IRS - How to See Life From a Completely Different Perspective - E210

Makes Sense - with Dr. JC Doornick

Dr. JC Doornick shares a transformative four-step framework—perceive, pause, process, proceed—to help listeners shift from automatic reactio

Key takeaways

• Our default reaction patterns are often shaped by external noise and subconscious programming.
• A simple mental pause can create space for conscious choice instead of reactive behavior.

Main topics

• Mindset transformation
• Reactive vs. conscious responses

Notable quotes

The things that were happening in my life didn't change. But the way that I was looking at them… something in a snap just changed.

Conclusion

By mastering the pause and consciously choosing how to respond, indivi

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) For many of us, going further isn't a choice. It's a feeling we can't ignore. Because ambition has a way of outgrowing where it began. Turning dreams into direction. Every journey brings us closer to the life we imagine. So, where will your journey take you? Etihad. Beyond Borders. Speaker 3 (0:30) If you've been trying to change your mindset for success, happiness, better relationships, or just gain more clarity, you found the right episode. So for those of you that don't know, I'm Dr. JC Dornick, and for more than 20 years, I've helped thousands of high-performing and high-net-worth individuals see things from a different perspective. And that's one that helped them get out of their own way, like it did for me. and create the success in life that they always dreamed of and desired. But watching how reactive, divided, and quick to judge the world has become, I decided it was time to share this with everyone, not just the people who could afford to sit in the room with me. So give me the next few minutes of your time. I'm going to show you the four-step framework that can help you stop reacting to life and start consciously responding to it. And stick around for the last step because that's where you're going to actually flip the switch. Have Speaker 2 (1:26) you noticed that the world that we live in has been doing most of the Speaker 3 (1:29) 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 and label it as Speaker 2 (1:44) life and Speaker 3 (1:45) reality. Yeah, that ends here. Welcome to the Make Sense with Dr. JC podcast. This is your opportunity to start thinking for yourself, reclaim control, and step back into that role as the shock collar 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. Speaker 1 (2:15) Great morning, Speaker 3 (2:19) everybody. Great morning, world. This is Dr. JC Dornick, otherwise known as The Dragon, and I want to welcome you to the next episode of the Make Sense with Dr. JC podcast, and welcome to the uprising of the sleepwalking masses. What if I told you that an overwhelming amount of what you call your choice isn't really your choice at all? So here's what it looks like. Someone says something that you don't like. You get offended maybe, maybe angry. Someone maybe criticizes you in life and you become defensive. Your partner gives you a look and you immediately decide what that look means. Maybe someone cuts you off in traffic and suddenly you're furious at a complete stranger that you know nothing about. You see something online and within seconds, you've already decided whether you agree with it, hate it, trust it, or think that the person who posted it is an idiot. Are you making those decisions up or is something else going on? It almost feels like you made a decision, but did you? Or did your programmed operating system make that decision for you? That question became an obsession of mine after going through one of the darkest periods of my life. I somehow came to the conclusion that turning my lights out was the only solution that I had in response to this idea. that I had lost control of who I was, where I was going, and why. If anybody has ever experienced something like that, a lot of people go through life, maybe you've had somebody that committed suicide or that was suicidal, or maybe you've gone through it as well. But a lot of us have our own opinion about it. A lot of us are afraid of that. A lot of us don't understand how anybody could ever get to that point in life. But some of us understand what it's like to be at that point. So during that dark time, I can tell you that I knew that I was thinking in a way that wasn't helping me. I knew that rationally and logically. I knew that I was thinking in a way that wasn't helping me. And Speaker 2 (4:17) I had studied, I mean, I have always been a reader. I'd studied personal Speaker 3 (4:22) development for years and years, personal and self-development. And I didn't lose sight of all those lessons that I learned in the books. But in that dark time, they no longer pertained to me. those lessons. They were just lessons that pertain to everybody else, but not me. I knew all about Wayne Dyer's famous quote that said that changing the way that we look at things helps the things that we look at change. That was the first person I heard it. I don't know if he was the originator of it, but he always said that if