The Humbling: The Science of Post-Traumatic Growth - E198

Makes Sense - with Dr. JC Doornick

Dr. JC Doornick explores the concept of 'the humbling'—a transformative shift in perspective triggered by life-altering experiences like a c

Key takeaways

• Mortality or major life events can dramatically reorder personal priorities without requiring trauma.
• Humility corrects one's sense of scale, not self-worth—recognizing limitations leads to clarity.

Main topics

• Post-traumatic growth
• Humility vs. humiliation

Notable quotes

What if the things that you're stressed out could in an instant become completely irrelevant?

I'm humbled, deeply, painfully at times, beautifully at others.

Conclusion

True awakening comes from seeing life accurately again—realizing that priceless

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) What if you acknowledge everything that you're stressed out about today and recognize that a surprising amount of it could become completely irrelevant in just an instant? And that's not because you fixed it. It's not because it just like poof went away. It's more because something bigger entered your life and suddenly put it into perspective. 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 and label it as life and 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 (1:17) So today is an interesting one, and it stems from the answer that I give at this time when people ask me how I'm doing. I always found that to be an interesting and loaded question. When you say, how are you doing? I prefer to ask the question, what's new and exciting? You know, it's nice to know what you'll say and have it be something meaningful when people ask you how you're doing. So I call this the humbling, the science of post-traumatic growth. And it starts with this idea. What if you acknowledge everything that you're stressed out about today and recognize that a surprising amount of it could become completely irrelevant in just an instant? Or as in my book, I call it, just in a snap. What if the things that you're stressed out could in an instant, like right now, become completely irrelevant. And that's not because you fixed it. That's not what we talk about here. It's not because it just like poof went away. It's more because something bigger entered your life and suddenly put it into perspective. And I think everybody here knows about that. What if something just disappeared that's been bothering you because it became irrelevant and something happened in your life for you, even if it's good or a bad thing, that put it into perspective. So great morning world, great morning humans. For those of you that have never met me, my name is Dr. JC Dornick, otherwise known as the dragon. And if you could see my desk here in my studio, I have just so many dragon. things all over the place that people send me. It's just so crazy. I got a lacrosse jersey there sent to me of a lacrosse team called the Dragons. You know, it's like everywhere. And I'll also remind you that people told me over and over and over again not to call myself the Dragon. And I'm like, but I am. So I'm happy I followed through with that. That's what I go by, and I want to welcome everybody to the Make Sense with Dr. JC podcast, another edition, the live edition, and I also want to welcome you to what we call the uprising of the sleepwalking masses. As many of you know, and I say this not to make it about this, but as many of you know, and some of you don't know, I was recently diagnosed with cancer, and we're going to look at that in a different way and look at your version of that, whatever's going on in your life, in a different way. One of the most profound things that have happened since that diagnosis is actually not fear. Strangely enough, I'm not scared. You know, I was telling my kids this, and I'm not afraid of what might happen. I wasn't afraid of what might happen before the diagnosis. I'm not scared. But what happened is something I can only describe as the... fastest reordering of my priorities that I've ever experienced in my life. That's the most profound thing that's happened as a result of receiving this diagnosis. And you'll see that you don't have to receive a diagnosis per se to have this happen. But I just want you to know that when somebody says, how are you doing? And I kind of like go through my filing system. That's what I'm thinking about is my priorities have been completely reorganized, completely reorganized. Things that used to piss me off. don't have the same power. Just happen. Don't have the same power. Things that I want to control don't seem to require much controlling anymore. And that's a great feeling. People I wanted to have understand me, like, you know, those people out there that I just feel like didn't get me, or people that I was trying to get to understand me, I'm okay with the fact that they don't. And situations that I thought needed to be resolved immediately, Well, it turns out a lot of them don't. Don't get me wrong. I'm not like this guy that has no issues or doesn't ever fly off the handle or anything like that. You know, I could say I do it a lot less, but there are still things there, you know, and there's still some things that are connected now to the things that matter most to me that I still will stand for, sometimes even foolishly. But most everything else, I just don't care about them the same way anymore. And this is what's happened. This is what's happening. In fact, in many cases, I don't care about a lot of things at all