On this episode we explore sound and how it changes and connects us; how to hear, listen and distinguish the truth in our hearts and souls. We also have a three minute Tone Therapy session with the use of Michael's invention: the N.O.W. sound device which when you listen for 3 minutes and 20 seconds has the similar outcome of a long meditation.

Wise words from this podcast:

Michael Joly:

“All forms arise from no form.”

“Having a fog experience like that, can kind of bring us back to this primordial pre-formed time. And I think that's part of what we're recognizing in a fog experience; is it's not quite in form yet.”

“…the Holy Spirit doesn't speak first nor the loudest. “

“…sitting in stillness and allowing stillness and allowing spaciousness allows thus, still small, very quiet, inspired thoughts to arise.”

“I realized that when I followed sound so intensely like that in the context of my job as an audio engineer, in the context of, of, you know, designing products and, uh, and listening to them, , that I found, I found I could not be thinking at the same time as I, as listening, if I was truly bringing and intentional attention to listening, right. I could not be thinking at the same time. And then only years later, did I say, Whoa, wait a minute. That sort of matches up with some of the check boxes of what meditation is and intentional unintentional, unintentional nonjudgmental focus on the present moment.”

“Let's bundle up all the lies and turn our backs to them. Turn our backs to that profanity and inhabit truth and see how that feels.”

“…this is another type of mindfulness practice that you have to have an intention. You have to willfully use your attention…combining the word attention with an, a, an intention. You have to have an intention to listen attentively and to direct your attention.”

“A shift in focus as an aid; these are aids; to give the mind another form object to alight upon, and doing that intentionally.”

Fawn:

“Where the magic happens is in the space of the unknown… everything manifests within that space of nothingness where it's not formed yet.”

Transcript:

Breaking the Sound Barrier Episode 37 with Michael Joly

[00:00:00] Track 1: [00:00:00] We're an interracial couple with two kids wanting to do something that highlights the power of friendship and what it means to be in the company of true friends. We're going to move our society away and out of the loneliness epidemic and into a friendlier, happier world. Welcome to our friendly world.

Better, stronger, together.

fawn: [00:00:42] Good morning. Good afternoon. Hello. Hello. You know the sound of the ocean, the sound of ocean waves. I'm getting right into at first negative wisdom from Santa Monica. This time. [00:01:00] It's the sounds that I heard from Santa Monica. That was my lesson. I, as a small child, as you guys know, I talk about. My mentor, Santa Monica all the time.

But as a child, now that I'm looking back on, it makes sense. One of the reasons I felt so calm and taken care of, I think it was the sound of the ocean waves. What is it about that? It's, it's like, it's like the sound of. Shh. Like, I don't know how that came across the microphone, but you know, when we had our babies and the doctors would say, uh, that's sound calms them, um, on an extreme level, they would say even the sound of a vacuum cleaner calms them.

And I'm like, why? That is ridiculous. And they would say it, it could be the sound [00:02:00] of. Just being in utero. Right. All the, all the pipes going, I guess. I don't know how you describe it, but you know, the sounds of water you're in water. Right. And so the sounds of the waves, I guess it's kind of like, it reminds you of a breath coming in and going out deep breath in.

Deep breath out, Matt, why are you looking at me like that? Stop it. Do you not understand what I'm saying? No, I do. I do ocean. It, it is life. It teaches you so much. Just sitting there, the waves come in the waves, go out and it's so powerful. Even if you're just there with your. Toes in the water, like barely the water reaches your, your ankles, but you feel like your entire body will get sucked into the deep, deep ocean.

When the, when the tide goes out, when [00:03:00] the water goes back out, it's a huge port. Very powerful, much like the sound. It just made me, it was like a mother, a kind loving mother or a parent shushing me. And saying it's okay. Shushing in a good way. Don't laugh. No, no, no, no. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Go ahead. And so today I want to talk about, I call it breaking the sound barrier, and I want to talk about communication and I wanted to talk about tone and sound.

I'm now addicted to looking things up. Let me see tone. Let's look it up. Noun, a musical or vocal sound with reference to its pitch quality and strength to the general character or attitude of a place. Piece of writing situation, et cetera, much like you, Matt, you will say something to me. And I will say, [00:04:00] I don't appreciate your tone and you don't, you don't understand.

And you, we get into a fight over tone because you didn't feel like you express yourself a certain way. But to me it was a horrible. Tone, but you don't, you don't hear it, but I heard it, you know?

Matt: [00:04:17] Right. Because I understand the intent behind it, but you hear only what is said.

fawn: [00:04:23] I hear a nasty tone, not what you said, but like a mean tone sometimes.

Right? And it makes a difference, like, even with email, right? You always say you can never hear tone in an email. Right. You don't know, it may sound nasty. But the person may have not had that intention. Right. The other way around right. Tone is a big deal. Okay. So the definition continues. A tone is the kind of sound you hear in a musical note or in a person's voice live or in writing.

Look at that. So [00:05:00] example, when Al was born, I did not read to her goodnight moon. I read to her the journals from Bruce Lee. The different ways to strike a person, right? And then there's this other book that we have on all his athletic feats and his day to day his journal on how to work out. And that's what I would read to.

And she would go to sleep like that because the tone, it was about the tone. And I remember a long time ago when I was a kid, I loved black and white movies and there was this really old movie back in the day when people were hats and gloves. And there was a guy who was reading the newspaper to this newborn and he was reading the races, like, you know, how they would bet on horse races and that's what he read.

And I think that's when tone really came into my existence. Like, wow, look at that. You can read something like that and make it sound like a lullaby. It's all about tone and intention, [00:06:00] right? Matt?

Matt: [00:06:02] Yes. Abs no, no, no, no. Yes, absolutely. I totally get that. As a matter of fact. Yeah, just this past week, I rediscovered a musical artist who redoes actually songs and I listened to some of them and one of their remakes, it completely using the exact same words, completely changes.

The tone of the song changes the, the meaning of the song, even just by changing how it's performed.

fawn: [00:06:29] Exactly. And bear with me because this will really come down to. Our friend, by the way, welcome to our friendly world. Um, by the way, I forgot to introduce us, but you know, that is key. That is one of the keys with friendship with creating a friendlier world is to really.

Hear each other properly and to understand the undercurrents or the forces that you don't see, even with sound with the forces that you don't hear, but you feel I'm [00:07:00] almost done with the definitions. Here we go. Um, so where does tone come from? So, um, Really into the ETA model. Thank you, Anna model.

Matt: [00:07:11] That's a mythology.

Continue to the next

fawn: [00:07:13] word derive the right now I can't talk at all. Derived from tennis. I hope I'm pronouncing that right. Okay. Some Greek is about to come in. Do you know that, uh, it's uh, it's derived from tennis and the tension of the string of an arrow bow and the noise that was produced when the arrow was shot that.

So that's what tone that's where tone comes

Matt: [00:07:40] from. Did you know that I can, I can totally feel that.

fawn: [00:07:43] And then I looked up like, what is sound? It's a sensation produced through the ears late 13th century from old French. S O N soul sound musical notes, voice from [00:08:00] Latin. So news sound annoys. The atomology of sound is derived from the Anglo-Saxon or old Norse word Sund.

Again, I apologize for my pronunciation, which also means swimming. Did you know that the word sun S U N D is documented and old Norse and old English as meaning gap or narrow access and geography of sound as a large sea or ocean and let deeper than a bright and wider than a Fjord or a narrow sea or ocean channel between two bodies of land.

That's interesting because sound is like the vibration and the land is in fact, us, do you know where I'm getting at? Like we are the land, the [00:09:00] water, the sound it's I, I take it as a direct correlation to our connections as human beings. The sound, the water, the actual sound, the land. You know, the, the interplay, why are you looking at me?

Track 2: [00:09:14] Like

Matt: [00:09:14] I gotta stop looking at you. Why Omar? Well, no, I'm thinking I'm just, I'm drawing my own, like connections and inferences, but yeah, go ahead. Okay.

fawn: [00:09:22] Your eyes are scanning. Awful. Look. All right. So here's where our super friend comes in. Michael Dolly is here, everyone. Please meet Michael, Michael, please talk to us because you are the expert.

You, you bring in the metaphysics, you bring in sound listening consciousness. You're an inventor. I would say a scientist. You've you've invented this amazing now. These discs that for three minutes, give you [00:10:00] a heightened state of meditation. I feel, um, I just got these in the mail recently. We, we are so excited.

It's making our house completely buzz and vibrate in such a beautiful way. And it takes me right back. To the ocean, which, you know, Matt, I miss so much because somehow we're living in the middle of the continent and I feel like ship, not a ship. I feel like a fish out of water. Like I am, I can't breathe.

I need, I need a water anyway, Michael, I'm sorry.

Matt: [00:10:33] Michael. Welcome. Hello. Welcome

fawn: [00:10:35] to our friendly world's Michael.

Michael: [00:10:38] Good morning. Good morning. It's a very friendly reminiscence of Santa Monica. And the ocean also, thank you for setting up my entry with some sound memories.

fawn: [00:10:50] Thank you so much for being here.

We've been wanting to talk to you and we, we friends, we scheduled a little meeting beforehand and Matt [00:11:00] refuse to talk to Michael because I know so through. Okay. So. Michael. I met my goal last week at a convention or this week, I don't remember. And through Michael, we met Barry who we interviewed a few days ago.

We had such a great time. I was talking to Barry and Barry was saying w such amazing things about Michael, which I already sensed anyway, because as soon as I heard Michael speak at this convention, I was blown away one by his beautiful voice. But by the way, this man speaks, he is an exceptional human being, I think.

Michael: [00:11:40] That's a pretty, you know, you're making a pretty high bar

fawn: [00:11:43] there. I'm sorry. But I think you guys are actually

Michael: [00:11:46] like aspire to all of that. Let me, let me put it that way.

fawn: [00:11:50] I think you guys are best friends. And so Matt didn't want to talk to Michael because he wanted to keep it fresh for this, for this, for this episode.

[00:12:00] But I'm going to let you guys talk. Now

Matt: [00:12:04] what she's referring to is just, I started like riffing and that's what happens when I connect with some people is all of a sudden it kind of generates. Different and new and glorious thoughts and, and attempting to re kind of invent that, or have a, have that conversation over again can be problematic.

So, yes, let's start from the

Michael: [00:12:24] top. You want to have a conversation in the now?

Matt: [00:12:27] Exactly. All. That's cute in the now you

fawn: [00:12:33] guys, these, the no, these discs are called the now. These what we'll get into at you, and we're going to have them in the show notes. When you guys go to the show notes, you can totally hear the experience.

Three minutes of tone meditation. Michael will describe a better, of course. Uh, Michael, can we start from the beginning? Can you tell us all about yourself? How did this start? How did you get into sound? Who are you? Tell [00:13:00] us everything. Welcome. Welcome.

Michael: [00:13:03] Well, thank you. Uh, thank you for the invitation Fawn and Matt.

It's lovely to be here. I'm speaking to you from Tampa. It's East coast time here at this moment. I love these images of the description of tone and also sound and waves and water. Let's see. Yeah, I came here from, uh, from the Island of Martha's vineyard off the coast of Cape Cod separated. The two are separated by Nantucket sound Heyo.

Uh, I would take a ferry boat back and forth a few times a week to go from the Island to the mainland Cape and, uh, ferry boats. These very bows had a twin engines and the two engines would come in and out of sync, uh, with their, their sort of th the throbbing of the. Diesel moaners. So you'd get these pulsing and, you know, you get this horrible blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[00:14:00] And, uh, so those low frequency pulsations can really move you into a meditative state because that kind of amplitude pulsation in that frequency range helps. Set up what we would call an entrainment, a brainwave entrainment situation, where the brain recognizes those low frequency sounds as being something that's pleasant.

The kind of, it's the kind of, um, it's the kind of brain waves that are generated when you are in an open monitoring meditation, uh, or you're, um, sort of gazing out onto the mid distance across the ocean. You'll find that you have more brainwaves in the lower frequency range, alpha brainwaves, Delta brainwaves, as opposed to the kind of faster beta brainwaves that when you're having a conversation, you're solving a puzzle, you're doing something like that.

So these, uh, so traveling back and forth on the ferry, I was exposed to these [00:15:00] very powerful, low frequency brainwave, entrainment frequencies. And then you could very quickly fall into a relaxed, open monitoring meditation. And that was through through sound and the brainwave entrainment, but that's, that's recent history.

That's not my earliest memories of being in the fog when I was five years old.

fawn: [00:15:21] Yeah. You mentioned that before. What do you mean when you said that it took me to Santa Monica because we had, what was it called? Matt when w the. The, the Marine layer.

Matt: [00:15:35] So it was always overcast until you got about a mile inland, which is not where we ever

fawn: [00:15:40] went.

So yeah, we always had was, so there was a big street that would go all through LA called Lincoln and in our neighborhood, we would even have t-shirts that said always West of Lincoln, AWOL, always West of Lincoln, because on our side, towards the ocean, Like literally across the [00:16:00] street from Lincoln, we had Marine layer and the vibe was different.

The sounds were different. The temperature was a good 15 degrees different. And then you literally cross the street, this big street Lincoln. And it was, it was this, the vibration was hectic. It was loud. And the sun was blaring on you.

Michael: [00:16:22] Right. I've never been to Santa Monica, but I've, I lived in San Francisco and, um, you know, the fog there is very predictable.

It comes in every day. Well, in the hate, it comes in every day at four 30 in the summer. And, um, neighborhood to neighborhood you'll have, uh, a fog neighborhood or not a fog neighborhood. And each of those neighborhoods has a different, um, tambour and feel, um, Yeah, so fog is Fogg's wonderful. Fogg's, uh, you know, it's, it's a flood, right?

And it is fluid. Um, it's, uh, nearly formless. And so when we have fog experiences, we're [00:17:00] experiencing something that is closer to the unformed. You know, the mystery before things take shape inform, uh, which is, you know, so all forms of rise from no form. And so having fog experiences, you can do this with a steaming cup of tea also, but having a fog, it's really nice because it's a very immersive, right.

Uh, so having a fog experience like that can kind of bring us back to this primordial pre preformed time. And I think that's part of what we're recognizing in fog experience is it's not quite informed yet.

Matt: [00:17:44] Yeah. And certainly when I'm in a fog, when I'm quote unquote, like driving through a fog, you're, you're much more introspective and you're much more cautious and you're much more definitely I'm in my head when I'm quote unquote in a physical fog,

fawn: [00:17:58] for sure.

But [00:18:00] also that's where the magic happens is in the space of the unknown. When there's no thing, no sound, no one. That's I think when you, I mean, scientists are now totally recording all this, that everything manifests within that space of nothingness where it's not formed yet.

Michael: [00:18:22] Yeah. There's a great allowing.

For inspired thought to come in. If the egoic mind is running all the time, I know mine wants to run the show and she does a pretty good job. No, it does a good job of taking over from my essential self. It doesn't do a good job of running the show at all and messes things up. Um, but if we, uh, if we, you know, that, um, that allowing in the silence that, that you said, stillness, silence, we want it.

Nothingness then allow for inspired thought, you know, um, I'm a, a reader of a, and have been for a long time of, [00:19:00] uh, of course in miracles and, um,

fawn: [00:19:04] Marianne Williamson love her.

Michael: [00:19:06] Yeah, I I've never read her, um, her interpretation of it. I know that she really popularized it in the eighties, but I've never read her work, um, inspired by it, but inspired thought.

And the course of course in miracles says that the Holy spirit doesn't speak for nor the loudest I'm paraphrasing here. Okay. Uh, I think what the course means by that is sitting in stillness and allowing stillness and allowing spaciousness allows. Thus still small, very quiet, inspired thoughts to arise.

The quick response, the quick to jump in finishing someone's sentence, as they're speaking, this is, uh, an almost, um, you know, I interpret that as almost like an egoic need to be heard and to be right or to create drama. [00:20:00] That's interesting. But, but stillness, you know, there was, uh, the, uh, falling, you talked about the, the, uh, podcast conference that we were at, that, that we met at, and there was a wonderful presenter.

Um, Raquel Ark, a R K I think her name is, she was talking about how, if you're interviewing someone, it takes almost eight seconds for the subject to be able to sit with the question and have. An honest, informed, spontaneous, truly spontaneous answer to arise. That's not part of a rehearse pattern. So she was really advocating for the allowing of spaciousness.

And that's a it's, you know, it's difficult to do because we're not. We don't practice that very much

fawn: [00:20:46] uncomfortable as I'm interrupting you. It's very uncomfortable because I think we all know that in that space, what can come up, all the things that need to come up [00:21:00] will come up and maybe we want to suppress that.

Maybe

Michael: [00:21:03] not go. Yeah, that's a, that's a great insight. Like, keep it, keep it busy so that we don't have

fawn: [00:21:10] to deal with it.

Michael: [00:21:11] All right. No, the, uh, the stillness, spaciousness and silence, uh, can be really uncomfortable. And that's, you know, that's one of the reasons why we made, um, while we made now tone therapy is, uh, in three minutes it gives a complete life cycle.

You know, it allows people to experience a complete life cycle of, of, um, emptiness and stillness. Then I sort of. Inspired intention to act then from stillness emerges. Sounds. Those sounds very. And change over time as all forms do. And then those sounds fade away as all forms do and return to stillness again.

So [00:22:00] we, we made something that in three minutes, you know, the most, this is a hardware device. So it's a hardware meditation device, two little speakers you're holding your hands. Um, but it's really an experience. And then it's an experience of, of, uh, a life cycle. Over and over again. And, and we made it only three minutes long.

And then the question, the most popular question we always get is I love this. I want it to last longer. This is like the conundrum of life. Isn't it. When your life is going good, do you want the life to live? I want more of that good life. And then when it's not going so well, I would prefer not to have this particular life right now.

So we, we made now in three minutes to give you a complete life cycle of a stillness emerging form, and then form that fades and returns to stillness. And if you, and if we made it continuous, Without the ending gap, without that ending, uh, into return to stillness, we, we would not have made [00:23:00] something that is true.

And one of the overall over writing experiences with tone therapy is that there is a kind of truth that comes through. There are multiple truths, but there's, um, this emerging from nothing returning to nothing is true. That's a kind of truth and it's experienced as truth.

Matt: [00:23:21] Now were you also inspired? I know that, uh, there are certain practices of meditation that, you know, they bang a gong and you're supposed to focus on the sound and then the sound obviously fades away.

And that that's like your entry point to a meditation.

You can say no

Michael: [00:23:43] short answer. No, uh, long, long, longer answer. Um, I was trained in practice as an audio product design engineer for many years. And so after you breadboard a circuit and you build it out and then you, um, then you run some [00:24:00] signals through it, and then you listen to the result of that circuit. The kind of work that I was doing was for motion picture sound, and this is back in the analog days.

And, um, yeah. Uh, analog noise reduction circuits, uh, to keep the sound of the clicks and pops and his and haze of emotion, picture optical soundtrack from getting in the way of the speech and the music. So I was working on noise reduction systems, uh, and, and one aspect of my job was to listen to the effect of the circuits I had built.

And that meant listening and following sounds all the way down into the background haze of the optical soundtrack or magnetic tape recording medium in those days. And I realized that when I followed sound so intensely like that in the context of my job as an audio engineer, in the context of, of, you know, designing products and, uh, and listening to them that I found, [00:25:00] I found I could not be thinking.

At the same time as I, as listening, if I was truly bringing an intentional attention to listening, right. It could not be thinking at the same time. And then only years later, did I say, Whoa, wait a minute. That sort of matches up with some of the check boxes of what meditation is, you know, an intentional and intentional unintentional nonjudgmental focus on the present moment.

But in my case, In my case in the, in the oral dimension.

fawn: [00:25:36] I wonder if that's one of the reasons music is so healing. I think most songs are three minutes or I actually, I looked it up it's three minutes and 20 seconds or most songs and lately, um, I read that it's now 20 seconds shorter these days. And I wonder if that's because people.

Just [00:26:00] don't have the attention

Michael: [00:26:01] span or, and when I was, when I was a pup in the sixties, uh, you know, uh, progressive music, you know, the FM radio progressive rock, right? Uh, the songs sweet, the eight or nine or 12 minute extended version that would then be cut and you need to make a three minute and 20 seconds single version of that.

So, yeah, th there are these different, uh, Oh, um, uh, Forums form, uh, durations, uh, the pop song three minutes, three classic pop song or symphonic, um, for much longer. Uh, but they, but they both have, you know, start, uh, evolution and ending. And, um, yeah, so connecting with, uh, the impermanence that, you know, the arising from nothing and to, to hearing something and that something changes and then something goes away.

Uh, I used to love, you know, I'd have, uh, you know, get your favorite 45 RPM record and say, man, I will just leave that thing on all [00:27:00] day long and just go over and over and over and over again, love that so much, but, but at least there was a little bit of gap between the successive plays. Um, right. That favorite record

Matt: [00:27:13] right now, question audio engineer.

The loudness Wars. Do you think that those are serving us or not serving like Phil Spector popularized? The whole making everything allowed her and all the artists were like, make it louder. And so what do they call it? But what is that scale? It's like a D there's like a Dr. Number, like dynamic range. I think it might stand for.

And the higher, the number, the more actual, quiet to loud happens, the whole crescendos. How do you feel about like popular music and the loudness Wars?

Michael: [00:27:47] Uh, you know, I came across a quote this morning of, uh, Walt Whitman and he said something like, um, am I contradictions? Well, I am, I am everything. So, so be it with contradiction. Uh, so my [00:28:00] answer is, uh, yeah, uh, loud, this war is good and bad aggressive use of compression. That's the type of circuit that, that reduces loud sounds to the mid range and brings quiet sounds up.

To the mid range to meet them. It helps with intelligibility of speech. So it's a good technique for speech where you're really trying to focus on the voice. And maybe there's some background noise in the place where you're, when you're listening, uh, uh, road noise or in a car. So FM, radio, or even am going back to the days of am radio.

Okay. Loudness compression is almost essential. Uh, early days of telephony telephony com compress the, the dynamic range to emphasize the volume aspects of the voice that are key to intelligibility. So it's good when it's used in music, it can be used as a musical effect and some of the earliest, um, uses of compression, aggressive compression, dynamic range reduction.

Um, And pop music would be like [00:29:00] some of the earlier Beale. Well, from the time of, uh, let's say, uh, rubber soul Beatles, rubber soul, 66, late 65 recordings. When the drum recordings of Ringo's drums were heavily compressed. So you would get this, the kick drum would slam in and then it would be this.

Reduction in volume following the kick drum hit. And then there would be a rapid swelling back up in between the kick drum beats. And what would happen is you'd get a, a cymbal sound that would was quite unlike a normal symbol. Normally when you hit a symbol, you hear the Pang crash decay. But these early recordings of a, of Ringo's drum kit, and with only two mikes with heavy, heavy compression, you'd get a, you get a swelling of a symbol that was like,

like a backward sound to like, then you're hearing, um, Oh my God, the [00:30:00] world has gone backwards or something is, you know, in, in, in the middle of this beat is a part that seems like it's backwards. So that's a, that's a beautiful use of, of compression. Now the worst use of compression is when you take the entire song, the entire production and, and smash that down so that there's almost no moments, a moment amplitude variation, you know, maybe a DB or two of amplitude variation so that it slams and, um, the, the, the, um, Broadcast channel or the recording channel, uh, and an attempt to make that song appear to be louder than those songs around it.

But when everyone does it, there's no difference. Right? So you haven't achieved the end of standing out. You've just literally leveled the playing field amongst all the participants. So that's a. That's a, that's the [00:31:00] answer? So, uh, dynamic range and processing. Um, yeah. Good. Yeah. Good, bad and ugly.

fawn: [00:31:06] Right?

Speaking of good, bad, good, bad, and ugly. I have a question to pose. I have my own theories, but not really. I would love your take on technically scientifically vibrationally. Why sounds affect us the way they do, for example. The good, you know, hearing a good sound that will soothe you or hearing a piece of music that for three minutes makes your ego mind be quiet so you can totally just listen without having your own input.

I think that's why music can be so moving because it takes you out of yourself and into the wider spectrum of the universe. But, and then you hear sounds like I heard about the government's having a certain sound wave that [00:32:00] can destroy somebody. Remember ma we would watch, it was a couple of years ago, how they would like one forest would out in the ocean, points the sound at a ship that would make them go crazy.

Right. You know, what is it about sound it's this other REL sound as it, as it relates to us as human beings, connecting with one another and understanding one another or the other way around making us fight each other, um, or causing harm to our bodies. And then there's also sound there's sound therapy, sound bath.

There are these sounds that actually will heal cells. What is it? It's it's really, Oh, it's like diving into the ocean with discovering all these things that we're not aware of yet, you know? Yeah.

[00:33:00] Michael: [00:33:00] It's um, I'll try to give a short, short answer. Um, and, uh, and, and to make the answer shorter, I'm going to put aside, um, Um, idiomatic expression.

Um, so let's group music that has genres, new age music, jazz, hip hop, rock, rap, whatever, all wrap it all up in one balloon and put it to the side for a moment so that we can concentrate on the more abstract qualities of sound and not the idiomatic expression. That's culturally informed. So I'm not responding to music because it's from the place and time of my birth and early childhood.

