Practice Session #50

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 7th. 2021, February, February, February. And this is practice session number 50. Wow. That’s crazy. 50 episodes, 50 weeks. That is a crazy number to think about. And quite a milestone. I think Pat myself on the back or patting myself on the back earlier today, doing a lot of that, I guess.

Pam: Okay.

CK: So that brings something to mind where when we started out this practice, Podcasts. I looked up, excuse me. I looked up the average number of podcasts that people tend to produce or release before they quit, basically. And for some reason, I can’t remember the exact number, but it was either like somewhere around 11 or 17, but either way we’ve.

Surpassed that by far. And yeah, I don’t see myself stopping this process anytime soon. I really like it. And especially today, uh, I I’ll probably go through, go into this a little later, but I’m really grateful for having this process in place. And having like a touchstone every week where I can just kind of get my myself centered and keep like a consistent, I mean, of course we do this every Sunday, so it’s a consistent practice, but it’s something to come back to and something that’s always there.

And even though I instituted myself, instituted it myself, it’s something that has become a routine. And almost a ritual and it’s always there and I can kind of count on it. And in a way I’m like today I can kind of count on it to kind of bring me back and get me back on track and get my week started off on a good note.

So yeah, really enjoying this practice and hopefully that’s obvious we’re 50 sessions into it. So I’ll just keep going and see where it takes us.

Pam: Cool.

CK: So the quote for today comes from stoic philosopher Seneca, and the quote goes like this. I am not born for one corner. The whole world is my native land. That’s it short and simple. And of course it has a lot to do with things that I like to talk about in terms of. Basically complex systems in individualism versus collectivism. And that’s basically the gist of it. And the reason that this kind of stood out to me was less for the actual meaning of the quote in more for Seneca, the name Seneca, because for some reason, when I saw this.

This past week, I realized that I spent my first six months of life in a town called Seneca.

Pam: Really.

CK: And it’s outside Chicago land about an hour South of Chicago, South West, I believe. And yeah, it’s just a little small town, maybe a few thousand people. And I really don’t know much about it, but after that came up this past week, I looked it up a little bit.

And there’s no real history or there’s no like reason that like there’s no written reason or historical reason why it’s named Seneca. Like, no, one’s really written that down or said, why. But, yeah, I don’t, I don’t know why either, but I just think it’s kind of interesting to have that in my life somewhere and now being so interested in his philosophy.

So yeah, I thought that was interesting.

Pam: Can you say the quote one more time to make sure I got it. Cause I think that it ties in well with the Linchpinspo operation today.

CK: I’m perfect. It’s I am not born for one corner. The whole world is my native land.

Pam: Okay.

CK: Sure. So let’s see. Now we’re into our next segment where we check in with each other. And we just started this last week where we do a little check in of our mental, physical, and social States on a scale of one to 10. So Pam last week or, okay.

So do you want me to say what your numbers were last week? Or do you want to say your numbers for this week? And then I’ll say the numbers for last week and kind of compare

Pam: Um, man, I don’t think it really matters. I don’t remember what they were. Um, okay. So what am I rating?

CK: mental, physical, social.

Pam: Mental physical, social, mental. Um, so the first week of the month, which is always my busiest week with reporting and whatnot. Um, but even with that, it was still a pretty good week and I signed a new client. So, um, well, whenever I signed a new client, I start to get stressed out because there’s so much that I could do.

And there’s like, um, performance, anxiety. So. I still think I’m going to give it an eight though. I had a pretty solid week. I wrote some content for the, not bad with money site, which felt really good. So I’m going to give it an eight. Um, Physical. Uh, I would say I’m gonna give that one a six because I had a regression with my knee issue. Um, I squatted in properly and aggravated it again. I’ve got some old patterns with my hip that ended up effecting my knee. So give that a six and then social. I don’t know this one’s so weird for me because I. Obviously I have friends, but I am perfectly fine being alone for extended periods of time and never speaking to anyone.

I’m like, I don’t re I don’t give that a low rating if I do that.

CK: Yeah, I think that’s fine. It’s like, whatever you feel, if you’re not, if you don’t feel fulfilled socially, then you know, it’d be a lower number, but it’s yeah. It’s your own subjective opinion.

Pam: All right, let me give it a nine then feel good.

CK: Nice. So this week you’re at eight, six and nine for a total of. 23. And last week you were at nine, seven and eight for a total of 24. So

Pam: Consistency.

