Radical Responsibility: When Life Chooses You - E213

0:00Welcome to the newest grocery outlet location. Your couch! No parking lot, no shoes required. And the commute is approximately... zero feet. Because now you can shop Instacart or DoorDash and get your grocery outlet favorites delivered right to your door, with the same great item prices as in-store. Your couch has never been this productive. Grocery outlet. Big deals. Now delivered. Hey, it's Kelly Rowland. You may not know this, but I have eczema. So I get how it can steal your time. But why let eczema take over when you can talk to your doctor about eczema? Eczema, a 250mg per 2mg leader injection, is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older, who weigh at least 88 lbs or 40kg with moderate to severe eczema. Also called a topic dermatitis that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin, or topicals, or who cannot use topical therapies,

1:02ebglus can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you are allergic to ebglus. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have newer worsening eye problems, you should not receive a live vaccine when treated with ebglus. Before starting ebglus, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. What is your partnership with Lily? Respect your time. Ask your doctor about ebglus and visit ebglus.com or call 1-800-LilyRX or 1-800-545-5979. At QVC, shopping is more than just checking out. It's discovering something new every day. Start with today's special value. Then explore exciting finds across the brands and categories you love. From beauty and fashion to home, culinary and outdoor living. Shop now at QVC.com. I just want to start off by just coming from a place of gratitude.

2:04And this is just a message to my make sense family. This project that we have on YouTube has started this year with only 2,000 subscribers or under 2,000. And looking back, you know, I can't really wrap my head around all that's changed. We are at 20,000. We're over 20,000 subscribers right now. And it's interesting if you're the kind of person that's trying to grow a YouTube channel. There's a right and a wrong way to do it. And there's the right people to work with and the wrong people to work with. I was trying to do it by myself. So I do want to give credit to all of you and my team. But say that the growth that we're experiencing with the podcast and specifically the YouTube channel, it's not mine. It's ours. It's everyone that shows up and watches the videos. And I can't tell you how much fun it is to see people comment on some of these interviews that we have and the videos that we have love talking to you guys on there. All of you that listen and share this stuff with somebody that you love, you know, I don't take any of that stuff lightly. And I never will. But I just want you guys all to know that I wake up every day.

3:08It's a big reason that I do these things. I wake up every day grateful for everything, you know, for this community, for this work that I do and for you. 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 role as the shot 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.

4:10All right. So today I want to talk to you about something that I believe could quite possibly be one of the most empowering and misunderstood ideas in personal development. And that is the idea of taking radical responsibility. And I think it's going to clear a lot of things up with what I've been going through and why I've been taking it so well. So I want to say great morning world, great morning humans. This is Dr. J.C. Dornick, otherwise known as the dragon. And I want to welcome you to another edition of the Make Sense with Dr. J.C. podcast. And I want to welcome you to the uprising of the sleep walking masses. So strangely enough, this whole conversation that we're about to have started with a thought that I had about what I call currency. So I'm writing my new book. I've actually written the new book. It's going to launch in the latter part of 2027 because we still have Make Sense. And the world still needs to read that book. That's Make Sense. How to rewire your brain or how to rewire your mind and transform your life.

5:11But I'm writing this new book and one of the big concepts on there is how careless we are very often with where replace our care. So I came up with this idea of currency and that is referring to the limit amount of care currency. If you looked at care and our attention and our time and our focus as a currency, it's limited. And we have a limited amount, a limited allotment of it every day. So this includes things like our time, energy, focus and our attention, which everybody's vying for these days. I think a lot of you probably agree with that. So it occurred to me that we seem to be spending an abnormal amount of our currency on things that might happen in the future and not nearly enough of it on what is actually happening. So think that through. Think that through for a second in our brain. The voice is saying things like, well, what if this happens? What if that happens? What if I lose my job? What if the relationship fails? What if the treatment doesn't work? That one pops up in me.