It's it's, you know, it's comforting to me because it reminds me of home or it reminds me of a certain being a certain age. So let's take all of that aside because that's all true. That's all true. But, but my work and my understanding comes through the empirical [00:34:00] work that I've done with more abstract sound and the basic physical dimensions of sound that is amplitude.

How loud or soft. Uh, frequency how high or how low, um, uh, and, uh, tambour, which is another word for, for tone. That is the tone quality. Is it buzzy or is it, uh, more, uh, flute, like a simple, simple sine waves. And then how do those, uh, how are those qualities, uh, combined together? Um, and then how do they change over time?

Um, now when you w you opened the show by talking about Santa Monica and the ocean, and, uh, this is something, you know, this is a sound that a lot of people are familiar with this crashing waves or even lapping water that's. Um, that is broad band sound. It's a lot of frequencies all at the [00:35:00] same time, mashed up together that the ear in her interprets as a.

Right. A lot of different frequencies. You don't recognize any one particular frequency and in a noise source like that broadband noise source and, and noise doesn't mean I'm. And here, I'm just saying, it gives you going to, as an engineering term noise, uh, without any value judgment attached to it. So it's just a broadband signal that we would call noise.

The opposite of that would be a single tone. Like you would hear from a Tibetan bowl as you were S. Scraping the Stryker around the outside of the bowl. More, more pure tone sound. Um, so we have, we have, um, noise. Oh, there's a continuum between noise and, um, pure tone. And both of those types of sounds [00:36:00] can affect us psychologically because there can be some truths.

The, the sounds that are impactful. I think the sounds that are impactful are expressions of truth. And then our soul and mind resonates to truth. You know, when someone lies to you, there's a discomfort that's associated with this shared knowing that the person knows that they're lying and it comes across in their voice.

And then you know that they're lying and, and you know, that they know that, you know, so the whole thing is a big ball of discomfort. And, you know, we've lived through and we're currently living through we, um, a lot of the chaos of disinformation and lack of truth. So music and sound is a way for us to parse our way through an intentional misuse of sound, to obscure and [00:37:00] confuse and to sow chaos.

Now, the former president. Would not have been elected, had so many of us given that person attention and listen to that person sound right. You know, or we're all somewhat complicit and bringing our attention, uh, two lies. You would think that, Oh my God lives have to be called out and, and, and, uh, reacted to, well, no, that feeds the monster.

But it let's, you know, my work, uh, uh, is an attempt to say, well, here's truth. Let's, let's bundle up all the lies and turn our backs to them. Turn our backs to that profanity and inhabit truth and see how that feels. Right. And that's where we live and that's so when people say, [00:38:00] well, now it makes me really now tone therapy.

It really gets me relaxed. Well, in part that's because you're not getting lied to.

fawn: [00:38:08] How do you do that though? How do you turn your back on it?

Matt: [00:38:13] Yeah. It, it, it has a nasty habit of, unless you call it out for what it is, it has a nasty habit of just being repeated and echoed and echoed and echoed in your own mind.

Sometimes he asks him sometimes just in popular culture

Michael: [00:38:25] or, yeah, well, uh, to, to Fonz question, how do you tune that out? Well, it's practice. Um, this is, this is another type of mindfulness practice that you have to have an intention. You have to willfully use your attention. You know, bring in, I'm always combining the word attention with an, a, an intention.

You have to have an intention to listen attentively and to direct your attention because, um, um, to interact with free, will we have a free, we have, we have a free, we have the freewill to do this. How do we do that? [00:39:00] Oh, you can substitute it, but something else to begin. Well, you can get a singing bowl. If you play an instrument pluck.

The string on an instrument or tone and hum to

fawn: [00:39:11] yourself. So causing an interference?

Michael: [00:39:14] Um, no, I wouldn't call it an interference. I would call it, um, focus, uh, a shift in focus as an eight. These are AIDS to give the mind another form object. To a light upon and doing that intentionally free will is something that, uh, it's like a muscle, right?

And you can, sometimes you want to exercise your free will. And other times you don't, you know, I know that I have this problem. Well, I know what my, I know what, you know, my, my true essential self. Consciousness would have me do, but then there was like, well, let me just dip my toe in this mess over here and see how that [00:40:00] feels.

Matt: [00:40:01] Yeah, no, no, no, no. I totally get it. Sometimes I'll wake up. And first thing in the morning, my brain just starts spinning. And if I wake up too early and I know I'm going to be tired all day, I don't want to think, I just want to go back to sleep for instance. And so I will turn on, uh, and listen to something.

And, you know, that kind of sets my kind of higher mind. My thinking mind starts to quiet down and starts to quiet down. And finally, then I can go back to sleep. Um, you know, and it's just a question of, I'm just not ready to spin it all up yet.

fawn: [00:40:40] It saw, kind of reminds me of when we had our first child and.

That's Al Al would be crying and crying and crying. And I would do everything in my power to ease the situation, ease her, you know, I would start from the basics, like, [00:41:00] is it a diaper? Is it a burp? Is it something tight on her? Like her clothes don't fit or whatever, all of that. And nothing would work and she'd still be crying.

And are you, so is this kind of like, On the realm of sound changing things up. So I, I said interference, but Matt, will I call it cutting your key in martial arts? So Matt would take owl and he would take her into another room or take her out in nature, like remove her from that. Situation, give her a different perspective, different sounds, different temperature, different environment, going back to communication, and maybe you're hearing a lie.

Usually I know when someone is lying, when I can feel a gap in my brain. Like they're talking, but it doesn't make sense [00:42:00] on some other level on a deep, deep level where they're, I, I, there's a gap. Like there's a, there's just a gap is all I can describe it as, um, there's a point in time where there's nothingness and to, to get at the truth.

My question was, how do we, how do we do that? How do we get to the truth? Do we dive into that gap? Where there's nothingness, where in your brain, there's no sound

Michael: [00:42:32] well, you have, um, you know, you suggest a good way to do it, which was paying attention to your body signals. And this is easier for some people than others.

You know, the F for people who are, it's not my first mode, right. Paying attention to my body and my emotions, you know, it's, it's partially gendered. Um, You know, it can be developed. We can all develop that. So yeah. Paying attention to what your body, how does it feel in the gut? How does it right. [00:43:00] Tension, no tension.

Yeah. So I think you're, you're, you're certainly right about, about. Recognizing what the body

fawn: [00:43:08] is doing. It's so weird because I don't consider my brain as part of my body when you're saying that I'm like, it's not in my body, Michael it's in my brain. The brain is the body. Isn't that weird though? I just realized that.

But yeah, there's a, there's a, yeah, I have to get back into that space. Like what. I always say this. I always have, when I'm talking to someone on the phone, I can always tell when they're not listening, because I find myself shouting or my voice goes up and I'm trying to get louder. And as soon as I catch myself doing that, I'm like, Oh man, this person is not listening to me.

So, you know, but I can't put blame on that because I think we're in. Society now in such a way that we all have so much pain and it, you can describe it as not pain. You can [00:44:00] describe it as there's so much that needs attention. And we all haven't had attention placed on the things that desperately need it.

So that's why people interrupt each other because they desperately want to be heard. And they desperately also want to be hearing. The other person, but if, if we're both, if both sides are having such, um, turmoil in a way, maybe that's not the right word. Matches raises eyebrows up because I'm sure that's not what he would say.

He says, I tend to get negative with my descriptions, but what I'm saying is I think we're all experiencing so much and we, that it's a give and take. And right now we need to speak. We need to have our sounds, need to be expressed and released. At the same time. I think we're in a culture where there's so much coming at us where we're hearing so much and we're [00:45:00] seeing so much, and all of our senses are on overload.

That the basic sound, the basic thing is the sound. And I think if we start from there, I think that will start some. Some healing is if we go back to the quiet and then slowly introduce reintroduce sound to each other, if we go back into the quiet and really listen to ourselves, and then we're able to listen to the birds outside, we're able to listen to.

A new friend standing in front of us to understand what they're really saying instead of putting our own baggage, our own history into what they're saying. Do you guys see what I'm saying? Yeah,

Matt: [00:45:51] no, no, no, I totally get it. Um, no argument. I mean, we're certainly our brains are getting reprogrammed to be like these multitasking monsters.

And [00:46:00] it's hard for us to focus solely on one thing at a time anymore, because cause we don't have to, I've got my computer and I can Google this while I'm talking to that and I can see this and I can listen to that and I can do a million things at once. And you know, I think on some level. It does our, does our census of service, but on another level, it doesn't, it makes it harder to be quiet and still,

fawn: [00:46:23] and I think we should go back to in utero, you know, like hearing that ocean sound when you're in the womb.

Michael: [00:46:33] Well, you know, to stay on this idea of truth and. Truth being, um, comforting and untruth, not being comforting. Um, I'm a comfortably lapsed, um, Roman Catholic and, um, so, um, I don't have any problem like using the Christian terminology and mythology. Um, so you can substitute whatever your favorite words are for these concepts.

But you know, in the beginning, [00:47:00] before there was anything, and then there was something and then what happened? Um, God said, Through the first thing that happened was God speaking versus nothing, then God speaks. Then God creates light.

fawn: [00:47:15] Oh my God. Right? Yeah. Like

Michael: [00:47:18] so, so there's, it's, it's really kind of huge when you think that, um, enlight is what we use to, um, to be able to perceive forms, you know, objects, object forms, um, sound, sound objects.

We are, are a bit more ephemeral because they are truly not fixed informed. They're they're moving through time. They're constantly evolving through time. So they're less like they're less like a form than they are like energy. So I'd like to remind myself that before there was anything. Before there was light in physical objects.

It was sound. And before there was sound, there was nothing. Wow. You can kind of work your way back to silence. And then that, uh, uh, the [00:48:00] experience of, um, that's that stillness,

fawn: [00:48:02] you know, I'm a big fan of Gregg, Braden and Joe Dispenza. And. I was, I spent like a week long time with Greg Brayden and one of his workshops and we were concentrating on sound and he, he kept emphasizing that as creatures.

We are, he said we are unique. I really don't think so because I think every creature makes sound, but he was talking about how your sound, your ability to vocalize something, manifest things. And because we can create sound from, from this area, the throat that it is, uh, it is a tool that will manifest things in physical form.

I tend to think every. Creature will do that. Right. Birds will do that, I think. Yeah. Do you know where I'm getting at? Like, I [00:49:00] just think

Michael: [00:49:01] you gotta be careful with that manifestation stuff, you know?

fawn: [00:49:05] Oh, right. Because you hear all the time. If you speak it out loud, that's the first step. Well, the first step is the quiet.

I'm sorry.

Michael: [00:49:16] You can manifest, you know, you can manifest the ego can manifest quite well too. And then that's going to be a boatload of pain. Eventually

Matt: [00:49:27] it depends. Right? Because, you know, I would say almost on a most primordial level, a bird will make noise in order to announce that they're there and then a mate shows up and then , you know, that's a very straight line, very scientific way of looking at things.

You know, versus, you know, I imagine I have a winning lottery ticket and boom, it's right there to it. And that feels more mystical. And yet, you know, the birds dead, it's just how it works. And

Michael: [00:49:58] yeah. Yeah. When you, when you get to [00:50:00] the level of the human, where we have conscious intention, it can, we can load that manifestation activity or the gap.

Deepak Chopra likes to say, it's like, And cert the intention in between the gap and thoughts, or Frep the intention with a gap and then into that gap of no thinking and then into that gap in certain intention. And then, then boom, you know, you've kind of loaded your intention with that manifest. You've loaded the manifestation with an intention.

That's more conscious. So yeah, we so. We're not bird-like in that way. You guys,

fawn: [00:50:39] the gap is great. I love that one. Isn't it reminds me of London. When I would get on the tube, what did they call it? I don't remember what they called it, but the train, you know, underground the underground. And you would always hear that voice come up and it would say mind the gap.

Michael: [00:50:58] And I wonder how many, you know, what [00:51:00] percentage of people actually did mind the gap?

Matt: [00:51:03] I was there. I was like, I don't want to get hurt, but yeah, I think, I think the first 20 times you hear it, you certainly hear it. But then I think after a while, it just kind of blends into your reality and you know what you're doing.

Michael: [00:51:15] So yeah, in China, it's funny that they don't tell you the mind, the gap they tell you quite, uh, quite clearly to step back from, from, from the, uh, from the train.

And they have, uh, right on the floor. They've got, um, um, you know, stand here even before COVID painted on the floor, we'd be the footsteps. So you stand here, you stand there and say, uh, and that's really interesting, you know, because, um, you know, it's a bit more of an authoritary immigrant. We're gonna compare 'em day in the life in London, day in the life, in, uh, in Shenzhen or Beijing.

It's a bit more authoritarian, uh, experience. Um, In in China. Uh, so, so rather than this, allowing, you know, th th the [00:52:00] in, in, in Britain, uh, the subway safety message of minding the gap, which is a beautiful. Double entendre, right? Uh, the mind, the physical gap, and maybe you might want to consider paying attention to what your mind is doing and the gap in between thoughts or pate.

Right. Um, but, but in China they say, don't go there.

fawn: [00:52:24] I was wondering

Michael: [00:52:25] doing that. Don't go there.

fawn: [00:52:29] Oh my God. It's so true. And there, you know what, now I get it and it's quite beautiful. Sometimes you need to, we will take

Michael: [00:52:36] care of it. We will take care of that gap for you,

fawn: [00:52:40] but you know what, sometimes you need to hear that.

Don't go there. Because I can easily go into this messed up memory or messed up thing. Yeah. Yeah. Just don't go there. Someone has to tell me that.

Matt: [00:52:53] See, I'm just laughing because every time like we start talking over a movie, cause that's what we do, uh, as a, as a household [00:53:00] and, and my wife was like, can you guys please be quiet?

Cause I want to hear this. Then we all yell. Don't go in there. Cause that's something you yell during a horror movie, right? Like, you know, the stupid heroin is about to walk in and encounter the, the, you know, our antagonist.

fawn: [00:53:17] Uh, I used to watch movies in peace and quiet, and I am grateful. I'm grateful. I have a family.

However, looking at a movie, it's just the movie experience I haven't had in many years because these guys will just talk. I don't understand is, is something happening to my hearing that. I can't listen and hear at the same time. Like I can't hear the movie and hear you guys at the same time. Are you guys able to hear what's going on in the mood?

No, of course not. I'm not

Matt: [00:53:48] paying attention to a score. So why a plan? Oh, my clowning. That's what I do.

fawn: [00:53:52] I've try to watch a movie anyway. We digress. That's what we do. And other thing that trips me out is [00:54:00] when I hear politicians or I hear just anybody actually. Would they start raising their voice, like what is happening?

Right. I don't trust the person that raises their voice. It just makes me feel like they're losing control or they're lying, or they're trying to really push something they know is not right. Or pushing something that they know you don't think is. Right. So they're going to yell at when someone has an even keel.

Speaking voice. Why is that so much better?

Matt: [00:54:37] Well, it, it depends on where your head is at, you know, um, yeah, one of the unfortunate, great lessons, Adolf Hiller told us as a repo, uh, lie repeated loud enough, often enough becomes truth in people's minds. Wow. Speaking with a calm, even voice, you have the opportunity to lose what I call the soundbite [00:55:00] test.

So if I can snip out like two seconds of what you've said, that totally contradicts what you've said, you lose. And that's where we are today in a, in America. We're very much a soundbite mentality because we're kind of bumbling through so many things at a given moment. So if I say something like such and such as bad, and I don't really mean it, or, I mean it sarcastically that meaning can still get lost because of somebody can slice out just that tiny soundbite,

Michael: [00:55:28] this, um, This, this challenge of, um, uh, linguistics words, right?

Subject object, uh, language and how, and how loud or not loud language is spoken, um, is fascinated me for a long time. And I think that's in part, what has brought me to this pure tone work that I do, which is, um, carries truth, but it's it's but not being carried by words. So it can be experienced as truth and not be, [00:56:00] um, rejected or, um, folks radar don't go up as quickly.

Um, so I, so I think what we're able to do with, uh, with tone therapy in these, in a very short period of time, and sometimes even just a fraction of a second of a cup, a few seconds is convey a sense of truth. That transcends the limitations of subject object, uh, language duality, because it's so easy to be reactive to, um, to the words he said.

And then he said,

fawn: [00:56:39] uh, should I, should we play? Should we play a little bit right now, Michael?

Michael: [00:56:47] We could. Yeah.

uh, ready? Ready? Okay. All right. Let's um, let's just take three minutes and listen to now, um, the present [00:57:00] moment and Mo, and the way we can make this easier is by listening to, um, a little. Meditation device, a sound meditation device called now tone therapy. Uh, it, it takes just three minutes to listen to this.

Um, and all you have to do is, um, bring in an intention to listen attentively. Now it's natural for thoughts to arise, and as they do, just notice that you have thoughts arising, but bring your attention, bring your attention back to the sounds and, um, Enjoy the, uh, enjoy the gap between thoughts. You'll notice that.

And that's a beautiful thing because that's, uh, that's your essential self. That is what is noticing is consciousness. And, um, let's uh, let's just give it a listen.

fawn: [00:57:53] Okay, here we go.

[00:58:00] Track 4: [00:58:09] uh,

uh,

[01:01:00] [01:00:00] [00:59:00] uh,

Michael: [01:01:22] I'd like to have a big breath, you know, a big release and then an honor that space, and then gradually come back to the business at hand. It doesn't have to be

fawn: [01:01:32] long. Can I describe what goes through my spirit? What I get from it is so add to remind myself to just focus on the sound and nothing else. And then I started to actually see waves.

Like when you throw a pebble into water and you see. The rings expanding one by one. I saw that cause I was trying to close my eyes so I could [01:02:00] really just focus on one thing, which was the sound. And it made me realize that that's the only way to really get to a healing state, whether it's emotional healing, physical healing, because life is really quite simple.

If you'll allow for the focus on one thing to occur and not putting your attention and your focus on so many things at the same time, because I think what happens is pieces of ourselves ended up dispersing everywhere. And we're not there. Like if you could imagine you're a whole thing. And if one piece of you goes over here, one piece of vehicles in this other direction, It's like you're exploding into space and all these different directions.

And you're not in the now that you're not in that one point in the universe and for anything to happen for your [01:03:00] dreams to come true for you to be able to love for you, to be able to see you have to bring yourself into that one pinpoint part of the universe for, for a little bit. And it's and it's apropos that this is called now.

Did you mean for that to happen, Michael? Yeah, it has.

Michael: [01:03:24] It has two, two meetings, right? The present moment. And it's also, it's an acronym for new origin wave forms. So each moment is a, is a new moment being created and carried forward through sound waves, new origin, making a new moment. So, yeah, the present moment and also new origin through wave forms.

I

fawn: [01:03:47] have, I have a little story that will maybe help. What I'm talking about is there was a moment I was on a photo shoot and it was going through something horrible. There [01:04:00] was, it was, uh, there was some trauma, there was, um, was actually a stalker was after me and I was out, uh, in. The what seemed like out in the middle of nowhere, but it was where I worked the corporation I was working for.

It was there. And, um, I had had a harrowing night actually the next morning. So I went a night without sleep. So much was happening. I was under so much stress the next morning at 6:00 AM. I was on a photo shoot. I was a photographer and I was standing there. And this woman that I worked with who works for the corporation also, she was standing there.

She was in management. So she was helping me with a photo shoot and she knew what was going on. She knew what had happened. Everyone was on high alert and the building, and she looked at me, she smiled and she said, [01:05:00] Child of God. Are you happy? First of all, for her to say child of God, because I wasn't religious, was it tweaked me a little bit?

And then for her to say, are you happy with a smile on her face? And really, uh, it really bothered me. Like, are you crazy? You know what what's been happening? The whole building is like on alert. And you're asking me if I'm happy. And I don't know what I said to her. I probably didn't say anything. I probably looked really confused and I was exhausted.

And she said, she, she kept repeating that to me. And she knew, or maybe I said, are you crazy? And she said, look right in this moment right now. So she gave me these steps. She's like right now, where are you standing right now? Are you not standing in front of me right now? Are you not at a room that is [01:06:00] beautiful right now.

Are you not surrounded by people who are protecting you right now? Don't you have everything that is making you, your body, everything comfortable right now? Is it not peaceful right now? Like she kept saying that she brought me to. That precise moment that if you break it down, if you keep breaking down right now, right now, right now, everything else disappears and everything is okay.

If you go into that space of right now, you can strip out everything else that is happening that is distracting and pulling you in different directions. And I think that's what happens when you listen to this.

Michael: [01:06:55] Yeah, and it, you know, getting to right now then allows for the inspired [01:07:00] thought that allows, that can empower change or in the case of your story, taking appropriate protective actions, asking for help.

All of this can come from a truly empowered, inspired moment. So it's not passive. It's really. Still act, it's still action and stillness. Really? That being able to connect to the present moment doesn't mean that we don't, that we can function in the world. We can function better actually.

fawn: [01:07:31] Absolutely better.

Matt, you're quiet. Yes. Why are you quiet? You're in the

Matt: [01:07:37] now maybe.

fawn: [01:07:40] Well, we know that sound. Is one of the key factors in creation first comes nothing, then comes sound, and then comes what? The

Michael: [01:07:53] 10,000 things. Yeah.

Matt: [01:07:55] The 10,000 things. But I would argue first comes thought, then come sound, then [01:08:00] comes, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Because you have to set your intention before you, right?

Michael: [01:08:05] Yeah. Now we're getting metaphysical.

fawn: [01:08:11] Well, Shall we continue this for another time it leave it. Sure. The peaceful, peaceful. Now then the peaceful now

Michael: [01:08:24] really, really nice, uh, visit and a wonderful way to, to finish here and for me to start my day.

fawn: [01:08:30] Cool. Thank you so much for being with us. We want to thank

Michael: [01:08:36] you both.

fawn: [01:08:36] Yeah. I look forward to future conversations with you. There's so much to explore. Seems that way. Doesn't it? It does. I think, I think this conversation really had so many facets we could have gone into that I really wanted to go into, but I was trying to be quiet.

Matt: [01:08:55] Me too.

fawn: [01:08:56] Actually. I don't like it when you're quiet.

Matt: [01:08:58] I know, but you [01:09:00] know, you did shush me at one point.

fawn: [01:09:03] I did.

Michael: [01:09:05] That was the ocean waves.

Matt: [01:09:07] And that was not, um, a mother lovingly shush.

Michael: [01:09:11] Oh, I would like to swap some stories around, um, uh, you know, place as a teacher. And we can, we can do that at another time. I love that idea that, uh, you know, Santa Monica, as a teacher, there are many different kinds of teachers we can talk about.

We can have a whole conversation around teachers and students, different kinds of teachers. Absolutely love that places can be teachers for me, read flutes. Our, our teachers. And, uh, I'll try to paraphrase the, uh, the classic Rumi poem, uh, you know, the Reed flute, which, which is, Oh my God, I'm speaking to a woman that should be quite familiar with it.

Reed flute,

fawn: [01:09:51] my family.

Michael: [01:09:53] Yeah. So these reeds grow. By the side of, uh, where it's moist by the side of the [01:10:00] stream. And, um, they, they reach up to the heavens, they, the flowers catch the light and they, the roots are in the ground. So it's really a beautiful conduit between the sky and the earth. And when these reeds are picked and dried and then shaped into flutes, that the sound that they make when you play a Reed flute.

And I believe this Rumi poem is called the sound of the song of the Reed flute. Uh, it's a very mournful tambour, and that's because the Reed flute remembers it's a right relationship between the sun and the earth and its relationship to its brethren. And it longs for all of that together is the beloved.

So it, it longs for the sun and lungs for its feet to be in the ground and longs to be next to its brethren and the Reed Grove and the sound and the music that comes from the Reed flute. It's quite poignantly, um, as a quite poignant, longing, uh, timber.

[01:11:00] fawn: [01:11:00] Nice.

Michael: [01:11:02] So that's a teacher, you know, so the read flutes for me, I used to make these things.

I found them. I found them growing up in coastal Maine when my daughters and I, and we're on vacation. And when they were very young and I started making these floods. And so they became the flute itself, the read itself taught me how to make a flute and then through playing them. There's other kinds of learnings that come in from those teachers.

So there are plant teachers, there are place city teachers, there's all kinds of

fawn: [01:11:28] teachers. Definitely the squirrel outside has been my teacher for the past year. What

Matt: [01:11:34] be greedy and get fat.

fawn: [01:11:35] No. Oh, the school comes up and I just learned so much from the squirrel. Like just keep, you know, just simple play and they survive out there.

Here we are inside. It gets negative 20 degrees Fahrenheit out here and they're still like, Jill, you know, they, they move on with life and they're still cute [01:12:00] and happy and bouncing around and playing all the time. Before we go, I want to ask you a question. Both of you, Michael you first, what is your favorite sound in the world?

Michael: [01:12:16] My favorite sound in the world is a sound I never get to hear because I'm, um, I have a. Tinnitus, which is described as ringing in the ears. You hear tones all the time. It came on very, very gradually I think, as a result of the kind of audio loud audio work I did early in my career. Uh, and I no longer hear silence.

So, um, that would be my favorite sound would be the sound of silence.

fawn: [01:12:44] Wow. How about you, man?

