Makes Sense - with Dr. JC Doornick - The Superpowers You Mistook for Weaknesses - E170

Episode Date: May 15, 2026

Have you ever felt like your sensitivity, your overthinking, or your need for perfection was holding you back? In this episode of the Makes Sense podcast, Dr. JC Doornick reveals how the traits you’ve been trying to "fix" are actually your greatest competitive advantages. Most people spend their lives hiding their true selves, but we're showing you how to flip the script and use these unique qualities to win in 2026. Stop fighting against your nature and start leaning into what makes you different. We break down the psychology of "hidden strengths" so you can stop feeling stuck and start feeling empowered. Whether you're 20 or 60, this shift in perspective will change how you see your career, your relationships, and yourself. #PersonalGrowth #MindsetShift #SelfImprovement #MakesSense #HiddenStrengths   Resources: The Science of Flow - https://amzn.to/4nx1CAK The Big Leap -     Have you ever thought of someone just seconds before they called you? Or found exactly what you needed just when you were about to give up? Most of us brush these moments off as "just a coincidence," but what if they are actually signals? In this episode of Makes Sense, Dr. JC Doornick talks about moving from living by accident to living with awareness. We explore how your Internal Response System helps you notice the patterns and people that are already showing up to help you. When you stop seeing life as a series of random mistakes and start seeing it as a series of connected moments, everything changes. Learn how to tune in, stay open, and finally understand the "logic" behind the big moments in your life. #Coincidence #Awareness #DrJCDoornick #MakesSense #LifePatterns   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: Makes Sense Academy: A private mastermind and psychologically safe environment full of the Mindset and Action steps that will help you begin to thrive. The Makes Sense Academy. https://www.skool.com/makes-sense-academy/about The Sati Experience: A retreat designed for the married couple that truly loves one another, yet wants to take their love to that higher magical level. Relax, reestablish, and renew your love at the Sati Experience. https://www.satiexperience.com     0:00 - Intro 1:05 - Your Weakness is actually a superpower 4:58 - The Misleading concept of your gifts 7:40 - The Invisible Gift 9:50 - How do we identify with our gifts? 12:14 - What Energizes You and What Drains You? 13:41 - My Personal Story of how I found my gifts. 19:14 - Chronic Depletion 23:20 Ines from Substack - There's something inside us all that makes us unique Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is going to be some good shift today. We're going to change our mindsets around the traits that we've been trying to fix and explore how our insecurities may actually be hidden strengths. 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. label it as life and reality. Yeah, that ends here. Welcome to the Make Sense with Dr. J.C. podcast. This is your opportunity to start thinking for yourself, reclaim control, and step back

into that role as the shock caller and dominant force of your own reality. It's when you change the way that you look at things, that the things that you look at begin to change. So let's wake up, let's rise up, and let's make sense of why and how shift happens. Hmm. Makes sense. So this is your weakness is actually a superpower. We're going to entertain that idea. Do you ever feel you, me, us like maybe you're too much or somehow not enough? I've sure felt that way.

Or maybe you've been told that you're too sensitive. Has anyone ever told you that you're too sensitive? Or maybe too emotional, too stubborn, too intense. or too different. I've always said, let you're crazy out. I like to know what's different about people. That's what I find is special. We don't have to be like everybody else, but we find ourselves gravitating towards it. What if the very thing that you've been trying to hide is actually the key to your greatest breakthrough? What if your sensitivity is actually just awareness? What if your overthinking is actually a superpower of deep processing? What if your stubbornness

was actually conviction that was just simply waiting for purpose. We're going to change our mindsets around the traits that we've been trying to fix and explore how our insecurities may actually be hidden strengths. So I want you to just kind of take a moment and start thinking about your insecurities. And let them come back out. Let's not hide from them today. Let's not be ashamed of our insecurities today. And let's kind of assume that we've hidden them under a rock and we're going to roll that

rock over today because the final shift that we're going to discuss today might completely change how you see yourself. One of the tenants of our Make Sense Academy, our Make Sense ecosystem, our Dragonfly Podcast Academy, my book, all of that stuff in this ecosystem is that if you change the way you look at things, the things that you look at change, Wayne Dyer said that. I don't know if he invented it, but man, when I heard that, I said, that's great. But what we're going to do is we're going to actually give ourselves the opportunity to change the way we look at things. We're going to look at things differently today and actually execute on that. I think that one of the greatest struggles that we all carry is the fear that there's something

fundamentally wrong with us. Do you ever think that your greatest struggles indicate that there's something fundamentally wrong with you? And so most of those beliefs that we have didn't originate with us. So where did they come from? They came from our programmers, beliefs. And that would be our mother, father, teacher, preacher. So those are the programmers. But there's some other types of programmers. This is right out of my book. Makes sense.