CK: yeah, pretty close. And we kind of determined that anything above 20 is a good week. Anything above 25 is an awesome week. So it sounds like you had a pretty good week. So for me, I’ll say my scores for last week.

And there were seven for mental six for physical two for social. And I was struggling a bit with my sleep cycles and my, my sleep wake cycle, basically my circadian rhythm. And so this week for mental, where it was seven last week, I would say it’s eight this week. Definitely feel an improvement. And I have been getting my cycles back in line and, uh, this past sleep wake cycle was perfectly in line.

So if I could get on that, I’d be, uh, I’d be good. So if I can keep this momentum, uh, I’ll be on the right path. So last night I was able to get to bed at 10 30. Whereas I haven’t been getting to bed till like midnight, I think the week before I pulled it back until like 1130 and then my goal this past week was 11.

So I hit that and more this, uh, last night. So that’s good. And I got up around seven, I believe so. Yeah. That’s a much better timing for me. And. I hope I can stay on that schedule and I don’t see why not. Although, looking back, I’m like, I’m not exactly sure why I got so knocked out of my schedule because of course there were some things that came up in terms of anxiety and working on these podcasts and audio shoes and a lot of technological issues.

We mentioned mercury last week or the week before being in retrograde and causing issues with technology

Pam: Everything CK touches breaks

CK: yeah, it’s been ridiculous. Oh my God. Yeah. So anyway, it seems like I did have some tech logical issues this past week as well, but. I was able to deal with them and got over some of them and didn’t encounter any issues the past couple of days.

So that’s been good. So mentally, I mean, and getting better and improving. So that’s good physically. I was at a six last week. This week, I’ll say seven. I feel better than last week. I’ve been working on the hip impingement that I’ve been dealing with and. Actually this morning during my morning walk was the first time that I noticed that it didn’t really bother me much at all, because pretty much every walk we go on, I’m mindful of it and mindful of my posture and gait and everything.

And this morning, As we were walking, I noticed that, you know, I wasn’t having that pain and pinch him. So I was surprised because I worked on it. I did soft tissue work on it Wednesday, no Thursday and still experiencing some issues. And then suddenly this morning, it just kind of all felt better and then went through my Oh shit.

Okay. So there goes mercury again. One of my mounts camera months. Hello. Ah, anyway, where was I physical? So anyway, I did soft tissue work again this morning on the hip and my legs and everything around that. And. Uh, it was a good session. It feels good. And so I feel loose and good. So hopefully I can get back on the road and start running again.

Actually yesterday, I was just thinking, you know, my body gets sore and, or it starts hurting and I get these impingements whether I’m very active or not. So I might as well just be very active and just try to get over the issues through activity. So I was in that mindset and then this morning, everything felt better.

So I don’t know, maybe it’s mental, maybe there’s some kind of placebo effect going on or something, but whatever it is, I’m feeling good. So I made it a seven physically and I’ve been feeling like a little so low on the physical totem pole lately. Like obviously I haven’t been playing soccer throughout this pandemic.

So I haven’t been nearly as active as I usually am. I haven’t been out on the trails as often, and I’ve been doing my little exercises here and there every day, but still I feel a little lacking and I’m losing weight like crazy. And I dunno, I feel like I’m getting smaller. So I don’t really like that feeling.

Pam: You always say that, but you look exactly the same, literally, no matter what you do, you always look perfectly fit.

CK: Maybe I’m feeling weaker. So I don’t know. I, I want to get some strength back. So

Pam: You’re welcome to work out with me.

CK: yeah. Um, I’ve been thinking about that. I see you doing your exercises every now and then, and thinking some of those movements look pretty nourishing, so yeah, we’ll see where that takes me. So last week in terms of social, I had my status at two and I did not improve that very much, but I did a little bit, so I’ll say three.

So yeah, I did message, uh, some friends this past week, which was more than I did last week, but I didn’t do as much as I wanted to and ran into some issues with technology and stuff like that. And I had some ideas of. Going crazy social that didn’t work out in terms of live streaming. So I’ve been having a, what’s the word I’m looking for?

Like propensity or inclination to live stream for some reason. Yeah. The urge. Exactly. And. I tried getting up on Wednesday and of course, mercury intervened. And, uh, my issues with technology came crashing down. So I’m going to try again this coming week and see what we can do, but had some interesting thoughts around that because like I’m going from being so isolated or internal or.

Introverted to wanting to just be everywhere, kind of, or be live or put my self in a position where anybody can watch, or even with this podcast where anybody can listen. And so I dwelled on that a little bit and thought that maybe like, there is this live performer inside me. Like I, I am a live performer and.