Matt: [01:12:49] Yeah. Wow. As he said it it's like, you know, that moment we have air purifiers and they run all the time in the house for the most part. [01:13:00] But there's a moment where I take the air purifier out of our bedroom and I move it into our study for, so I could begin my day.

Uh, and that moment where I unplug it and I can, I can feel the whole world just kind of go like everything everything's quiet. And sometimes I'll turn off the air purifier by the girls. And I literally, I can. Feel a shift in their energy. Just exhale, everything. Just kind of just settles.

fawn: [01:13:30] Yeah. Yeah. My favorite sound I have too, is you guys laughing?

That's a good sound. The laughter of our children and the laughter of Matt.

Matt: [01:13:42] I was going to go that way, but there's a, there's a visual component for me as well.

fawn: [01:13:46] And I have another sound and I wouldn't know what the visual component is. I just want to finish. Is the other thing is when I reach out and I hear a friend talking back to me on the other end, [01:14:00] that is a lifesaver right there.

True. And it's not fair because I'm the one who asked the question. So I had time to think about it while you guys were talking, but what I need to hear someone's voice to let me know I'm not alone. When I, I, my mind goes into that lie of I'm all alone. Yeah. So what was the visual component you were saying?

Matt: [01:14:24] Just there's a brightness in a laugh, right. And I'll see that on, especially Ellis face, but I'll see that on everyone's face as they're laughing all of a sudden, but it's, it's like a little spotlight is shined on their faces. There's a, there's a Glint in the eye. There's the, there's the compression of the cheek into the smile.

Right. Um, so it's, there's a visual cause I was thinking the exact same thing, but it's, it's the two of them together. Strictly sound. It's

fawn: [01:14:50] that shoe, you know what it is? It's a war. It's a term you use when I first met you. It's a divine spark

Matt: [01:14:57] Heyo, right? Yes, it [01:15:00] is very much. It is kind of this connection.

It feels like a connection with something higher.

fawn: [01:15:06] All right, everybody, we're going to wind it down. Thank you so much, Michael, for being with us today.

Michael: [01:15:13] You're very welcome folks. So great

fawn: [01:15:15] to be here and everyone, we are going to have a link. To the now, so you can hear more and you can. Figure out where you can get your hands on these things.

They're amazing. They're like there is, I've never been near a hockey puck, but is this what it looks like, man? I think

Matt: [01:15:36] it's a little bit flatter and maybe a little bit wider, but, um, so the company is called solar S O L U and it's the now and it's two speakers

fawn: [01:15:45] and this is, this is not a commercial guys.

This is like us for real loving this. Device. Um, we'll put more into our show notes about it. Michael, thank you so much again, and [01:16:00] friends, we will talk to you in a few days. Yes, we will stay in the now take care. We'll talk to you later. Sure.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Side note: At the end of this show, Matt grapples with something he caught himself saying about friendship that really bothered him. So we will have to explore a second half of this topic by bringing an expert on, for another show to remedy things.

Pearl of wisdom from Bruno's in Santa Monica – an entity/ parental/protective figure that helps raise the children.

This episode is about leadership. Matt explains the concept of servant/leader.

We discuss true leadership and what that truly is.

We discuss tantrums.

In all aspects of life and culture, we are here to take care of each other. We are creating each other. Creativity - creative energies are brewing and are very strong.  I always think about collaboration and creativity; the way we influence each other in conversation, our experience with one another and how they create an imprint; I can be imprinted by your behavior. My behavior could be imprinted on you.  Your behavior towards me can create and impression of you that will be forever imprinted.  It happens in relationships, in business, with leadership, with friendship; all of the ships.      

#leader #ittakesavillage #parenthood #friendship #leadership, #business #tantrums #servant #servantleader #despit  #compassion #undercoverboss #tedlasso #ellewoods #legallyblonde #aikido

Transcript

[00:00:00] Fawn: [00:00:00] Good morning. Hello? Oh,

Matt: [00:00:05] you're gonna have to cut out that first one second. I said evening

Fawn: [00:00:08] and now I'm not cutting anything. Oh, dear. How are you guys? Welcome to our friendly world. This is fun. How are you doing? What do you love to,

Matt: [00:00:19] what'd you doing? Oh man. I'm feeling energized today. You're in trouble.

Fawn: [00:00:23] I, I was, I know, you know what?

I, I woke up feeling like I was in trouble. My mind is really preoccupied. I feel not so light in the head, like too many thoughts, too many. Responsibilities too many wants and desires and too many frustrations in my head right now.

Matt: [00:00:44] I've been there, but feeling like laser-focused, I'm

Fawn: [00:00:48] glad. Okay. I will start with a Pearl of wisdom, Pearl of wisdom, because I usually start by saying it's a nugget of wisdom from Santa Monica.

This one is a [00:01:00] Pearl because it has to do with. Transcending time and being a parent, being a grandparent or not that you're a grandparent or parent per se, but  it's the feeling, it's the responsibility aspect of it. It's the aspect of taking care of someone regardless of your age and taking care of them as far as emotional goes.

, if you guys have listened to the very, very first it's called the mentor, the mentor is me talking about my mentor and that's the city of Santa Monica. When I was a kid, Santa Monica was always around. I had no idea I was being influenced by this entity. And by the time I was 16, 17.

Most of my friends were out of high school. They were in their twenties, they were working professionals. I worked with them and the people that I worked with had other friends. So we all became friends and I was the youngest one in the group. Gotcha. [00:02:00] And one friend was, this was before gay marriage, but they were kind of married.

They were together,  to two men in their twenties. , beautiful people and so loving to me. And they really took me under their wing. And because I was having so many problems with my family and there were, there was so much, I was, there was so much I was working on, I was working on my portfolio trying to figure out how to make it as a professional photographer, even back then, as a kid.

And they helped me out when they were gorgeous. They were my models because I did these elaborate fashion shoots back then. And, , Michael was,  the higher level tier of this, I don't know if it was a chain back then, a pretty well known hair salon. So he was this really talented hairdresser.

And it's really interesting because I always had that , in my field. I always had martial [00:03:00] artists around me and. People that were involved in makeup and hair, you know, because I mean, years later I ended up working for the Aveda corporation. Right. And I was surrounded by that. It was like the professionals in the industry that worked in hair and makeup.

So anyway, when I would visit my friends, they lived right on the boardwalk. The Pearl of wisdom comes from a place, a restaurant, an Italian restaurant, and Matt you'll remember, but this restaurant was part of the influence for me when I was a kid, like it was always around and it was Bruno. Remember Bruno's restaurant.

Matt: [00:03:41] I was about to ask if it was brewed house, but yeah, of course it must be right there at the base of the, literally the boardwalk,

Fawn: [00:03:47] rather. Exactly. It was right on the corner. And the food was lovely, but what was really amazing and comforting was the owner. It was always him, [00:04:00] always working, always cooking.

You walk in there. He is, he's waving at you. He's always smiling at you, but he was like a caretaker. He was like a guardian angel for that area. And it, and I just felt like. W, especially at that age, I needed comfort. So my friends gave me comfort, but also Bruno's gave me comfort. Like he was always there and there was just the whole nourishing part of life.

That was Bruno's. It was always there. He was always there. Right. So years later, I mean, many years later he was still there. And I remember hanging out with him. And I was hanging out now with now we're, you know, much older. I am anyway, and I'm hanging out with a friend, who's a dad and he has a teenager.

And this teenager of his is out of control. Right. And we were always talking about this. I'm [00:05:00] like, why is it the parents look so old? And I remember we were watching opera together. One day we were just sitting in his apartment and we were looking at, this was a long time ago, but we were looking at, uh, a panel and I don't remember what the discussion was about, but they were, they were parents and they were talking about their children and they looked really old to me.

So I looked over to my friend I'm like, because they said how old they were. Okay. And I was shocked that they were actually that young because they looked really old handled to my friend. I'm like, why do they look like that? He didn't even skip a beat. He goes their parents.

Matt: [00:05:44] Oh my

Fawn: [00:05:44] goodness. What do you mean?

He goes, it it's stressful. Fun. Like, what are you talking about? And so, anyway, that's when he started talking about.  What he's going through with his son, with his teenage son, like this guy is out of control. , he [00:06:00] doesn't talk he's into bad things, but I don't know exactly what is happening.

There's no communication. It's like the tantrums are on another level. When they're at that age tantrums,

Matt: [00:06:13] I was about to say, and you would call them tantrums.

Fawn: [00:06:15] I now would call them tantrums because I've seen. Tantrums take place, not only with toddlers, but heads of CEOs. I've seen tantrums in politics.

I've seen tantrums just in regular business. It is ridiculous. If I can step away from it, it is quite comical, but it's not really

Matt: [00:06:36] well when you're emotionally connected. It's really hard to step away.

Fawn: [00:06:39] So. Okay. Well, I mean, not just being emotionally connected, but  obviously you have to do business with someone, even if you try to remain unemotional about it and like level headed, it is crazy.

Like, are you serious right now? That type of thing. Anyway. So back to Bruno's  , so I was sitting with my friend [00:07:00] who has the son that's out of control. And we're just sitting there trying to calm down and like, just trying to have a nice afternoon. Right. You know, how we would go to Bruno's and we would just sit there and just eat an early dinner before we headed out and did other things.

Right. So we're sitting there. And Bruna comes from behind the counter. Like he's he was always there spinning and twirling the pizzas or whatever. And he was always busy, but he came, he came to our table and he's talking to my friend. He's like, Hey, give him info on his son that he didn't have. Oh, snap.

And I was like, Oh my God. , this guy kind of like, I felt in a way watched out for me when I was a kid. And here he is, he still looks the same as the same youthful thing that he had. And now he's still looking, he's doing the same things and I'm looking out for this right? For my [00:08:00] friend. Who's the dad of this kid.

I was just blown away, but that's a nugget of wisdom right there. That's a Pearl of wisdom, no matter your age,  that's the village, ,  we take care of each other in a way we are creating each other, you know, creativity, creative energies brewing, and very strong.  , I always think about collaboration and creativity, the way we influence each other in conversation, our experience with one another, they create an imprint.

I can be imprinted by your behavior. My behavior could be imprinted on you, right? Your behavior towards me can create and impression of you that will be forever imprinted, , it happens in business with leadership, with friendship, all of the ships,  I'm thinking about one instance.

If I'm going to talk about [00:09:00] business, I had this experience where this person that I admired suddenly had a tantrum.

Matt: [00:09:07] Right? I mean, everybody can have a bad day though, right?

Fawn: [00:09:09] It wasn't about a bad day. I could see it brewing. I was watching this person for a while because one, I admired them and two, because I felt like I was proud of them and I was wanting to just watch them to see how they navigate through life.

Okay. Navigate through business and they're pretty well known, , they're, they're quite successful, but I was watching , and I was seeing little signs along the way that they could be wavering or they could be, , what's the word? Not necessarily being troubled, but like I could see a few hiccups happening.

Right. And it wasn't a parents to people, but I was noticing  little tiny things in the ether here and there. If I can say that, [00:10:00] I was just noticing certain things. And so one day I had a question and it was the same question I had had for a long time. And it was always, , pushed aside like, Oh, we'll get to that later.

So we're in business, like, right. It's a business relationship. And I have a legitimate question. I need to get something done. And it was constantly like, Oh, when you get to it, when you're ready, we'll discuss it then. Right. I kept saying, well, I'm ready. Can we discuss it now? Well, let's discuss it at this meeting.

Well, that meeting comes up and there was no room for that conversation. So I said, once again, , I really need to figure this out  could we have a discussion or a call or something, but I, I use the word call as in, I didn't mean necessarily it has to be a call, but this person had a major tantrum.

And I was so I wasn't surprised because I could feel it coming from months ago [00:11:00] and , I tried to not. Step in the way, because I don't know , what it is about me, but I S I, I tend to get the heat for things. If there's a whole group feeling this way, right. And it's targeted at maybe this leader, that's not doing their job.

We feel like they're not doing their job. They're phoning it in. It's not things aren't being done. Right. And if I'm in that group, I get scolded. Because I asked what I think was an innocent question. Like, Hey, can you help me with this? Right. And then all of a sudden I get , the lashing. Is that a word?

You know, I get, I get the tongue lashing and I get the whip,  , and everybody else can be like, Oh wow. That sucks. And meanwhile, I'm here shaking. Like what the

Matt: [00:11:47] hell? You're very empathetic. So yeah, no, I totally get it. And you're getting now into leadership and how leaders process things. And so often I [00:12:00] think we go out into the world as babes in the woods and we don't know anything.

You know, I have a four-year degree in computer programming. Big whoop. I learned some very cool stuff, absolutely things that I still use every day, but from a technological viewpoint. Oh my God. There's, you know, you could fill many encyclopedias with the amount of technological stuff I don't know anything about.

And the trick is, is that a lot leader, depending on the style and the type of leader you're trying to be. I think people are very much locked into this whole, leave it to Beaver ward, Cleaver who always had a good answer. And , sometimes as a leader, you don't have a good answer and you need to be able to clearly communicate.

I don't know. I don't have a good answer to that. And that's hard for people because when you're seen as a leader, people like to view themselves. People think that they're seen up on a pedestal and we've, we've talked about, [00:13:00] , mentors and things that ultimately, you know, I've never had somebody that I could emulate a hundred percent and that's just what it is.

People  ended up being shite on one level or another, and it's really hard to be that hundred percent emulator kind of a person. And, , I'm willing to bet if you go digging for enough dirt, you're going to find it on everyone. Everybody screws up. And it's not about, it's not about how, how you screw up.

It's about what you do when you do screw up. Do you double down and,  attack the other person or do you really listen to their criticism or understand what they're saying and say, you know what? I don't have an answer for you right now. I'm going to find one for you.

Fawn: [00:13:44] Okay. Which you sent it because I was going to talk about.

How we, how we always talk about mentors, . And how you and I grew up looking for the mentor and we never found it. So we had to, we had to pretty much do things on our own because the [00:14:00] parents suddenly didn't have any answers for, I think probably for the age that we were in, like the ages in society, like had changed so much, there's so much information.

Everything is constantly new, but then yeah. You made the devils point of, well, it's always been new for the past century and a half. Like everything's changed. It seems that way for sure. But then we had mentors way, way, way, way back during, when the change started to happen. You know, I just felt like back then years ago, like a hundred years ago, there was, even though we, the change had started, like we had so many advances.

With technology and we had the car, the phone, the backs, the cell phone, the internet. But no I'm saying how it started. Like we had suddenly there was a car, right? No more horse carriages needed. , suddenly we had washing machines in the house or a telephone in the house. Then we had all of a sudden, a [00:15:00] cell phone you can walk around with.

Right. Then we have the internet, you know, all of that, like in a short amount of time, within the last a hundred, hundred 50 years, would you say it would take

Matt: [00:15:11] a hundred years? Just keep it a hundred

Fawn: [00:15:14] years, but yeah, but like I'm saying. It feels like a hundred years ago, we still have the journeyman and the, you know, the apprentice, the

Matt: [00:15:22] dream things were pretty much straight line and odds are, you knew.

It actually may be more about 150 years ago, because if you really think about it years ago, a hundred years ago, we were just coming out of world

Fawn: [00:15:36] war one. But so do you see what I'm, what I'm getting at back then? There was that respect of like, okay, this person knows their stuff and they did. Right. , they may have had tantrums and other places, but as far as their work.

They were seen as , the leader. Like you took care of business, right? Like, think about even the soldiers that went [00:16:00] into world war two and think about the population around the world, what they all sacrificed for. And I'm not saying, I'm not saying I'm advocating war. I'm not, but I, what I am intrigued by is how everyone pulled together for one common cause.

And I'm saying there is no more one common cause, and there's no more one. Common kind of like a mentor in any particular field. I feel like. And if there are people out there like that, please let me know guys, our friends that are listening please, because I've been searching for forever and I have not found it.

And so what I'm saying is it's not you. I was going to also bring up the mentor thing that you just talked about. And also it's also the capacity thing that we always talk about also. People don't have the capacity to lead. Like what is going on? Why is it that  , our leaders can't handle the job? Like you really, you have [00:17:00] one job to do and you're there to support.

Well, do your people, do you have one job? If you're in public service, if you're a politician, you're a public servant, right. Okay, go ahead. You're there to serve, but I feel like. It's just, everybody is in, , the mode of survival. So it's take care of your own, that's it?

Matt: [00:17:21] You know, where things get truly interesting.

Doesn't it let's talk about politicians,

Fawn: [00:17:26] but before that, I just wanted to bring up the whole tantrum thing again. That's what I don't understand. , I'm noticing. So for example, with this person that I worked with habit Dan drum, right? I mean, For net for forever. Now she is imprinted herself as a toddler to me, and the respect is gone.

Matt: [00:17:51] Right. And that's a big one

Fawn: [00:17:54] because I, all of a sudden I had to put aside what I had to do. [00:18:00] , it wasn't a job. I'm learning something. Correct. So we're in a learning situation and there was no learning happening.

It was just phoning it in is, was awesome. Our perspective as the students, right. So it's still a business transaction. Right, right. You're paying a teacher they're supposed to help you. Right. Um, what was I saying? I totally forgot. Tantrum toddler. Well, yeah, forever. They've, they've lost my respect and there you have it and that's it.

And really it had to do with communication, but I could tell, I, I had to stop. I had to completely stop that relationship.  It's not that I stopped talking to them, but I had to stop looking at them as teachers. I had to start looking at them as wounded screaming, toddlers, that need help.

Right. [00:19:00] So I was no longer concerned about my questions being answered or what I needed to be done. To be taken care of, but now I'm like, wow, I can see her in pain. I can see that. You're frustrated. I can see that. So I'm going to try to erase that frustration for you. Don't worry about me. I'll figure it out.

Matt: [00:19:21] Do you know what I mean? Yeah, no, no, no, no. You're what, what you're doing in essence is you're being a compassionate parent to this person.

Fawn: [00:19:29] Forever. They are now imprinted as someone that is a screaming. Toddler.

Matt: [00:19:35] Right. And unfortunately, or fortunately, or unfortunately, and mostly, unfortunately I think you're going to take a look at this person.

Who's supposed to be teaching you things as I'm going to take whatever you're offering and run it through my filters and try and understand it. But if I come back to you with a question that's off topic or a question that's going to be challenging, I'm going to [00:20:00] expect perhaps for you to respond the same way, which really kind of hinders that learning process.

Fawn: [00:20:04] And by the way, the question I was asking was totally in sync with what we were supposed to learn.

Matt: [00:20:11] Well, and that that's the fun part is you absolutely believe that. And obviously this person feels differently about it somehow. So, yeah.

Fawn: [00:20:19] And you know, that's where the communication comes in because they could have said.

I can't answer that, but they didn't say that. They said, well, I answered that when you get to it, when you're ready. Right. Anyway, I don't want to get into the nitty gritty of it. But what I want to say is it's just interesting. This is all within the realm of what I was saying, that we are creating each other, every relationship, every interaction that we have, right.

We are creating something. With each other, we are creating each other. And what is it that we're creating?  Do they know that they're creating that from our perspective that [00:21:00] they're now children and no longer authorities or leaders, they're no longer a leader? Well, it's because you're not able to be like, I, I always say.

And it's going back to the other thing we talk about, which is be a good host in the world. The world is your home. And even the strangers that you come in contact with on the street, you were just walking by that person, is your guest, make them comfortable in your home. Right. And if everyone did that, it would be a different kind of thing.

Very

Matt: [00:21:31] much so. No, no, no. And again, absolutely. Right. I mean, on some level now this. Instructor becomes like a YouTube video that, , you watch and you're like, Hmm, that's interesting. Thank you. And maybe it helps you and maybe it doesn't, but at the end of the day, you've lost a certain essence. So, yeah.

So I wanna like, I want to gently steer us now. Um, yeah. I want to talk about,  something that I've come into contact with, which has been, I was in an interview and [00:22:00] somebody threw these two words at me and I was like, what the heck is this? And the tours were. Servant leader. Ooh, what does that mean? And this is where w we, it's almost like we have to walk through, we're walking through a swamp now because it's a tricky, it's a tricky, tricky thing, because once you start adopting a certain leadership philosophy or whatever, I mean, you really, on some level, it needs to imprint on your soul.

 You really have to believe it. Like everybody wants to say, Ooh, I'm a transformative leader. Well, what does that mean? What does that not mean? What does it mean to be a servant leader? What does it not mean to be a servant leader and unfortunately, or fortunately the servant leader, a lot of people have glommed onto it and a lot of people have tacked on literary figures, historical figures to it.

And, , at the end of the day, I think , it is [00:23:00] what you choose to make it. So saying the original servant leader was Jesus Christ. Well, okay, fine. But if I'm Jewish, if I'm Muslim, if I'm Hindu, does that divorce me from it? Does that make me feel weird about it? The fact that people have said that, um, Dr.

Martin Luther King Jr. Espouse this philosophy, the fact that people have said, Oh, my favorite author, Herman, Hesse, or sod, depending on who you want to talk about it, the guy who wrote Siddhartha, the guy who wrote a Magister loony, he alluded to the whole concept of, of a servant leader in one of his books, the journey to the East, which he wrote right after Siddhartha.

But that's beside the point. And basically the philosophy comes from the fact that, , as you ascend the quote unquote hierarchy inside of a business or a, you know, institution of some kind that you become more and more responsible to the people under [00:24:00] you. It's not about gratifying your ego. It's not even about serving your clients, which wow.

That sounds more than a little counter. It's about serving the people who report to you and putting those people ahead. People first very important concept and also to collaborate with them compassionately. So people come to a leader, quote, unquote leader, and you can be a leader, even if you're a quote unquote team member leadership has nothing whatsoever to do with your official look at a senior manager in charge of TPS reports.

No, a leader is just somebody that people know are going to help them. It's a pretty simple thought. Help them. So it's about when somebody comes to me with a problem, not making them feel stupid because the [00:25:00] instant, I make them feel stupid. They're gone and they should be, I have no interest in talking to somebody who's going to be like, you don't know that, Oh my God.

Or having a tantrum on me,  basically, you've lost your leadership as far as I'm concerned, which is kind of a scary world because if you're a teacher, but not a leader because. Theoretically a teacher should be leading a discussion should be leading people towards knowledge, as soon as you lose that, it's really, you can't get it back.

First of all, I don't feel. And secondly, , people are going to try and go around. You circumvent you and you're in a very unhealthy kind of situation.

Fawn: [00:25:39] Okay. So I'm gonna play devil's advocate. Oh dear. I. I'm thinking about it. And I think you can get it back, but if you keep on with that same tantrum, if you keep on with your rigid view, if you're not flexible, no, there's no way you're going to get that leadership back.

Never. And

Matt: [00:25:59] the reason why I said, [00:26:00] yeah, never get it back is because that's the rule, not the exception. That is the rule and everybody feels, they are the exception. Yes, you can certainly get it back, but. You gotta do something. You gotta dig deep. That's

Fawn: [00:26:14] what I was going to say. That's what I was gonna say.

You can't stay in that same spot in, in no matter what you've done, staying with the conviction that you are in the right. As soon as this person that I'm talking about came back with a lashing. I immediately, you know, this is how I've always been because I grew up with a messed up family. I was always trying to figure out their point of view, like, why are they doing this right?

Why are they saying this? What have I done?  That's the first place I'll always go to. Right. so I went there again, I'm like, wow. So I understood her perspective completely. But in the end, it was still not okay. Like that was not warranted. That, that lashing that she sent my way,  it was [00:27:00] way out of line.

But what I'm saying is it happens everyone's human to be leader. You have to be human, but so one of our favorite shows is Ted lasso.  Remember when Ted. All of a sudden unleashed the fury, the fury, and happy on poor Nate, Nate, the great, like, so here's a Ted lasso character.

Who's  the most positive person.  He's a, he's a great coach. He's a great leader.

Matt: [00:27:29] Fish out of water. He's in England, he's coaching quote, unquote soccer or proper football. And he was a football coach, like foot, foot Gridiron football coach in Kansas. And he's now in England figuring

Fawn: [00:27:41] stuff out, but what a wonderful leader he is, and he never loses his cool except when he does, but he did.

Right. And you can say, okay, that's it, man. If I was that Nate character at being like F you Ted lasso. [00:28:00] But first of all, that other character was very special and like angelic. So yeah, exactly. So he wouldn't have, he didn't let that get to him. He understood, wow. Ted's going through something. Right. So he was very understanding.

Right, right. He stepped back. But what did Ted do the next day? He came back and he apologized, , he admitted that he was not in the right place. Right. And that perhaps he not perhaps, but he didn't, he didn't use what, what's the word for it? He didn't have the right way to, he didn't double

Matt: [00:28:33] down on his

Fawn: [00:28:34] Idiocracy.

Right, right. He was flexible. He realized. He hurt somebody with his words, with his, not even his words, but his fury just like his face was like a different person. He just roared total animosity at poor this other guy. But you see, he turned it around. Right. And because he was human, [00:29:00] the other person was able to see he's human.