There's also society. See, a lot of times we forget that what we're consuming all day is what triggers are assuming. And our assuming has a lot to do with our beliefs. So society, and then there's the paying forward of evolution. All of the lessons and ideas of what's right and wrong have been paid forward to us. And that has a big to do with our belief systems. So over time, many of us accept these labels before we ever even got a chance to understand ourselves. You're too emotional. You ask too many questions. You think too much. You're kind of difficult. So we start to believe them. And we kind of slowly learned how to edit ourselves to fit within the confounds of what's comfortable for others.

That's a big, big distinction. That was a big awakening for me is how I would start to ask myself, how have I edited my own self, kind of separate from what I actually think and what I want and desire, how have I edited myself to fit in with society but what's comfortable for others?

I don't want to make others uncomfortable when I'm around, right? But what if many of those traits were never weaknesses at all that we were hiding because they were uncomfortable for others. What if they were undeveloped gifts? So I want to talk about this misleading concept of gifts. So we're going to look at our gifts today and see that we've kind of gone astray. So I believe that we all come into this world with factory installed skills, features, and tendencies. So some people are natural leaders. I always felt like I was a natural leader, but I had to quiet that down a little bit because

I don't want to outshine people. Love Gay Hendricks work, by the way. Any Gay Hendricks fans out there? Some people come in naturally leading. Some people are natural nurturers. I know I can see a lot of you out there. Some people are great at creating things. Some people notice patterns.

I always noticed patterns. I would always find myself as a kid kind of daydreaming and with my head up in the clouds, looking at different angles of architectures or nature or anything like that. And some people communicate. what skills were you born with? You know, sometimes you'll find yourself a little bit of shame to mention them, but what skills were you born with? And if you don't know what they are, you can ask some people that know you very well, but nobody taught you those things. This is the distinction I want

to share with you. Nobody taught you those things. They were actually pre-installed, just like batteries, they came included. Doesn't that make you curious? Some people spend their lives trying to learn things that you were born with. Many of those gifts were mislabeled, and they were mislabeled early. And here's what it looks like. Sensitivity can become something that's known as dramatic. Curiosity becomes difficult. Hyperactivity becomes disruptive.

Oh, man, hyperactivity? I'm 54 years old. I was definitely ADHD, but they just didn't know what ADHD was back then. So hyperactivity becomes disruptive. Talking too much becomes annoying. That was me as well. People used to tell me I talk too much. Look what I'm doing now. A full-time talker. What if we reframe those things? What if sensitivity was actually just awareness, the skill of awareness? What if curiosity was just a form of wisdom? What if hyperactivity was drive? You know that people that have ADHD are more prone to being very, successful? Isn't that funny? How we've got a diagnosis that says that people are at a disadvantage because they can't like focus and things like that? But what if hyperactivity was drive? What if talking too much was just the skill set of communication coming online? What if many of these things that you were criticized for were actually never flaws? Maybe they were just underdeveloped superpowers.

So I like to call this next part, the invisible gift. A lot of things that we're we have and possess are invisible. So here's the tricky part. Some gifts are invisible to the person who has them. What we're saying is some of these gifts, superpowers, are invisible to the person that has them. Why? Because they come so naturally to you that you just assume that everyone else can do them. Your invisible gift, your superpower, you might not know that you have it because you assume that everybody else can do it. You know. You them. So you think things like, doesn't everybody notice that? I used to notice some weird stuff. And I used to say, well, I would assume everybody notices that. That's nothing special. Doesn't everybody think the way that I do? Well, my answer is most probably no. They don't.

