Telos Initiative
Telos is a term used by the philosopher Aristotle to refer to the final cause or purpose of something. Our telos is to seek truth and cultivate wisdom using dialogue and rational discussion. The podcast will cover a wide range of topics in various genres and we hope to grow with our audience toward our ultimate purpose in this mystifying existence.
Telos Initiative
Episode 15 - Self Mastery
Unlock the secrets of self-mastery and elevate your personal growth journey with hosts Angelo Cole, Chris Vigil, and Matt Maes in this captivating episode of the Telos Initiative. Ever wondered why some people seem to seamlessly blend knowledge and practice to excel in their crafts? Discover how practical experience can outshine theoretical knowledge, with engaging examples like woodworking and blacksmithing. Our conversation promises insights into the delicate dance between planning and executing, illuminating how over-preparation can sometimes hinder progress. With compelling metaphors, we delve into the art of skill refinement, drawing comparisons between cooking and the continuous cycle of learning and doing.
As we navigate the path of self-mastery, we shine a light on the transformative power of adaptability. Can embracing change lead to enhanced physical fitness, organizational prowess, and critical thinking skills? Join us as we explore how a strong mind-body connection can propel you to tackle life's hurdles with newfound strength and assurance. Our discussion uncovers the communal benefits of self-discovery, highlighting how sharing your unique talents can enrich community ties and foster deeper relationships. From the joys of learning new languages to the strategic foresight honed through chess and video games, we illustrate how passion and obsession can drive self-improvement and societal contributions.
Concluding with a thoughtful examination of aligning passion with goals, we challenge you to envision an unstoppable future self. By embracing change as an active process, you can direct your personal evolution towards positive outcomes. Reflect with us on the role of consciousness in recognizing and aiming for potential, as we touch on the acceptance of discipline and functional fitness for greater personal influence. With gratitude for your support, we encourage you to connect with us and stay tuned for more inspiring conversations in our upcoming episodes. Join us on this exhilarating journey of self-mastery and personal growth!
Hello everyone, welcome back to the Telos Initiative. I'm Angelo Cole, I'm Chris Vigil.
Speaker 2:And I'm Matt Mays.
Speaker 1:Today we are going to talk about self-mastery, oh yeah. So, matt, this being a topic that you proposed, why don't you kick us off? Maybe let's start with what we always start with, and start with the definition for what you think self-mastery is.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Well. Let's say, when we're born into the world, we have no distinction between ourselves and our experience, and as we go through the world we discover that there is this relationship between us and this world around us and we have things that are happening to us through external experience and we and through that we have to learn how to comport ourselves. We have to learn how to manage ourselves and be able to be masters of not only ourselves, but then we can affect the world around us too through our influence and through our capacity that we're able to be integrated and whole with ourselves. And I believe that's a lifelong journey. It really never ends. But through going on that journey then we can have the fullest and most extraordinary and most integrated lives that we possibly can. So that's why this is such an important topic to me and something I think that ties in really well with all of the different topics that we have talked about on this show.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 3:Okay, yeah, so with it being a lifelong journey. There's no real mastery of that self-mastery.
Speaker 1:It's really just lifelong journeying I don't know of something is to have so much experience and practice at doing that specific skill that it comes basically second nature, I would say to the extent that you could show someone else how to utilize that skill in themselves. So a master isn't necessarily someone who's achieved a fullness of knowledge in that particular skill, but they know enough about it to integrate others.
Speaker 3:Okay, so it's not just about information, it's also about experience.
Speaker 1:I would say, experience is one one form of learning right. It's probably one of the best ways to learn and master a skill right.
Speaker 3:You can't just talk about how to catch a baseball.
Speaker 1:You have to know how to do it sure like who's better at woodworking and building a table? Is it someone who's actually built tables or is it someone who's read all of the steps and instructions on building a table? I would say the person who's actually gotten his hands dirty and sat down and worked on tables has had a better chance to really get into the nuances of table building. Really get into the nuances of table building. You know all the little things to avoid and oh, actually, if I do this, like the instructions say, it's not quite, does not come out quite right. Or here's a little trick I use in order to do this part faster and there's just a lot of nuance and particulars about everything. In reality, that it's. It's hard to sum things up, um, just by writing them down and trying to digest them without actually doing them absolutely very very well said.
Speaker 2:You know this has been a recent revelation of mine is I love planning things and I, you know, pride myself on being able to lay out strategies and ways of doing things. But when I'm doing that, then the more tasks that I'm laying on myself that I then have to execute.
Speaker 2:So we can spend so much time preparing and strategizing and planning, and there's a time and a place for that. Absolutely, you know you shouldn't forego planning and thinking things out. Absolutely you know you shouldn't forego planning and thinking things out. But if the pace of strategizing outpaces the pace of the actions that you're taking, then you're just going to end up with this long list of tasks that just gets longer and longer and longer and it's going to seem much more daunting rather than quickening the speed at which you get to to action right and you're moving through the necessary things right, because we can.
