Practice Session #25

Thanks for checking out my show notes! I’ll be utilizing this to clarify and elaborate on points that I didn’t convey as well as I would’ve liked to. I’ll also provide links to further information and resources.

We record these weekly sessions on Sundays. Please note that I try to publish episodes the day after recording: Mondays. I generally will have the transcript and initial notes published on Mondays as well. From there, I may continue adding and modifying the show notes throughout the week.

I’ll be interspersing all my notes with the transcription from the audio, which will be displayed like this:

Intro.

CK: Here 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. I’m using this platform to practice podcasting as well as speaking in general, 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- we’re doing this on the fly, 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’ve done better. You may find this and more information about this project at ForcesOfEqual.com/Practice.

Today, we’re recording on Sunday, August 16th, 2020. This is our 25th practice session.

25!

Pam: You’re a quarter of a century old.

CK: Yeah! Uh…. I mean, not quite a century, but…

Pam: isn’t a century, a hundred?

CK: Yeah, but it’s been 25 weeks… So…

Pam: A century of episodes.

CK: Okay.

So, I am actually gonna change things up a little bit this week with no warning whatsoever to Pam.

Pam: What’s new.

CK: But yeah, instead of going through and having like these dedicated segments or whatnot – which we kind of got away from the past couple of weeks, anyway – I just want to kind of have like a little discussion or make it more of a discussion rather than trying to fit stuff into neat little boxes.

And I’m trying to slow things down for myself in terms of my communicative aspects, or communication. And this is because in listening back to previous episodes, first of all, I can definitely tell that I’ve been improving with my speaking abilities and my communication and my thought processing. Where in the first episodes, I can totally see that- or I can hear myself having sympathetic reactions or these stress or anxiety reactions while I’m talking. And then I go into this- like, I can hear myself going into like a thought cycle and self-editing.

And listeners may have heard me, like, say… like, kind of go through this edit cycle in terms of saying synonyms back to back when I’m talking and not, like, finding the exact words. So then I’ll repeat like three similar words and just kind of self edit right on the spot.

So it’s little things like that here and there that I’m noticing in terms of how I’m feeling in the moment, when I look back and reflect. So in observing that I can see where I can improve and how I- how I can improve.

And I can kind of see why I get into those situations. And most of the time it’s because I get kicked out of the present moment basically. And so I started thinking about the future, like how this is going to come off. How, you know, how what I’m saying is going to come off. And then, you know, I may start self-editing right there and try to correct myself or start getting in- to start stumbling around, like I am now basically thinking about how this is going to come off and, you know, start correcting myself and try to make things more clear.

And that’s basically one of the whole reasons that I’m doing this is because I have this fear or anxiety of being misunderstood. And it’s not necessarily because I’m saying the wrong things. It’s just coming out wrong… or the wrong things in my mind, or like the wrong way or whatnot. Or, you know, I maybe, rather than living in the future and thinking about how things are coming off, I may be already looking back and thinking about how I said some things and looking back towards the past and, you know, getting out of the moment that way.

So I want to practice slowing things down and staying in the moment. And we’ve been talking about this kind of stuff a lot throughout the weeks – throughout the past couple of weeks – and we’re all about being in the present and taking things as they are. And even relating it to the momentum wave, staying in the sweet spot of the wave.

So it’s all related. So that’s kind of my intention for this change up and we’ll see how things go from there. What do you think, Pam?

Pam: I think that it’s a great practice for Practice. A lot of times when you start to go into that thought cycle, when you start editing yourself, you then end up taking whatever thought that you were in the middle of and actually making it way more complicated.

CK: Oh, totally.

Pam: So, I think that in your goal to be understood, you actually end up biting yourself in the backside – trying to keep this PG for you – because you get so wrapped up in that thought process. So then you end up going on like a million different tangents and your original point gets lost. So I think that it’s going to be really good for you to focus on like a train of thought and trying to complete what you were saying and- and be understood in that rather than getting wrapped up in a million different thoughts and going off on all of your

CK: tangents.

Yeah. Yeah. And it’s going to be a process, obviously. And it will be a slow and iterative- iterative, evolving process. And yeah, I don’t know if I’m conveying my thoughts here and articulating everything the way I want it- the way I want to be articulating it. But the whole thing is, like, I can feel…

It’s… okay… so this is getting into that cycle already, but I mean, so let’s try practicing here and slow down and maybe even pause, take a breath…

And reflect and realize that, like, this whole feeling is an abstract feeling. Like, it’s hard to put it into words because it’s hard to relate these feelings to how other people may relate to the same feeling. But the whole thing is, you know, I’m trying to convey how I’m feeling in order to illustrate why I’m think- why I think I’m getting into some of these patterns that I’m getting into.