That's okay. And he's still the leader. He's still someone I respect, especially because he just admitted to a wrong,

Matt: [00:29:13] yes. But again, I feel that's more the exception that proves the rule. I think that typically leaders like to double down because unfortunately, or fortunately, or unfortunately the last, not the last, but one of the principles of servant leadership is that you are the moral authority.

So, you know, what's right. Wow. That seems a little too arrogant for me. That's yeah, yeah. That's too much.

Fawn: [00:29:36] Yeah, no, no, that, that needs, that's an outdated definition of what a leader should be, because we all have the moral authority. We all have something amazing to offer,

Matt: [00:29:48] but by the same token, there have been moments in my career where I have talked to somebody who.

Set me properly on the morals of the company or the organization I was [00:30:00] working for, because I remember I was working on a system and I was like, yeah, but if I have access to the system, then I can do bad things. And, wow. So I was talking to my bosses boss, cause it seems like I always tend to talk to my bosses boss, but anyways, smacked me basically psychically and said we don't hire people like that here.

And on some level you can say, wow, dude, naive by the same token. I mean, he's, he's basically saying I'm we, , when you work here, you understand that you have this level of trust that you should not abuse. And if we hire somebody who does abuse that trust they're done and, , We're   going to do what we can to ensure that we don't hire people like that.

So I'm not going to immediately say you can't do this, or it has to pass through some kind of official, no, because this was an emergency system. And so things needed to go quickly as opposed to, but

Fawn: [00:30:55] that's beside the, but this is what I'm talking about. When I say you have to [00:31:00] be a parental figure because a parent needs to be stern.

If you tell your child, Hey, don't touch that stove. It will burn you. You have to be very firm about that, make sure that they are aware of that. There's no wavering here, but if I, as a parent have a bad day and I unleash horrible fury where it's not warranted at all, even if it is warranted, he shouldn't do that.

We should find another way to communicate, but I am human. So I immediately have to re. Redirect myself and come back and say, what I did was wrong. Please forgive me. Right. Okay. And that's what I'm saying. Okay. There's a difference between teaching, like this is the proper way do not touch the stove, do not steal, do not, do not do bad things with the code as, and then having.

Having a [00:32:00] tough time and coming back and throwing your coffee at somebody. Do you know what I mean? That's what I'm talking. I'm talking about being human and it works not in, not just in business, but throughout all relationships, friendships. This is what is key. You cannot be rigid. We have to realize everybody is an authority in some way, and we are here collaborating.

That's why I was saying.  We're creating each other , it's a, it's a flow. Do you know what I'm saying? No, no, no. I

Matt: [00:32:30] completely understand. Again, back to compassionate collaborators, that's what a servant leader is supposed to aspire to. So they're not, I'm the expert on a hundred percent of things, but I am, I may be understand what the end goal is, and I need to make sure that I communicate that cause again, communication.

So always, always going to be probably biggest indicator of success for any host leader. And you can sometimes use these [00:33:00] terms interchangeably,  it's about the flexibility and the understanding and the, and the compassion when you're going through even your communications, but certainly when you're actually,  collaborating with

Fawn: [00:33:09] someone.

And I think when compassion is left out, you no longer have leadership, you have a despit, correct? Yes. I mean, think about, um, if there's a disaster and a state and a leader suddenly decides to take time off, to get, to get away from things that would never happen. There is no compassion. Like I would not, that's not a leader to me.

I need someone to understand the situation of the people, right. So if you're an army leader, who's never, you know, I've never been in the army. So I don't know, but I can only imagine you have to be a really good leader. You know what it's like to be out in the trenches. Right. How can you [00:34:00] possibly lead properly if you don't know what that feels like, if you don't know all the elements that are involved in that, or what's another example besides war, but like, remember a long time ago, there was a show undercover boss

Matt: [00:34:15] and they might still be

Fawn: [00:34:15] on actually, they were talking about this.

There was this one show. Uh, the boss was, , the head of sanitation or something and. He wasn't he or she went undercover and they were driving the truck to pick up trash. And the person, the boss couldn't figure out why all of a sudden, , one of the people would disappear every now and then and hide behind the truck or do something.

And so they, the boss, like who was in Cognito asked, and it turned out that this person had to pee inside of a water bottle. So never did the leader of the company realize, wow, this [00:35:00] person performing this job all day does not have a bathroom to go to, right. Something so necessary and basic for human survival.

Right. Is that a good leader? I mean, obviously he put himself in that he or she put himself in that situation to understand things that he may not know about, or she may not know about, but really, or yeah. I mean, there are so many examples of this when you're absolutely right. , it feels like when you are not the leader, you tend to have more compassion and more sensitivity because you're exposed to so much information.

 , so many of the necessities that are needing to be in place, those, those are what make great leaders coming from that. And having that empathy, that compassion for people and their survival.

Matt: [00:35:53] Right? No, no, no, no, no argument whatsoever. And to take us back to Ted lasso for a second, what's like [00:36:00] literally like the second thing he did, he suggestion box.

He fixed the water pressure. No, he put down the suggestion box. Right. Right. And even though he got tons of abuse because obviously he's Yankee doodle and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But ultimately speaking, he went through, he ignored all the insults and he, he, he passed that one off and he said, there's something we need to feel.

Fawn: [00:36:22] Yeah. 99% was insults.

Matt: [00:36:25] Right. And those just bounced off. And because that's what you, unfortunately you have to do because as a leader,  sometimes you're not well-liked, but he also said, okay, I don't know what you say by even implementing a suggestion box is there's a lot, I don't know. And I'm going to provide a forum for people to tell me.

And at the internet has taught us anything it's anonymous, as you know, can be good. And, , he implemented that and  that showed again leadership and that showed that, , he wasn't afraid to admit that there were things he didn't know,

Fawn: [00:36:59] you know, another [00:37:00] great key was he didn't take her personally.

Obviously there was a lot of skew in that. Let's just use that as an example, on that football team, there was a lot that was wrong. There was a lot of weird abuses going on and there was a lot of, , inconsiderate things happening at all times. So for him to get a 99%, , insults in the suggestion box was just an example of.

The air, , the sense of being that just existed within that culture.  For them to say, when going co-anchor, Rinker Winker careful, constantly. Right?

Matt: [00:37:39] Right. I apologize to our British listeners. It's

Fawn: [00:37:43] from the show. I know, but still, but for them to her all kinds of insults it, it's just indicative of the, kind of.

Feeling of that culture that existed, but he didn't take a personally, right? He didn't, he just like moving on [00:38:00] and not just, well, I'm sorry, but I'm a great lover of TV and movies, but another great example is Elle woods from legally blonde. Here we go. I mean, talk about all kinds of insults being thrown at her, but like looking at that, the brilliance of this movie and the character was he could see her kind of like.

Like as if someone's bringing a tiny little cute little belt, she would sh shrug it off and continue

Matt: [00:38:27] on. Well, again, I think that they both embody what I consider the pop-up principle, which is I am who I am. , I think that they both have that strength of character in that they know who they are.

 If you know that you are strong and you know that you are fit and you know that you were beautiful, if somebody calls you ugly, you're like, wow, I guess you're having a bad day, dude. You know what I mean? I mean, it's, it makes it easier once you come to grips with exactly who you are

Fawn: [00:38:55] and knowing that when people are hurling, insults and [00:39:00] tantrums, It's really all about them and their pain, right.

Has nothing to do with you. But for some reason you may be a good target for them. Well, because maybe because you do have that leadership within yourself that, that compassion, that empathy. you may feel like a mother to them so they could have their toddler tantrum,

Matt: [00:39:21] right? Well, yes, but sometimes you instigate that tantrum.

I'm remembering an incident. Are you saying you, as in me, I'm saying that I'm saying you as in me, actually I can remember an incident where. We were going through, we were reviewing code blah, blah, blah. That means I'm looking very deeply at what's going on and I'm asking questions and I'm trying to get to the root of something.

And another developer was presenting and he was a father and he was older than me and dah, dah, dah, dah, right. Theoretically more mature. And he just, at one point I was like, so is this what's happening? And he got. And he had a tantrum right in front of me. And because of what I said, because [00:40:00] I think what he wanted to hear was brilliant code.

You're a good guy. That's like your

Fawn: [00:40:05] fault. That was not your, again. That was not you instigating. I know you were not the instigator pulled it out of him. No, you didn't.

Matt: [00:40:14] Babe. If nobody would've said

Fawn: [00:40:15] anything, you wouldn't have had, someone would have said something or a pin might've dropped and he would have lost his brick and that as possible, you cannot blame that on me.

You sound blaming

Matt: [00:40:25] myself for it. But I am saying that I do instigate something. Yeah.

Fawn: [00:40:28] That's what I'm saying. That was not you instigating, unless you said, yo, you suck and you did not say that. No. What people have to understand is no that you were not instigating this. It would have happened either way.

All right. If it wasn't you, it could have been his wife or his partner, whatever it could have been his dog, it could have been some person on the road driving, you know, it will have gotten unleashed in some other ways [00:41:00] what I'm saying, and that brings us back to capacity. When someone is full, they have no longer the ability to hold something which means understand something to have empathy.

There is no room for empathy that that will result in a tantrum or disease. Like they have a heart attack because it's just building up. Do you understand? Yes, you are not the instigator.

Matt: [00:41:28] It's not like I'm holding on to this.

Fawn: [00:41:29] I'm just saying, I'm just talking for our friends out there too. And for myself,

Matt: [00:41:34] you know, hammering home in a woman.

No,

Fawn: [00:41:36] because I mean, that's totally, no, we cannot assume the responsibility for someone's tantrums. If someone is having a tantrum because they're in pain, it has nothing to do with you. And I want people to understand that in a way I'm also repeating it for myself to remember that.

Matt: [00:41:56] Right. Well, no, it's, it's certainly, you know, [00:42:00] people have just a plethora of options to respond to whatever it is I say to them.

And sometimes, , once in a blue moon, somebody reacts in the worst possible

Fawn: [00:42:09] way. Remember what, okay. All great martial artists say this, but also since they chicken legs would say it. That. Hey, he was, he was decent come. I just said, I just said, Mark, great martial artists say this, including some chicken colluding.

I thought you said. And Oh, maybe I did. I don't know. Okay. So he was still great. All right. But since I chicken legs would always say that the best moves are the easiest moves, right? When you're lazy, I'm lazy. So when you're tired, when your muscles are exhausted, you just. You do things better in a way you're more flexible.

You're more able to, you're more apt to go with the flow. Correct? That is tough. How else would you describe  all right. So I'm thinking of really old people [00:43:00] and they tend to have more patients. Why is that? Maybe because they're fricking tired. Do you know what I mean? And they can surpass all that BS and say, this is some ridiculousness.

I'm not going to participate, but this is what's up. You know what I mean? Yeah, no, no, no, no, I get it. Yeah. So to come to that state of laziness about it, that laziness, like, I don't care about you. I'm not going to do anything laziness as in martial arts aspect of laziness and that you're not going to engage with.

Coming back with the same force or if not a bigger forest combat, right. It's not about combat, it's about a flow. And it's about that. Engaging in that. I really want to say the bad word, but not engaging in the messed up stuff. Right. It's about. What's the common thing in Ikea. We did, when someone's attacking you, we let them go on their [00:44:00] way.

If they really want to go this way, please help them, allow them to keep going that way. And sometimes even faster. Can you explain that? I'm not saying it right.

Matt: [00:44:09] Uh quote-unquote and I Quito teaches us all attacks a or circles and B. They always have a direction, usually it's at your face, but whatever. So if somebody is moving towards your, if somebody is moving with a fist towards your chin, The worst thing you can do is stop that motion from happening.

You certainly aren't going to let him hit you on the chin, but on some level, by the time they realized that their emotion was at your chin, which in point of fact, motion being circular, it's probably still, it's probably going, you can extend it up or you can extend it down probably up in that case. By the time they realize that they haven't connected with your chin, their hand is maybe behind their back and they're on the ground.

Right, because you haven't said I'm stopping you from doing anything. What you've said is I'm going to let you do this to the [00:45:00] absurd extreme, which is going to end up with you on your

Fawn: [00:45:03] butt. And without you being in the way is the obstacle. Right?

Matt: [00:45:07] Right. I am not going to hinder that motion. I'm going to extend that motion.

Fawn: [00:45:13] So another example would be someone is coming at you with. A fist up punch. You're not going to take your fist and meet their punch with a punch. It will result in an explosion. And both of you getting hurt. Definitely. One of you getting hurt. So what you're going to do is you're  stepping to the side a little bit and meeting that punch and letting that person keep going in that direction.

But you're not opposing them. You're on their side. You're by them, your shoulder. So shoulder with them.

Matt: [00:45:48] And that's that's that absolutely is one way of doing it for

Fawn: [00:45:51] sure. So you're guiding them, right? They're not going to destroy you with their blow by you're going, you're now the guide for [00:46:00] them.

And that's what I'm saying about leadership, It's all about you being the guide.  If someone is throwing a tantrum at you. To be a really good leader. You have to be a good mother and a good father and put your stuff aside. Not take anything personally, because this tantrum is happening. Just think about it.

If there's a dirty diaper and they're screaming happening, are you going to take that personally? Like I instigated that poop to come. No, the person has poop. And they need a

Matt: [00:46:34] change, right? No, no, no, absolutely. Right. And,  taking it to that level when the person is perhaps acting that infant, that with so much infantile , there's no good word.

I can't find it.  In those cases, yes. You have to be more than just a servant leader on some level, you have to be the parent. Right. And I would say you're absolutely right in saying a servant leader does [00:47:00] indeed have to bring people back to center, but a parent has to do it even more if you will.

Fawn: [00:47:06] Yeah. You have to, you have to find a way to have the capacity enough to be caring enough, to not take it personally and help them. Right. Which now makes me think of this person I told you about. And I said, okay, I'm done with them. Do I care enough to allow for something to develop? Right. Or am I totally done?

And I, now I don't want to say the word, but, um, you know, what do I say? Am I done with this person

Matt: [00:47:38] completely. Right. And that, that can be a tough thing, particularly in the friendship arena when somebody says something. So, you know, everybody has, I always, like, I was like to describe the fact that it doesn't matter how long you've been at a job, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

There are 10 words you can string together. God knows what they are. And maybe it's 20, maybe it's a [00:48:00] hundred, but it doesn't matter. There's a series of words you could string together that would get you fired. In the same way inside of a friendship, there are 10 or a hundred words that you can string together that will end that friendship.

Right. You know, odds are, and, you know, uh, again, speaking about rules and not exceptions, cause I'm sure, but he'll be like, but my best friend who knows, maybe you've got something so utterly beyond special, but there are things you can say. , and it's about, , has that person said those 10 or a hundred words, or can you be big enough to ignore or move past that attack?

And, , sometimes the answer has to be sadly, no, just to keep the integrity of yourself, if they so invalidate you that, , If they so invalidate, they strip you all the way down. Like I talk about how, , I consider my personality like an onion. If they cut all the way to the heart of the onion, can you [00:49:00] all the way in, can you let that go?

And for me it's no, but that's me. I'm, you know, I'm, maybe I'm a fool. Maybe I'm an ass, but you know, on some level I have to keep that sense of self.

Fawn: [00:49:14] And, you know, this is, this is our perspective and it's not the end all be all. Like, I really wish we had, whoever wrote Ted lasso that character. I want to talk to them because I feel you, how would a Ted lasso deal with

Matt: [00:49:31] it?

Right. Like cutting. So in, in, in, and, , they have the luxury of saying, well, yeah, but this is just a character and I can control who, what people say to him and, and what happens to him. And I can show him in the light. I want to show him in. Cause you know what, everybody has a terrible, and

Fawn: [00:49:51] that's the brilliance of that character as they show him in the terrible day, terrible situations.

Right. But he's still. [00:50:00] Is an exceptional human being he'll break down, but wow. He's still, I mean, I haven't seen the whole series yet, but you have, I really okay. Let's can we find whoever wrote that and talk to them because seriously, you and I, I think we have had enough Hertz where we're like, Hey, if you're going to reach this part of the onion, you're dead to me.

But. With Ted lasso. Say that right.

Matt: [00:50:28] Great question.

Fawn: [00:50:29] This is just our perspective. I wonder what, what it is out there. Let us know guys, do you have anything else you want to say? Wow.

Matt: [00:50:40] It feels like we've kind of covered. It feels like we, yeah, I'm sorry. I'm looking at my notes. It feels like we've kind of covered

Fawn: [00:50:46] everything.

It's just that whatever we end the show, you always say to me, Oh, you didn't tell, let me talk about this. I was going to wind it down and say, all right guys, you listening. I would love to, we would love to know your thoughts [00:51:00] because I mean, this is just our perspective. What's yours. If someone gets to the heart of the onion, Oh, are you done?

Should you be done? Should you, would you, would you want to be

Matt: [00:51:11] done? Can you look at yourself in the mirror? If you say you're not done and on and on and on, this is, wow. This is intense. And I, you know, for me, I am not Jesus, the Christ. I am not, you know, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I'm not, you know, everybody has that moment.

I think, but that's me. And am I projecting? It's kind of fun.

Fawn: [00:51:38] All right. Well, let us know. Can we wind it up? We can wind it up. All right. Reach out to us, our friendly world.com and thank you to all our wonderful listeners. We're so grateful. We're really starting to pop around the world and I'm just in all of you.

Thank you for listening to us. Please [00:52:00] send us notes and

Matt: [00:52:02] rate our podcast. Yeah. Can you

Fawn: [00:52:04] please, um, leave five stars? Can I say it? Am I allowed to say anywhere between no, no, please. Maximum number of stars. Can you please? No. Well, what we're really trying to do is start a movement where we create a compassionate world through friendship, and there are other things that we're working on right.

As we speak. So. There are big things that we're working on and we want to work on it on a global sense too, to make this world more compassionate and to develop friendships. True, true friendships. So once again, you know, our website, our friendly world.com, please rate us kindly and, , leave us a review.

Reach out to us because we need friends too.  Do you want to add anything by, by what? Well, we're [00:53:00] here. We never have an off, uh, we never go off. We are always having a show every week, a new show every week. That's our commitment. We will, if someday we ever get to have a vacation, we'll still record.

We'll still have a show during the vacation, right, babe? Yes. As we love this, we love collecting. All right. We'll talk to you in a few days. Have a beautiful every day. Talk to you later. Be well bye-bye bye.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode will calm your senses and make you feel way better about the world! Barry even sings to us! And we discuss the way of kindness. Enjoy this very important episode. 

to contact us: www.ourfriendlyworldpodcast.com or www.ourfriendlyworld.com

To contact Barry: www.forcefieldforgood.com

Transcript: Episode 36 -  A Kind World with Barry Lane

[00:00:00] Track 1: [00:00:00] And Matt, we're an interracial couple with two kids wanting to do something that highlights the power of friendship and what it means to be in the company of true friends. We're going to move our society away and out of the loneliness epidemic and into a friendlier, happier world. Welcome to our friendly world.

Better, stronger together,

guys, listen to this. Barry Barry, will you lead us in please? Sure.

[00:01:00] no worries. No more fears, something new between the years someone hits you. Turn your cheek. The word peak is the day.

The new day now is you can judge me by my skin kick in time to look within treat you the truth is on the track, but no one talks behind your back is now is the new day. Now is

the

day, both are weak [00:02:00] is a verdict. So there's the burden sings, but more love and much less much the world go up. Hurry. Cause now is.

Now is any day

now is the mixed fleet of one tree live in peace and unity at the old embrace a new

you, you.

Now is your day. How is the day now is a new day hungry people, scared. They don't know how much we can feast the sun soak up. It's raised it's time to find a [00:03:00] better week because.

Now is the new game that the day now is done.

That is the perfect introduction for today. Everyone I'd like to introduce you. To our new friend Barry lane, you can find barryLane@forcefieldforgood.com where he sings and teaches kindness. And that is the subject for today. Barry is an amazing writer, musician. Publisher. Amazing human being were so fortunate to become friends with him.

Welcome to our friendly world, Barry. Welcome. Oh, thank you. It's so great to be here. I feel [00:04:00] really at home. You are at home. You're literally in our home, in our kitchen virtually, ironically, you're in your home. Thank you so much for being here. I'm so happy. You're here. I wanted to talk about kindness today and I looked up the roots of what kindness is.

I have some definitions that I've found. So check this out. Kindness. It's from the old English word. How would you pronounce that? Matt? Jacob and Jason is G E C Y N. The means kind nature, race related to kin. Family it's from the prodo Germanic. Coon does, is that how I would pronounce that map? What do you think?

Which means family race from PI roots? Jen, Jean, I'm sorry guys. I can't pronounce [00:05:00] things. English is not my first language. Either give birth begets with derivatives, referring to procreation and familial and tribal groups. Here's the other definition. It comes from the old, this is the etymology of kindness.

It comes from the old English and is constructed from the adjective kind. And the suffix ness kind comes from the middle English, kin old English. How do you pronounce that? And I was like genocide. She, and it meant it meant friendly. Well, disposed tender ness is announced suffix middle English ness and is used to denote a quality or state when attached to an adjective.

Right? So originally kindness, the old English man's nation. However, the meaning evolved during the 14th century to [00:06:00] mean noble deeds, courtesy. Quality or habit of being kind. It's interesting. It said nation, right? Yes. Don't we need that as well. Well, I think as just a citizen of the world, we need it.

Exactly. Thank you. That's really what I meant, Barry. Thank you. Because you are the leader of kindness. You are the ambassador of love. And kindness. We're so happy you're here. Thank you. Thank you. Where do we even start, Matt? I know let's. I'm sorry. I have a nugget now. It's not going to sound. It's not going to sound very kind, but bear with me back in Santa Monica nugget, nugget of wisdom from Santa Monica back in Santa Monica days.

I was a struggling artist. I had gotten off of a corporate job, as you all know, I've taught, I talk about it all the time and I was burnt out. So I started to serve coffee and I [00:07:00] lived for every dollar. Unfortunately, like I didn't have much money. So every dollar I made definitely went towards paying the bills.

I had no health insurance, none of that. I had a car. I had car insurance and on a good week, my budget would allow me $20 a food a week. Right. Like I had $20 to spend on food, but all the coffee you could drink. Right. Um, yeah, but I, wasn't not a coffee drinker. I still am not like one sip will make me the Sapper, but so one day, you know, Santa Monica is beautiful.

So everyone's trying to film there one day out of the blue. Our shift was our shift at the coffee shop was gone. We're like, what's happening. We're not working today. No one warned us that there would be a commercial photo shoot happening in the cafe. And so not only that, but the film crew came in and they towed all our cars.

[00:08:00] Um, now they had put signs up saying, Hey, we're going to shoot, but we didn't know where they were going to shoot, but you know, when they leave a sign there, you're not allowed to park there between those hours in the day, they say, but there was no sign where I parked my car. I can't believe I'm talking about us all over again.

Here we go. So what happened was they started shooting and it was directly underneath me. So my studio was directly on top of the coffee shop. Where they were doing the commercial shoot and you know, it's hardwood floors. And remember I told you guys, I can talk through the pipes, to my neighbors. So you hear everything right?

And so best believe they needed me to be quiet. Right. So what happened was I'm like, okay, I guess I'm not working today, which is a bummer because I really needed the 50 bucks I was going to make that day. And including that was including the tip. And so I walked to my car. My car is not there. Like, where is my car?

I started [00:09:00] to get panicky, like someone stole my car and I don't remember how, but I figured out they towed my car. So I walk all the way to city hall, which is down the street on main street, which is a walk. Right. Especially when you're nervous and you don't know, and you're just trying to run. I figured out that they had in fact towed my car.

I talked to the towing company. I don't know. How I figured that out, but I go to city hall. I'm like they towed my car. There was no sign, nothing. So they looked it up and they're like, and this is how like a tight knit community. It was, they're like fun. They're in the wrong. They did not. Your spot was not there.

Actually. They can get in big trouble. Your spot was not designated for towing. It was not. So you're on the right. So I go back. To my studio and they're shooting. And every time they said rolling, I would make a bunch of noise. I was fuming. I was so mad. I was so angry. I would stomp the floor. [00:10:00] I would hang out my window and there's the whole crew down there, you know, with all the mikes and all, everything that they have, all their gear and they would just ignore me, but they would have to start again because I made noise.

Right. I ruined their tape. I wrecked every take I could. And my friends started showing up because I was yelling so much and they were used to me always being very kind, right. I was always mellow and laughing and we played together all the time. They never saw me lose my temper. Until that day. And one of my friends later said, he's, he literally could.

And he was not, I mean, he was Catholic, so he was spiritual, but he was not like me, like, woo, woo. Spiritual, you know, like seeing auras and everything. He's like fun. I saw a red all around you. Like for real from the street I saw red around you. I'm like, yeah, you best believe I was angry. And so I was like telling the [00:11:00] director, you better pay for my toe.

I'm not paying $350. And that's re I can't, I can't, I don't have the money. And so all day, this went on and the, one of the managers of the building that I was friends with, he comes, he's like fun stop. I'm like, no, you stop. I want the, I need, this is ridiculous. So. This went on for hours until all of a sudden there are three people who show up in my studio and it was the, um, the assistants, the people who, who helped bring the coffees and, you know, the production assistance, right.

They showed up with a wad of cash and the most sincere look on their faces, like, and they said, we're so sorry for the behavior of our. Um, producer or a director, we're really sorry, please take this money. And I said, [00:12:00] thank you.