Speaker 2:We can absolutely get addicted to planning you know right to getting into all those, all those fine details, and you know you get into perfectionism, right, but it's you know, you, you put this so well the the doing of it. You know it's the actual executing of it. Like when you're working on something, it's not just the thing that you're working on, it's not just the performance of the thing you're creating. Like if you're a blacksmith right and you're crafting a sword, it it's not just the crafting of the sword, it's also the sharpening of your focus, it's the work working on you as you're working on that thing. So there's a dynamism between those two things, between the creation, the project, whatever it is that you're working on, and your cultivation of yourself as you are working on that thing I would say there's something.
Speaker 1:It's something like integrating the internal with the external right. You have an idea in your head and you're trying to project it into reality, and the trick is to get the thing in your head to match reality right. So if you're a blacksmith, you have this idea of what the sword ought to be, but putting that into practice is tricky, and sometimes you don't quite match it in your head because you're not skilled enough to perform it. There's something wrong with your technique. Sometimes what's in your head doesn't match up with reality, and so you didn't account for something that you need to account for with the physical materials of creating whatever you need to create, and so the problem with just writing out a plan is you can be very wrong about your plan.
Speaker 2:Right, you can. You know, I think about like cooking, right you?
Speaker 1:you come up with a recipe and you're like, oh, I think this is going to be great and it might taste good and then you find out you added a little bit too much of an ingredient in the planning or something didn't quite work out. And then you gotta, you gotta practice, and then come back to the recipe and refine the recipe and then put it back into practice. And once you've mastered the back and forth there, then you can take that recipe, give it to other people, and they should be able to follow the same routine and get the same result that you did, yes, and with with intention too.
Speaker 2:Speaking of of cooking, there's the um, where did I read this? There was a story I don't know if you've heard it where this, uh, or this woman is cooking this chicken or something like that, and what she does is she, you know, cuts off the ends of it and she her daughter's asking her why, why do you do that? You know? And she's like oh, you know, this is my, the way my mom did it. And she's like, okay, so she goes and she talks to the mom. She's like, well, it's the way that grandma did it, you know. And she's like, okay, well, then she goes and talks to grandma and she's like what, you know, why do you do it this way? She's like, oh, I did it, so it fit in the pan, so it would go in the oven.
Speaker 2:It had nothing to do with the necessity of of the recipe itself. She just chopped off the the end, so it could, you know, fit in the pan to fit in the oven, right. So the reasoning behind the things that you're that you're doing really helps you to well. That's such an important question too, is why? Why am I doing it this way? Because that can allow you to really go in and dissect the thing. And this goes in when you're planning or really when you're adjusting what it is that you're doing.
Speaker 1:Right, and sometimes the process can inform the result in the case of the size of the pan.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely.
Speaker 1:So, now that we've kind of maybe got a little bit of a grip on what mastery is, what does it mean to master yourself? How can you be a master of self? Is there an objective measure for what the self ought to be? How can you? How can you tell when you've mastered the self?
Speaker 2:It's levels and levels and levels, deep. I mean, think about I'm going to go real deep here so think about all of the genetic inheritance that we have as human beings, leading all the way back to, say, the first humans, and all the way back to then, like all of that potential that's within us. Right Now I hear this a you know certain people who are like you, are perfect, whole and complete as you are, which the way that that's translated seems to leave out, like your ability to adjust right, like you are, just as you are. All that you're doing is perfectly right, which, as we know, is off base.
Speaker 2:I mean you have to be able to adjust right you have to be able to recognize where you've made a misstep of some kind and say what's a better action than that and be able to steer your sales right.
Speaker 2:So I think that a much better way to understand that statement is you have all that you need inside of you, including the potential. Like you have all that you need within you, that potential is a part of you too, and so, when you have this journey of unfolding all that, you could possibly be into the world, what you could even perceive as the, the ideal in your mind like you can do things that continually amaze you and you say wow, that came out of me.
Speaker 2:How could that wow you? Not only did you do it, but you saw yourself doing it, you realized yourself doing it. You say if I can do that, what else can I possibly do?
Speaker 1:and you just keep going and going and going on this on this journey I like to think of the self as the the part, the the part of you that is adaptive, right, what you are is informed by your environment to an extent and as your environment changes you extent. And as your environment changes you have to adapt to that environment. And the more you conform to your environment in a cohesive way, the better adapted and better you are for that environment. So I would go to the extent of saying self-mastery would be the ability to adapt yourself to any environment quickly and seamlessly and to be able to get others to adapt themselves to their environments, to have some sort of a pattern of, of moving forward into the unknown effectively into the unknown effectively.