So yeah, I mean, it’s difficult because in general, you know, if you ask someone about their feelings, that’s difficult in itself.

Pam: Depends on who they are. I’ll tell you everything. But you definitely have a hard time explaining how you’re feeling. And a lot of people do.

CK: I guess, yeah. That’s a good point. And got to stay mindful about spectral potentiality there and empathy and theory of mind: other people don’t think the same way that you do. And so you have to keep that in mind as well.

So, yeah, I don’t know. Hopefully some people can relate to what I’m talking about here and maybe they’re able to put it into better words. Um, but yeah, I’m going to keep practicing this and continue asserting myself, basically.

Something else that I’ve been thinking about the past couple of weeks is my own development and my own developmental process. Because as I mentioned a few weeks ago, I had an epiphany in terms of why I’m lacking in self confidence and how my upbringing affected that.

And in talking with my parents a couple of weeks ago, we kind of got through some of those layers and peeled back some things and uncovered some things where my parents’ confidence – or lack thereof – in my success as I grow up and proceeded through life was lack- my parents confidence in me, it was lacking. So, you know, there’s- it’s no wonder why my own confidence was lacking.

So in that… with all of that information, I’ve also kind of have this- I have this idea that my own development throughout my childhood and adolescence was very tightly bounded by my super-system, which was my parents at that time. So super-system referring to the systems outside, above our systems – the systems that we as humans are a part of.

So my immediate relational super system is my parental system. So my parents were my super-system. And that super system basically encompassed what I was able to do while I was in the care and supervision of my parents, which was through childhood and adolescence, through my high schooling. And I didn’t really get out of that system until I got to college and looking back, there’s a very distinct difference between my life as an adolescent- or, you know, before college and after college.

And so what I’m thinking is that I have- I’ve had this limited developmental ability while I was under my parents’ supervision. So I’m kind of having to go through a lot of those developmental processes now, now that I realize that I missed some of those processes or missed some context throughout some of that processing.

So basically I’m living some aspects of my life, or reliving, or kind of rebuilding some parts of my life- some parts of my adolescent life, basically. So I’m not sure where I’m going with that, but it’s just kind of a notion that I’ve been mulling about. And it makes sense to me in terms of how I’ve developed some patterns in how I’ve retained some of the cycles that I’m still going through and trying to- trying to fix or improve.

So does that make sense to you, Pam?

Pam: It does. It absolutely does. And I think to build on that, you, after college, also went into a pretty heavy anxiety. So that was also limiting your development. You were unable to think about, like higher level development and focus on, on. These like more high level mental processes, you were just stuck in anxiety and just really focusing on like, surviving basically.

So then there was another chunk of time where you maybe missed a lot of the development that people go through in like their late twenties and early thirties that you’re now catching up on.

CK: Yeah. And that’s a good point. What that brings up for me is that all of this development pre-college, and even post-college – before the realizations that I’m making now – it’s all been focused on the super-system for me. So even when I was under my parents’ supervision, I was in line or I was inhearing- adhering to their super system.

So I had to follow their rules and their traditions and conventions. And I was limited within that scope. And then when I left the home and went to college and was able to explore a little more and try to find myself, I guess, I was still influenced by the super-system. And that was the super system of my social system.

So when I- so I went to two colleges, I went to one college my freshman year, and then I transferred my sophomore year to another college. And the second college I joined a fraternity. So the fraternity was a big super-system for me. And even before, uh, the first college I played soccer. So my soccer team was my social super-system.

But in both cases, I was trying to appease the super-system and conform, per se. Like, I did assert myself a little more. You know, I was free from my parents supervision, so I was able to explore a little more in that sense without being under the strict eyes of my parents. But I still had these ideas that I had to conform with my social system.

And, you know, I- I’m not one who falls in line and follows, you know, everything and I’m very unconventional. Uh, but at the same time, while I may have been different in a lot of ways from my fraternity brothers or my soccer teammates, there was still this general notion, this general overarching systemic notion that was keeping me within some sort of system.

And I wasn’t necessarily asserting myself, or the real, like, inner-self fully, I guess is my point. So that’s something that I’m doing more now or trying to do more now. And as I stated a couple of weeks ago, you know, I want to try to assert myself more into the system and assert my own system into the system.

So that’s the whole reasoning behind this kind of adjustment in the process of this practice of podcasting. So that’s where I’m coming from and where I want to go with this. So do you have anything you want to add there, Pam?