In fact, that might be exactly what makes it your gift is that you don't know you have it because it's so natural to you. Sometimes your greatest strengths feel ordinary to you because you've never experienced life without it. So no, these are not common among everybody, right? They're common among you. So they don't. That may be exactly what makes it your gifts. So remember this. Sometimes your greatest strength feels ordinary to you because you've never experienced life without it. So try this. Here's a little bit of an exercise. Ask yourself this question. What do people consistently come to you for? I ask that about myself as well. What do people consistently come to me for. What would your answer be for that? What do people come to you for?

Advice, could be leadership, could be calmness, creativity, perspective. I like to come to JC because he gives me good perspective. God, I hope that's why you're reading my books and consuming my stuff in the makes sense ecosystem, you know, for perspective, because that's what it's all about. Maybe they come to you for problem solving. Sometimes we complain about that too, that everybody comes to you for something. what we're doing is we're kind of looking under the hood of that. People often recognize your gifts before you do. So we're talking about how to identify with our gifts. So look at your childhood for a second. My book looks deep into my childhood, which I didn't think to do until I hit a wall one day. The essence of the 10 stories that I share in my book makes sense, how to rewire your mind and

transform your life, was I woke up and I experienced this going from completely dark and offline to online. It was like a rebirth. And I just recognized that that was possible. And I started to say, maybe there's a lot of stuff that I don't know about myself. So I started to go back and unpack through these new lenses that I have, these new awakened lenses, this new value system, this new identity. And I started to look at everything. So look at your childhood. Before practicality and programming, what completely absorbed you and what made time disappear. For parents that have kids, you know this about your kids, but I'm asking you about you. What were you completely absorbed with as a child and what made time just disappear?

I think if I asked a kid today, they would probably say playing like Fortnite or something like that, right? Tadenae says, advice. People come to her for advice, keeping them grounded and at ease. So Tadenae, what we're entertaining there is that could be signs and symptoms of your superpower. So whatever it is that you're trying to accomplish right now, that would be something you'd want to learn how to really, really craft and exploit, perhaps. So children often reveal their natural gifts before the world teaches them what is normal and realistic. That's what's so fun about the play of being a child.

We don't know yet. And you know how many knows we get. There's some statistics out there. like we hear the word no 5,000 times before we're a certain age. We often exhibit our natural gifts before the world teaches us what's normal and realistic. What I'm saying here today is follow your signal. That's what this whole ecosystem. That's what this show is about.

That's what these Monday mornings are about is letting you know or reminding you that you can follow your signal, follow the signs and the clues and the insights that you're having, the things that are happening in your heart and your gut, follow your insight, follow your signal, and follow your energy. Pay attention in your life to what energizes you rather than what drains you. This one's a little bit tough to wrestle with because it typically makes people realize where they're wasting time because we don't know how much that we have. So pay attention to what energizes you rather than what drains you because energy is actually valuable data, especially in this conversation.

So you may spend eight hours at work. Well, today maybe 10 or 11. You may spend eight hours at work and feel exhausted. But then find yourself spending three, four, five hours, helping someone, maybe in the creative process, teaching people things, solving problems, you know, giving advice like Tadena said, and suddenly feel alive again,

regardless of how much you slept or anything. Some people say, oh, man, that looks like hard work. and you say, this is hardly work. This stuff matters. One of the clearest signs that you're aligned with your gift is that using them creates energy rather than merely consuming it. Where are you energized? What are you doing that's energy?

If you have a nine to five job and it's just draining you, I'm not going to give you advice, but that's not living. You know, most Americans don't know that they work 85% of their entire life. Now, I wouldn't mind where. working 85% of my entire life, which I kind of do now, but I'm energized, but what I do. My personal story, and this comes out of my book, and I don't want to share too much of it because it would take too much time, but I lived something like this, where I was unconsciously experiencing something that I had to quiet down because I thought it was abnormal.

When I was younger, if you read the book, you hear this one particular story is a really weird thing. When I was younger, I experienced this weird thing all by myself. I was riding my bike home from the pool, and all of a sudden I experienced this, like, massively heightened sensitivity to all five of my senses. I mean, I don't know if anybody here has ever experienced something like that, but I think it was like eight or nine back in the days where you could, like, not worry about stuff and ride your bike everywhere. But all of a sudden, I noticed everything.