6:16What if my cancer spreads and things get worse? So I started wondering whether living so much of our lives inside an uncertain and unpredictable future is actually creating a rift. And a challenge with our ability to live responsibly in the present. So there's an idea I want you to just kind of contemplate right now. Are we spending so much time kind of living our lives in this uncertain future? We all know that that's kind of silly, but we kind of get confusing caught up when we're setting goals and we're creating direction and stuff. And you'll see I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. But we spend so much time living in that future and not enough time in our present right now. And this is creating a rift and it's making a lot more challenging to take responsibility for ourselves right now. And no one's excluded from this me as well. So here's the thing you can't take responsibility for something that hasn't happened yet. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. You can worry about it. Yes, you are correct. You can worry about it.

7:24You can fear it. You can even rehearse it in your brain. You can catastrophize things in the future. What I'm saying is that you can't take responsibility for things in the future because it is not here yet. So that's a big distinction today is we're looking at the idea of taking radical responsibility on things that are not things that might or things that happened in the past. We can't take responsibility. We can take ownership for something that happened in the past. But where does that responsibility take place now. So meanwhile, while we're living in the future all the time, the present moment is always standing here. It always is. And it's asking you this question, hey, dragon, what about me? And we have this really, really good ability to ignore it, to ignore the now because it's always there. It's always there. And we think that we have unlimited time as well.

8:25So it became very, very real for me when the whole cancer thing happened. You know, I remember the moment that I heard the diagnosis because a big part of the interface response system is not running from our thoughts and feelings. It's acknowledging them, but not necessarily believing that they are the only option that we have. Right. So I remember when I first heard my diagnosis, my brain instinctively raced into the future to predict the worst possible scenario. The thoughts in my head was, you know, and it was a defense mechanism, by the way. But I just remember predicting my rapid death, you know, you just remember all of a sudden thinking. And by the way, for those of you that have never experienced something like cancer, you have your own versions of this in your life. It could be associated with bills or something happening with your work or one little thing that triggers you in a relationship. We have this tendency of our knee, you know, reflective response is to just think of the worst.

9:26You know, I was thinking about my rapid death and all the people that would be crushed by it. I was the automatic thing, you know, and let's not forget about all the suffering that I was going to go through. This is what was running through my brain. And I kind of remember thinking to myself that all of those thoughts and feelings were offerings. They were opportunities. And that was an interesting moment because their lies step one and step two of the interface response system where I kind of naturally became curious. And of course I said, hmm, which stands for haven't made up my mind yet, which is associated with curiosity. When I say, hmm, and I hear about all these predictions of these disastrous future when I got my diagnosis. I also for some reason, because I do this work all the time said, well, what else is there? What else might be true? And I remember thinking if I choose to live my cancer journey primarily in the future. This is an interesting thought and think about your version of cancer. You know, what will the next scan show I could think? What if the treatment doesn't work? What if it spreads? That's a big one.

10:37But other things spread other than cancer, don't they? What will happen six months from now? What about if I go into remission and it comes back? That's what it would be like to experience cancer from the future? There is no shortage, my friends, you know, of frightening futures available to all of us. If I want to spend my currency there. If I decide to spend my currency, my energy, my focus, my attention in the future only, and forget about the, hey, what about me present moment? There's no shortage of frightening futures available to us. So here's the distinction or one of them. Now, no of those things are happening right now. It's important to be able to acknowledge that now you might be projecting an optimistic future. That's not happening now either. So that's how sometimes we can get foolish. Now, I'm not saying you'll see I'm not saying to not project a future and set goals. What I'm saying is to acknowledge that a lot of the things that we're thinking are going to happen or projecting are going to happen or predicting are not happening right now.

