearer. Your emotional reactions begin to slow down. This is the neuroplasticity in the right direction and your life begins feeling like your own again. Oh, I feel so good. And slowly you stop living reactively and you stop being controlled by every notification, every expectation, every emotional demand. You stop surviving and you start

Starting point is 00:41:12 becoming intentional. And that's that thriving. So that's the real superpower. Not dominance, not status. That's not what it's about. Not control. Peace. Give peace a chance. That's what they were telling us, right? The Beatles. So what is your superpower? They're going to ask you, What's your superpower? And you can say, peace. I restore peace to myself and therefore others. This is what it means to have that superpower. It means the ability to remain centered in a world that is addicted to urgency.

Starting point is 00:41:50 In closing, maybe the strongest thing that you can say in 2026 is not yes. Maybe it's not today, not at this time, or even just, hmm, I'm not sure. I'll have to get back to you if that's okay. And if that's not okay, tough shit. Tough shit if that's not okay. So love and appreciate you. Wow, what a fun day today. What an honor it was to be with everybody today on YouTube and on Substack.

Starting point is 00:42:21 Have an amazing day. And I'll see you next time. Bye-bye now. That's it for today. To support the Make Sense with Dr. J.C. podcast, be sure to subscribe, like, and share. well as follow the Makes 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

Starting point is 00:42:45 today, give it away. That's the only way it's going to stay. See you next time. Makes sense.

Makes Sense - with Dr. JC Doornick - The Super Power of Unavailability - Why Successful People Don't Answer Every Text - E-172

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