All at once, it was overwhelming. That was the theme. It was overwhelming. All of my five senses went from like one to like 20. I started noticing like with an overwhelming quality, patterns, emotions, energy shifts, sounds, movement, behavior. It's like I noticed everything. And my immediate knee-jerk reaction to that, I remember, was to get the hell out of there.

You know, I remember the first time I experienced this as a kid, and this whole story's in the book, I ditched my bike and I ran into the woods so nobody could see me, because I thought something was wrong with me, and I just piled a bunch of leaves over me. I was just trying to escape this overwhelming feeling. And for years and years, you know, with the help of my parents, I thought something was wrong with me until, case in point, until later on in life, because it never really went away, I noticed. I just got used to it.

But I noticed later in life that hypersensitivity was not a dysfunction. It was just my keen sense of awareness. And that awareness, what did I do with it? It became a pattern of recognition. Pattern recognition became understanding. And understanding became helping people do what? Make sense of things. And by the way, that's how all of us are here today.

Whether you're live with me today on Substack or YouTube, or you're listening to this as a podcast in its edited form, That's why we're here today because I recognized that my hypersensitivity wasn't a dysfunction. It was awareness and I allowed myself to go down that rabbit hole. So what is that for you? Is it time to take that off the shelf? Brush off the dust of something that you think is just normal and you think that nobody cares about, but you kind of know you were born with it.

That pattern has shaped everything and it's brought me here today and it's brought you here today. You wouldn't be here today if I didn't tap into this. This is how we unlock extraordinary things and superpowers. See, I don't think people are stuck and broken. I think people are highly capable and just lost and scattered. That's why in our ecosystem, we always say clarity before action. What I believed made me broken turned out to be exactly what made me useful. And I think in the last 10 minutes of life, that's what we're all going to reflect back.

It's not going to be about all the things we're worried about now. We're going to look back and say, was I useful? Did I matter? And I wonder how many people listening to this right now are still apologizing for the thing that makes them extraordinary. Are you apologizing for the things that make you extraordinary? Isn't that silly sounding? So notice what bothers you. What deeply bothers you in the world?

Because irritation often points towards assignment. This is fascinating. I see so many people pissed off, angry, worried, concerned about things and doing nothing about them. We're entertaining the idea that irritation often points towards assignment. Maybe that's your assignment. If injustice affects you deeply, leadership may have something in store for you. Leadership may live inside of you. If wasted potential bustrates the hell out of you, well, then mentorship may live inside of you. If confusion bothers you. Teaching may be your gift. That's me. I was always so frustrated when things didn't make sense. I didn't want to be confused. And I was a kid in

class that everybody made fun of because I kept on raising my hand. People said I talked too much. I was annoying, all of that stuff. I didn't like sitting in misunderstanding. I was crafting some of my skills, my gifts. Sometimes purpose hides inside what your soul refuses to ignore. So if your nervous system is acting up in any of those ways, maybe it's an assignment or maybe it's something that's living inside of you coming out to say hello. What if your struggles were just refining experiences, training maybe, or maybe even preparation? What if our struggles were training and preparation? Because power without purpose becomes frustration. Having power without purpose becomes frustration and perhaps the reason why so many people feel lost is not that they lack

gifts or superpowers, but because they disconnected from them at some point for obvious reasons. Maybe today's the day that we reconnect. Maybe we've been offline and we're coming back online. One of the clearest signs of misalignment of this stuff is chronic depletion, boredom, Sunday dread, feeling spiritually numb. You should not need to recover every day from the life that you're building. We should not have to recover from the life that we're living and building. Make sense? Let's connect this to two things that I love.