11:47You got to make that distinction. Here's what's happening right now. I'm here. You're here right now. I'm alive right now. I have people that I love right now. Lessings are happening in my life that I could completely miss. There are so many things happening in the present moment. It's unbelievable. This conversation that I'm having with you is happening when right now, not in the future. Yes, we're going to record it. But when you watch this recording or listen to the podcast episode, it's happening right now. So many beautiful things in life happening right now that we would completely miss because we're too busy very often emotionally living in a future that hasn't even happened yet. And this is not new information for you. This is just a reminder. A lot of the stuff that we talk about on this show is us saying, hey, what about this? What about that?

12:47Remember, you cannot take radical responsibility for your life. If you are constantly abandoning the present moment, hop around in a jumping castle for a while on that one. Think about that. You can't take radical responsibility for your life. If we're constantly abandoning it because it's happening here, banding the present moment and living in the future. And the reason is the present is the only place where we can actually formulate a response. Now, remember, in the interface response system, what we're teaching people has had a move from reaction to response. So think about a reaction. The reaction might be taking place right now, but it's associated with the past or the future. We're either worried about the future or we're hung up on the past, but a well thought out response, which is the goal of the interface response system to make better decisions, stop reacting in response is being formulated by asking questions and looking at what's actually happening now, not predicting.

13:55We're very bad predictors. Some of us are going to predicting financial things. And the reason is because this is the only place that we can actually formulate response. And this brings us to an important distinction. Responsibility is not about playing the blame game. Responsibility is not attached to blame. Blame, when we're in a state of blame, think about this. Blame looks backwards and asks, whose fault is this? Whose fault was this? Imagine if I was thinking, well, actually I did. You know, I'm like, how could this cancer happen to me? Who's fault is this? Because I was thinking for 20 years, I've been living very, very healthy. You know, don't drink, don't smoke, you know, just doing almost everything. I wasn't trying to create cancer. So it wasn't my fault. So whose fault is it? So that's not taking radical responsibility. Responsibility looks at where you are right now and asks, what am I going to do about it? What am I going to do about it? I remember one time I came off stage and I was talking about this topic and somebody came up to me and said, you know, that was really, really powerful. That really moved me. I had a big, big aha moment from what you said. And I asked him, I said, well, what are you going to do about it?

15:18And that's an uncomfortable question. I could be misconstrued. What are you going to do about it? What are you going to do about it? So as most of you know, you know, once again, case in point, I'm navigating this stage four cancer thing. Just think about how that sounds, you know, the first thing that everybody says to me is, oh, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry. And they say, how are you doing? And I have a different answer than most of them are used to and they get really shocked by it, you know, so one of the strangest things is that I find myself feeling lucky that I have cancer. And I have to be careful who I say that too, because if somebody is really below the line. And when I say that you're below the line of, you know, either conscious or unconscious or below the line of responsibility, if you're not taking responsibility, you're acting as a victim. Right? Or a villain or a hero. And that's Jim Deathmer's work. I quote him in the book very often. There's a whole chapter on that stuff. But here I am above the line by choice telling people that I feel lucky that it's me. And I'm telling you this right now, when it comes to this whole cancer thing, I feel lucky that it's me.

16:32So I want you to think about your version of cancer. And I want you to ask yourself how you feel about it. I feel lucky. And people think cancer, lucky. How could those two words possibly occupy the same sentence? Well, let me explain why. Because everybody can do this because either way your reality is your reality. Wayne Diarrhoes said though, if you change the way you look at things and things you look at change, that's what we're talking about here. And that's what the interface response systems, therefore, I know my sense of the same thing. I know myself. Here's my why. I know myself. I know the tools that I have. I know my relationship with adversity. It's been time tested. And so has yours. You're all here right now. So I know myself. I know the tools that I have. And I know my relationship with adversity. I've been through so many different things. And here I am right now. I know the support that I have around. And I know my capacity to question my perception and take responsibility for my response. Why? Because I've been practicing this work, the interface response system. For those of you new to it, you've just read my book. And that's makes sense.