What does that have to do with kindness? Honestly? Sometimes we all need a little help. You know, I try to walk my talk, but I am human and I can lose it. If I'm in pain, I don't have the capacity. So do you to be kind to you when you've harmed me and. It's so great when we can give each other some Slack. So if you see someone in pain and perhaps you have less pain than they do, maybe you can step up and help them out with something that you can, if you look, you know, they clearly need.

So anyway, Pearl of wisdom from Santa Monica long about windy story, I hope that helps. I hope you will. Don't think less of me, but I can lose my temper. There you go. Okay. I'm done. Okay. Can I, can I tell a quick story? Okay. So [00:13:00] literally one of my favorite things to do or was, I suppose, was to go out for coffee and honestly, I'm very rude.

When I get coffee, I'm not very kind. You're a pointer. You're a close pointer pointer. God. And then I say stuff like, um, gimme, gimme, yes, give me a blah-blah-blah it's, you know, super grand day, blah, blah, blah. And every single time my wife smacks me just a little bit and says, honey, come on. Be kind. I'm like put you don't touch that.

You're too close to that donut. Like he'll put his finger all the way, almost like he's going to touch it. And as a germaphobe, even before the pandemic, I've always been like, Hey, this food shouldn't be out. Like it's in the. It's in the air. Like I don't like things need to be put away. And when people point and get, they get really close to something, it really freaks me out.

And, you know, traveling around the planet, you can always tell who the Americans are. You can always [00:14:00] tell us like you, we, we are like, it's just, they'll. They don't say, please. And thank you. Or may I, may I have, it's not your donut yet. Do you know? You have, until you pay for it. It's and it's in your hand, it's not yours and you don't say gimme.

Okay. Oh my God. I know. And honestly, that's one of the, that's one of the million things that I'm working on.

Okay. That's it. And actually there's, there's a coffee place was a coffee place where they actually recognize me. They could never remember my name, but they always recognize me because I was so Oh, nice. Really good job, honey. I try. But anyways, we're ignoring our guests Arland. I'm sorry. We're rude. I'm enjoying the conversation.

Thinking about things. We don't know. You have any stories of, uh, uh, kindness or unkindness as the case may be buried. Well, I'm just, I think just splits last week. Um, I had a [00:15:00] situation. I, I I've been delivering pies now. It's the first job I've had in 30 years. I actually worked for myself and, uh, it's really fun to be part of the workforce again, but, and I go to supermarkets and supermarkets can be very, um, They look all shiny and nice in the front, but in the back, they're like little dungeon and people work in there and I have all these I'm sure I'm going to write.

I'm the PI guy. I call myself the PI guy, you know, like I am the walrus. Supermarkets with these pies. And, um, the best supermarkets are the independently owned ones because you just walk good. Say, Hey, how are you? Oh, great. We're waiting for her. We love her. They signed the thing. But the fancy supermarkets, the ones that are owned by corporations.

They have these little guns and they have to beep in every pie and there's people called receivers and they can be, it's a very difficult job because [00:16:00] you imagine like three or four pallets of Pepsi coming in and. All these liquor bottles, and then this guy comes in with three and you have to stop what you're doing and go, okay.

Yeah. I'm going to say very difficult job. And I can think of one situation where there was this woman. And I had talked to her. Her name was Patty. I had talked to her like a month or two ago, just briefly. And she had told me she was going to have an operation on her. Needs. And you know how the car, when you get old, the cartilage sometimes goes into your knees and creases, great pain is like going on bone.

And she had to have a job in the dungeon doing that, where you have to walk to the door to let Liz or anything. They don't just have a door that you can walk in. A lot of times they have to be locked though with time. So it's like. The port call us, has the rays for the guy to come in with a one to Brad, you know?

Right. It's like, um, so she has to walk all the way over and back and we already do, and I got there and it's a grind. Sometimes I love the job. I [00:17:00] just listened to books all day, but I try to stop and connect and then I thought I should be connecting with people. I just had that thought, that little thought in your mind.

And I remembered, she had told me. Like weeks ago, just in passing that it was hard for her to get to the door because of her knees. And so I said, Patty, how when's the operation happened? Just like that. And I think she, um, she started almost crying and talked to me for about a half an hour, you know, about.

Yes. And I just listened to an insane, much just listened and nodded. And I realized that day that that was the work of that. I thought, I thought I was a pie man, but I was really something else, you know? And I think that. Many of us have jobs like that, not the job that you're doing is not the real job of our place here on earth.

Uh, it's a job of, um, that's like the, uh, the [00:18:00] surface, you know, underneath there is things in so many times I can think of moments like that, but it takes a little bit of pausing to get there and, and focusing out on them and not yourself. Yeah. Yeah, no, no, no. That's definitely one of the things I've discovered is if you actually pay attention to what people tell you, They're so grateful.

And if you actually then retain that information and make a comment about it later, like it can be as simple as remembering someone's birthday or making a promise to somebody that you're going to connect with them on such a, such a date and doing it. It's about showing that you're willing to go to the next level.

You're not just being there on the surface. You're you're, you're paying attention. You're connecting you're while you're attempting to connect to someone. In the good way, much as like I Quito. Cause we were talking about IQ earlier. Um, much as I Quito teaches us that a punch is a communication. So is listening and [00:19:00] communicating that that's what you're doing and it happens.

It's rare that it happens and that's how Matt and I became friends and I. Short after that totally fell in love with him because he was the only one that heard me. I feel like I, I was going through a live and no one heard me, no one listened to what I was saying, but Matt got every word and the meaning of what I was saying.

And that was love right there. You know what I mean? Beyond, beyond the physical, it was, that was the number one. That was the number one. And I think, yeah, I think it becomes a habit too. Uh, if you do it once, it's like pay it forward. You do it once. You know, this happens to me a lot. Like even it happens to me at toll booths where you can get to the tub with, instead of the person in front of you paid for you, they're like, Whoa, you want to like catch up with them to like, say thank you, whatever.

But it [00:20:00] happened to me in Starbucks, get this. I was driving. I don't even know how to get it. Don't you have to know what they're getting, but I think she asked what the guy behind her was getting. And, uh, you know, I have a friend named Tom and he's really fun to travel with Trump, gen ed say his last name because he'd loved me to, to immortalize him in this part, say his name again, what's his last name.

And he lives in Philadelphia now he's Quaker. And he, he did a lot of work at like Quaker retreat there and Pendle Hill. And he, um, He used to be the guy that cleaned the rooms and made the coffee and that kind of thing. And, um, so he and I took them on the road. I did three seminars on teaching writing, and I took them on the road with me and we, and we just, it was really fun.

Cause we're old friends, like 30, 40 year old friends, a friendship, but here we go, been in a hotel with Tom and you'd stop. So I'm going to be vacuuming and say, He'd walk up to him and say, stop. Did you turn off the vacuum for a second and turn off the vacuum kind of annoyed. And he, and he looked him right in the [00:21:00] eye and said, you know, I just want to tell you, you're doing an amazing job here.

You know, I've done this kind of work and no one ever, they just complain when something's wrong, but no one ever gets to tell you. So I don't want to tell you that. And people would week, literally week, uh, when. This happened and, and what a great, you know, so when you're traveling, I would tell them, you're not doing seminars, your doing, it's like a ministry, you know, it's like a ministry.

Yeah. I've absolutely known people like that. Yeah. They're, they're not a traditional kind of Holy man or mentor or, but you know, just the way they live is very, it humbles you a lot and teaches you a lot. And you know, what I think is. The other side of it. When you catch yourself, maybe looking at the trifle of what is happening, like you notice something in this person and then you may think to [00:22:00] yourself, Oh, well, I.

I don't know if it's a real thing when I just picked up, because it could happen in a split second. It's like a psychic thing. And most people don't believe they're a psychic. I think we're all interconnected and we're all intuitive. And then we're all picking up each other's feelings, emotions, and there are scientists who've been recording all this to prove that we are in fact totally connected.

By the heart by the electromagnetic field of the earth, the heart, our hearts are connected. So there's that, but most people don't believe that. But what I'm saying is when you see someone and you see a little twinkle or non twinkle in their eye, And you act on that thinking, Oh, if I act on that, I'm just making it up.

Like, I can't believe this is for real, like whatever I may have picked up. But if you do act on that and leave that aside, the surprise of having the [00:23:00] person becomes so emotional and so grateful for the fact that you picked up on whatever that travel was. When that happens, it's addictive. So you want to do it to everybody else.

Do you know what I mean, Matt, do you know what I mean? Very like you catch it and someone gets emotional. Like that's what you want to do it again. And that's kindness. That is that's where it can really transform the world if we all played like that. Yeah, no, no, no, no, absolutely. And I can see that as an evolutionary trade almost.

Because if you do a solid for someone in your quote unquote tribe, you know, you give them food when they're hungry, you, you give them medicine when they're sick, you know, that's going to increase your survivability as well, because then they're going to be able to take care of you when you know, and they're going to have a desire to do this when you're not at your best.

It was actually a study that was done at Harvard. I use this with kids. Sometimes if I have a story, this is kind of a [00:24:00] very trivial story, but even how you're in the line at the checkout at the grocery store. And you've got, you know, a wagon of things and there's some bird bite with like just the carton of milk or even just a couple of things.

And, and you say, you know, Oh, you go first and it's Josie starts. They also have chocolate at the checkout as impulse buys for people. And there's research that rats will forsake a chocolate to save a drowning rat, which I hate. The idea of this experiment, how they do it or whatever, but, but the idea is that evolutionarily, they sit there.

They're hardwired. To save to, to be kind to each other and the same part of your brain that likes chocolate, it lights up when the chocolate also lights up when you do a solid for someone like that. So I'd say the kids I got, you know, you can go first, you know, I'm getting my chocolate in a way. It's weird, but it's like, uh, [00:25:00] you know, and, and this woman went.

You're so kind. Yeah. It's kind of that wash a feeling of, yeah, this is why we're here. You know, why else are we here? What's the, what's the definition of insanity is somebody that can't connect with anybody, but. The demons in their mind, you know? Um, so how do you, um, escape that you focus on others? I had a friend who was feeling suicidal and depressed and he got some advice I forget from who, but they said that the best thing you can do is just spend your time doing stuff, volunteering, and doing stuff for other people.

So he started to go to. Uh, nursing home and reading poetry, reading to people and totally changed his outlook on life. You know, it probably still took some of the anti-depressant drugs, but it just helped him to re-center. I hear that. And [00:26:00] I have definitely been in situations where I felt like there's no hope.

And I recall like one of the last times I was feeling this way, it, it shook me too. I felt shattered. Like it shook me so much that I shattered everything that was about me. Like, I I've talked about this before, like Matt and I used to have a household that was zero waste. We were very gentle with the earth.

We, we were very careful about how we walked and when things got really bad for us, and we felt like we, we didn't have anyone helping us out at all. I was not in the state to help anyone else out. So like, if you're so low, You can't even muster up the energy to go help someone else. If you're feeling like that that's, I've been in that state.

So I can't imagine saying, [00:27:00] okay, I'm just going to go help someone else out when you're in dire need of emotional or kind help. I remember lashing out and I lashed out at the earth. I remember. So we didn't. We, we had lost our home. It was like after 2010, Matt, doesn't like to talk about this. I'm really sorry, honey.

I won't talk about it too much. I'll just say it was a really bad time. And I remember we had to go to the store to buy food and of course we didn't have a place to cook anything. So we had to buy a packaged food, which normally we would have never done because it has plastic. It has all this stuff that I didn't believe in.

Using, but I remember getting it and I remember it for me, this was like pretty defiant might not sound like that to anyone else, but I remember feeding the kids and we had [00:28:00] food and I was looking at the containers of plastic that were non-recyclable or even recyclable. And I was so angry then I just threw it in the trash and.

I w I was just cursing everything. Like I just threw it in the trash and w S thought if no one is helping us out, why am I even bothering? And I threw it in the trash and it took, it took a while to come back to center for myself and like, go back to the kindness. Right. But like, Barry, what do you do when you don't, you can't even muster up the energy to go help someone else when you're so down.

Well, one of the things that I do when I talk to kids about this is that it's really hard to know your higher self or to act, to be kind when somebody is being mean to you. That's like the gold standard of Christianity or any religion really is turning the [00:29:00] other cheek. It's not even just turning the other cheek.

It's actually, you know, uh, maybe it's more about, um, not taking someone's energy, but the Akido thing where you take. The energy of the world coming at you and, and doing something with it so that it doesn't, uh, escalate the conflict or whatever it is, the internal conflict or the external conflict. So one of the things I talk to kids about is to do that.

You have to be able to fight. Your happy place, that part inside your brain, where you can just take a deep breath. And kids are very wise about this. Even when they haven't had mindfulness training, they'll say things like you have to take a deep breath, you know, where you have to be able to punch a pillow or do something you need to find, take care of that part of yourself.

So you can find your happy place. There's a song I wrote. It goes like this. When you're feeling sad, getting scared and mad. Here's a place you can get there [00:30:00] in a moment. If you're only turn the key. So just close your eyes and forget the lie. Cheat. What's the story that you tell that your anger SES and you find a piece down inside your continence.

Well, find your happy place. Deep within your mind. Life is matter. Race. If every one is Chi, stay there for a while. A rainbow smile.

It gets me feeling seen to give everyone love. You're standing there snatches. They blow in the stars. Close. Just breathe in and out. You don't need to shout when you know that your [00:31:00] shadow loving, like trying to fight something might become the day. Find your happy place. Keep with the ear. My life is not a race.

Right. One is K. Stay that for Y grow. Uh, reading books

and winning, winning when it gets so hot. Oh, you can ask him why he's strong and draft here, guys. Keep brave enough and try

to find your happy place. Deep within your mind is not a race. [00:32:00] One is Chi stay for a while. A rainbow smile.

No.

Thank you. You know, it's um, I have so much to say about that. I'm sure you did too, but I'm going to just jump in there, Matt. We are not alone and I did feel alone. And when you're feeling alone, you feel like you are alone, but it is a lie because we're not because we are, it reminds me of your shirt, Sperry, you have a shirt that you wear and it says all one.

And then if you, and you said this on one of your TEDx talks, and then when we were, when we met for the first [00:33:00] time on zoom, you were wearing one of those shirts and it did the same thing. Like when you're in a certain position, the. The shirt creases in a way where it says alone. And then when you put your shoulders back, it says all one, like it happened when we were on zoom the other night.

It's so funny because really you're not alone because we are all one. So I liked the trick that your shirt plays on people. Yeah, I talk to kids about this. We talk about it, you know, the difference we'll usually give us a role-play where a student's having a bad day, kind of like you were describing before, where you just, you know, I'm going to buy the packaged, we're going to cold cuts in plastic today and throw it out the garbage and not recycle or whatever it is, you know, just kind of, uh, uh, Yeah, why bother?

And so you walk up to your friend, you can usually get a kindergartener to [00:34:00] come up back in the days before covert, I had these great super spreader events where I, and everybody 600 kids holding hands. And, you know, it was like a. Great. Thanks very much before the days of COVID. Hold on Barry before, please hold your thought because I forgot to mention guys, this is what Barry does.

He travels around all. Before COVID, but even he's doing it on zoom now, but he travels around his schools and spreads the message of kindness to children. Go on his website. Forcefield for good. And he talks about the force field and interconnecting and how we're all win, but it's really amazing the work he does and the songs you sing, it's all on your website.

Anyway. So this is what he does with kids. He goes to schools and they talk and teach and sing. And it's all kindness related. Okay. I'm sorry to interrupt. Go on Barry. Sorry. Oh, that's a great quote. I'm [00:35:00] glad you brought that up because a lot of schools, when they try to teach kindness, they kind of try to teach it in a very, almost totalitarian way.

Well, that's what schools do. Yeah, not getting in front of anti-bullying is a great example. So say what's kindness, not hitting, not bullying, what's bullying. Well, you know, and then what happens with anti building is everyone just keeps pointing fingers. Oh, you're a bully. Oh, he's bullying me. And it becomes not self-reflective, but like almost like a blame culture.

Uh, and uh, so one of the things I try to teach the kids. So we do this a little role play. So Amber comes up and she's got just kind of, um, she's having a bad day. We all pretend we cross our arms across our chest and we scratch up our face. When we talk about there's 43 muscles in your face that have to work in order to frown, but only 16 to smile.

Some of the research on that it's a little, sometimes it goes back and forth, but. [00:36:00] Roughly about that, that number. And so we practiced going her and then I have this drawing, uh, of all the children around the earth, holding hands and my daughter, Gracie drew. And, uh, we talk about that where you hold your arms out, connect with each other and hold hands.

It's like, ah, sorry. Ah, and we practice doing that. So, so Amber says she's having a bad day. I walk up to her say, Hey, I'm ready. Are you doing? And she looks at me. And because she's having a bad day, not because she's a bully or a mean person or whatever, anything just because she's not feeling well. She looks at, she says, I don't like your shoots.

You know, she says something that just a judgment or something near, and, and then I turned to the 600 kids that are sitting there and I say, what, what can I say back to her when she says that to me? Cause I, you know, immediately I kind to act like. Like you're being injured, you know, he says, that's the moment.

That's the moment we've been talking about the moment [00:37:00] where somebody is, you know, happened to me the other day in the supermarket. This truck driver came in. I was on the phone. Talk to me about the guy to fix my snowblower while I was going delivering pies. And this guy keeps us where's the pie guy walks in and he's got this hat on and I go.

And for some reason I said to him, Oh, do you like our pots? And he says, you're parked your van where the truck needs to go. And he's a guy from Boston and he's, he's really being rude to me. And like, uh, you know, he's like really angry, but he won't look at me, you know, and as we're walking back out and I'm going to move the van right away, and then I did the Akido thing, right.

Oh yeah. Sorry, I didn't mean to do that and that'd be good. And he turned to me and says, you know, I don't like your pies either. But you know, that the thing about meanness is it was harder for him to muster up. He had to say something else, but he couldn't think of anything else. So we had to integrate, [00:38:00] it was like, it was like a moment where anyways, so then I came to the group of kids and I'll say, you know, what do I say back there?

And in some cultures, it's interesting, these little tiny rural schools, like in Wyoming, sometimes kids know it. Because they've got grandmothers, I've got a culture of it, but usually they'll say things like you could say, I don't like re-issues either, or they'll say, or they'll say things like, um, you could say, Oh, I like your shoes.

You may say, well, let me take the kids. What if I were to ask her question and that's the, the moment I'm looking for? And if it's a good moment, there's usually a pause there and then somebody will put their hand up and I can tell just by the look in their odd. That they have the answer, the questions that, and they'll say, well, why did you say that?

Which is the simplest non-judgment question. Really? It's not like, why don't you just, why did you say that to me? And at that point, [00:39:00] well, Amber can say I'm having a bad day. Right? And then the whole class can say, it's what I do with the 600 kids. I'm sorry, you're having a bad day. And that moment there's connection.

There's like, there's there's contact. And, um, and to me, what the problem with punishing kids for not being kind or even rewarding kids for being caught, which is, to me, that's kind of absurd in a way you get a pencil. Because, you know, you're, we're kindness week, you know, it, kindness is its own reward and it cheapens, it almost makes it like, it's like, I don't need the chocolate from in the checkout line at the supermarket, you know, I all needs the kindness.

I don't need the chocolate. That's like too rich. Um, but, but that's, that's kind of what I do. I want kids to be able to practice. Kindness and not feel like they're failures because they bought something that they threw and they threw a bit in recycle or whatever it is, [00:40:00] whatever that, uh, bar of perfection that we set for some.

And one of the problems with schools today, I can go on. A lot of, this has to be a whole podcast is that they try to make. Determination into a virtue, you know, there, you know, or that somehow you have to be this Uber Manch, this perfect person to be, you know, successful in life. And, uh, they have quotes from like Wayne Gretzky.

You know, you get, you miss a hundred percent of the shots you don't take, you know, you know, I'm like, what, why don't you share the puck once in awhile, Wayne, you know, You know, there are things, there are different ways of looking at those quotes, Ruth, you know, you can't lose if you'd ever give up, maybe it's good to give up.

Especially if you're doing something that's not good, you know, for people or hurtful to people in the world. And so, you know, there's kind of a, a human dignity and integrity that, um, I think we need to teach along with kind of [00:41:00] the, why. It's not just the word of kindness. The why of kindness is, uh, yeah, no, no, no, no.

I totally agree. Something. My wife says is hurt people hurt. And in your earlier example with Amber and the role playing. You know, from an acute point of view, she's got so much, let's call it red energy after, you know, Aras, but very angry energy and asking a question, all of a sudden you're engaging a different part of their brain.

They're you're not engaging that I'm mad at everything kind of phase you're you're you're getting into maybe a higher brain function of huh? If you can get there, sometimes you can't, sometimes people are seeing red and then they've got the wall up. But as soon as you break them into a, I'm going to deal with you almost like a parent, we talked about how to be a good host, how to be a parent.

And you know, you're almost teaching the child to be that nurturing force, you know, in that, in that. W why are you being [00:42:00] so mean? Why are you making comments about my shoes? They're not, you're not. You know, it's like, it's like, you're not admitting weakness. You're not admitting that your shoes are, are ugly.

What you're, what you're getting to is explain this to me. I want to know what you're thinking. And all of a sudden now on some level that kindness is validating that person as a person. Because sometimes when we're so angry, we feel ignored. We feel disrespected. We feel all these kinds of disks and, and all sorts of things like trash.

And somebody is saying, Hey, I see you. Hey, I see you over there. And I want to connect with you. Even if you're giving me all this like static and all this, I still want to connect with you. You know, one of my, one of my core fundamental beliefs is that. Everybody has an interesting story. And, you know, I like digging for that.

And so even if someone is mean to me, I still want to find out what that interesting story is. They have to tell, and I don't care [00:43:00] how, you know, how on the surface boring or how different someone is from me. You know, they have that story, you know, I've got those stories, but everybody has that story where you're just like, wow, Yeah.

Yeah. Very way. That is like that another life before COVID I did a lot of plane travel, you know, I don't know if you've ever been in an airport and seen scenes where businessmen get angry at the gate attended because it's snowing, you know, like the, the United airlines seeded the clouds to create it's like, so there's this guy and it was in New Jersey and he was like, really.

Being a bully. You know, he, I mean, he made one of the gate attendants cry and he, they got the supervisor gate attendant to come over and she also just try to. Appease him and he put it with, but no eye contact, just kind of looking away and just trying to say, well, I can't do anything about the weather, sir.

Of [00:44:00] course we get on this little tiny plate and he's sitting right next to them. Oh yeah. Like gold chains, all these like nice and every, I can't believe the Sarah line, you know, I'm not going to get to Cleveland. You know, in time for my meeting or whatever, and we're talking, and finally he like grabs the, the flight attendant.

You literally reached for it and grabbed it. And she kind of looked at him and she looked at him in the eye and he starts to give a spiel, whatever you know about how, you know, the world is not cooperating with his plans basically. And she bless her heart. She, what she does is she gets down to his level.

She literally kneels down. Puts her hand on his hand, looks him right in the eye and says, it's going to be okay. And he just melted. It was amazing. He just like turned to, to melted butter. It's just, and it was like, Oh, you wanted was this mommy? Oh my [00:45:00] God, Barry. That's what we talk about all the time. When you get into situations like that, no matter what, you have to become a parental figure because that's what everyone needs.

And that's why that's the big reason. One of the big reasons I wanted you to talk with us today because. It's not just for children, we're all children. We all need that. And most of us have not had that from parents and we need to constantly parent each other. What's the word for it? I don't know. Abs absolutely.

We constantly need to empathize. I mean, it's all these kinds of words, like empathize and, um, you know, uh, parent are care, friends care show that we care. Right. I mean, a simple glance, a simple kind, not stare was the opposite of stairs. You know, when you look at someone with kind soft eyes, that's enough.

Sometimes most of the time. Right. What you see [00:46:00] now? I don't know if our audience knows this, but my hair is long now. It used to be super well. It used to be super, super long. It used to be super long. Yeah. And I would walk around in my, you know, my heavy metal t-shirts and whatever. And anytime I saw another guy with long hair, just always there's there's the, there's a, Hey, there's that?

There's that lift of the eyes. And there's that acknowledgement that, Hey, I see you. And what's so funny is we became friends with this other couple due to that, you know, because we kept, I kept seeing him and I kept saying, Hey, what's up? Yeah. You know, what's interesting, honey. Like any, when I was little, like four or five years old, there were not very many people like us in the neighborhood and I could spot another.

Middle Eastern person from a mile away. And I would start yelling Santa from far away and my parents would kind of panic because, you know, um, [00:47:00] Immigrants were not totally liked. So like, please don't cause attention to come at us more than we normally get. Right. But I would yell and I could see this trepidation on the other person's body.

Like they were far enough where I couldn't really see their faces, but I knew they were Persian. Right. And I could see that they were shocked. Like, Oh my God, what do I, how do I respond to this? And as we got closer, there would be this smile, but you don't want to be, I forgot what I was saying, but anyway, That was my introduction.