Pam: I mean, I could ask a lot of questions, like where else you’re asserting yourself because, uh, where our life is right now, your entire physical world is me. You know, we’re together 24/7. We’re in the middle of a pandemic, so we’re not socializing. We’re not really interacting with other people. So I’m just wondering, like, is this- is Practice where you’re doing this assertion or do you have other places that you’re practicing with this?

CK: Yeah, I haven’t really thought about it in terms of practicing other than this podcast, but it’s just more of a general mindset that I want to try to build upon. So other than this podcast, I haven’t really thought about practicing it, but hopefully practicing it with this podcast will help me get into that groove and help me expand upon it.

So, I mean, do you have any suggestions?

Pam: Well, I’m thinking ahead to next weekend when we’re having lunch with your whole family.

CK: Oh, geez.

Pam: I’m wondering,

CK: Yeah. I don’t know if we’re going to be moving that fast.

Pam: Okay. Just wondering. Cause I’m- I feel like I’m the one that has really pushed with them to like, be like, our life is unconventional – we’re not getting married, we’re not having kids. Like, you know, kind of pushing back on that super-system. I’ve done that, so I was just wondering if you’re gonna start, uh, exerting yourself a little bit more in that environment.

CK: Yeah. Yeah. I think I have been little by little, but yeah, I definitely could- could focus on that a little more and maybe… maybe you could try nudging me a little bit on that end.

Yeah, but yeah, there’s a lot of deep, deep history…

Pam: There’s a lot of layers in there.

CK: …in that family system, so,..

Pam: That happens with anyone. I mean, as soon as I’m around my parents, I turn into a kid again.

CK: Right.

Pam: That’s just what happens.

CK: Yeah. But I’m mindful of it now. So there’s that. I mean, the first step is awareness. So have that, and now. We’ll try to put it into practice a little more. So we’ll see how that goes. Maybe we’ll have an update with that next week.

But yeah, on that note, I also want to emphasize our unconventional practices. So if we have something new that we implemented over the past week or something that we’re changing up or something that comes to mind, I’d like to share those things. So what do you think about that Pam?

Pam: I like it.

CK: Cool. Cool. Can you think of anything right off the bat?

Pam: Um, I mean the only unconventional things that I’ve been doing, uh, is that I enrolled in an astrology certification course. So that’s pretty unconventional. Um, other than that, yeah, nothing really unconventional going on over here. I’ve just been focusing on body movement stuff to fix my patterns that are causing me pain and discomfort.

CK: Yeah. I mean, even that I think is unconventional because a lot of people. Don’t really know how to take care of themselves in terms of recovering from injuries. Uh, in general, I would think people are dependent on outside help, like doctors or physicians or therapists or whatnot.

There I go self-editing and doing synonyms again.

Pam: Yeah. I think a lot of people would just, um, deal with pain until it, like, got to a hip replacement or something like that. They don’t take the proactive measures.

CK: Yeah, let’s talk about that real quick, because I mean, how beneficial is it to know how to relieve your own pain or workout some of your own muscle aches and postural issues and stuff like that?

Pam: I mean, it’s definitely empowering to not feel like you’re a victim of. Whatever’s happening with your body. To be able to recognize patterns and be able to change how you’re sitting or standing. Or, you know, I think people get so reliant on, um, “Oh, if I buy a new chair, then it’s gonna fix all my problems,” but it’s really the way you’re sitting in the chair. It’s not the chair, you know.

And especially now that we are in a pandemic and going to a doctor’s office may not be the best idea. Or, you know, seeing a chiropractor weekly or whatever that is, you know, the- the more you’re interacting with other people, the more you’re putting yourself and your loved ones in danger.

CK: Right.

Pam: Or the physician themselves, if you’ve been exposed. So like inserting yourself into that system is- is potentially more dangerous right now. So just being able to have that ability, or even just the knowledge to like go to Google and search, like here’s what’s going on with my hip and- and to, like, be able to take that action, I think is so much more than most people feel empowered to do.

CK: Yeah. So many good points there. First of all, having self-empowerment, second of all, being able to make yourself feel better and recover better and be mindful of posture and alignment and movement patterns. And there was a another point…

Pam: inserting yourself into the medical system right now.

CK: Yeah, that, and on the other side, people may be developing different patterns now that they may be staying at home or they have different working environments. And their day to day is a lot different than it was a few months ago. So there may be new ailments coming- rising up.

Or you may have found that you don’t have the back pain that you were experiencing when you were working in the office, or something like that. Or maybe even past movement and bodily- physical issues or kinesthetic issues. You may notice the effects of lighting and stuff like that.