17:40And I've got to rewire your mind and transform your life. The flagship system in there is called the interface response system. And for those of you beginning the work, remember, it takes traction, which is the act of practicing being an action. You're not good at things first, but I've been doing it for a long, long time. I know my relationship with adversity. And I know my ability now to respond rather than react and change my perception. So here's another distinction. I didn't cause my cancer. A lot of times we blame and shame ourselves for what's happening in our lives because we like put the fault on us. I didn't cause my cancer. You know, remember something. For the most part, I didn't, you know, do too much to create this cancer. You know, I didn't set a goal to achieve it. I didn't order it from the menu. I've lived a very, very healthy life. But here I am with cancer. You know, there are things about cancer. And I want you to remind yourself, this is not about cancer. We all have a cancer of some sort. But there's things about cancer, you know, biology, genetics, environment, chance that are completely out of our control. If I can get cancer in this body, anybody can, you know, I mean, there's a little bit of an hour family, but like not like, oh, that's what it is.

19:04You know, I remember when the doctors were asking me all the questions, do you drink? Do you smoke? You know, and I don't. I don't. You know, I live in an unusually healthy life. And I just remember this saying, oh, well, that's good. And they were talking about how well I would be able to manage it. You know, so just remember, I didn't choose cancer. But here's the distinction. Cancer chose me. And whatever it is that you're going through, chose you. No blame. It chose you. And once cancer decided to choose me, I had to choose how I would meet it. Make sense? Because it was there. I needed to look at it as something happening to me or set something happening for me. And if it was happening for me, it became an opportunity. And I remember saying, hmm. And that's what radical responsibility is. Is what am I going to do with it? What am I going to do with it? What am I going to do about it? Welcome to the newest grocery outlet location. Your couch. No parking lot. No shoes required. And the commute is approximately zero feet. Because now you can shop Instacart or DoorDash and get your grocery outlet favorites delivered right to your door with the same great item prices as in store.

20:21Your couch has never been this productive. Grocery outlet. Big deals now delivered. Hey, it's Kelly Rowland. You may not know this, but I have XM. So I get how it can steal your time. But why let XM take over when you can talk to your doctor about Eppgless. Eppgless. Lebrichizmab LBKZ. A 250 milligram per 2 milliliter injection is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older, who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe axima. Also called a topic dermatitis that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals or who cannot use topical therapies. Eppgless can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you are allergic to Eppgless. A allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. I problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have newer worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with Eppgless. Before starting Eppgless, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Pay partnership with Lily. Respect your time. Ask your doctor about Eppgless and visit Eppgless.com or call 1-800-LilyRX or 1-800-545-5979.

21:32At QVC, shopping is more than just checking out. It's discovering something new every day. Start with today's special value. Then explore exciting finds across the brands and categories you love. From beauty and fashion to home, culinary and outdoor living. Shop now at QVC.com. So I think we are all experiencing some sort of a responsibility crisis right now. And you know, you are all forgiven for it's not your fault. You know, you know not what you do.

22:42But there's a responsibility crisis going on in our country. We've become incredibly skilled like fifth degree black belt skilled at identifying who or what is responsible for the things that we don't like about our lives. If you don't like something about your life or something becomes hard, it's not your responsibility. It must be somebody else's. And you know that that's not true here in this moment right now. That's what's great about these conversations. However, that's your knee jerk reaction, which is why we have to move to a response and think about it. So there's a lot of things that are hard and we don't like about our lives. Our parents are chilled, our childhood, our genetics. You know, maybe it's our boss, our spouse, the way they're talking to us, the economy, the government could be a religious thing, a diagnosis in my case, trauma circumstances. There's a lot of things that we didn't order from the menu. So if we did not order from the menu, they shouldn't be our responsibility should they well, you got them. So you better do something about it. So some of those things may absolutely have, you know, been contributed to by you, but either way you look at it, they're yours.

