Practice Session #51

Welcome to my show notes for this week’s session of Practice!

We record these sessions every Sunday. I try to publish the audio on the same day of recording, but I may get delayed now and then due to various reasons.

Also, I will usually have the AI-generated transcript and my initial notes published on the same day of recording as well. On Fridays, I’ll (try to) go back through and proof the transcript while I add all of my notes.

I’ll be utilizing this opportunity to clarify and elaborate on points that I may not have conveyed as well as I would’ve liked to. I’ll also provide links to further information and resources.

So, on Friday, I’ll intersperse all my notes with the transcription from the audio below (unless I don’t 🤷).

Intro.

[00:00]

CK: There we go.

Heyo! I’m CK, and you’re listening to Practice. I’m your functional systems integrator, and this is my podcast where practice is not just the theme of the show, but the whole purpose behind it. What started out as a practice of podcasting, as well as speaking in general, has evolved into a practice of self-coaching and self-reflection while espousing half-thoughts and providing unsolicited advice.

As always, I’m fortunate to be joined by my Practice partner and partner in life: Pam.

Pam: Hey, that’s me.

CK: Pam is also my pattern awareness manager, and every Sunday we reflect on the past week and my progress with this practice, along with other lifestyle practices, as well as theories and ideas behind the virtues of practice itself.

We’re doing this on the fly, and our dialogue here is unedited, so don’t hold me responsible for what I say here. Make sure to check out my show notes where I’ll provide some fact-checking, self-psychoanalysis and commentary on things I could have done better. You may find this and more information about this project at ForcesOfEqual.com/Practice.

Catch up with the Anomaly and the Linchpin.

CK: We’re recording today on February 14th, 2021.

And this is practice session number 51 and it’s Valentine’s day. So happy Valentine’s day, everybody happy Valentine’s day, Pam. But that we really care celebrate these hallmark holidays, Oh man, there’s so much traffic going on today in our neighborhood. Uh, our listeners probably won’t hear that background noise, that car noise, because I’ll be able to take out most of it, hopefully, but anyway, Let’s start off with the quote for the week.

And today’s quote comes from Victor Frankel. And for those of you who don’t know Victor Frankel, he is a Holocaust survivor. I actually don’t know if he’s still alive. I don’t think there’s any Holocaust survivors still around anymore, or they’re

Pam: I think there’s a

CK: very few, Became a psychologist. And, uh, he has a book called man’s search for meaning, hwhich I would highly recommend.

And I actually just finished memorizing a different quote from Victor Frankel, which is along the, along the lines of stoic philosophy, which is why probably one of the reasons why I like a lot of his stuff. But anyway, today’s quote from Victor. Frankel goes like this. When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.

Okay. And short and sweet and goes along with similar themes that we’ve discussed before. And in this case, it reminds me. Immediately, like my first instinct was of the fundamental attribution error, which yeah, it’s basically a cognitive bias where we tend to put blame or perceive as others having.

The faculty of doing things or, um, why, why is this definition so hard for me, basically, it’s a person versus situation debate. So we tend to see if people do something wrong or negatively. We tend to see it as their own fault, but when we do the same thing or similar things, We see it as someone else’s fault or the situation it’s because of the situation.

It’s not our own fault. So our perspective differs whether it’s occurring to us or to someone else. And whether it’s something that you see them doing wrong, like a behavior that’s faulty or dysfunctional or whatnot. So we tend to see others. Being at fault on their own. It’s their own fault. That’s something really happened.

Whereas for us, it’s someone else’s or something else’s fault or the time or situations fault. So quote, when we are no longer able to change a situation, we are changed. We’re challenged to change ourselves. It kind of goes into the whole, my whole thing with complex systems and the hierarchic whole lines where there’s, you know, us humans as a system and then our subsystems below us that we have autonomy over that we should be able to have control and will that we can have freewill and decide over.

But when we’re no longer able to change a situation, of course, there’s super system considerations. So there’s things outside of us that we can’t necessarily control. And we’re dependent on where there’s no autonomy. You know, we can’t function outside of our ecosystem. For example, like we have to adhere to the laws of gravity. And so we’re dependent on stuff like this outside of us in our super system. So when we can’t change those things, We are challenged to change ourselves. Those things that we do have control over. And a lot of this has to do with mindset and of course mindfulness. So the way we perceive things and the way that we integrate the super system with our subsystems is where we can have the amount of autonomy that we have available to us while still living.

