Well, Hey guys, Jonathan, with you again, welcome to the daily suffering festival. Uh, yesterday up pretty early and ran a little bit less than 30 K. I ran a half marathon and then a bit extra and, um, ended some beach sprints and, um, went hard on the pushups. Got 250 pushups done yesterday here. I woke up this morning. really not particularly excited about doing anything, uh, sitting in the chair and I'm pretty sore. And I'm like, okay, what am I gonna do?
And first step is just to get dressed, get the, get the gear on. Uh, now I know not all of you are into the crazy exercise. I do. I, I do often, uh, reference that, but I always say that it's relative. So. The principles that I'm gonna share in this really short message are gonna apply to you. No matter whether you walk into the letter box or you're running across the at Carma desert, it doesn't make too much difference. The principles are the same.
So this morning it's really about activation energy today. I've got a 15 K run I'm in this, um, A little rainforest at the moment, but I'm heading into a little town here and then if I can get the camera out again, I'll show you the Hills. I just ran it the other day. And I'm like, what? It's just like vertical. And, uh, look today, I'm really tired. I'm sore. But so I'm sitting in the apartment and then, you know, It's about this activation energy principle.
A lot of times there's things that we don't want to do, but all we need is just that first little bit of momentum. And then we're underway, you know, the stoic philosophers, uh, like you look at people like Epictetus Epicuren philosophy. They applied so many physical principles to their understanding of philosophy. So, so often for these guys, it was about how the body represented principles that applied to the rest of life. So the ability to.
Push the body to strengthen and to tame the body was a big part of how they saw the world and other aspects of life. So one of the reasons I'm often talking about physical processes, physical training is because the metaphors inside it really do apply to so much of life. I'm just looking down this logging track, hoping I'm not gonna get run over by. so activation energy is the first thing just to get yourself moving.
So sometimes we get daunted by the challenges we face, whether it's kind of work related, relationship related, but so often all we need to do is just start. So for me today, yeah, really tired. But once I get that first 500 meters under my belt, you kind of your foot's on the path and you're starting. And once you're started, it's just too much hassle to turn around and go backwards. So. I wanna say to you that in your life at the moment, sometimes all you need to do is just begin.
You just need to get started, whether it's fixing a relationship in a marriage, whether it's fixing a relationship with one of your kids, whether it's changing your career, whether it's changing your health. So much of the time we just sit on the metaphorical couch of life and we don't actually begin the processes that are gonna help us move forward. And once we get going for me, like I am no athlete, right. I'm 48. Yeah. I do all this crazy stuff, but I'm not a pure athlete.
Like I'm definitely not a runner by. By genetics or viability, but I have this principle of, you know, RFM, relentless forward movement or relentless forward momentum. I just keep putting one foot in front of the other one foot in front of the other. Just keep showing up day after day, do the work, putting the work, do what you need to do. And you just keep that momentum going. And, uh, there's gonna be difficulties on that journey like these Hills.
I'm about to go and do, but, um, look, today's message is pretty simple. I just wanna encourage everybody wherever you are hearing this. I know the podcast version is big for many of you. I don't have any amazing quote for you today. I don't have any great cosmic insight other than of you're hearing or seeing this. You're listening to somebody who is just like you, who is just trying to improve a little bit every single day. Who's trying to get a little bit stronger.
I think I mentioned a few days ago, you know, this is not sustainable forever ever, right? Like I can't run half marathons every day. But there's an old guy near where I live, who must be in his eighties. And I shared this recently, who just gets up every day and he runs, I reckon he probably only runs a couple of kilometers, but you see him out there Midwinter still going, still pushing, still, just keeping active.
So it is so relative whether today for you, the biggest battle is walking, getting off your couch and walking to the letter box. And maybe that's the biggest bit of exercise you've done in a month for some of you it's, you know, pushing yourself in some other way. But I just, I, I do this channel.
I do this content because you have so much to give the more I do this stuff, the more I focus on contribution, you know, this whole journey of personal development of motivation of inspiration is really so we can contribute. If we're healthy, if we're strong, if we're clear in our heads about what matters, we tend to enjoy life more and we can serve people more and we can be more of a blessing to people. So that's the purpose behind it all. Why am I running today?
My, my kids, like, it's funny, my kids are still young and you know, they're growing up with this and they're fascinated by it. They're just like, dad, just sit in the chair. Just why do you have to run today? And part of me is because, so they can see it so they can learn whether they. Take that into the exercise field or whether they just get a mindset as they grow up, that we do hard things, right? We do hard things.