23:53That's what responsibility is. It is what it is. So there's a dangerous point where an explanation quietly becomes an excuse. So I want you to look at how you're, you know, kind of like pitching this explanation of what's going on and see how it quietly becomes an excuse where understanding why I am here becomes a permission slip to remain here. If I can help you and myself understand why something is happening, it becomes a permission slip to stay there. Radical responsibility says something else. It says, this may not be my fault, but my life is still my responsibility. Can you dig that? So finding your true North, what's up my friend? Let's see what he says. Finding your true North says the seed planted in the soil of adversity under the watchful eye of the master gardener shall produce much fruit. The fruit you're producing despite not being ordered from the menu is valuable and serving humanity. I love that.

24:59See, we're going to put that one on the show. That's awesome. Finding your true North. That's awesome. And it makes sense. It makes total sense. Awesome. So this might not be my fault, but my life, your life, it's still our responsibility. Can you dig that? And I think that, you know, that's incredibly liberating. I feel extremely liberated about the way that I'm handling things and taking radical responsibility. It's, it hasn't become a burden. I feel liberated by it because the moment that I take responsibility, what I do is I reclaim it. I reclaim agency. I think it in a funny way. I like to say I'm a control freak. I like to be in control of my life. I like to have agency. So I like to reclaim that agency by taking responsibility. Remember the famous saying that nobody is coming to save you. Who do you blame for that? Mel Robbins. She says that all the time. How dare she say that nobody's coming to save me. Somebody better come save me because I didn't ask for this. No, that's not responsibility.

26:06If my happiness is your responsibility, you have power over my happiness. Think about some disputes and arguments you're having with people that are making you unhappy. Or if money is making you unhappy or circumstances are making you unhappy. If you put your responsibility of your happiness into their hands, they own it. If my confidence depends on your approval, you own my confidence too. And if my peace requires everybody around me to behave the way I think that they should. Such a funny topic. I've handed the keys to my nervous system to everyone else. I need to say that one again. If my peace, if our peace requires everyone around us to behave the way we think they should. We're handing the keys to our nervous system over to everyone else. And there is zero agency in that. Make sense? And the same applies to my health.

27:07I cannot control every cell in my body. I can leverage things, but I cannot control every cell in my body. I cannot guarantee that every treatment that I take, I take a daily treatment and every six weeks I do a treatment. I cannot guarantee that they're going to work. I'm always going to be wondering if they're working. You know, I only get a scan every three months. And I cannot control what tomorrow scan is going to say. I can leverage. And I think that's a big part of living in the present moment. You know, Steve Jobs used to talk about how we can only connect the dots of our life from the past, not from the future. So what to think about what that means is he's saying, you know, you can only connect the dots to how things, how you got here by looking at the past. You can't look at the future and I asked yourself how you got here. So if you understand that, that means that right now you're a dot. So the only way you can influence the next dot is by living in this present moment. Imagine if you forget about this dot and you're living in a future dot that doesn't exist.

28:11Well, then you're affecting in a negative way. You're dot right now. So I cannot control every cell in my body. I cannot guarantee every treatment and I cannot control or predict what tomorrow scan says. What I can do is I can participate in the process of my recovery today, my dot. I can participate in my dot and so can you. I can ask questions like, or I can ask better questions. That's one thing that I can do to participate my dot. I can work with my medical team and seek alternative strategies and think outside the box, which I've done. I can learn everything that I can learn in my dot. I can decide how I eat and how I move and what comes in and you know what doesn't come in. I can decide what information I consume. You're consuming this information right now and I hope that it's bearing well for you. But when you go out in the rest of this day, be very careful what you consume because remember what it is that you consume ends up being what you assume.

29:14I can decide who gets access to my energy and my attention and I can decide how I speak about what I'm experiencing when peace people ask me how I'm doing. J.C. How are you doing? How are you doing? And I respond almost always by saying I'm deeply humbled by this experience and I am. It's brought me to my knees, but I'm also in a massive state of gratitude and I feel very, very fortunate and lucky that I've been chosen to grow through this. And I keep telling my mentors and my business associates. When I get through this, if and when I get through this, look out because I'm never going to let go of just present time living. I'm living fully, fully right now, not thinking about the future right now. I'm here with you guys. On this show, we're always talking about making small changes that create big results. But one thing we don't talk enough about is sleep and that's why I genuinely love cozy earth.