Well, no, that's not long knowledging that people exist. It's you know, and it it's the whole, you remember on, uh, on Bainbridge, how people would just jam in the door before you. Oh my God, what is going on? Okay. So we lived in this area. I think we talk about this. I talk about this on our show, on the mentor show.

The very, very first show. When we started to notice something is happening to our society on a rapid scale, like time is moving [00:48:00] much faster and the anger is bubbling and the unkindness seems to be on, on the uptake wherever we went, we would open the door and. You know, there was someone right behind us.

So we would hold the door open for them and let them go in first. And they would not even look at us and assume that all day, every day, that was our job is to open the door for them and let them go ahead of us. And it would make me so angry and I became very unkind because then I would follow them into the coffee shop.

And I started like a mad person, like, you know, some of our friends in Santa Monica, Right. That needed help. I became one of them. Cause I started just out loud saying I do not understand you people, what? I'm not here to open the door for you. And I dunno, what would I say? I would go on a, I would go on a tirade [00:49:00] about.

Uh, you would, you would be like, it wouldn't be nice if people said thank you and right, and all the rest, but I to scold them, but we just identified something between you and me. I look at guys in the, I would look at, you know, gentlemen with long hair and I would nod. I was always eye contact. This guy wouldn't look at you.

And exactly. And the same thing with the plane, you know, he wasn't, he wasn't looking at the, uh, he wasn't looking at the, uh, yeah, it's the wall. When you think about it, it's the wall people to maintain, Hey, you need the wall. Um, you need to be able to, to not see the map, see the other person. Okay. You know what else it is?

My personal theory is when you connect eyes, you see each other's souls. You see far beyond what is there. And like, let's say you're walking down the street and there's a homeless person in trouble, and they're asking for money very rarely. Do people [00:50:00] have eye contact with the people on the sidewalk that are sitting down and dire need?

Why is that if we have eye contact, we connect immediately and they don't want that connection. That connection seems very scary. It can lead you to an unknown area of trauma that you don't want to revisit. Right? The glances, a very interesting, profound healing mechanism. It is, but it doesn't always have to be the glance because, um, uh, I remember in Santa Monica, I had somebody, you know, who was, who, who needed money.

And he asked me a question. He didn't say, Hey, can you, can you give me money? He asked me a question that made me stop. And that made me, are you talking about our friend or somebody else? No, this is a totally different one. But what did he ask you? I don't remember. It was a silly, it was like this word trick.

And he was like, I can tell you the day you were born or something. I don't remember. It was just, it was bizarre. [00:51:00] But it was my birthday that week. And so it was very confusing to me and it was confusing to him. And, but anyways, but that's just it, as soon as he took it away from, I guess the norm, which is let me, you know, let me.

Put up my wall. Let me just ignore you. Let me just treat you the way that I guess is maybe societaly okay. It's it's okay for me to ignore somebody opening the door for me, because if I'm kind, then, you know, I can't get my coffee and leave this place in two minutes or make my meeting or I can't, or I can't, or I can't.

And there's so much of this can't as opposed to, you know, really looking at. Um, you know, every interaction with people as, as an event, as a celebration as, as, uh, something bigger. Yeah. Did it experienced back in 1998? That was really kind of life-changing and I, um, I got to go to South Africa with, um, a delegation of teachers to do workshops for teachers [00:52:00] on writing and Google aid to in Cape town, which is, that was part of the Amy Biehl foundation, which is a story in itself.

This, uh, Amy Beal was a graduate student who was murdered, uh, in a tragic race riot. Uh, she was sitting from the U S she went to Stanford, I think. Can. Uh, whenever, but the, the FA her parents, when she died, when she was killed, instead of they were wealthy Californian people, instead of, um, being angry and just showing rage, they actually continued her work.

They went over there and asked the question, why did this happen? And how can we help? And which was in itself, they weren't. Christian or even religious people, but they just ask those questions out of pure, like humanity, whatever. And they found that this foundation that's a long story about it, but to make a long story short, I gone over there and done a workshop for two weeks in a very white enclave.

It may take all these people out of the [00:53:00] slums and the kind of the worst places and they get to stay at these luxury resort. And we did these workshops. Um, um, teaching, um, in a better way, I should put it that way co-operative way, um, as, as opposed to having kids in rows and desks and so forth and looking at one teacher, uh, but to learning to work together and that kind of thing.

And, um, but after the workshop I was on this kind of level, a lot of things happen and we'll go into it. But what was on this level where, when I saw somebody else's pain, I felt it. It was, mine was weird. It was a weird kind of field. I gave away all my clothes of my underwear, everything, and they just gave away everything to the people that were working at the resort.

And then when we came back, we're on this little van and there wonderful teachers with me, but they were going to do some shopping in the market there, which is okay, but I could not walk past this woman and this little girl, she had a styrofoam cup. She was chewing on the edge of the cup and a baby, his [00:54:00] woman holding a baby.

So I said, you know what? Come on in with me, we'll have lunch at the holiday at, so we came in, uh, invited them in and, um, I bought them lunch and we just talked for an hour or so. And, uh, she told me the story, how her husband had died. Uh, just, uh, on a trend, there was all these accidents that w w what happened in Google late too, is they had the slums w if you go up above the city, you can see where all the people are living, but there's hardly any electricity.

And everyone has to go into town to make money. So it was very, uh, difficult, uh, life for people. And her husband had many people die in auto accidents, just cramming into these little Volkswagen vans going back and forth. And, uh, and she had lost her husband and you know, her a little girl was named June and we just talked and in the restaurant, the people were giving really weird.

Looks like these people aren't supposed to be in the holiday Inn. Restaurant, you know, it's [00:55:00] like very, um, it was like, these are not, these are non people you're eating with, you know? And, uh, it was very, uh, it felt very powerful just to do that, but it also felt like why I could not physically not do that.

It was like one of those feelings of. Um, just being at that level, like right now, I'm looking at you. I can see the stuff behind you. What if it was just stars in space? You know what I mean? It's like that we're here and he asked, you would ask the question, why are we here? You know? And that kind of like, was that, you know, could you, when you think about it, can you walk by that homeless person, uh, every day and not realize the gift it would be to.

To, to, to be able to help them somehow, although it's not always that simple. Of course. Yeah. And yet it is, it is that simple. It's just a human touch. [00:56:00] It's putting your hand on someone else's hand, it's having a kind glance. It's just seeing someone, just seeing them even saying I see you. Hi, that makes a.

World of difference and that will change everything. And I think, I think it was more than the money. Yeah. It was more than money or food. It was that. Yeah. Yeah. It's an, uh, it's, uh, an inter interaction. It's a, an exchange of energy and someone needs that. Like I was saying, When someone is really down, they don't have the ability or the capability to help someone else because they need help.

And that exchange give someone energy to be able to go on and then eventually help someone else out. Um, I have to. [00:57:00] I have to wrap it up. I know, but there's so much to talk about Barry. You know, it was a wondering, there's so much to talk about. First of all, the fact that you're. You're you're delivering pies.

Matt and I always talk about pastries will. The pastry is, is the answer to world peace. Uh, and I always say, when you end up, it doesn't matter what country you're in. It could be at the United nations and. You have all the world leaders there. If someone walks into a hot room where there's arguments, if someone walks in with a pastry box, I don't care.

Everyone knows what's in the box. Know, well, everyone has an inkling of what's in the box and everybody stops and gets happy and they want to know, is that eclairs? Is that donuts? Nice cheese. So Barry it's beef fitting that you're delivering world peace. You're doing pastries and [00:58:00] I was to be here. Will you please come back with us and continue the conversation?

And can you, can you send us off with another song, the song, um, it's called old to other and it's about, uh, this is my favorite. Yeah. It was started as a poem. And then I wrote it as a song, but it's really about how you began, where I add. That's why I call you my friend.

Track 2: [00:58:33] Without plaque. No way without day, no night, but that's sad. No glad without good. No fan without time. No late, without a love. No hate for the teas. No joy without girls. No. Boys. You begin where I am. [00:59:00] That's why I call you. My friend maybe is different as a land and sea.

With me without where? No. Y without clouds, no sky without not knowing without fear. No hope without stay. No go without fans. No slow without green, no blue without me. No, you begin where I am and that's why I call you. My friend maybe is different as a land and sea.

Me, but don't know where we're going to [01:00:00] just know where are we? He don't believe he and the differences

to make 'em man without like no black without Fred, no back. No without no new without sun lower without death. No, but that's a new space without smile, low faith. You begin where I am. That's why I call you. My friend maybe is different as a land.

Maybe is different.

[01:01:00] Track 3: [01:01:13] Thank you, Barry. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you everyone. Thank you for this beautiful circle of friendship and should anyone need any, anything, please reach out to us and we love you. We love you, Barry. Thank you so much. Any parting words before we say, talk to you today. Um, what's Barry's website again, force, field for good.com.

Forcefield for good.com. Sounds like

the force field force field. [01:02:00] All right, well, we'll talk to you in a few days. Everybody be well, see you later.

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Nugget of wisdom from Santa Monica: Petite Sensei  (Francoise Petite)– make yourself at home in the uncomfortableness.

We talk about being comfortable in the many forms being comfortable and uncomfortableness exists. Fawn brings up her friend Eowyn and the subject of being comfortable with money no matter where you sit in the financial realm.
How does being still and not being still; multitasking contribute to loneliness?

How can the alarm clock help you?

Capacity is a big factor in the loneliness epidemic or in people having their relationships fractured. We don't have enough capacity to be able to offer anything to anyone else.  When you have so many things vying for your attention, you end up with a piece of over here, a piece of you over there, and you're not there.  You're not present. You're scattered throughout all these other places and tasks.  And that's where you are fragmented all over the place. So you're not able to totally be with your kids a hundred percent and not to be there for your friends. So you can't notice that one look that you need to notice that would quite possibly save someone's life, or a look someone will give in a split second that gives you information. You'll miss out on stuff like that.  And that's being distracted. We are distracted from each other.

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There is a connection far beyond our bodies.

There is a part of the neuroscience and the neurobiology that is called the social engagement system. And it's a grouping of five different things in our physiology that allows us to connect with ourselves. But also to connect with each other

This week we get into the neuroscience of our connections with one another and we figure out how to begin the healing process for our society. 

Some topics include: the science of brain and body, trauma based therapeutic movement and brain training, movement and neuroplasticity, mindful motion, the insula cortex and how it is the key that allows us to connect with others.

This episode is really big on more than one level. It's a little over 90 minutes, but it's packed with techniques that will help our world. Trust me when I say, you don't want to miss a minute of it.

We begin with the question of how to get out of operating from full capacity mode (meaning we all have so much on our “plate” from responsibilities, to worries and thoughts, to trauma, fear, and pain) and unable to be open to others, to getting to an embracing, loving, giving state; getting back to social engagements and selfless constructs, after so much we have been through. Also, can trauma actually be beneficial? How can we be there for each other (as a society) when we are all in pain? Who gets to go first in being heard and cared for, when we all need comforting and help?

Today, we have some answers that will begin this process. Guys, everything is going to be OK! - more than OK, actually!

 to connect with Pamela 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/moveintoresilience/

https://www.moveintoresilience.com/about-pamela/

Let's connect! Email us through: www.ourfriendlyworld.com 

and also: www.ourfriendlyworldpodcast.com

Please leave us a review on iTunes to help our podcast reach more people.

Thank you,

Fawn and Matt

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We can develop connections with people when there's a ritual, and it can be the ritual having a cup of coffee, taking a walk, going to the farmer's market or sharing a table is a beautiful ritual. And that's one of the things I would like to say is, we can benefit from getting  in the habit of sharing what we're not comfortable sharing until we're comfortable at it; for example, sharing a table with a stranger. This brings us to this episode's nugget of wisdom from our mentor, Santa Monica.

Today's topic stems from Musashi Miyamoto and the “A Book of Five Rings” as we discuss the fifth rule: “Distinguish between gain and loss in worldly matters.”

Capacity. We define it. We analyze it and we come to the conclusion that love has infinite capacity.

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Perceive those things, which cannot be seen. Understand what cannot be seen by the eye.

How do we access this information undetectable to the human eye?

How do we access information beyond the five senses? That's because we have a six tenths and everybody, every human on the planet has a sixth sense.

“Be patient with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for answers. It cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present, you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer some distant day.

-  Rainer Maria Rilke  Letters to a Young Poet.

Rachel: “Science is huge. It's a big world, science. Everything about being human; of frequency, frequencies, you know, there's hundreds of thousands, if not, who knows, maybe unlimited numbers of frequencies and all of those frequencies are part of this creation that we belong to.”

Rachel: “Being able to share freely our different human experiences, this is how we all grow and evolve together into communities that care about each other's health.”

To reach Rachel Chevalier:
https://rachelchevalier.com/

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2 nuggets of wisdom from Santa Monica:

Calmly and reverently carrying on, holding your center in love, no matter what is going on around you in the outside world.

It is an honor to be invited to someone's home. Treat it as such.

We also talk about “entitlement” and what that means. What are we entitled to in life? This leads us to the topic of appreciation.

This week we travel to different countries (via a book and our kitchen table) to discuss how we're supposed to behave in different countries. If we are in quarantine and can't travel for now, might as well brush up on etiquette from different countries. Which countries do you greet with a handshake? Who kisses once on one cheek and twice on the other cheek, hold hands, not hold hands, late or punctual, to gift or not to gift when visiting someone's house, where to not use your hands for gestures as you speak, eye contact or no eye contact, to say yes or no thank you when you are offered something, to use a fork or spoon, to compliment or not to compliment…every culture is different. We need to behave ourselves, understand each other's customs, marvel in each other's beauty and enjoy each other's company when we get together again.

Snippets from our talk:
To take one step towards the next step; to go from left foot to right foot, is all about imbalance. It's a leap of faith because in between the steps, you don't have any balance at all; no connection to the earth. You're basically mid-flight. We work with that imbalance and get to a point where it becomes a beautiful, graceful step.

Walking is really kind of this controlled fall.

Everything is always in a state of imbalance. Just make the world more beautiful, and in a reverent way, hold that beauty until that beauty, that love, transcends everything. Even if you have misunderstandings and conflict, if it is coming from a place of love, it will be understood.

“If you have no peace in is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” - Mother Theresa

“Your words have power. Use them wisely.”  - anonymous.

“Raise your word, not your voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.”  - Rumi.

Reach out to us: www.ourfriendlyworld.com

Insta: @befriendlyworld

Twitter: FriendleeBe

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We have Farnoosh Torabi, an honored friend, American journalist, author, television personality, and personal finance expert, as our guest this week.

With Farnoosh's wisdom, things are illuminated! As Matt, Fawn, and Farnoosh converse together, Fawn realizes that some of us (she and some of her friends) live in a state of purgatory with money. We are trapped and confined to a memory or experience with money that unless we switch our thinking and snap out of, we'll stay in hell instead of moving on, thriving, having fun, enjoying life, and creating the lives we want to be living.

We explore the concept of friends with money, by not only talking about how friendships affect economy, but also how to make friends with money as an entity in Fawn's case, because she feels mad at money (like money is this friend that has shut her out and she wants to be in that inner circle again), longs to be friends with it and get over a world of pain she experienced with it. Farnoosh creates a path to a major transformation for Fawn and Matt (listen to the very end after Farnoosh signs off) as they talk about what transpired after the show because of their time together with Farnoosh. There was not only a major money shift, but a miraculous friend connection with someone they were talking about on the show. Tune in!

Some memorable and noteworthy quotes from this episode: “Oh shit, the universe was listening. I was like; I told the universe I was going to marry this guy eight years ago. It didn't forget.”

“Listen, you're putting too much on money. Money is not anything. It's a rock. It's air. It's nothing, you know? It doesn't have opinions. It doesn't judge. It doesn't!”

“It's not about you versus money or money versus you. It's like; who do I want to be? What is the impact that I want to make in the world? What is it that I love about myself that I want to amplify, and what I want to really contribute in a bigger way, and how can money be the tool for me to that end? And that is it. Money is YOUR servant. You don't serve money.

Can you guess who said them? (It's Farnoosh Torabi)

Minute 40:53 Farnoosh tells an inspiring story about overcoming money adversity.

 To support Our FriendlyWorld with Fawn and Matt podcast, please leave us a review on iTunes!

Keep in touch: www.ourfriendlyworld.com

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Trifle definition:

 noun,

1: something of little value, substance, or importance

2: A small quantity or amount of anything.

3: Pewter of medium hardness.

4: a dessert typically consisting of plain or sponge cake often soaked with wine or spirits (such as brandy or rum) and topped with layers of preserves, custard, and cream

Verb,

5: to deal lightly or without due seriousness or respect.

6: to amuse oneself daily

7:  to play or toy with

8: to act or talk in an idle or frivolous way.

9: Nine to waste time to idol,

10: to pass or spend time idly or frivolously

Fawn and Matt discuss A Book of Five Rings and the philosophy of Musashi Miyamoto, a Japanese samurai, from whom the lesson “pay attention to trifles” comes from.

Teaching from Fawn's college professor, Hank Wessel: pay attention to what seems boring or normal. And in that, you'll find immense beauty and profound, mysterious qualities. Pay attention to things that everyone ignores. That is where the genius is.

Fawn's thought: This also goes for paying attention to ideas and people that often go ignored. Pay attention to the aspects that the main stream is not looking at. The qualities and details that most people do not look at, recognize, or see, is really the thing that is the most interesting and soon to be followed by these same masses that have to be shown by other “trend setters” as what is cool or beautiful. The masses are just stragglers on the wave of profound thought. They are piggy backers.

Matt: If you stay alert and aware, even when everything seems so ordinary, you can spot the extraordinary. That's, when sometimes you'll see $20 on the street or, you know, you'll be paying attention and somebody will say something that'll key something. One of those interesting moments, and it's a way to become closer to people. People love to tell you about the things they feel passionate or interested in, but sometimes they only hint at it or they give you a whisper… They'll say one word and you can choose to follow them down the rabbit hole or not.

Fawn: Sometimes it's not a word (that exists as a trifle). Sometimes it's the disappearing of the lips that will happen in a split second. There are micro movements people make that will tell you everything in a tiny split second of a shrug of a shoulder will tell you everything.  If someone's in pain and they're hiding something, or when their lips disappear, it means the person is not comfortable hearing or seeing something that's in front of them. Paying attention to the tiny details will give us a better understanding of one another and therefore better friendships; and not just with friendships, but with family. Like especially with kids: Question: “How are you doing?” Answer: “Fine.” Question: “What'd you learn today?” Answer: “Nothing”.  But within those short statements we'll come across with a shrug of a shoulder, which means there's something uneasy, something that they're not sure about. So we have to figure out a way to communicate past that trifle of statements. If someone asks you how you're doing and really we're trained in society to say “fine, how are YOU?” where we can't really unload our pain because it'll scare off or overwhelm the person who asked you how you've been. But paying attention to what their eyes say or some tiny little detail (could be anything it's different for everyone), but paying attention to that could save their life or give them love. Pursue that one tiny trifle that you pick up and don't ignore it.

Matt: “People like to open doors and leave it open to other people to figure out whether or not they want to go through them.”

At the close of the show, we discuss the loneliness epidemic and how finaly we are talking about the loneliness issue because of the pandemic of the corona virus. The truth is our friendship culture has been fragmented for a long time.

Matt: “…truth is a hard thing. That's why advertising exists in the first place is an attempt for us to deny truth; for example: My life will be super spectacular if I get that as UV, Cause I'll go kayaking and wind surfing and you know, base jumping (Yeah. Right).  And that's why advertising exists. It's offering a quick fix to kind of deep seated issues, even though it doesn't, it offers the illusion of a quick fix.”

Fawn about the New Year: Every day is a new year. Don't disrespect the previous year, no matter how many hardships that offered it, brought you very gingerly and perfectly in a way to this new time. And. It scares me when people celebrate New Years like “Woo, yay! F you! Good riddance” about the year they're leaving behind because the the next year they're saying the same thing about this year (basically saying an “F-you” to every year). It's like having a two faced friend say, Oh, I love you. Oh, I hate her. Do you know what I mean? Don't do that with your time. It's all precious. And if you are here, and you're hearing these words and you're breathing, you were brought gingerly into this time and you belong here. You are meant to be here right now. Honor every day.

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visit us at www.ourfriendltworld.com

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First:

Santa Monica pearl of wisdom from 5^th floor quiet painter neighbor. You never truly know what someone's life experience is until you are invited in, or you invite THEM in.Sometimes you may look at a person you think, “Oh my God, I am probably not their cup of tea. They will probably hate me”, or you can see major differences between you, and that “there's no way that this person will like me”. Give it a chance. You never know!

Fawn and Matt share their difficult weekend as Fawn pushes back the tears of her sadness and anxiety, and tells how she had to type the words “I NEED A FRIEND” to her friend Beth Hewitt (of the podcast “Visualize You w/ Beth Hewitt). Fawn describes how that changed everything and reads what Beth wrote back to her, out loud for any of you to receive Beth's words to help you feel better as they helped Fawn. All the tears and emotions happen before Fawn and Matt introduce their honored guest Paul Martin, who wisely and kindly says: “It's really nice to hear you embracing your sadness… what I've learned, especially over the past few years of, you know, I used to be, um, an alcoholic and an addict or thing that pushed away me embracing all of those certain feelings and now that I'm clean, I get to fully embrace them. And even sadness has like a true kind of beauty with that. In a weird way, it has its own yeah sacred, special place. Um, but to truly feel it and like engage and embrace it like you did. It's just like, it works wonders. And in a weird way, like if you have the, like the perception of the it's there for a reason, you can actually sometimes like, enjoy it whilst it's happening as well; not just the benefits after”.

Fawn, Matt, and Paul discuss how different cultures handle emotions and drugs. We discuss embracing each other's emotions and what we should do when we see someone crying.

Paul's music is an embrace from an old, caring, loving, entity:

And as Paul says: “…getting in touch with that vulnerability of letting go and staying in that safe space” is what it's about. “…so there's feelings can come up and they can just feel that beauty of light. Like that's a kind of, that's like a happy sadness, and it's very important, I think, to get in touch with that side of your emotions.”

We also talk MEDITATION, as Paul is not only a super talented Musician, but also a meditation coach who studied in Thailand.

Paul: “…we're put here is to understand life and experience life and to understand the difference between yin and yang, what we perceive as good and bad.”

Paul: “all anger derives really from the sadness.”

We get into the discussion of social media…

Fawn: “So I think social media is actually parallel to real life because in real life, I mean, I'll just speak for the communities we've noticed in the culture we've noticed in the United States, where so much is is superficial and you know, it's just superficial and you're not really there for each other, right. It's just, you're going to present the best face possible. You're going to present yourself as the greatest, the best, the richest, the prettiest, whatever, but very few people actually. Well, like, be real with you and have a heart to heart, total open path, open sec, you know, open segway; open heart.  And it's the same in social media. That's what I think some people are now piercing through is that superficialness. It happens outside of social media.”

To reach and hear more of Lotus:

 https://www.lotusmusic.co.uk/

https://www.instagram.com/lotusmusic.co.uk/

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Nugget of wisdom from Santa Monica – receiving a treat through your window, just exactly when you need it.

Prosperity – PRO= towards Spera=hope

spera. sperare Verb = hope for, hope.  Looking at prosperity. Pro pro means towards. Sparity Comes from Spera it's  Latin, Spera means hope. Prosperity, if we break it down means towards hope.   My question is how can we look towards hope? What is prosperity?

Fawn: “Prosperity is a universe inside of you. Do not look outside at other people. When you find yourself looking at your friends and feeling like you're left out, that right there is the opposite of prosperity. That is scarcity.”

???:  How can we go from hopeless to hopeful? How can we go from feeling left out, shut out and uncared for to realizing a muffin flying through your window?

Fawn: “You can use scarcity as a tool. You can use it as anger for fuel, enough to get you to a point where you're realizing you're not where you want to be. That's okay. When you feel that, instead of continuing on with that feeling of jealousy or hopelessness, we can use that feeling to get to our own core and find what we need.

If I find myself feeling left out like that, that left out feeling, I'll go in the bed under the blankets and maybe have a good cry, go inside and think about my own universe; the universe inside of me. That's where my genius is. That is where it is for all of us.  It's at that center where it all gets activated. Some people call that place “the unknown” “the void”; a place where the focus is not on anything or anyone else but it is where genius is. The universe at your core will begin to magnify. From there, anything you focus on becomes activated becomes a magnet for your greatest desires, guaranteed.

That's how I get my mind into the mode of prosperity. I either bake cupcakes or have a good cry. I rebuild my universe inside of myself.”

Matt: “Now you see, the way I come to it is I like to surround myself with wonderful people and I've been very blessed knock on wood that I've been able to do this with both my friends and my family. And for me, when I hear about one of my friends doing something awesome, I'm very stoked for them. I'm extremely stoked for them.

And typically I want to find out, well, how did it happen? Because maybe there's a template in it that I could follow, or at least it gives me a better understanding of them as a person. Now, when I feel down and everybody does it, it depends on the type of down obviously. But, if it's specifically related to work, I find one of the easiest ways for me to feel better is for me to go through my list of past accomplishments.