And so I know we’re starting to get in tangents here, but it all comes back to being mindful and…

Pam: It’s all awareness.

CK: …awareness of patterns. And so, yeah, it’s great if you can learn, and, yeah… The other thing is being a problem solver. You know, learn how to solve problems yourself. We have so many resources and there’s so much information out there. Of course you have to disseminate the information and there’s a lot of bad information out there too,

But once you start looking into this, you also become knowledgeable in weeding out the bad information and figuring out what works best for you.

Pam: We talk a lot about how different our upbringings were, but I think that’s, that’s one thing that we have in common that as kids, we both had to figure a lot of stuff out for ourselves. So you had to, because your parents couldn’t really help you because they didn’t know either. And I had to, because I was a latchkey kid, so I spent a lot of time alone.

And if I wanted to know how to do something, I had to figure it out. I had to take it apart and put it back together or, um, you know, whatever it is. So we both are big problem solvers. And I think one of my huge pet peeves is when people can’t do that. So, you know, if you have kids, I think let them figure stuff out on their own don’t spoon- don’t spoonfeed them everything. Like, leave them alone, let them figure it out, cause it’s going to be a huge skill later in life.

CK: Yeah, exactly. And that seems to be an issue that may be rising these days. And I don’t have firsthand experience, obviously. We don’t have firsthand experience.

Pam: Yeah, we’re going to get parenting advice when we don’t have children.

CK: Yeah. But I- I read a lot about, uh, bringing up children and even birthing. And I, you know, I’m interested in all this stuff. So, there seems to be a preponderance of this helicopter parenting going on these days.

And yeah, you’re not doing your children any favors if you’re solving all their problems for them. You’re making them reliant on you. So, yeah, don’t do that.

Let them learn. It’s all about learning. And if you do everything for them, they don’t learn and they can’t evolve, and they can’t progress and improve their minds and their cognitive abilities.

Pam: And that doesn’t just have to apply to children. If you have employees, or a significant other, or anyone that you’re in a close relationship with. If you’re constantly solving their problems, you’re not doing them any favors. I was thinking about that when we were watching the Peanut Butter Falcon last night, and that was like a big message that was in there.

It was that his caregiver wanted to solve all of his problems. And that Shia Labeouf’s character was like, “no, let him figure it out on his own.” And that’s a huge lesson, I think, for anyone that happens in relationships, you know, I try and solve CK’s problems for them. And then I just ended up getting in the way and then he’s gets frustrated that I’m in the way, and that’s a lesson that I’ve had to learn.

Um, so I think that that’s, uh, that’s something that can apply to more than just children.

CK: Yeah, that’s a great connection you made there. And what a good movie. I really liked that movie. Shia Labeouf.

Pam: Yeah. I keep telling everyone now to watch it. Cause it was so good.

CK: Yeah. Yeah. Check that out. Peanut Butter Falcon, Shia Labeouf… and yeah, so great points…

Uh, I totally lost my train of thought, but there are a couple other things that I want to start working in. And these are around things that I’ve talked about before, too, with like Stoic philosophy and Daoism. And maybe I may recite a quote or something for every episode and kind of take the theme off of that.

And something else is something that Pam mentioned: her interest in astrology. So maybe we’ll work a little of that in, and the- just as a quick note, we’re not looking at astrology is this like woo-woo fortune-telling kind of methodology. It’s more of an avenue or a path towards self-reflection. So it all fits in with our… um…

Pam: Overarching themes.

CK: Yeah, exactly. Our overarching- overarching themes. And I just totally lost the thesaurus in my brain. It’s not working now.

Pam: It doesn’t want you to start listing off synonyms.

CK: Yeah, I guess so. So yeah, so we’ll start working those things in, and basically how I’m coming about this is- is a process of self reflection. And I know I’ve mentioned that before, but in thinking about this and the things that I’ve been going through the past couple of weeks is kind of one helped me realize that this practice itself recording these sessions every week has become kind of like a touch point…

or is that the word I’m looking for? Like, a touchstone in my life because we have this every week, and I can reflect every week, and kind of look back on our weeks, and see how they went, and kind of process things and consider our mindsets and stuff like that. So it’s really become like a self reflective touchstone for me.

And in realizing that, and also realizing that, uh, it’s allowed me to let go of some obsessive practices that I had been employing for the past few years. Like the self-quantification stuff that I mentioned a couple weeks ago, where I basically notated- I had like two over 200 different factors that I notated every day.

Pam: And you three body trackers.

CK: Yeah. And now I’m down to two.