30:18The first night I slept in their sheets, the biggest surprise to me wasn't how incredibly soft they were. It was actually that they stayed cool. If you've ever tossed and turned at night because your sheets got too warm, you'll appreciate the difference immediately. I also really appreciate that cozy earth backs everything with a 10-year warranty and 100 nights of hassle-free returns. So trying them is completely risk-free. They're made from visco's from bamboo, breathable, soft and built for summer. Get on over to cozyeurth.com and use my code Dragon for an exclusive 20% off. And if you see a post-purchase survey, mention that you heard about cozy earth right here. I only recommend products that I truly believe add value into your life. Better sleep simply makes for a better life. And to me, that just makes sense. At QVC, shopping is more than just checking out. It's discovering something new every day. Start with today's special value. Then explore exciting finds across the brands and categories you love.

31:25From beauty and fashion to home, culinary and outdoor living. Shop now at QVC.com. As a quick side note, once a month, we do our make sense mastermind. And I invite you all to join. If you ever want to join any of these things, just go to drjcdornic.com or reach out and just say you want to be part of the mastermind. It's 100% free. We do it once a month. And we really take a deep dive into all of this stuff.

32:30The other thing that I want to invite all of you to do if you're looking for coaching, for mentorship within this realm, because there's a lot of work. There's a lot of traction in this. We've constructed something called the make sense academy. And that's a unique opportunity for a very, very little bit of money. I don't know if you guys have ever hired a coach, a life coach or personal growth coach, but that could be quite expensive. We're talking about a hundred bucks a month, you know, to be in my group and meet with me almost three times a week. So that's called the make sense academy. If that's interesting and you really feel like the time is ready to make that move and do that work. Once again, reach out and just ask that's on the school platform. And the people that are in there, a lot of them are here with us right now are just having extraordinary breakthroughs. They're unrecognizable on the inside as far as I can see. So responsibility, by the way, doesn't mean control. That's not what responsibility means.

33:33Now, I told you before by taking responsibility, I reclaim agency, but responsibility doesn't mean control. Responsibility means ownership of your participation and experience. So when I say agency is reclaimed, I'm reclaiming ownership of my participation and my life experience. I'm no longer handing it over to others with things like blame and being a victim. What are you going to do about it? That's what your choice is. And that includes taking responsibility of my own perception of things. So sometimes I look at things and I perceive them incompletely. Do you ever do that? Right? Something happens. That's what we call the event. Something happens like a happening. Then your brain interprets it. This shouldn't be happening to me perception. My life is ruined. Why me? This isn't fair. Even after all these years of work, that's my knee jerk response, or I should say reaction.

34:34But those statements aren't the event. There are interpretations of the event. So we have to run this stuff on our own perceptions as well. So this is once again accomplished with the four steps of the interface response system, which are perceived, pause, process, and proceed in this book. So this is the book make sense how to rewire your mind and transform your life. This book was written. So you figure out all of the things that I went through in my life to come to this conclusion. And then in depth explains the interface response system. If you want the cheat code for it, I just did an episode on that. I think it's the last, yeah, I think it was the last podcast that loaded actually two ago, because we just loaded a new one today. If you want to hear a great story, we loaded an episode today of a guy that was worth like 27 billion dollars. And when I asked him how he created that wealth, he created that wealth by helping his employees become millionaires.