Of course there, there’s a lot of different variables that go into it in terms of how that increases motivation maybe, or incentive or initiative in even thinking about me being a soccer player. I mean, that’s like alive action, sports and sport, and you’re performing in front of people. And of course there’s certain pressures that that brings about.

In terms of performing and having others being observed by others and being responsible, having a responsibility to others on your team or your fans or your coach or whatever. So I think there’s this aspect of live performance that really invigorates me. So yeah, I’m kind of exploring that. And it’s just, it’s kind of weird to me because there’s one side that says, you know, I don’t want to put myself out there and I don’t want to be judged or, you know, stuff on that end.

And then there’s the other side where, you know, I want to express myself in a certain myself. So trying to find a balance between that, I think is what I’m trying to say. So, yeah, last week, my total was 15, I believe, which wasn’t very good. And this week I am crystal by three to 18, so we’re improving and hopefully we can improve that next week. yeah, that took a while to get through, but. Move on to our next segment and this segment, I forgot last week, and this is our forest principles segment, and this is where we each choose an object for each other. And we try to come up with other uses for the object within 10 seconds. So let’s see. Do you want to go first or should I go first? Okay. Oh, I’ll go first. I’ll volunteer myself this week.

Pam: Got your timer ready?

CK: Okay. Do you have an object?

Pam: I do I have the one from last week that I didn’t get to use.

CK: Oh, I guess so.

Pam: All right. Your object is a towel.

CK: The towel could be used as Oh, a weapon to clean. His clothing is shelter. Oh my God. That was hard. Oh man. Yeah, I think. I thought that at first, and then I got flustered and then I got really anxious and flustered. So yeah, I wish I could do that again, but yeah, that was bad. Yeah. We won’t even talk about it. I, I guess I wasn’t ready for that. All right. Yeah. I, I don’t know if I would count any of those. Okay. So let’s see.

Um, all right. I was going to change this, but I’ll just stick with it. Okay. You ready? So your object is a piggy bank.

Pam: Piggy bank, a paperweight, a door jam holder thingy, um, and weapon a, um,

CK: You like to resort to the door

Pam: Georgia can hold the door open.

CK: same

Pam: a giveaway

CK: Like anything can be.

Pam: except to tell, well, maybe you could choke somebody with a towel, I

CK: Yeah. So like, I think what threw me off with the towel was like, my first thought was using it to slap someone, you know, like you snap

Pam: Oh, okay.

CK: on someone’s butt.

Pam: but that’s just using it as a towel.

CK: Right, right. But yeah, for some reason that just totally threw me up. Okay. Well that was fun. So let’s move on to the meat of the session and go into our progress with podcasting. And I think I kind of got a little bit into this before with technology and stuff like that. And I was dealing with a lot of that with our last episode of not bad advice. And we’re still going through all the episodes that we’ve recorded months. Prior and the recording qualities are so different from episode to episode.

So I’ve been dealing with that. And these recent episodes that we’ve been releasing, I think is when we switched to Mike’s we’re using now, but we didn’t have our like techniques down and it’s done sunlight. We were way too close to the mix. And so there’s just so much mouth noise and stuff like that, that I had to edit out.

And so this past week, after dealing with all that, I finally decided, you know, I don’t want to deal with that stuff anymore. I’ve had enough practice editing and processing that kind of quality. So, and it, it takes so long, like a recording that’s maybe 20 minutes. Takes at least an hour or two to just go through and edit through the noise and get the quality of the audio to a point where I find it acceptable.

And so rather than doing all that and processing and editing, I decided, well, let’s just rerecord. And you know, it’s just another 20 minutes that it takes rather than a couple of hours. yeah, we’re at that point and I’m at the point now where I’m like, you know, I just don’t want to deal with it. I’ve practiced enough.

And we know, we know now that I’ve gotten to the point where I can edit and release and the podcast I’m good. So I just don’t want to spend all that time doing it. And it’ll be much easier for us to just rerecord it. And now with our audio quality, especially. Like what I’m doing with practice. I can just get that done and processed and everything done within an hour, if not half an hour.

So that’s where I’m at with that. And we’re trying the PreSonus to pre V2 again with Pam’s Mike. So everything looking good so far.

Pam: We still have one blue light.