With the dependencies of our super systems. So yeah, the quote stood out to me because of that. Basically it relates a lot to my own functional systems, integration philosophy, and also the quote that I’ve been learning over the past week. Basically the quote, the other quote I’ve been learning has to do with success and the journey basically versus. Aiming at the end product or angle. So it’s all about the journey. And so do you have any thoughts for him?

Pam: Um, only that it’s really apropos for me this week. Um, that’s something that I’ve been thinking a lot about as I had an interaction that could have only been improved by changing myself, uh, that the situation had had no fault or no blame. And so I needed to change how I was behaving to make it have a better outcome.

CK: Hmm. Interesting.

Pam: makes sense for me.

CK: cool. Cool. All right, so let’s move. Oh

Pam: Oh, to close the loop. Viktor Frankl passed away in 1997. So he’s been gone for awhile.

CK: Yeah, I think I knew that, but for some reason, yeah. All right. Uh, but yeah, definitely recommend Victor Frankel’s work and let’s move on to our status. Let’s check in with ourselves and I’ll start this week. I had a really good week. It’s not necessarily optimal, but definitely progressed from previous weeks.

And so mentally, I would say. I’m at an eight physically, I’d say I made an eight. So mentally I feel very good. I’m progressing. And I have my circadian rhythm thinked up and, um, built up some. Uh, built up my sleep sleep bank, which I was in debt for over the past couple of weeks. And I did kind of veer a little off course the past. Two nights stayed up a little later than I would’ve liked to.

I got caught up with a few things and I’m just having fun with a lot of different things. And so I’ve been doing a lot more research and stuff like that, but I still have my rhythms aligned. And so I’m waking up at a better hour. And even though I’m going to bed a little later than I want to. And so my entire rhythm in general is still aligned, so that’s good.

And I feel fine. I feel okay. I. Don’t necessarily feel like I needed more sleep or anything like that. So I feel good. I feel alert and my cognition’s working well. And so, yeah, mentally I feel good. And physically, I feel better than I have been. I worked out that impingement that I’ve been experiencing in my left hip, and it’s a lot better.

It’s kind of weird walking around now and realizing that I’m not feeling that impingement. And then. Being mindful of that makes me feel a lot better. And of course grateful that I’m not experiencing that pain or impingement that I kind of forgot that I had. So anyway, that’s going better. And we did a two thirds mile run this morning and that felt great.

So I hadn’t, hadn’t gone out for a jog around, in like two to three weeks. Probably three or four, actually. So it felt good to get moving. And I’ve been joining Pam for her workouts. And to be fair, I’ve only been doing the warmups basically, but I liked them and they’re enough of a workout for me. And. I’m also kind of getting back into being more active.

So I’m going to take things slow, but those exercises felt great. And my body’s feeling good. So I’ll say an eight physically and socially, I did a lot better this week as well. So I’m going to say six socially. And so last week my numbers were at. Eight seven and three, I believe. And this week we’re saying eight, eight and six for a total of 42. And so, yeah, that’s up from 18 last week. So it’s really good. And in terms of social, I finally caught up with my parents and let me catch up. Yeah. I caught up with them yesterday and I’m going to catch up with my brother later today. And collab with some other friends through text messaging. And I actually got on social media in Facebook and participated in some groups that I’m in, uh, and they’re like their music groups and, uh, they’re based on production music, production in gear as well.

And I’ve been lurking in these groups forever. And like the past year, since I started doing all this stuff and I don’t know why I didn’t ever post, like I’ve had questions that I very well could have asked and gotten. Legitimate responses from probably in a more efficient manner than me just researching all this stuff myself and I, well, most likely because I found out this week when I actually did participate that, you know, I got all these answers and even more that I hadn’t even considered.

And so, yeah, I just kind of basically ended up throwing the baby out with the bath water. And with my restriction of social media, I just kind of restricted a lot of potentially beneficial aspects of it. So I’m starting to work those things back in, and I mentioned live streaming last week. And so I’ve been testing out more things over the past week and I’m getting really excited.

This is all kind of a whole new world. That’s opening up for me. That I didn’t realize how big and influential it was. And it’s a totally different social aspect that I really didn’t consider, like before I kind of perceived it more along with the gaming community, I think in terms of live streaming. And I didn’t understand why you would.

Sit around and watch other people play games. That was just so weird to me.

Pam: Do you watch other people play sports?