35:37That's an amazing story. So go check that one out. But before that, if you want the interface response system, so that's perceived, pause, process, and proceed. So something happens, your brain catastrophizes that happening and looks to blame. This is our knee jerk reaction. And instead of automatically accepting the stories in your head, what we're going to do is we're going to pause. So if you want an action step right now, just take a curious pause on everything. And how do we do that? We just go, hmm, it's not saying that what you were thinking is wrong, you're not abandoning anything. You're just going through life, which by the way is now scientifically tied to living longer. You're going through life being open and curious about everything. Interesting. And that stands for haven't made up my mind yet. Guys, you don't have to make up your minds about things so fast, especially when you know that your brain has been programmed, your operating systems have been programmed from the outside. So we say, hmm, and that means like noted, thanks operating system, well done.

36:41Thank you for the pitch on what you think is going on. Take a lunch break while I investigate and check the facts. And then after the pause, we process, is there any other way to see this? Is there another way to see this? What part of this is controllable? What a great question. What part isn't? And perhaps most importantly, am I caring about what is happening or on what I might think is going to happen? This is a great question to ask yourself. Am I caring if you're worried about something? Because as soon as you can make this distinction, you're free. Am I caring about what is actually happening or am I caring about what I think might happen? And if you're worried about what might happen, you've just abandoned the present moment and you've abandoned your life. So don't be mistaken by my words everybody. The future does deserve some of our attention. I know it's not like I never set goals.

37:43It's good to plan and prepare. We should make intelligent decisions to leverage our future. It's a big reason that I'm practicing health. And it's very much connected to being there to walk my daughter down the aisle and being there for my kids and being a grandparent and all that stuff that's important to me. But there's an enormous difference between preparing for the future and living in it. Big difference between preparing for something and leveraging it and living in it. Because as soon as you live in it, you're not living here. So the blessing of cancer has taught me that distinction, you know, in a way that nothing else could have. So that's why I call that cancer a blessing. There's no way that I would be able to live in this present moment the way I am without this abrupt disruption in my life that forced me to let go of the illusion that tomorrow is a guarantee. And as soon as I did that, I started to look around and say this present moment is fucking awesome. So most people understand the question why me, but eventually if you do this work and that's the value of joining the Make Sense Academy, you know, read the book, come to these lives.

38:50But joining the Make Sense Academy is doing the work. If you're the kind of person that likes to just like have a jacuzzi experience and get mentored and coached so that you feel like you're doing the work, then it's not for you. It's about doing the work. And that's when you get the extraordinary stuff. So we start off fully understanding and embracing why me, but eventually work helps us develop another question. And we start saying why not me? Why can't I be somebody like that an eternal optimist and eventually something even stranger emerged? Right? I'm glad it's me. I remember that I started to feel so lucky about the cancer. And yes, I know what is tied to it. And you know, it's funny is I have a lot of people say, well, you don't have a cancer as bad as mine. There's like a pissing contest with cancer. You know, I'm sorry, you know, I'm sorry about that. You know what I mean? It's such an interesting thing. And I do feel for people that, you know, don't have much chance. I mean, there's some certain people that just die within two months and I've lost people to that.

39:55But that's not my reality. Right? And that's not your reality. You have your own and I have my own. So eventually I started to think I'm glad it's me, even if it came with a shorter life expectancy. Now, I'm not glad that I have cancer. You know, I wouldn't order it from the menu, but I'm glad that if this battle had to land somewhere it landed in the life of someone who intends to use it. Whatever battle you're going through right now, do you intend to use it or you're just looking for ways to lose it? I'm somebody that's willing to learn from it. Someone willing to be humbled by it. I understand that there's a lot of pain and discomfort. I'm in that pain and discomfort right now, but I accept it radically. So I'm humbled by it. And I'm also okay with letting it reveal what really matters most to me. Perhaps use those lessons to help somebody else one day. So this is why I feel blessed and lucky and I'm glad that it's me. I feel fortunate.