So many of the people that I really admire and respect in this space, campaigns, David Goggins, people like that, they just do hard things. And I get inspired by it. Like reading campaigns as book recently has just pushed me on a whole new path. I've just been like, This dude is just unhinged. I thought I was bad, but his next level, I get encouraged by it, by these men and women that just do hard things. Again, it's relative your hard thing will be different to mine, but don't do comfort.
I mean, do little bits of comfort. We all need times of rest. And tonight, Karen and I are hopefully gonna get out for dinner together. We're still in that young family phase where we don't get to do that too often. So we're gonna enjoy some comfort. We're gonna enjoy a good glass of wine. Time with each other, um, which will compensate for the crazy Hills I'm about to do. So I don't think we're built for comfort.
I think we're built for a little bit of it, but I think we're really made to stretch, to grow, to do hard things. So, um, God bless you, everybody. I hope this is just some encouragement for you wherever you're at in life. Get out there, fix things, change things, fix relationships. Be the bigger person grow, contribute. Accept people where they're at. You're like just grow, grow into the amazing human that you were created to become. It's beautiful. Watching my kids grow.
I think God looks at us exactly the same way. I reckon God looks at me and goes, dude, you're 48. You're running these crazy Hills. You're mad. I think he's laughing. I'm hoping he is laughing. I'm I'm, I'm hoping I'm putting a smile on God's face by getting up every day. You know, for many years I battled with depression, anxiety. It's just been amazing to see those things disappear in my life over time because of a bunch of strategies, a bunch of this sort of stuff.
Just making sure every day that my my is strong and my body strong. You know, I had a beautiful conversation with this young lady last night, where we are staying and we were talking all about the content that I do and stuff she's interested in.
And I said to her at the very end of the conversation, I said, if there's one thing I've learned in this 30 plus year journey of personal development is I said, do I spend about 20 plus years thinking that whatever was my brain was telling me was reality. So if my brain was telling me thoughts of depression and anxiety, Fear and, and failure. And then I thought that was reality. And I would get into a low mood or an anxious mood based on what my brain was telling me.
And then I said to her, you know, the real revelation has been this awareness that I can control what I think and direct what I think and choose different meanings to the circumstances in my life. It's it's. Actually possible. And I think so much of the depression and anxiety that we live under comes from being in low physical states, um, being overwhelmed by complexity and social media and that sort of stuff. That's why I don't have any social media.
Um, but learning that we can literally direct how we think. So. Yeah, I'm gonna about to prove it now. My. There's a big part of me that as I finished the next 10 K of this run is gonna be wanting to stop, wanting to win, wanting to complain. I'm just gonna be going, stay mentally strong, push through, keep listening to stuff on my headphones to try and block out the craziness. So be encouraged, right?
If, if you're doing it hard at the moment, if life seems so difficult, pay attention to your internal dialogue, pay attention to the internal conversation. Listen to it. You will hear it saying things to you about like darkness and failure and. And you wanna move out of that. You've gotta start to focus on very different things. I was teaching one of my kids this yesterday. I was teaching them saying, look, we are not victims of external circumstances.
If reality is not the way we want it, then we need to begin a process of creating a reality of building a life that we actually want. It's challenging work. It's difficult work. Most people don't do it. Most people blame. They become victims, but if you're watching this and you're on this kind of journey with me, we're doing it a bit differently, you know? We're taking some responsibility for the outcomes in our life. Alright, I'm gonna stop there.
Give you one last look at this beautiful little forest here, which, um, unfortunately this part of the run is, is very brief when we go back on the Hills very soon, but, um, I'll try and post a bit of footage from one of their Hills. I'll try and splice it in towards the end here. If I can do it. Okay guys, this is where it starts. Just come out the railway bridge, and now the Hills. Start here gonna be brutal. Um, it's a real heartbreaker and it's such a metaphor for life.
It's like you come out, I'll come out under this railway bridge and I look up and I'm like, ah, dear God. And when I ran it the first time, it just keeps going up and I keep going, oh, we must be at the top. Now we're going some more. It's like life. That's why exercise is a metaphor because these Hills are like life it's just hill. After the hill, we get some downhills and we go again and we grow in the process. So God bless you. Be encouraged.
And, uh, please make sure you subscribe to the channel. If you're hearing the podcast version here, I'd love you to subscribe, but subscribe here on YouTube. Um, check out all the show notes here, cuz there's links to all my other stuff. You can get free access to my book, bridging the gap. You can find out, uh, how to book me to speak and uh, God bless you. My name's Jonathan Doyle. This has been the daily podcast video message, inspirational thing.
And I'm gonna have another one for you tomorrow.