CK: Yeah, that’s true. But yeah, that’s an interesting perspective. Yeah. You kind of stumped me there. That’s really interesting, but yeah, I mean, I guess on that note, I’m starting to realize, now that it’s a social experience and to your point, it’s even more social than watching sports because that’s just one way, you know, you’re, you’re watching and they don’t, what’s on TV.

They don’t know, like they’re not interacting with you. They’re not responding to you in any way. Whereas with live streaming, you can have interaction with the streamer and the person that you’re watching. So it’s actually more, there’s more of a social experience and that’s what I’m getting at. That’s what I’m realizing that it’s more of a social experience.

I keep saying that, but for lack of a better term or another term that you’re hanging out and socializing. And it’s, of course it’s not as functional as real life, but that’s almost as close as you can get without socializing in real life, you know, even more so than text messaging or writing on social media or, or even talking on the phone.

Like, because you get the visual aspect there and you’re just kind of hanging out and it’s more of a relaxed environment. So yeah, this is all new to me. And I’m kind of discovering it in, um, seeing how fun it is basically. So getting into all that stuff. So I, the past two weeks I gave myself a really low social score, and I think that.

Really skewed things incorrectly. And I was being a little too critical of myself and my social status, because like you were saying, your social scores were still fairly high in your feeling fulfilled socially and meaty. I mean, I, I. Just basically need you to feel fulfilled socially, but I also had been craving some other interactions and I know that I get motivated and I get, uh, exactly yeah.

Inspired with. Various interactions. And that feedback helps me and, you know, it feeds and nourishes my brain. And so, yeah, that’s kind of why I was more critical about my social status, but I’ve been fulfilled. So I would say like, if we’re fulfilled in our mental fiscal and social aspects, You probably have at least a score of six or so.

So rather than the scores of two or three that I gave myself the past couple of weeks, I had at least a score of six, I would say.

Pam: Okay. Now those twos and threes were pretty depressing.

CK: Yeah, I was just, I was just being harsh on myself because I wasn’t socializing with anyone other than you. And, but yeah, I, it’s not, like I felt I was lacking in social stimulation, so yeah, that’s my status.

And I’m sticking to that. And so Pam, how about you? W what’s your status like over the past week?

Pam: Uh, I had a really good week until last night or yesterday. Um, so I would say an eight, um, for my mental, um, probably nine for physical. I’m finally starting to get over the shoulder and hip and knee issues that I’ve had for the last year. So it felt good on the run this morning. Um, my shoulders moving much better.

I’m starting to actually be able to. Um, work out a little harder again and social good week. Let me give myself a nine.

CK: Nice. That’s a really good week. Let’s see

Pam: it was

CK: total is about a 26, so yeah, very good week. Nice. All right. So I, that segment always takes me really long, but I. I think that’s okay. I kind of want to get that stuff out and reflect

Pam: Therapy

CK: Exactly, exactly. But anyway, let’s move on to the next section segment.

And this is where we talk about our progress with podcasting. And over the past week, things have been going really well. I, I, well, I just can’t believe how much more there’s. Still to learn. And I’m still learning stuff around noise reduction, which I’ve been learning and doing for almost a year now, which is crazy.

And I’m still learning a lot with it. And it’s pretty cool. The stuff that I’m able to do now. So that’s exciting and I’m still discovering new tools and stuff that. May or may not improve my workflow and processes and make it more efficient, but I’m excited to try one that I just found out about last night.

And so, yeah, it, it has to do, it’s like a, I think it has like AI built in and it has some kind of progressive equalization. Feature. So, yeah, I, I don’t know too much about it yet, but it sounds awesome. So I’m going to start testing that out. I think there’s a seven day free trial and I may talk about it more once I play around with it.

But yeah, other than that, I kind of got hung up with not bad advice in terms of banking. The next step is stone. And so I, so that’s kind of what. Triggered or catalyzed me to go into noise reduction and those aspects in processes even more over the past week. And then I, so I almost got to the point where I wanted to rerecord the next episode that we were going to be putting out.

But then I figured out that I could clean it up and have it at the level that I want it. And so, yeah, I mean, yeah, just still learning things and still trying to get ahead, but I’m at a much better place now where I have things on schedule and getting things in line and stuff is getting more efficient in my more, my workflow is getting more efficient, so yeah.

Things are going well in general. And. I’m having fun with it. Like everything’s been positive this past week, so yeah. Any notes on your own town? Okay, well, nothing’s good. At least there’s no negative stuff. And I guess that’s another point that I want to make. Like you don’t have to improve or make progress all the time.