CK: All right. So hopefully that comes out well before. For some reason it seemed to cut the gain by almost half. It seemed like about a third of the way through our session. So hopefully that doesn’t happen this session in we’ll see how that goes. So yeah. Anything, any updates on your end, Pam?

Pam: Um, really what is happening on my end with podcasting, other than getting more comfortable promoting it. And, um, like before I would just like tweet once that there was a new episode out and, um, now I’m getting a little bit more aggressive about it. So I’ll tweet a few times about the same episode, but, you know, with different, um, Context or content from the episode, knowing that people who need it will see it and people who don’t will ignore it.

And that’s okay. Um, but also I’m getting more comfortable hearing my own voice, which has been, um, a problem my entire life. Like I always thought that my voice was squeaky or annoying or whatever. And so this week two of our friends, Casey and Kelsey, both tweeted that I had an audio book. Quality voice. And that meant so much to me because of the, of those issues that I have with hearing my own voice. And so I started talking to someone else, a man who replied and was like, you know, you know, why do you have issues with your voice like that? And. I started kind of processing it. And I realized that a lot of it is like the like misogynistic patriarchal messages that we get as women that we shouldn’t be speaking up and we shouldn’t be heard and that our voices are annoying because they’re higher pitched.

And that, that takes away the quality of what we’re saying. So, um, that was kind of a revelation this week to shift how I felt about that until there’s a kind of step into using my voice and not. Being afraid to hear it.

CK: Cool. Yeah, I was going to say that I feel like we all have issues with our own voices or hearing our voice back. Especially because it’s, when you hear it back, it’s not the same as hearing it yourself when you’re talking. Obviously it’s when you talk and hear it while you’re talking, it’s being conducted through your body and your bone and bones and everything.

So it’s a little deeper and there’s a different tone and it’s different from someone else hearing it. But to your point, I think you, you have a great voice too, like a totally radio quality or audio book quality. Something that’s pleasant to listen to. So a lot of the work that I do is going into making sure that your voice comes out the way it is and the quality that you have, and to make sure that, you know, it’s not dirtied up with all the technology and the mic noise and, you know, ambient noise and all that stuff.

And yeah, I want, I want to get your voice out there and it’s easy to listen to you. And so, yeah, that’s a lot of my motivation, so

Pam: That’s the second part of what I was going to say. There was to thank you for the work that you do editing because having it edited well and having good audio quality obviously helps with being able to listen to it. So thank you.

CK: Yeah. You’re very welcome. And I enjoy it. For the most part when it works, when everything works. Right. I enjoy it. And you know what, I, I actually liked the process and the challenges and, you know, it might be frustrating in the moment, but I enjoy the challenge. So I gotta maintain that perspective. I, you know, be aware of that and realize that I do.

It’s it’s weird to say that I enjoy that obstacles, but there’s I enjoy the growth that comes out of it.

Pam: well, and you made the choice consistently to not rerecord these episodes that you’ve been having trouble with every week. I was like, why don’t we just re re record it? And you’re like, no, I’m learning. I’m learning. So that was a conscious choice that you were making was to go through that.

CK: Yeah. That was an interesting mindset of mine where I been. Purposefully challenging myself. And also this past week where I had so much trouble and I almost quit, like you gave me permission not to publish this week. And I was so close to saying, yeah, it’s not going to work. I can’t do it. And like, for some reason I have this tendency to. Still get it done. Like I, I have an issue with deadlines and not missing deadlines. Like when I used to work for the man before I worked for myself, I never missed a deadline. I never missed a single deadline in my history of working for someone.

Pam: You don’t seem to have a problem with deadlines that I give you.

CK: Yeah, I’m not sure what that tendency or mindsets attached to, but yeah, for some reason, but I mean, the deadline was not bad advice for some reason that stuck. Um, probably because we’ve been publishing it every week and there’s other people that are expecting it. So, you know, that’s probably me plugging into my super system in.

Being dependent on that. So, yeah, we’ll see where we go with that, but that’s where we are or where we are with it now. So let’s move on to the next segment and we’re going into the weekly ForceCast and we’ll start with Podspo. Where are we? Talk about a podcast that inspired us over the past week. And I finally have one this week.

I remembered it. Actually, I think it came up today or maybe it was yesterday. I think it was yesterday, but this is another NPR podcast. And if you haven’t guessed yet, I love NPR. And this one is called planet money or no, I’m sorry, planning. Money’s a good one. But this is called the indicator. And it’s kind of a spinoff of planet money, but it’s a shorter, it’s about five or 10 minute episodes and they come out once a week or so maybe sometimes more.