40:55Now, where does growth take place outside the comfort zone? What does this don't say? The obstacle is the way. So why do we get so freaked out what a big obstacle comes? It's because we start to realize that our relationship with time is wrong. It was incomplete. But guess what? That's a good thing too, because you start living that mortality mentality. So that's why I can say that I feel lucky, not because cancer is a gift that everyone should be grateful for. I'm not saying that. But because I get to decide what this experience becomes in my life, and I have decided not to waste it. I've decided not to waste this experience. That is mine. For some reason, that's the difference between happening to me and happening for me. More importantly, I've decided not to miss this. I don't want to miss this opportunity as well, because it's happening right now. I don't want to live in this delusional life where I can pretend that nothing's happening. I'm in it. I live it.

41:56So I don't want to spend today worrying about what might happen tomorrow. I can tell you that that's for damn sure. And I completely don't want to overlook what is happening right now by doing that. The conversations, the love, the people showing up, right before this episode, I went and just, and I wouldn't always do this before an episode. I just went and laid in bed with my wife and, you know, cutled her just to listen to her breath. You know, not like I think I'm going to die today, but that's pretty fucking awesome. That's that's way, way more cool than my business goals and things like that. And I know you know this. So a lot of love going on, the people showing up to support me, the clarity about what matters. You know, I don't want to miss that stuff, the gratitude of waking up every day. I don't want to miss a day of recognizing that. The extraordinary privilege, you know, of just an ordinary day. How amazing is the extraordinary privilege of just an ordinary day. I refuse to sacrifice what is on the altar of what might be, but that in your pipe and smoke it.

43:07So I challenge you all. Here's my challenge. I challenge you all to look at your own life today. Your health, your happiness, your finances, your relationships, and your perception and ask yourself this, where have I surrendered my responsibility? Because that will uncover where you can take radical responsibility. Then ask how much of my care and attention am I spending on a future that hasn't happened yet and may never happen. I have discovered that taking more responsibility has actually made me feel less burdened. This is the liberating feeling. It's scary to take responsibility, I think, because it's associated with overwhelm and you won't be able to handle it, which is kind of silly because that's wasting time too. You have to eventually take responsibility for what is yours. Right? I can't run from it forever, like the law. So I have discovered that taking more responsibility, taking that leap has actually made me feel less burdened.

44:11So I remember times where I thought responsibilities connected to overwhelm. No, when I take responsibility for things, I feel less overwhelmed, less burdened. Responsibility sounds heavy, but you know what's heavier than responsibility, helplessness, helplessness. Blame is heavy. Resentment is heavy. Waiting for things in life and coming to the conclusion that you don't have that time that you thought you have is heavy. Worrying about 10 imaginary tomorrows and recognizing that you don't have the guarantee of them, that's heavy. Responsibility simply says, okay, this is where I am. Now what? I don't know how my story ends. I don't think any of us do. All I know is that my story is happening right here in this dot, right here, right now. So this week, find one place where you have been giving away your responsibility and ask, what part of this belongs to me right now?

45:12You'll notice that it's not all of it. What part of what's happening belongs to me right now and make the distinction that it's not all of it? It's just your part because that's where your power lives. So stop asking why did this happen to me and stop obsessing over what might happen to you. Instead, start by saying, hmm, such a simple thing to do to be open and curious in life. This is probably why it live longer. Start by saying, hmm, and then ask, what is happening right now? What part of it belongs to me and who am I choosing to become as a result of it? Take responsibility for what belongs to you, release what doesn't and be careful how much of your precious currency open up your care wallet. Right, you only get a daily stipend of it. Be very, very careful how much of your precious currency you spend on a tomorrow that hasn't arrived yet. Because while you were worrying about what might happen, something extraordinary is already happening your life until the next time I love and appreciate you all.

46:16So if you'll learn something today, give it away. That's how it's going to stay. That's it for today. To support the Make Sense with Dr. J.C. podcasts, be sure to subscribe, like and share, as well as follow the Make Sense sub-step 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. If you liked the show, please take a moment to rate, review and subscribe. It really does help the show to grow. Thank you for listening. Thank you for watching.