anymore. And remember, this is the most profound thing that I'm thinking about when somebody says, how are you? So I've been searching for the right words to describe what's happening to me. The word that I came up with, and this is how I answer, is humble. You know, whenever somebody says, how are you doing? I just say, I'm extremely humbled by this experience. And we're going to kind of explain what that means. And I'm going to challenge you to kind of look at that in your own way today. This idea of like what it would take and what it would feel like and what it would do for you if you got humbled. And there's some tough ways to get humbled. I sure found one. But there's also just some eye-opening recognition in life that will humble you. It's like even just looking at that picture, I remember looking at that kind of picture that we see, it's like a meme, where you're looking at like planet Earth, which is like this teeny little speck in the galaxy of the universe and all the unknown and an arrow that says, remember, you are here, right? And you realize how insignificant you are and you get humbled. So that's the way it can happen as well. The goal today, I want to make sense of something that I'm calling the humbling. And I love that name. And what that is, is that's what happens to a human being when life hands them something big enough to challenge their illusion of control. Why can an encounter with mortality, why can an encounter with mortality so dramatically reorganize what matters? And also, we're going to look at the idea that maybe, most importantly, do we really have to wait for something catastrophic to happen? before our lives can start to change and see things and live clearly. What does it actually mean to be humbled? This is important. I think there's an important distinction between being humbled and being humiliated. Humiliation says this, I am less. Humbling says, maybe I'm not as important, certain, permanent, or in control as I thought I was. Humiliation can diminish your sense of self-worth. Humbling corrects your sense of scale. And that's a beautiful correction, isn't it? So we all walk around with some sort of a model of reality. I talk a lot about mother, father, teacher, preacher. It's not really your model. It's the one that you were taught. It's the one that you're going with right now. It's not the model. It's your model. That's why we meet people all the time that have different models and we kind of like either fight them or just say, hey, that's cool. Everybody gets a model. But we all walk around with this model of reality and that is our operating system. This is who I am. This is what's important. This is where I'm going. And this is what should happen. My body should work this way. People should behave this way or that way. And my plans should work out. Think about what the should means. It's kind of like a little sense of entitlement. Like, who are we to say the way things should go? We're just regurgitating what we've learned. That's our operating system. Underneath it is an assumption of something we rarely acknowledge, and that is the assumption that we have time. This is an inflection point of this discussion today, is just to acknowledge where you stand with how much time you think you have. I'll make that call later. I'll take that trip someday. I'll forgive that person eventually. I'll stop worrying so much when things settle down. When are things going to settle down? I find that by the time things settle down, other things have settled up. I'll take better care of myself next month. I'll be more present when I get through this busy season. Busy season. Isn't it always a busy season? If it's not a busy season, it's just that we're not busy with the season. It's not the season, is it? I'll straighten that out with my wife and my kids tomorrow. Or maybe I'll just wait to the end of the week. It's been a crazy week. Someday, you know, a better time. That's what we say. And then occasionally, life introduces something so profound and powerful that it's enough to challenge that entire operating system. Now remember, the idea is, do we need to wait for something? reactively in life to happen to challenge our operating system, or can we challenge it ourselves? That's what I'm hoping for, for everybody today, and me prior to my challenge. So occasionally life introduces something so powerful, powerful enough to challenge the entire operating system. So for me, as you know, I'm just using this in context, it was cancer. And I was a pretty humbled guy, but... I never had something that big happen that humbled me. This was a big thing. That's what I mean when I say the humbling. It's when reality becomes bigger than the model that you've built on reality. It's not fun to get humbled all the time, but ooh, is it valuable and necessary. So the question is, how am I? Dragon, how are you? People ask that all the time now. They say, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, what's going on? You know, how are you doing? How are you? And my answer, as I said, is that I'm incredibly humbled by this experience. And I love that answer. And I love the conversation that ensues after because it has the person walk away and say, how are you doing with your experience as well? Is it humbling you or are you just comfortable and putting up with a bunch of shit? I tell them I'm not scared and I'm really not. But I will tell you that the physical experience of what I'm going through, specifically with my treatment, I don't think cancer kills