It’s okay to maintain status quo if you’re in line or on a long-term trend of improvement. So, yeah, I think a lot of times we tend to get caught up in that cycle of productivity and having to be more and more productive and produce more things all the time. Where, as you know, there’s a point of optimization where if you surpass that you over-optimize, and then you get into a point where things become unsustainable and you fall out of the momentum and then you may.

Start finding yourself, not progressing on a regular level. So yeah, I just think it’s important to say that you don’t have to keep improving all the time. It’s okay to maintain your level. And that’s kind of what I try to get at is to maintain that position in the momentum wave. You want to be in the middle of the wave and.

Another thing is that you may not see yourself improving, or you may not notice improvement, which is wait, which could be, it affect you mentally in terms of, you know, if you want to improve and you keep hitting it hard when you actually are, and you’re not seeing it. So that’s. Uh, you know, that’s something that can talk towards being mindful in reflecting on your progress in having certain milestones or goals or like touch points or boundaries, so you can evaluate your progress.

So, yeah, I don’t know. It just kind of went on a little one off on a little rambling rant, the inner. So does that all make sense?

Pam: It does. I think that having plants is a really good way to keep yourself reminded of that, because you’ll have a plant that you like watch for months and you’re like, it’s not doing anything, but it is it’s growing roots. It’s doing a lot of work underground that you don’t see. And then all of a sudden it hits its growing cycle and goes nuts.

CK: Yeah, great metaphor. It’s perfect example. Okay, so let’s move on to the next segment. And this is the weekly ForceCast and we’ll start off with the first part, which is Podspo where we

can, I haven’t come up with like a standard deduction for this. So. I’m not like I can never remember what to say or I don’t know what to say here yet, but we’re going to recommend a podcast that inspired us over the past week. And I’ll go ahead and start. So last week I accidentally mentioned planet money when I meant to say the indicator and they’re both similar podcasts.

I believe the indicator spun off of planet money, but this week I’ll go ahead and recommend planet money. And I consider planning money is one of the OJI podcasts. It spin around for a while. I don’t even know how long, probably at least before 2010. And I don’t know if it was like a regular radio segment for podcasting got big.

I don’t think it was, I think it. Became one or started out as one of the bigger podcasts, but yeah. Uh, I don’t know, but anyway, it’s a great podcast and it’s been around for awhile. It’s an NPR podcast, so it’s produced very well and they talk about money and economics and pertinent, relevant, timely information.

And. The this past week, the episode that stood out to me had Sam Sanders on it. Who is the host of

Pam: It’s been a

CK: it’s been a minute. Yeah. Which I don’t listen to. I think I’ve tried a couple of times, but it’s just not, there’s just too many podcasts to listen to. And I think it’s produced well, I was content just wasn’t for me.

I think it was just too mainstream something. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But anyway, Sam Sanders was on and they kind of did a, a what I called like a, where you have multiple stories about the same subject compilation. It’s like a compilation episode. They, Oh, they first had Raj Chetty on who’s a Harvard economist economics professor, and he’s regarded as one of the top micro economics scholars or mines around right now.

And he’s really into taking huge data sets and using data to inform. Behaviors and policies and stuff like that. And he, I believe he’s very much into complex systems and he looks at things from a complex systems perspective where there’s so like all these different variables that are affecting certain things.

So I really like the way he does this work. And so that’s one reason I liked the planet money episode. And another reason is another story. Was, I don’t remember what the story was about Sam Sanders. I believe Stan standards was saying that throughout the pandemic he’s developed a routine and his schedules become similar from day to day.

And he’s finding comfort in that. And he’s ended up making the same meals and eating the same meal every single day. And so he’s talking about how there’s comfort in that and knowing that, you know, whatever happens that day, the next day, he can expect that and he’ll have that, you know, at that time. And so he’s developed this routine throughout this pandemic.

And so I’m thinking, so this is what I’ve been doing for the past 10 years or so like, so it was interesting to have that perspective where people who aren’t in our positions, where we’ve been working from home. For a long time and have developed these schedules and routines that, you know, all these other people who are now getting into this situation over the past year are finding out how beneficial it is to have routine and schedule and.

All this stuff. And yeah, that was just kind of an interesting perspective to me and also gave me some, maybe confidence per se, in terms of sharing or asserting myself in my experiences, in what I know, because it was kind of a, maybe even a shock to me to hear that from someone like saying like, But like thinking of course, like of course that’s beneficial and efficient and optimal or, yeah.