you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change, that's become one of the tenants of the Make Sense Academy, the Make Sense ecosystem. Why? Because I'm not letting go of that. But I knew about that. I knew what Wayne Dyer said. And I remember thinking, oh yeah, that's so cool. It makes so much sense. If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. And I knew better, by the way, than what was going on. But I couldn't seem to do better. So I was kind of fucked at that time. That's the way I looked at it. So eventually, you know, with the help of some family. I sought the help of a psychologist, and this is how the story goes, who began asking me a series of questions. I'd never been to a therapist like that. I pretty much thought that they were bullshit. But I started to go down this rabbit hole of complying with all of these questions. Took me down this rabbit hole of all of the life events that had transpired up until that fateful morning where I got this idea that I was fucked. I wanted to die. In the process of answering these questions hopelessly, but complying, all of a sudden something happened. And I refer to it as a snap because it happened in an instant. Just like that, boom, something changed. My circumstance and all of that stuff and the idea of what was actually going on in my life, my circumstances didn't change. But the way that I was seeing them in a snap, just as a result of answering this woman's questions, and if you want the whole story, read the book, but the way that I was seeing my circumstances had changed. So let's just take a stop there. What I'm saying is, is that the things that were happening in my life, that had played a role in me going into this dark place, those things didn't change. But the way that I was looking at them as a result of these questions that this psychologist was asking me, something in a snap just changed the way that I was looking at them. So that was the first time I really experienced what Wayne Dyer was talking about. I suddenly felt like Speaker 2 (6:54) I had come Speaker 3 (6:55) out from this deep, dark hole. My operating system, which I kind of came to learn we have one, and meaning-making machine went from offline back online. And I was right back in action, all from her asking me a couple of questions and me making a distinction. So as you can imagine, that dramatically changed my life. In the book, I say, That day, I made two powerful distinctions and decisions. And that was one, I was going to learn what happened in that series of questions and make sure that it never happens again. Because for those of you that have been in that dark place, you don't want that again. But also, I was going to spend the rest of my life figuring out how to help others. I wanted to pay it forward. You know, that to me seemed like such a wonderful thing to do with my career. So that's how we've gotten to this place right now. For Speaker 1 (7:44) many of us. Going further isn't a choice. It's a feeling we can't ignore. Because ambition has a way of outgrowing where it began. Turning dreams into direction. Every journey brings us closer to the life we imagine. So, where will your journey take you? Etihad. Beyond borders. Speaker 3 (8:14) Experience left me with this powerful question that I've spent much of my life, or I'd say most of my life now, exploring. It's the purpose of the book and everything else that's coming. The question was this, why do human beings, and that's us, react in ways that don't serve them even when we know better? Why do human beings act a certain way that they know doesn't serve them? It could be eating. It could be the way you treat other people, even when we know better. So what I'm saying is we know the right thing to do, but we don't always do the right thing. We don't always do things and respond and act in a certain way that serves us. Why? That's what I became obsessed with. Why do intelligent people like you, highly capable intelligent people, lose their temper and regret it five minutes later? Why do we repeat? relation patterns that we swore we'd never repeat again from past trauma? And why can two people have the same experience and experience the same event and walk away with completely different interpretations and outcomes of what happened? Why is that? Is there something unique about each of them? Yes, but it's something that could be learned by all people. I believe that two people can walk into the same circumstance and walk out with the same results. But we have to learn what's going on there. And this became my Speaker 2 (9:42) obsession and I read every book in the world on this. Speaker 3 (9:45) So what I came to understand is that you don't experience reality in its entirety. That was the first big distinction I made. You experience your brain's interpretation of reality. So think about your phone. I can't use my phone because I'm using it for Substack. But if you're looking at your phone or even this computer, think about that for a second. We don't see the millions of lines of code that are running underneath the screen. I learned this from Donald Hoffman, and it's on my book list. And that was his book that he wrote called The Case Against