And they’re just short bits on economics and a lot, there’s a lot that has to do with money, but there’s also that they talk about in terms of behavioral economics, which I’m very interested in. And so, uh, the, there was one this past week where they talked about the whole game stop fiasco. And there was someone that was, they had a guest on who was anonymous, but he was a Redditor that was in that subreddit.

I forget what it was called, but it’s the sub Reddit that. Uh, they all go on to talk about trading and stuff like that, but it’s like, it’s a really cool community and they’re all like for each other and they’re really for these businesses. So they, uh, obviously I’m sure everybody knows the game stop story, but the cool thing that this guy was saying was that, you know, when game stop went up to like 300 bucks or something like that, he.

Still he didn’t sell. And now it’s down to like 90 and he’s not selling, he doesn’t care to sell because a lot of these guys like him are in it for the companies, or they’re not in it for the money in it for the ethics and the morals. And that was just really awesome to hear. Of course, I’m sure a lot of them cashed out.

And cashed out big, but it’s cool to hear that this community, like a lot of people in this community are all about helping each other and helping businesses and helping the whole. And that goes into the quote for the week, which was, I’m not born for one corner and it, the whole world is my native land.

So I didn’t connect those beforehand on purpose. I just kind of realized that, but. It’s all about the whole system in collectivism. And I just thought that was awesome. So the indicator from NPR is what I recommend.

Pam: Okay. Um, I am going to make a recommendation since we are in black history month. I thought it would be good to highlight, uh, voices that are not. Middle-aged white men as we usually have with podcasts. So I wanted to nominate code switch, which is, um, stories about a lot of stories about black experiences, but also Latino and, um, you know, basically just not white centric stories.

And, um, they handle a wide variety of topics relating to race and politics, obviously, but they also just cover like good. General topics like books and music and human interest stories. Um, so it gives me a perspective that I wouldn’t normally get from my bubble and from my experiences. So sometimes I will listen and I have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about, but it’s valuable to me to hear it and learn about it and just kind of broadened my perspective.

CK: Cool. Yeah. I listen to code switch every once in a while too. And then I get so good choice there. All right. So let’s move on to the next portion of the weekly ForceCast and this is Linchpinspo. Where Pam gives us some inspiration from the planets or the stars or the cards.

Pam: I’m actually not really going to do any of that today. Um, so this morning I was thinking about a movie that we watched last night, which was bliss on Amazon stirring, Owen Wilson and Selma Hayek. And it’s about drug addiction, but it also makes you think about what in life is real. And without ruining anything, um, there’s this theme throughout the movie that some things, and some people are real and some aren’t and like that some are simulated.

So there’s like this running joke that people are living in a simulation right now. And I mean, who knows, maybe that’s true, but, um, we really are in some ways, because your brain is literally creating your world. It’s a computer that is running the simulator of your life, but at the same time, you’re able to control the computer. So you can program it to create the simulation that you want to be in to a certain extent. So what I want to do for our inspiration today is tell you to think about what is. Real to you. What do you want to program your simulation to have more of, and what do you want to edit out of the code? What self-limiting thoughts are you ready to let go of?

Because none of that stuff is real. Anyway. It’s literally all made up by your brain and it’s your brain. You can use it to simulate what you want instead of just wishing that you could change. And I want to tie that back into the quote because the quote was, I’m not born for one corner. The whole world is my native land.

So. Use your brain to get out of the one corner. That is your reality. Change the simulation, expand to the entire world and see what’s possible for you.

CK: Awesome. Yeah. And I just want to relate that back to complex systems really quick

Pam: Okay.

CK: and where you are a system as a human. And we talk about the super system that’s above you, that you’re dependent on, which is, which could be your social system or the ecosystem or the economic system, or, you know, everything around you.

Uh, you know, of course where the quote says the whole world is my native land. This is your super system. And then where Pan’s saying, you know, you have some control over your brain and what it does. Your brain is a subsystem of you. So you have control your brain is dependent on you in the system, and you have some autonomy on your sub systems.

So yeah, I mean, control what you can in be mindful of your super system and integrate those things. And that’s where you get integration and optimization. So that’s what I’m about. And. That hopefully I can continue articulating that. And I guess that’s all for this week. Did you have anything else that you want to leave off with?

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 can find me on Twitter where I’m at Sitka disco. And of course, thank you, Pam, for joining me as always. Thank you to the listeners for joining me. And I hope you all come back next week and keep on practicing.