The state of flow and also the zone of genius. The state of flow, great book, you know, I think should just be required reading for all humans. And that is the science of flow. And then we have the zone of genius, which comes out of Gay Hendricks book, the Big Leap. When your gifts intersect with meaningful contribution, so when you have these gifts and they intersect with meaningful contribution, flow emerges. We get into the flow state. They don't talk so much about that in the flow state. I like to look at the idea of when you are matching your superpowers in your gifts with meaningful

contribution, that's another way of hacking into the flow state. Flow emerges and time seems to disappear and energy increases. So go back to one of those things that energizes you. When you were a kid that you just got just lost in and just see how you're potentially matching your gifts with some sort of meaningful use or contribution. Energy increases, time disappears. You stop surviving your work and you start becoming energized by your work. Imagine that. You bust your ass all day to day and you're energized by it. A lot of people that, have come to visit me and they look at my workday. I mean, I get up at four in the morning. I go to bed at a certain time and I don't really eat too extravagantly. I pretty much eat the same

thing every day and I work really, really hard and I get my, my day is off at two. That's when I just devote myself to my family. People would say, man, I don't know if I could ever do that. Man, I love my life. Love my life and it energizes me. So maybe one of the greatest success habits for 2006, is learning to stop fighting your nature and finally start building your life around it. I always say that I try to live my life around the things that matter most. And those would be family, health, spirituality, and all of those things, the things that matter most. What we're entertaining is throwing another one in there, and that is your true nature. To live your life around what matters most is not just about living in service together.

God and all of these different things. Those are all extremely important. I'm not taking that away, but what about your true nature? Maybe it's to remember who you were before the world told you who to be. Who is the world told you to be? Maybe your purpose is not something that you have to invent, but maybe it's something that you have to remember or uncover. Maybe that's why you're here today. All of the possible places you could be, here you are today. Maybe you're having a discovery today. Now, most people after this will go back to their life because it's powerful and it'll wash it away. But at least now that you've taken the first step of knowing. I would always say write it down.

You know, I always say the same thing at the end of my show. I say, if you learn something today, give it away. That's how it's going to stay. If something is awakening inside of you right now, the easiest way to take hold of it and own it is to go teach other people about it. And maybe the thing that you spent years trying to fix is actually the thing that you were born to use. Your sensitivity. Your curiosity. Your intensity.

Oh, my God. You're so intense. Maybe that's what you were born to be and use. Your awareness. Maybe your voice and your heart. Maybe those were never flaws at all. Maybe those were your superpowers waiting for permission. By who?

Who gives your superpowers permission? mission? You. So this is Inez from Substack. Everyone possesses something within that sets them apart. You know, I think that we're all from the same. We're all interconnected. But she's right. There's something inside of us that all sets us apart. And there's also others out there with your superpowers and makes them unique. Something that makes them love life and live happily. However, they may not know where this something lies. That's what we're talking about. She's getting it. This is making sense. So they must research through their surroundings to find it. Perhaps circumstances and all the challenges will force them to reveal it quickly.

Inez, you got it. You got it. That's beautiful. I love it. A lot of people think that whatever it is that they see and perceive and believe, all of these things, they came up with. But what we're realizing is maybe you didn't. Maybe you were taught these things. Maybe we some lint rollers to get rid of some of our beliefs. Why would we get rid of our beliefs? Even the ones that you are completely grounded on and certain of, why would we get rid of them? Because it opens us up to the unknown. Really take home this idea of like identifying what your comfort known is. Maybe they were never flaws these things. Maybe those were your superpowers waiting for permission. So instead of asking, what's wrong with me? Maybe it's time

to ask a different question. How can I use this gift in service to something greater? That frustration, that sensitivity, that communication skill. Hmm, that's why I say, hmm, all the time. That's why I wear glasses without lenses. That's why I wear this hat. Because my programmed condition nature, which is not mine, is very, very strong and it's always looking to take me back on that course. So I use some of these tokens, right? I use some of these cues to remind myself. So, hmm, reminds me that I don't have to make up my mind. I haven't made up my mind about anything.

I find myself sometimes thinking I have, but I always entertain the idea of saying I don't have to. Next week we're going to talk about the power of being unavailable. Because the moment that your insecurity becomes useful, it transforms into power. And I hope that all that made sense. All right, love and appreciate you all. Have a wonderful day.

Have a wonderful week. Treat this day as if it was your last. And remember, if you learned something today, please consider giving it away. That's how it's going to stay. Have a wonderful day and we'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, as well as follow the Make Sense substack for free daily quotes, live streams, and blogs. And remember, Learning without action is just another form of distraction. If something hit home and you learn something today, give it away. That's the only way it's going to stay.

See you next time. Makes sense.