And I've done some (in my mind at least) pretty amazing things as a software developer, as you all know. I build things from nothing. So it's just kind of like, it's almost like imposing your will upon a blank sheet of paper and making something that you can be very happy with, or that someone else can be very happy with because maybe you're creating it for someone else. And so that process, that creative process is very hard to not make you feel like this, a limitless abundance out there because you realize the I. When I first started working on this, I was a complete idiot. And then I figured stuff out and I got a little smarter and a little smarter and a little smarter, a little smarter until, “wow, I did this really amazing thing.” If it comes down to less of , a work-related and more of a,  financial , kind of world then I look at the things that I do have, those material possessions , and I see the wealth and the places I've chosen to invest my money as it were. And  I look at my rack of music. I look at my bookcase, and I see the real abundance there and the fact that there is limitless potential out there. And these things start to shift in my head and in that positive direction. And of course the ultimate trump card is getting on the horn with one of my friends and talking, be it zooming, be it on the phone. Be it however it is, just that act of communication, just their willingness to reach out, to reach back to me that willingness to have communication with me and for us to laugh and have a giggle. You know, these are the things, that make me feel just this raw sense of abundance in my world. Love, grows. And it is infinite much like prosperity. So I think love and prosperity go together.

So everybody goes through bad times. It's just, it's the ebb and flow of the yin and the yang. The true definition of union yang means any place you draw lines with a union symbol, half of it's black half is white, half this good half as bad, however you want to choose to interpret that. So typically, yeah, there's a certain belief that things balance out.”

Thank you for listening! Join our circle of friendship. 
We would really appreciate your help by leaving us a review on iTunes and/or telling your people about our social movement and our podcast. We would be so honored if you would spread the word about this podcast.

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Nugget of Wisdom: Jesus and the Bread Guy – Fawn recalls “… two things, two, if you pick two things in the neighborhood, within the community that are a constant, you never thought about together at the same time; in the neighborhood, you never thought had a connection. If you take two things or two people that are consistent in the neighborhood that you never connected; like they are not going to cross, or it didn't even cross your mind, but when you see it, it makes total sense. Have you ever had an epiphany like that?” This story is about two main fixtures in the Santa Monica/ Venice neighborhood that one early morning Fawn became aware had a divine, spiritual connection to one another that brought her a deeper understanding of our connections within our community.

PECULIAR - pe·cu·liar  /pəˈkyo͞olyər/  adjective

1. strange or odd; unusual.

Similar words: Strange, unusual, odd, funny, curious, bizarre, weird, uncanny, queer, unexpected, unfamiliar, abnormal, atypical, anomalous, untypical, different, out of the ordinary, out of the way, exceptional, rare, extraordinary, remarkable, puzzling, mystifying, mysterious, perplexing, baffling, unaccountable, incongruous, uncommon, irregular, singular, deviant, aberrant, freak, freakish, suspicious, dubious, questionable, eerie, unnatural, bizarre, backasswards, eccentric, idiosyncratic, unconventional, outlandish, offbeat, quirky, quaint, droll, zany, off-center, wacky, freaky, kooky, screwy, oddball, off the wall

Opposite: normal, ordinary

2. Particular; special.

Similar words: distinctive, characteristic, distinct, different, individual

BUT ALSO: Peculiar comes from Latin peculiaris, an adjective meaning "privately owned" or "special" that is derived from the word for "property," peculium. ... Peculiar borrowed the Latin meanings of peculiaris, but it eventually came to refer to qualities possessed only by a particular individual, group, or thing.

An article by Jess Zafarris: The Etymoooology of “Peculiar” “Peculiar” comes from the Latin peculium, literally “property in cattle,” a meaning that lingers in “peculiar to,” meaning “belonging solely to.” Its “odd” sense arose after the term evolved to mean “distinguished, special,” describing a person or thing of great wealth or renown.

Peculium was used to describe property in general, for cattle were considered the most important form of property, and wealth was often measured in livestock. Cows were especially considered a mark of wealth and social standing because they were used to expand the scale of crop production, to haul goods and weapons in trade and war, and were also (obviously) a rich source of protein.

Owning, purchasing, and breeding cattle was considered an investment in the future, and practices involving cattle were handed down from generation to generation—meaning that cattle played a not-insignificant part in establishing early ruling classes and families.

Peculium gave rise to peculiaris, “belonging exclusively to one person,” which carried its meaning over to English in the 15th century. From there, in the 16th century, “peculiar” came to mean “distinguished or special,” suggesting someone endowed with great wealth (not necessarily in cattle) or esteem, or something else particularly renowned or remarkable.

This noteworthy sense led to what might be considered a more common use of the word today, “unusual, strange, curious,” from the 17th century—though, of course, its sense of belonging specifically/especially to someone or something remains in use today as well.

Seth Godin on “Peculiar” - peculiar actually originates from the Latin word for cattle. It means private property. You own the cattle, but peculiar means you are in and out of yourself.

 Seth Godin says peculiar means you are in and out of yourself.

Matt:  So if we want to talk about peculiar with regard to cattle, typically cattle herd, they like to stay. And this is again my belief, but cattle like to be in herds. They like to be close to one another. They don't like to be off on their own. So I could see where maybe cattle comes into it because a peculiar cattle is probably one that might be sick or something might be going on with. So we have to be careful there. You know, mad cow disease, et cetera, et cetera. I'm sure there are all kinds of bovine diseases that can occur.

Fawn: Taking it away from disease, I'm just thinking I'd probably be one of the cattle that's like “I'm outta here, man. I'm not going along with you.” As a child, Fawn was called the black sheep.

Matt:  Right, but typically, what is it, “the Judas goat leads the cattle into the slaughter or so anyways, let's, let's change that subject very quickly then let's talk about in and out.

So I know how to do the opposite of being peculiar, which is to blend in.

I can go in and out so I can be part of the herd and then I can also be out of the herd. And so in many ways I'm kind of in and out, particularly if I'm really working on a challenging idea or I'm looking at something that no one else was looking at, et cetera, et cetera, I'm pondering something no one else was really pondering. There's a certain comfort in being with the people, but then there's also a huge amount of satisfaction being. Outside being the outsider kind of looking in. And so that's where I draw the in and out from.

Fawn: I've never been able to go with a masses, I've never been able to go with the crew or whatever you call it. I. I stick out like a sore thumb, probably March to the beat of a different drummer, and that has really negative connotations to it, too. “They marched to the beat of their own drummer” means that there's a problem.

Matt: And that's just it. That's how you choose to define it. However, it's, it's the. It's the, forgive me. It's the Edisons it's the Teslas. It's the Henry Ford's, we can even talk about the Zuckerberg. It's about the odd ducks.

(Matt and Fawn argue about Edison and Tesla being peculiar Fawn does not like Edison and does not want him in the same talking circle as her beloved Tesla).

Matt: “It's the peculiar people who push society forward… it's these types of people who are willing to, or stand a little bit outside; the peculiar people who push things forward.”

???: If everyone was peculiar, would we all not be individuals and just become one mass?

Matt: we can't have too many of them or you're a massively fractured society. And the certain amount of fracturing is healthy too much is very bad. …

And what I'm saying is there's a reason why Tesla died penniless, and there's a reason why Edison's heirs probably still have oodles of money.

Fawn: And what's the reason? Well, because he (Edison was able to go in and out).

???: If everybody is so completely on different pages on everything, how do you get them to agree?

Fawn: my college professor, Hank Wessel who showed us that it's the simple stuff that we ignore that is actually the most peculiar.  I could really look at it, but you ignore it. But it's there. And I guess that's, that would be kind of like not standing out; that blends into society kind of “peculiar”. However, on the other side of it, I just feel like so much of society teaches us to be a certain way. And it strong arms as to blend in and not be authentically ourselves.

Fawn recalls all the different towns and cities that they have lived in and how within each different town, people looked the same (same haircuts, same style of clothes, etc.).

Matt blames this uniformity on the automobile manufacturers.

Matt: why is every single car offered in (of course they don't call it this) black, white, gray, or silver. And then if you're lucky, they'll throw in a blue and a maroon. It used to be American cars, you could get any color of the rainbow. Anyone, you would just say, “oh, competition orange”. Or you would literally bring in a paint swatch and they would match it. This is way back in, I've heard in like the sixties and seventies, but like all the cars look the same. All the colors of the cars look the same. And there's a certain comfort in that anonymity. And, you know, it's the automakers, I think, who were playing to that. Cause they always have to be 10 years ahead or so. Cause that's how they design cars, but I mean, it's so hard. I mean, we really love our car, but all the, all the colors were monochromatic.  I don't think we could've scored our car in a red or a blue, which is sad.

Fawn: There's a whole design aspect. You think we're controlled by just finance, right? You think THAT will be the way to control the population, but it's really interesting how design plays a role in it too. This also takes me to homeschooling. Why did we choose to homeschool? We didn't want to be a part of this factory based, cookie cutter, everyone cram in here, like an assembly line. And this is what we're going to feed you. Get out. We wanted our kids to explore all cultures and explore many languages. They're multi-lingual now they are way advanced with math and art and everything that we possibly can study. We are not doing the cookie cutter version and that's why, but everything seems to be that way, this conformity.

???: Why is conformity so prevalent?

Matt: Part of it is for comfort.

Fawn talks about this translating to the arts and to actors. Cary Grant as an example who said of his craft that when you're a movie star, people want that movie star version of you. And if you veer away from that, they get very upset. Your fans want to see you as that Cary Grant they are used to, and if you go and play some other character, that's radically different, they are not happy.

Matt: “Right. Or heaven forbid you have a social life that is reported and doesn't make you look, it doesn't adhere to this, this thought”.

Fawn brings up Diane Arbus the photographer and her images of people we wouldn't normally look at and how haunting the images are and the importance of representing all people.

Matt: People want comfort. People want comfort in all things, and people have an unwillingness to be challenged. I think the thing about it is, is finding your tribe and finding these people who resonate the same frequency that you do. And sometimes you've got everything in common and sometimes you dress alike and sometimes you have very little in common, but those things run deep.

Fawn: Seth Godin, said something that really made me sad and made me feel like, you know what, Seth Godin, I don't want to listen to you right now.

He (Seth Godin) was talking about being authentic and he said “you don't want the authentic, don't do that. You don't want the authentic”.

Fawn: I was thinking to myself, “what the hell?”

And he (Seth Godin) said, as an example, that if you go to a Jay Z concert, you don't want the authentic Jay Z if Jay Z is having a bad day. You want the Jay Z you paid to listen to.

Fawn: But excuse me, that is art. If someone is singing or whatever, they're expressing themselves. You better? Give me the authentic, because there's feeling behind singing, there's feeling behind poetry. There's feeling behind photography. There's feeling behind paintings. There's feeling behind cooking. We can cook the same things you and I could cook the same exact recipe. Mine will taste different than yours. It's kind of like the movie, Like Water for Chocolate. The main character would cook something and she was sad. And when people ate her cooking while she was crying, they started crying. You know, it transfers into everything.

More on this subject continues as Fawn and Matt discuss art and what is authentic as well as perfectly crafted.

The conversation then goes into Fawn talking about authentic interactions with people and when to truly express how and what you are feeling. She comments on the fact that because we don't talk to one another that much that when we feel isolated going through life and then we speak to someone who asks how we are doing, all our cobwebs and horrors may come out and that scares people off. But is we had more heart to hearts, things; our emotions would not be so hectic and we wouldn't feel like we had so much to unveil and unload.

Matt has an issue with this. And explains using an example of football and the quarterback for the Steelers, Ben Roethlisberger -  a conversation he never should have unleashed on, on a reporter of great scoop, et cetera, et cetera. But it wasn't something he should have unleashed at that moment. It was something he should've kept private talked about with his loved ones, his inner circle, his friends, his et cetera.

???: Why do we tear down our heroes in society?

Quote hall of fame from this episode: “If you want to go fast, go by yourself. If you want to go far, go with the team.”

?????: what do we do with this knowledge of the peculiar? Do we strive to hide our peculiarities?

Fawn's nugget of wisdom: “We all need to be scholars. And if you're a true scholar, you're going to look at something that does not make sense to you and be open enough to look at it and marvel in its extraordinary difference and its beauty.

Please send us an email and keep in touch: www.ourfriendlyworld.com

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Thsnk you!

Love,

Fawn and Matt

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Pearl of wisdom from Santa Monica: the light within can really touch someone out there that you may not know. What you do in your own home can seriously affect someone on the outside.

SYNTHESIS:   1) the combination of ideas to form a theory or a system. 2) The production of chemical compounds, by reaction from simpler materials.

Fawn: I have an issue with “simpler materials” for so many reasons. If you're going to take it outside the science scope (I'm going to talk about synthesis), like communication with people and culture, using the word “simple” is a mistake. If you look at something through a microscope, you can get more powerful microscopes and keep going and going and going and going as you look at any given thing. Does anything ever stop being or existing? Like numbers, is everything infinite? You look at something through a microscope, you see the smaller particles. You magnify it even more, you see even more. A flower is complex. If you look at the design of anytihing in life, if you really look at things, everything is incredibly complex.

Another thing about synthesis; another definition is to combine a number of different pieces into a hole. And it made me think of the term “melting pot”. The description of a culture or society being a Melting pot always bothered me. It never sat right with me growing up. I heard that a lot, but I never really thought about why it bothered me. I was always asked (it was actually demanded of me) to erase my culture; to erase my identity, not only growing up in the United States, like to become Americanized, but also within my family who was very terrified of having to escape from a country that was in turmoil, to erase who I was.

And even though my family loved their culture and wanted to keep their culture, they had to flee the country that they were originally from, come to a new place and where they had to deal with a whole new set of problems and persecution in so many ways. There was this confusion of, do we assimilate? Do we keep our traditions or get rid of them? Do we teach our traditions and culture to the next generation? How do we do that, when the culture you live in despises you and the next generation is caught in between these two worlds?  I noticed this peril not just with the family I was raised in, but with so many different families across so many different cultures other than mine. I watched the struggle with: do we keep the traditions, do we do a dare speak together, out in public in this other language?

I just don't like the analogy of a “melting pot”. Instead of a melting pot, I think it should be a dish that holds the integrity of every ingredient not something that melts and becomes something else. I don't want to melt. I do not want to melt. I want all of my cultures. I want my languages. I want everybody else's cultures and everybody else's languages, everybody else's fashions, everybody else's ideas to hold their own and contribute a vast delicious balance of tastes that light up your life force when you taste it.

I want it to remain whole. I don't think it's a good idea to melt into one thing and lose your unique flavor. I think if we can appreciate the integrity of each individual ingredient, that it will lead to world peace.

We talk about assimilating and what that means.

We ask if there's a constant assembly line of hate. The focus may end on one group, only to focus on the next group. Eventually, you will be the target so best to stop the hate now.

 When your mind is open enough, you can see the profound in things that people completely ignore. PAY ATTENTION TO TRIFLES.

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Nugget of wisdom from Fawn's neighbor in Santa Monica, upstairs Joey – the lesson of the hot stove.

Today's episode revolves around the fable, “The Frog and the Scorpion”

“The Scorpion and the Frog”

 “A scorpion and a frog meet on the bank of a stream and the scorpion asks the frog to carry him across on its back. The frog asks, "How do I know you won't sting me?" The scorpion says, "Because if I do, I will die too."

The frog is satisfied, and they set out, but in midstream, the scorpion stings the frog. The frog feels the onset of paralysis and starts to sink, knowing they both will drown, but has just enough time to gasp "Why?" Replies the scorpion: "It's my nature...".”

Our super friend, psychotherapist KJ Nasrul joins us to discuss:

the changing of minds; our belief systems, specially in times of argument.

Can a person fundamentally change?

How do you know when to reenter a friendship?

How do you know when to end a friendship?

THEN…

Fawn: I have lots of people I had to totally cut off like the scorpion, right? The end from the very beginning, I knew their nature. I knew how they were, they were showing it to me, but I assumed, Oh, they'll never do that to me. You know, the last ones were some of the yoga crew around where we live.

I saw how they treated each other, their family members. And I assumed they wouldn't do that with me. And we had the established where we're family, men were sisters. And then all of a sudden they treated me like family, which is how they treated themselves, which was not good. And I had to cut it off, and I knew they wouldn't change. They were the scorpion.  And they already stung me and boy, did it take a long time to heal from that. So never again, because they tried to apologize. They tried to come back and I'm like, “Nope!”.

Matt: But if you take a look at that, you just take a look at, let's say the yoga people, they get continual reinforcement to act the way that they do.

They get continual positive reinforcement to act the way that they do because they have blood family, if you will daughters, et cetera. And they act that way towards them, but there's still that relationship. And so they've had continual reinforcement that they can act like an a-hole and it's going to be okay.

You know, the way that, oftentimes families will fight and they will just lay it all out. They will just devastate one another and then they'll figure out how to get back together without talking about it.

So there's no impetus for them to change other than the fact that they they've lost your friendship, but they can, they can find an excuse. They can excuse that away and make it your problem or your fault.

Question: Have you been friends with a scorpion? Have been bitten, or knew that they would bite, but continued to have a friendship out of desperation of wanting to have a friend so badly that you played with “fire”?

why do you think the frog did it anyway?

Matt: Otherwise we wouldn't have a fable, but also I think that the frog dog is the optimist on the outside and the inside. He believes in the good in everyone and he believes everyone can change. And he believed in the logical argument back to emotion versus logic, the scorpion stung, because that's what he does. It's an emotional thing. Whereas the frog understood on a logical level that if he got stung, he would die in the middle of the river. And so he believed that the scorpion would take the logical argument, but the scorpion was never going to do that because it's not in his nature.

What's the difference between evolving and changing? Can your nature change?

How do we deal with all this at work?

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KJ INFO:

Instagram: @blissbeginswithin as well as at @musingsonother 

Podcast: Stories of Astonishing Light.

www.blissbeginswithin.com.

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Nugget of wisdom from Santa Monica: Moses and the Ten Commandments – Why hearing a crowd chant your name is important.

It is a healing. It is validation. We need that. My friend hearing his name chanted - that's a good thing. It gives you that strength and that validation, that power that says "I exist. I am powerful. I am loved".

What is it about words? I always say words have vibration, words have power. There's so much energy associated with sound. The internal emotion logic works between two people. Two people are arguing and one person takes the emotional argument. The other person takes logical argument. We're working in a whole different system. We're working against imposter syndrome. We're working against everybody tells me whatever it is I want to hear, except for there's one person who says that hurtful comment. That's the only person (maybe I feel because I'm an imposter walking through the world because we all feel this way at some time where, you know, I don't belong. I'm not worthy. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not), so this is the only person who is telling me the truth and you start to become emotionally connected to the one person who tells you the truth. And it also can be because you are, you do feel like you're wearing this. It's like you're wearing a coat. This is your body. You're wearing it like a coat. And you're you. You go through life sometimes worried that somebody is going to call you out on your BS. And so if somebody calls you out on anything, you feel like this is the one person who is being honest with me. This is why we are so emotionally attached to that ONE ugly comment.

Anecdote:  this company called Despair: they do these demotivational motivational posters. There's one for dysfunctional. The only thing in common between all of your unsatisfying relationships is you. So it's really hard to shuck that off or understand that.

More on criticism: (the unkind mean things people throw at you): …and then we have being a youth or being an unexperienced; un-fully formed kind of a person who's still trying to figure out who they are. And people love to tell you who you are. Why do they do that? Because they want you to be just like them. This concept takes you into a brand new completely other world of "the way I live is the best way to live. So you should live just like me, because then you living that way validates me".

Matt: …”and that's a lot of what I grew up in was, I lived this way, my parents lived a certain way and the people who they associated with lived basically the exact same way. And if you didn't kind of live that way, you were a little, either a little off, if it was only a little bit different or you were nuts, if it was completely different or they couldn't even fathom how you would, but by the same token, because you're their child and they are tutoring you and they are, providing a role model for you, if you choose not to live the same way they did, then you invalidate them too. So there's a jumble of all these emotions caught up inside of people”.

Fawn: Why do you think that that happens? Why do you think that people are so attached to you being like them as the only way to be? Why isn't it that they have a slate that says, you know what, you don't have to be like me, cause I want to be different; even if you are my child or my student. Why is that the common thread? Is it going back to when we were hunting and gathering, and you have to stick together. I mean, I don't understand where that thinking comes from.

Matt: It does. It has. It evolved from this, team-based kind of a feeling where, I'm on a team, we're all going forward. And this gets, I think, lost inside of a lot of emotions, but on some level, I think people like being validated. People like being told they're okay. And people like feeling like they're okay. In the best way of somebody telling you it's certainly the best, but the best way of feeling that way on a day-to-day basis is for other people to have seen you and emulated you. So if I'm a big fan of band “A” and all my friends discover that band through me and they're all big fans too, then I feel good for some reason; some esoteric reason.

Fawn: What if we approach everybody and notice their uniqueness and bring that up as a conversation starter or even throughout, within a longstanding relationship. And I come up to you and I say, wow, I really like the way you do A, B, and C. I really like how you think about A, B, and C? I wish I was like that. I tend to do this. So therefore I'm creating a situation where I acknowledge you much like Moses, I'm chanting you. So you feel validated, understood, heard and seen. And at the same time, I think in a kind of a depreciative of way, I'm saying, but I'm this way. In a way I'm kind of saying, I totally respect and admire what you're doing. I wish I could do that, but this is how I am. In a way I'm saying, I totally respect and admire what you're doing. I wish I could do that, but this is how I am. If we were to approach each other regularly in this way of acknowledging each other's uniqueness or your way of being, that way you don't have to beat me over the head with your way of being, and you don't have to rain on my parade for being who I am.

Matt: This can work with friends and colleagues, but parents is another ball of wax; relatives, another ball of wax.

Fawn: Why can't it work with them?

Matt: There's too much emotion.

Matt gets emotional about raising their daughters and talks about what they're going to be when they grow up.

Fawn: I don't think about what they're going to be when they grow up. I always think they already are what they are. I don't wait for that. What are you going to be when you grow up? What are you going to be, you already ARE. They already ARE what they are going to be when they grow up. It's all there. And there's no one thing to be when you grow up. There are many ways in many careers to have and many different ways. I think we have to watch out for that because the day of “this is your career until you die” is gone. You have to always shift and grow and do other things and not one career path will be it for you, perhaps. I think it will be rare when someone has one career.

MORE ON CRITICISM:

Question: Why does one bad comment ruin everything???????? How can we defend against it? Some people put walls up and are on the ready to take on any nay-sayer with a horrible comment. But that takes a lot of energy. Then again, so does being hurt, getting hurt when you are clearly caught off guard.

ANSWER: because we need to recognize that emotion trumps logic. We need to figure out a way where we can hold on to a very positive view of ourselves.

SOME TECHNIQUES TO WARD OFF THE BAD FEELINGS:

Fawn's assignment: Fawn was given an assignment from a psychic to help her get over the hurt feelings. This prayer, where she had to fill in the blanks with the name of the person that she had been hurt by.

Lord, please help me to forgive ______________. Please help ____________ to forgive me.

Please help us to forgive each other. Please Lord. Thank you, Lord.

Matt: an easy, quick one is to call people out right away (but what if you just can't think of that – like when you are caught off guard?)

Matt: then the other thing is, you own it, you're like, “Oh, okay, maybe they raise a good point, but you're trying as hard as you can, and it's hard to stay in your logical frame of mind.

Matt: remind myself that it's just their opinion. And just because it's their opinion, doesn't make it valid. It doesn't make it invalid either. We have to evaluate and look at it, but again, it's like. You're trying as hard as you can to not let it cross over into emotion. As soon as it crosses over into emotion, it becomes “how dare you?!” and you're never going to end up in a good place from an a “how dare you”, because either the other person is going to double down on their emotions or, and it can feel even worse, the other person is going to cave and say, “I'm sorry” and not be. And if somebody feels like they're being straight with you, you don't want to get rid of that. You don't want them to feel nervous about being straight with you, but when they strike you really close to home, you've got to figure out what to do with that. And honestly, it's a skill that you learn. And it's a skill!

Fawn recalls this advice: the way to turn it around is to ask them (the offender of the rude comment) to repeat word for word, what they said, Like you didn't hear it the first time. You say:  “I'm sorry, could you repeat exactly what you just said again? I didn't quite hear you” and make them repeat it so they can hear what they said and if they don't realize it, then you say. “I believe you're on purpose, trying to bring me down or to hurt me and that's not going to work here”.

Matt: the overarching technique is what I've described so many times as the Popeye syndrome, which is “I am what I am”. So understanding who and what you are, understanding your strengths, understanding your limitations and owning them.

Now of course people always say, oh yes, but you want to attack your weaknesses and make them strengths and all the rest of it. And there are occasions where you can't and there are occasions when you can, and you do when you can and when you're interested and when you have that desire and you don't, when you can't and you play to your strengths. Understand who and what you are. Understand your strengths, understand your limitations and own them.

Note from Fawn: We really don't have frequent get-togethers and when we do, it's very emotionally charged, for example, it's a wedding, it's a birthday, it's Thanksgiving, it's Christmas, it's whatever holiday or a funeral. All the gatherings that we tend to have are very emotionally charged. Much like we don't frequent at get-togethers we don't frequent in conversations. So, because we don't practice because we don't build up our vocabulary, because we don't have a friend who likes to hit us where we're weak, we're not used to a communication. We're not used to tough conversations. We're not used to uncomfortableness. We tend to retreat. We don't have enough gatherings. We don't have enough conversation and we don't know how to have the conversational back and forth and we don't know how to handle criticism because we get caught off guard.