It’s just like, I’ve been living in it for so long that I don’t realize that others have, you know, it’s like this big revelation to them. So yeah. Plenty of money. I recommend that podcast. It usually comes out like once a week or so.

Pam: And do you see how. The story of him creating a routine in the pandemic relates to your quote

CK: Oh, yeah,

Pam: to, he’s basically trying to find something that he can change and exert control over, to feel comfortable in his situation.

CK: totally. Nice. Cut. So any podcasts stand out to you holding fast week?

Um, I’m going to recommend ghost of a podcast done by Jessica

Haven’t heard of that one.

Pam: Well, it’s an astrology podcast, but you can actually completely disregard that she’s talking about astrology at all, because she really focuses on personal growth and, um, just like perspective on your mental health and you know, behavior. And so she had an episode recently that was talking about joy.

Being that we’re in a pandemic and a lot of people are really struggling, but then there’s also a lot of people that are doing great. And I talk sometimes about kind of feeling guilty that I’ve been so, um, okay. This year and, you know, really, uh, done, you know, actually came up with a lot of, you know, new things and, and, and did really well this year.

So she talks about, um, how different people handle things differently and about that, you know, maybe. Maybe it’s okay to feel joy when other people are having trouble with it. And she talks about the difference between happiness and joy and that happiness is fleeting. And it’s, you know, you feel moments of happiness, but joy is something that you can cultivate long-term.

CK: Interesting.

Pam: Yeah. So, um, yeah, I think her, her podcast is, is really good. And you might learn something about astrology while you’re listening to it.

CK: Nice. No, that’s that’s fine. All right. Thanks for that. So let’s move on to the next portion of the weekly ForceCast and this is Linchpinspo where Pam provides us with some inspiration from the planets or the stars or the cards, or?

Pam: Well, I had a whole thing prepared and then I got mercury retrograded. Um, I wrote it all up. It disappeared. So we’re going to do this on the fly. Uh, so yeah, this week we have the sun moving into Pisces. It’s sort of Pisces season on February 19th. And that will last until March 20th. And, uh, also on February 20th, we have the end of mercury retrograde.

So we kind of have two big things happening right there on the 19th and 20th.

CK: February, sorry, February 20th is the end of mercury retrograde.

Pam: end of the retrograde period.

CK: I think

Pam: So Pisces is the last sign in the astrological calendar. So it’s the end of the cycle. And, um, it’s, you can think of it as like that time of year it’s it’s, um, you know, the end of winter, right? Uh, because March 20th, the end of Pisces, uh, season is also the spring Equinox or the Vernal Equinox. When the sun moves over the equator and starts spring in the Northern hemisphere.

So. This period of Pisces is the end of winter. You’re not quite to spring yet, but you can like feel that it’s coming. Like maybe there’s still snow on the ground. It’s still cold, but you get a couple of those really warm days where you’re like, Oh, like spring’s coming. Like we’re almost out of this, but you can’t quite move forward yet.

So this is like a time to review and reflect and think about what you learned over the last year and what you want to integrate. Before we move into that next season. And the symbol for Pisces is two fish that are tied together, swimming in opposite directions. So it’s reminding you of the duality of past versus future or reality versus fantasy.

Like we have. But all of those things happening at all times, and we’re constantly being pulled in both directions. So you want to think about what you need to bring with you from the past to move into the future and what you need to let go of to be able to move forward. Because if you don’t keep both sides in mind, you just swim in a circle.

Right. Two fish tight together that are trying to swim. They’re just going to end up in a circle instead of being able to make progress one direction or another. So even if you don’t believe in astrology or you think that everything that I’m saying is crazy seasonally, we are in that same period with winter ending spring, starting soon.

We’re about to move into a growth phase. So this is that pause. Before you move into that growth phase. These are the roots under the plant that we were talking about earlier, where you want to you’re you, maybe aren’t making progress right now, but you can start planning for it and you can start getting ready for spring coming in March.

CK: Sounds good to me. All right. Well, thanks for that town. And that brings us to the end of our session today. So do you have anything else you want to say before we leave off? All right. Well, where can people find you?

Pam: You can find me on Twitter where I am at Pamela underscore Lund.

CK: And you might be able to find me on Twitter at CK disco. So thank you, Pam, for joining me as always. Thank you listeners for joining me this week, and I hope you all come back next week and keep on practicing to loo