But yeah. Yeah, but at the same time, I kind of lost some other practices. Like I was very regimented with my scheduling and planning every day and every week. And I had a goal-setting plan where I’d set goals every week and every month and every three months and- and every day.

So some of it was a little too obsessive and some of it was a little too overboard, obviously. But some of them, I kind of just let go completely. And some of them, I, um- some of them, this practice of podcasting help picked up the slack, but I feel like I need to get a little more organized and back to some of those practices.

And so I kind of want to almost use this podcasting session as like the weekly base for my weekly, um, reflection, and then kind of work off that. Because we’ve been going for 25 weeks now, 24, 25 weeks? Uh, 24 weeks, the off-by-one error. And so – and we’ll explain that someday. I mentioned it…

Pam: I’m sure people can figure it out.

CK: Yeah, true. I’ll link to it in the show notes. How about that? If I get around to doing that.

But yeah, I think I’m going to get back into all that. Get my processes down a little more. Um, I’ve been talking about my workflow and the studio and all this software and all the logistics that I’ve been going through the past couple of weeks. And I started flying this past week.

Like, the past couple of days everything’s been running smoothly. I got everything working. And so I can get back into my flow. Like I envisioned this next week getting back into all my organizational stuff, having all that down and getting back into my flow.

And I’m really pleased with how my computer’s running. And I kind of want to talk about that, but we’re running out of time here, and I can really get in the weeds with that. But yeah, maybe I’ll mention some of the key points in the next few episodes, because there’s something that I thought that I knew about, but had no idea about. So, uh, may gather those up and bring those up in future episodes.

So I think we’ll leave it at that this week. Do you have anything else that you want to add?

Pam: I don’t think so.

CK: Cool. So, yeah, that did end up pretty fun. So that’s why I love this practice. Like, honestly, right before this recording session, I was not in a good place. I got really frustrated because we’re still experimenting with microphones and our setup and stuff like that.

And Pam’s using the Shure SM 7B again, this week. But there’s some kind of noise coming from it, and I can’t figure out where it’s coming from. We had it last week and Pam pointed it out and I said, “you know, I’ll just deal with it and I’ll, uh, I’ll- I can use that for practice in post.”

But now, I mean, I know how I can- I know how to deal with it in post and it’s- it still degrades the audio quality a little bit, having to deal with that noise. So I want to get rid of it and try to figure that out right before recording and could not figure it out. And then, you know, when you- that kind of stuff, there’s all these different variables that you have to figure out.

So I was switching out cables. I was switching out interfaces. I was switching out the computer. And then my- there’s something wrong with my laptop, where if I unplugged the headphones and I plug them back in, they don’t work, so I’ll have to restart. And so that was an added annoyance and that really started getting to me.

So I was really annoyed right before we started recording.

Pam: And I was really annoyed as your pattern awareness manager, because you always choose to troubleshoot stuff like that before we record, instead of doing it earlier in the week, when it won’t be stressful.

CK: Yeah, that’s the other thing, because on one hand, I look at this as a time to do that, because this is the practice time. But on the other hand, I have also realized that I’ve been getting into these cycles where I’ve been doing that and getting into these moods at inopportune times. So, yeah, I am mindful of that and looking to improve upon that.

Um, I’ve been- on that note, I’ve been slow on getting out the weekly episodes because I’ve been practicing so much with the audio and I’ve been just fiddling with the audio throughout the week instead of just. Releasing the episode and then fiddle- fiddling with it. So now I have that in mind as the practice.

So we’ll see how that goes. I’m improving every week and, yeah, we’re evaluating and adjusting as we go on. So yeah, it is what it is and that’s where it’s at. And we’re trying to stay in the present moment and trying to stay in that sweet spot of the moment and what yet?

Pam: I am trying to honor divine timing and not ask about how not bad advice is coming with all of your audio fiddling on practice.

CK: Yeah. And that’s another thing with my scheduling and stuff like that. I think I’ve kind of been avoiding my planning and scheduling practices because I’ve been dealing with so much troubleshooting and. I didn’t know how to plan for that, or didn’t want to deal with thinking about planning for it.

So that’s probably the wrong strategy. So don’t do what I do. Don’t or, you know, do what I say don’t do, or what’s that saying?

Pam: Do what I say, not what I do, I think.

CK: Do what I say that what I do or something like that. I don’t know why it doesn’t sound right, but we’ll leave it there for this week. And Pam, where can people find you?

Pam: You can find me on Twitter where I am @Pamela_Lund.

CK: You might be able to find me on Twitter @cKdisco. Thank you to the listeners for joining me this week and thank you to Pam for joining me as always. And I hope you come back next week and keep on practicing. To-da-loo!