Another note from Fawn: When you go to bed and you go to sleep, you get a reset, unless you're still totally fuming over whatever happened that could go into years, right. Of deficit, years of deficit, over what somebody said or what somebody did. Much like brushing your teeth at the end of the day, we need to clear out all the nonsense and think about what really bothered us. And much like the emotional currency that we were talking about, we need to put the hammer down;to bring down the gavel after we ask yourselves how much more are we going to invest in this, and be aware of the fact that we're spending so much money; emotional currency on whatever it was. Do we want to continue with that as a, as a leader of a nation; as a leader of our corporation, which is our life; our nation is our life. How much more are we going to invest in this one particular idiotic thing?  Bring the gavel down and say zero! A clear mind at the end of the day is what we need.

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Nugget- The blind date – How to be gracious

“To Be a Good Guest”

When I was little, my immediate family quite honestly, was pretty stressed all the time and angry and kind of hateful. I was always surprised by how the relatives put up with. I actually had to cut them off. It's not something I did lightly. It took many, many therapists to get me out of that situation. As a whole though, my family and its dynamics was very much the movie, “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”. It was exactly like that but Persian. The relatives would get together every week; parties all the time, get-togethers all the time; always in each other's business and very loud and the dinners are not just like quiet dinners with seven people.

As a child, every time I had to go to one of these parties, (I mean, other people would call them parties for us, it was just a Friday night), the amount of stuff that would happen in our home that I grew up in was just not happy. There was screaming, yelling, criticism, body shaming, all kinds of shaming, you name it. It was heavy. And this was right before going to see the relatives. As a kid, you can't just switch that off and go to a party and be the life of the party as a guest in someone's home (at least, I couldn't). Every time I was at a party, I would be in a corner sulking. At parties, I just wanted to be alone. I didn't want to be around anyone. My feelings were hurt and no one else really understood that. My relatives would try to force me to dance and grab my arms, drag me to get up out of the chair, to get me away from the corner. And it just hurt my feelings even more. I didn't understand the concept of a party or being a guest, even being a host.  To this day, when I have to go to a party I have inner turmoil because I feel less than, ugly, body morph issues galore stemming from those times as a child.

It took years, many, many years to realize the responsibility I have as a guest and how important that is. It took being away from all that drama, moving away and hosting my own parties, attending all kinds of parties, to realize the art of being a good guest.

What is it to be a good guest?  As much as I have empathy for my childhood self, I realized the act of sitting in a corner, sulking and not being a participant is giving the haters all the power, it's such a downer for the whole place and a waste of time. We are here to live and to enjoy life. And just like that, I realized all of a sudden, like a flip of a coin, that I was the life of the party.  

Here's what I do: I interview people at parties like they're major celebrities. I asked them questions about their lives. I marvel at what they are wearing, about how great they are, how great they look, and how interesting they are. I will give people the red carpet treatment. I enjoy the food and drink and express gratitude for the amazing feast. I dance like a fool and laugh. I help carry the party. And here's the thing, the party is in daily life.

These are the things I am trying to teach my daughters. But really they were born with these instincts, until we came across one mean person after another and now I have to make sure they are brave and strong again; so they can go out boldly, enjoy and embrace life again, before the time the haters tried to dampen their flame. We all need to embrace life again!

My little girl (at two years old) with gusto, would step into every room and victoriously make an announcement that we were there (that we had arrived). We would go to swim lessons. We would push the doors of the public indoor swimming pool open together and with arms stretched out like she was embracing the entire place and all the swimmers, with voice echoing loudly she would exclaim that we're swimming today! The only people that seemed to get that genius were the “old” people (in the water aerobics class) who laughed and nodded in agreement, acknowledging the privilege of life and of the activity at hand.

There's a reason why you were invited to the party (at a party or life in general). Figure that out. Go out unscripted. Don't try to control the conversation. Just go with the flow. Get interested. Become unpredictable and interesting. Be open to having parties of your own and invite someone dangerous(but not psycho) over for tea! Improvise! Interact! Dress up! Wear something to make yourself chuckle.

I think, as a culture, we forgot how to have a good time. I have found that when people get together, they need to be inebriated to push back feelings. It shouldn't have to be that way. I just think that that we're not used to giving parties. We're not used to entertaining and when and if we do, all our issues are there. Think of it as kind working out (exercising).  When we work out a lot and use our muscles, all the kinks go away, the pain goes away and we get used to it. We get into the rhythm. It all becomes fluid, but if we're not used to entertaining and entertain only for special occasions, (like birthdays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc.), when people get together in that situation, all the resentments are there. But if we entertain more often, those issues don't matter as much (they're old news). The kinks get buffered out, they get get oiled and everything becomes fluid. We become fluid. We become a part of that dance of socialization.

If we're not used to entertaining, we don't know how to be a good guests. We don't know how to be a good host. We can have fun disagreeing with people; have our views stretched by totally different ideas other than our own. We can afford to be completely, unapologetically authentic. We should showcase who we are as well as applaud others for who they are. Let's be ok with confrontation and treat it as no big thing.

To be able to converse with someone and to have a relationship with someone, you have to know what language they use (what words they use), you have to be aware of their wordage and how they speak, so when you have a conversation with them, you know what words trigger or how they communicate. It's kind of the same when we're going to the house. We need to know how they believe good hosting is and what kind of a guest we need to be in their home. It's a fine line; a fine line that we have to figure out as we go.

Soon this pandemic and social physical isolation will be behind us. Now is the time to start preparing and to start thinking about how we go over to someone's sanctuary, reading social people's cues. There's going to be a lot of social awkwardness for sure. And the social awkwardness was there, but no one was really admitting to it. I think. Just bear all of that in mind as the host and as the guest.

Think about what kind of get-togethers you want to have because folks, friends, this time of loneliness and isolation will be over. We need to get through it, and before you know it, we'll be hanging out in person again.

Think about being a good guest and what kind of conversation starters you're going to have, or like how you're going to notice things you've never noticed before and seeing some other person in the room and how you'd approach them.

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Fawn feels a kinship, like a family type feeling about certain people, to which Matt says they are not friends because they don't even know you!

Fawn says we're all connected, at the risk of sounding way too woo woo. So yeah, this person doesn't know I exist perhaps, but they've touched my life profoundly. And because they touched my life, I shared how they touched my life with my close friends and so they also get touched and changed because of this person. Do they (the person that hasn't met us) know how they changed lives?

When I tell other people about this person and it changes their life, it's a ripple effect.

My idea of friendship is getting a little bit more fluid, especially in the time of 2020, and the fact that we can't be together. Before 2020, our criteria was that to have a substantial friendship, you had to be together within a close proximity and not on social media, but in real life.

What are we going to do? How can we define it?

Are we growing as friends? Are we growing together towards something?

Matt: I'm still gonna take the hard line and say, there's a mystical connection that happens when you're physically present; physically adjacent to one another.

Fawn talks about how sometimes all she has is a tree to lean on… “I'm just saying, I'm trying to get it (the support of a friendly force) wherever I can find it. And if you think about it spiritually, you're never alone. There's always,  you're a part of everything. Everything is a part of you. You have to broaden your scope.”

Fawn and Matt totally disagree about what a friendship is.

Fawns point: it is about connection. You have to recognize the connection. So when you are in a physical friendship situation, you can say, yeah, this is the connection. You have to look for it, even though you're locked down. Well, if you want to talk about it, as far as it feeling like you have to exercise those muscles, you have to exercise attention to the feelings. You need to have those feelings to live. It's like water and air. You need those feelings. And I'm saying to you sometimes you're in solitary mode and you need to have those feelings, first of all, within yourself. You have to be your own friend. You have to recognize happiness within yourself and not from the outside world. And that's key to friendship. You have to have that knowledge. You have to have that expertise about the feeling of friendship when you meet other people. It will enhance everything because you know that feeling, you know that dance, and you can pick it out from the ether.

THEN A MIRACLE HAPPENS! Fawn convinces Matt to shift his view!  Matt: Friendship has to have a component of effort. There is no passivity in friendship.

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Go to our website to eamil and to leave us a message: www.ourfriendlyworld.com

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Then there's the Camino de Santiago (the Way of St. James) which is a large network of ancient pilgrim routes stretching across Europe and coming together at the tomb of St. James (Santiago in Spanish) in Santiago de Compostela in north-west Spain. We talk about this path and Fawn talks about listening to Caroline Myss and her experience as she walked part of this path and the insight she (Caroline Myss) shared.

There's a fine line to everything. We can walk on a path and if we veer even one step to the left or the right, we'll have a completely different experience. As a photographer, Fawn is especially true in her field of art and how looking at the same thing, we will all have a completely different perspective.

 Matt: “I think generally speaking, when you're walking the path, you're meant to walk, it feels easy. It feels comfortable. It feels right…and so it's about trying to find where that spot is or where that path is.”

Fawn: “I felt like a needle in an acupuncture session (there are some paths and places that I feel perfectly in tune with and others I pop out of and just don't belong in)…it's just taking into consideration everything that's involved; even the forces that you may not be aware of, that you can't see, you have to feel for it.”

On today's episode, we are talking about foundation -  Isaac Asimov's “Foundation”. Matt explains the story and explains how Asimov is one of the great classic science fiction writers (science fiction writers of the 1940 and 50s were the seers of our society).

Fawn's take on Asimov and the questions that arise for her are: what are we fighting for? What is it that we're striving for?  What are we going to create as far as a society in which there's balance, truth, and something symbiotic. How are we going to create that?

Once again, we bring in Aristotle and his Nicomachean Ethics (the three kinds of friendship) and bring it into focus as it relates to Asimov's “Foundation” story. Aristotle pointed out the three forms of friendship as 1), there are those who love you because you are useful to them. 2), there are those who love you because your company provides them with pleasure. 3), is what Aristotle says is when you know, you have true friendship, like lifelong friendship that will withstand: those who love you because you're a good person.

In relation to the Nichomachean ethics and relating Aristotle's ethics to Asimov's Foundation: it's all about knowing who we are, knowing how we are useful, knowing how we are of service, and knowing how we make other people feel.

Matt shares a painful lesson about a work relationship.

Matt's advice is to focus your attention where it matters and figuring out where it matters can be a tricky thing.

Matt: “…and if you want to look at it, very digital and hard and logical and everything else, same goes for friendships. You know, you cast your net out upon, across the waters it feels like to me sometimes. And sometimes you catch a fish and sometimes you don't.  And where you don't, where you don't get something back; if your friendship is strictly a one way street, it's maybe not a friendship.”

Fawn explains that to know if there is balance is key, and using Aristotle's ethics we can save so much time and heartache because once we are in the beginning of getting to know another person, we can (in a non-charged way), look at a situation and figure out which of these three is happening. At this point and using Nichomachian tools, we're not emotionally attached, so we're able to see clearly. We're not going to get all bent out of shape when we realize a person is just using our friendship for their own selfish reasons. This works in business also.

Matt brings up Herman Hesse and examples (33 minute point) of different forms of attachments, where friends rely on each other's gifts and how these types of friendships have been beneficial and have been the way of things for thousands of years (once again Matt is respectfully in disagreement to Fawn and Aristotle's point of view).

The “Foundation” story becomes the example of how we are today, in our society, and how we take care of ourselves and each other. How does “CONVENIENCE” play a major factor? How is “convenience” related to WWII and our present state? How can we create a better life? How can we create change? Fawn and Matt share their ideas.

www.ourfriendlyworld.com

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The Pearl of wisdom is to enjoy your life for God's sake. Just enjoy. Notice the trifles. There is really no need to rush. Put on your roller blades, roller skates, flip-flops, sit, sit at a coffee shop holding on to a cup of your favorite coffee, play, eat, watch the light change, drink a great delicious drink, ride a bicycle, feel the sand between your toes, feel the sun on your body, take a stroll, do a little dance down the sidewalk…you get the idea, right?

The focus of this week's podcast is on the alpha, beta, omega, gamma, sigma… definitions of personalities that seem so rigid and outdated according to Fawn and Matt, as they break down the meaning of each stereotype and discuss who and how people really are away from these limited beliefs that society tries to impose.

Fawn and Matt share their experiences.  Fawn shares her own limited beliefs about herself and how she realized that her friendship with one of her greatest friends got weird for her at one point, without her friend even realizing it, all because of her (Fawn's) own insecurities about herself and her professional qualifications/identities where she felt “less than” or subordinate and not the alpha dog she perhaps wanted to be.

The DEFINITIONS: (We DISLIKE most of THESE DEFINITIONS! They are awful! One of the sources for these definitions came from themindsjournal.com

Alpha is generally considered the strongest of the group. They're very, very competitive. They're aggressive, very domineering. They're like the influencer. They're the ones that take charge. They're very bossy and often they're considered uncaring. They're just kind of like a bull. They just go and go for it. They take over.

Beta is the supportive person, who is sensitive, modest, easygoing, and reliable.  They're collaborative. They tend to be more reserved. They're more responsible and they're often seen as insecure.

Omega is the type of person that will be seen as neurotic, laid back, eccentric, and least likely to take initiative. They're considered, the lowest on the chain of command. They tend to have low self-esteem. They are seen as having dismal lives, and yet they're creative. They're, unambitious and unsuccessful in their careers.

Gamma are seen as restless, adventurous, and fun. They like to do their own thing and create their own rules without giving into peer pressure. Alphas may mature into gammas they say, and become more considerate.  Gammas are more social, socially conscious, and more diplomatic. For Alphas to become better human beings, they would turn into gammas.  Gammas generally appear to lack assertiveness. They freely express their emotions and they aren't very interested in status symbols or gaining popularity.

Sigma the definition is they're sardonic, cynical, bitter scornful. (That's what Sardonic means. I had to look that up - a little side note; sardonic comes from the Greek adjective Sardonios, which actually describes a plant from a place called Sardinia that supposedly made your face contort into a horrible grin... right before you died from its poison. The Greeks used sardonic for laughter, but we only use it when someone's humor is also mocking or ironic.  There's a term called the sardonic grinAnd so it makes people look like they have a sinister smile, like the joker and Batman).

Simgas are Cynical, bitter scornful and sardonic. They're definitely outsiders to the social game yet they manage to win and confuse everyone in the process. They are really good at challenging alphas and ridiculing them and making alphas really mad.

Okay, so, wow. That's way too many. WE thought we were going to only focus on alphas and betas, but here's the point: this is exactly the kind of criticism; another form of judgment and short-sighted way of thinking about each other. That is so rigid and so outdated, and it has got to go.

Matt: “…people start to assume that if you're terrible at any one thing, that defined you as a person for all things, you must be terrible because you do run into people who seem to be great at everything. The trick to that I think is that people who seem to be great at everything only show you the things that are great at.”

Matt recalls a time of competition with omelets in the neighborhood. “So it can be a bad thing to try and control, to boss, to use your power, to get your own way, because ultimately you may end up the King of an empty kingdom.”

Also takes us back to Aikido and the whole martial arts sense of things that if you are Oak; if you're rigid all the time in your beliefs and in your stance, you will break. If you bend with the wind like bamboo, if you're like water, you go with the flow, you are resilient and strong. Things will work out much like at the beginning, when we talk about taking things easy, enjoying your life, and going with the flow.

To connect with Fawn and Matt, reach out at www.ourfriendlyworld.com and send us an email.

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This week's topic is about the first time you felt the power of friendship and what it did for you and your life.

The alliance that we talk about this week is all about the sense that together, you're able to do ANYTHING. You can overcome racial injustice, you can overcome economic injustice. You're able to overcome any obstacle or any hurt in front of you, TOGETHER.

This is why we began this friendly movement, because we've found that our society has really deteriorated as far as people really being together in neighborhoods, offices and at home, and how in-person friendships, walking arm in arm is now rare.

Friendship and the alliance that is created within that sanctuary are incredibly powerful and we wonder why it has disappeared and why we've become so disconnected. Together, we can create great beauty, peace and strength and have a kinder, healthier, richer, more compassionate world, and a stronger, more balanced society.

Do you have a first Alliance story? When was the first time that you felt the kind of friendship where you felt the power of a union, the power of a bond that made you feel invincible? What was it that drew you together? What was the common thread?

Feeling the great life pressures, not feeling supported and feeling upset and overwhelmed (and maybe not even realizing you have been feeling all of this), can wreak havoc on us, our lives, our health, and our relationships, and as a result, bad things can happen. When you're in the thick of it, you don't understand that you're in pain because it feels normal until you get a break from it (if you get a break from it).  

So we need to support each other. People do communicate their deepest pains. It may be subtly. It may be slyly. And if you're paying attention, you can pick up on it and you can ask the questions.  A friendship is a cocoon where you can grow into what you're supposed to be, within a safe environment. You're protected within this friendship, within this circle.

We've all been disconnected. Come back and don't judge so much. Everybody's in pain. Don't judge it. Let's just be together and offer comfort. Let's provide a safe space for our friends to express the things they need to, and then in return, they will provide us a safe space so we can communicate the things we need to communicate.

Many of us have been treated “less than”, felt generally alone and absolutely isolated. It is a horrible feeling. How can we be heard and also hear our fellow brothers and sisters? It's about trying to focus in on what we can do. And here's the issue: we don't have a society where friends are a thing, (like real, for real friends, not talking Facebook friends but someone who has your back and can offer a shoulder to lean on).

  When we don't have friendship, when we don't have support, our capacity is limited, and we tend to lash out. This is why making sure that we develop bonds with one another is so important. It's time to begin talking and paying attention to each other and finding common ground.

An alliance makes for a healthier, happier life. We all need a friend we can take a break with, have some fun with, even if it's just a superficial friendship, one you're just having fun with. We always talk about the three categories of friendship from Aristotle's Nicomachean ethics and how the true lasting friend is the one who loves you for you, but sometimes you just need that friend to have meaningless, stupid fun with. That can be enough to get you through.

We need human connection. We're social animals, people. We are animals. We are social animals. This is how we've survived for hundreds of thousands of years

The key about people and temper tantrums; when you see somebody lashing out, getting angry, getting frustrated, yelling, raising their voice, acting like a child, you have to see this person as a person and start to understand the why's of it. Why are they acting this way? What led them to this place? And you know, of course there are those times where that's not going to work, but in general, people have bad days and people have bad days for a number of reasons and you need to have more compassion for them.

Be a good host. Try. Try and listen. And if that doesn't work, walk away, but remember how you become friends in the first place. You meet by chance. You discuss something completely inane. And then you realize that there might be something deeper and you exchange information or you see them every day on the playground. And then you slowly but surely become friends because of shared interests and shared experiences. So work on being a good host for starters. A good host knows when to bounce people out the house, but a good host also knows how to make people who want to be there, feel welcomed.

Please support us by leaving a review on itunes, subscribing to our podcast.

www.ourfriendlyworld.com

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Magneto cardiogram and it measures the magnetic field of the heart. These machines record this field to be about 12 feet in diameter, but they're all saying that the machines are actually limited. That in fact they believe the, the field to be infinite, which makes sense.

How do we “Agree to Disagree”, especially now with so much charged emotion within our divided nation in the United States? How can we maneuver the misconstrued tones, the arguments that grow, the unexpressed resentments, the unheard voices, the differences of psyche, culture, sex, race, social/economic, generational points of view, the mess under the rug? How should we step away when both sides are deeply emotional? Can we find a shared reality? Do we have a shared reality? How can we acquire humility and be open to being wrong – can we commit of the possibility of being wrong?

The topic is super big, so big we are going to do many shows on this subject and we invite our special guest (our super-friend), Psychotherapist KJ Nasrul. We begin the conversation today.

About KJ:

Kimberly "KJ" Nasrul is a licensed psychotherapist and musician nursing an obsession with words...and a gift for making grilled cheese sandwiches. She helps healers and essential frontline workers recover their resilient stories via music, art and compassionate conversations so that they can continue to uplift and heal their communities.

When she's not planning her next traveling adventure, kJ can be found on her podcast Stories of Astonishing Light jamming with musicians, artists and trailblazers about creativity and mental wellness accessibility for all communities.

KJ's a Disaster Mental Health Responder (Psychological First Aid) and Quality Improvement Specialist for personal health privacy (so sexy, right?).

Connect With KJ:

website: https://blissbeginswithin.com

podcast: https://storiesofastonishinglight.buzzsprout.com/

instagram:  @BlissBeginsWithin and @MusingsOnOther

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You need HYGGE in your life, especially these days, guys, this is how we can feel better! Here are some words words associated with HYGGE – comfort, cozy, relaxation, indulgence, and gratitude. This is about taking pleasure in the presence of a gentle thing, soothing things like a freshly brewed cup of coffee, cozy socks, food, drink, pastries, whatever your favorite things are, you partake in them and have them all around you. There's even a HYGGE manifesto containing 10 things that will get you to a HYGGE state! We share them with you!

There's a book that's called the book of” HYGGE  -  the Danish art of contentment, comfort and connection”. There's a quote from it:  “a practical way of creating sanctuary in the middle of a very real life and a cure for S a D” a cure for sad, which stands for seasonal affective disorder.

In this episode, we learn about the unfortunate engagement Fawn had long before she met Matt, her fiancé's very racist mother and the ultimatum she was given before her departure of her photography project to Ethiopia, how she came to being in the same room as Caroline Myss, and learning first-hand the meaning and significance of EMOTIONAL CURRENCY. Then of course, Matt has his take on the subject and the hilarity ensues over who came up with the concept. They both agree however that this form of currency is a major factor to consider in any relationship and discuss how to develop a healthy account.

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This week's pearl of Wisdom from Santa Monica comes via Fawn's Santa Monica Bathroom conversation delivery and what was shared with her that was a game changer. There are three words that have to this day been chanted by Fawn and those close to her. We talk about a couple of things here regarding the pearl of wisdom. Number one is what you focus on grows. So focusing on money coming, it's going to make that grow and happen. When Fawn was first learning to drive, her point of focus would have her not able to drive straight because she focused on a short, short distance (because she was fixated on the hood of the car) instead on the road ahead. You need to look way down the road where you want to go. Don't focus on that spot so close to you. Look to where you want to go. Look really far out, look way ahead of you. Your vision always has to be shifting. It's about knowing what the next step is, and knowing where you're going. If I have both of those things, things will feel pretty darn good on any particular aspect of your life. Look to where you want to go. Look really far out.

When you're riding a mountain bike down a trail, if you focus on the pothole in the middle of the trail, you're going to hit it. If you focus on the clean line around it, you're going to do that.

So it's all about where you draw your attention. If you keep your attention focused on the negative, well then guess what the negative is more, more likely to happen. And if you focus on the positive, it's the positive.

Show topic: “Busy” Have we become shackled by an invisible force? Fawn argues YES! Matt has his take on the subject that is more optimistic than Fawn's. Fawn believes this is the four letter word that has contributed to the loneliness epidemic. From business, the corporate world, to standing in your kitchen, feeling overwhelmed, to feeling if you're not busy you're are missing something, that you're not doing enough,  to the feeling of guilt that is all over everything, we discuss what it all means and go with Matt's sage advice: “on a day to day, focusing at least for a minute, a while, on the things that are truly important and realizing what those things are that you need to completely break yourself away from wherever you are. That's key.” Bottom line- everyone is operating at their highest capacity and we need to relax and appreciate each other.

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Criticism:  The practice of judging the merits and faults of something.

Fawn thinks they're the downfall of our culture, of our society. She can't stand them. ARE THEY VITAL TO OUR SOCIETY????What kind of critics are there? Art, business, coding, neighborhood people, friends, family, randoms, yoga women…Is there a semblance of a constructive opinion, constructive criticism?????

We talk about the HATERS (thank you Katt Williams and Busy Philipps).Then there is the silent critic: complicitness

This episode almost didn't get aired. Fawn ended up in tears towards the end and Matt stepped away from the mic. The issue was resolved. If only we could have more conversations like this one (that got uncomfortable for a minute), we would all end up feeling good.

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“Emotion builds Taj Mahals. Logic says F you and walks away. There is a certain element of compartmentalization. There's a certain element of looking holistically at your life and saying, does my life suck or does my life rule? If your life in general rules, one tiny little piece of one tiny little piece of gray sky, isn't going to affect it.”

Everybody has moments that they suck, and everybody has moments that they rule. It's a question of what you focus on grows; where you want to spend your emotional currency.

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In this episode Fawn and Matt talk about the science and emotional component to this very important and basic need and relate it to our lives, friendships as well as the power plays in corporations.

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As the conversation gets even deeper, we talk about how compassion has a life force, that it's the glue and the foundation for love. Love doesn't last without compassion, which leads us to explore the role our jobs have in shaping our lives and how we can turn that around.

We also have the 90 second rule to allow your to fully experience and feel, after which brings you freedom from negative emotions.

Stay tuned for the last half of the episode as Matt really goes for it and lays down some fabulous wisdom.

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This episode further explores our interactions with one another at the office and in our personal lives and is about applying the Art of Peace to the Art of Friendship.

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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.