Speaker 3:Okay, I think that's good. Um, I think that. So there are symptoms right there. I think that there are symptoms of self-mastery here. I think one of them might be a greater level of fitness, especially when guys like this, you know, start we're exercising and working out and being on the keto diet and stuff they start getting a little more fit, start looking a lot healthier, and that's a symptom of self-mastery, a greater ability of organization, going into the unknown and having good critical thinking skills right to apply to whatever situation you're in.
Speaker 1:I think those are symptoms, but self-mastery itself like, the program that you're going to follow as an individual is going to be very specific to the person or an analogy for other forms of self-mastery, because what you're doing with fitness like, let's say, you go train weights or do cardio or whatever you're doing you're putting yourself through a little bit of pain and torture in order for your body to grow and be more effective. And when you are a physically fit person and you're faced with a physical challenge, you're more adapted to take on that challenge.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right. If I, for whatever reason, need to run really fast and get out of the way of danger, if I've been making myself run every day and keeping myself in healthy shape, I'm more likely to be able to adapt to that scenario because I put myself through the routine of running every day. If I need to be able to effectively lift someone up for whatever reason um, to get over a fence or something, if I can't lift their body weight because I haven't been training myself, how am I going to adapt to that specific scenario? Absolutely, you can do the same thing with your mind, right. You can go and make sure you're studying and looking at different forms of knowledge and philosophy and mathematics and all of these different genres, and then, when you're faced with a tough problem, you can say ah, this is something I've come across before. Oh, I might not even know the answer to this problem, but I know how this kind of stuff works so I can solve this problem yeah I know where to find the answer.
Speaker 1:I'm well adapted to these chaotic situations.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the confidence and you know going to the fitness, like the physical fitness example. Again, that can have a psychological effect too, like I definitely remember when I was, you know, 140, some pounds, whatever, and I did not feel strong and I I really disliked the feeling of not being fit or not feeling that fullness. But having gone to the gym and really been developing myself for a number of years, there's a psychological sturdiness that comes with that too. You know where it's like, well, I'm, I'm, I'm not really as concerned about danger around me because I feel strong and I feel fit, and that also carries into the type of tasks that I'm undergoing too. I can feel like, yeah, I'm, you know I have the, I have the heft and this, the strength to be able to do that. You know I'm speaking of the, the mind body connection, that's. That's really real too, and you know we hear about that in martial arts.
Speaker 2:But I absolutely that also carries over into general fitness as well. I mean really, what in mind?
Speaker 1:yeah, when you're training at the gym, you're more training your mind than you are your body. You have to push yourself to a certain level of failure in order for you to get any muscular growth and there's that part of your mind that's like I can't, I can't, I can't, and you have to train yourself to push past that part and that part never exactly goes away. You just get more adapted to going there. Same thing with, like you say, martial arts, but even just fights in general. If you're inexperienced in a fight, you get into a fight. You're not used to being in that panic mode. If you're like a professional boxer, you go there all the time.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, and it's not so much that you don. You don't have a fight flight response in those fighting moments, but you're well adapted to handling that level of stress, to where you can effectively perform when needed be rather than panic and be overrun by your emotions.
Speaker 2:So I want to go to when you're starting brand new at something, say we're talking a lot about when someone is not well-adapted, versus when they are well-adapted. Right, like you don't just usually start off well-adapted, you may have some measure of talent in something that you're doing and it's good to follow that and say you know, I have a bag of skill that I can start off with at this thing, but that's not always the case, right, there can be a hidden skill that you have to uncover and you have to be willing to suck at the thing first and going through those growing pains till you're at least feel adept at that thing right to feel like, yeah, I can kind of own this skill that I have right there's something to be said for natural talent.
Speaker 1:everybody is dealt the hand of cards that they're dealt, and some people are naturally just equipped to do some things better than others. Some people just have a natural inclination towards math. Some people just are great at running and they're just like I don't know, I'm just faster than most people right now, and then you can take that head start and even push it even further.
Speaker 3:Just because you have those talents, that doesn't necessarily mean that you have to desire those for your life.
Speaker 1:True, it's up to you on which talents you use, but I would say you know, wasted talents are kind of sad. It's a little sad for sure it's like you don't want to be Superman and then just be like, yeah, just sit on the couch. I don't feel like saving anybody. And then just be like, yeah, just sit on the couch. I don't feel like saving anybody, you know.
Speaker 3:Oddly enough, I asked myself recently what's something that I really wanted to accomplish in life, especially because I'm just getting to middle age and don't have any spouses or any kids or whatever, unlike you, gentlemen, and my answer was surprisingly selfish. I kind of I so when you grow up latin american but you don't speak any spanish, you know kind of have this uh you have this great shame about it, like, oh man, I really need to learn spanish.
Speaker 3:But you know what? I really want? To learn french. I mean, you know it's because something I did in third grade and I kind of just like the french language. I don't know, I just really like french beautiful language and um, I also realized I don't need to like move the world in this grand sense. Um, like I don't really, I don't feel like I owe anything to anybody.
Speaker 1:Uh, I mean so there's, there's like a communal aspect to a lot of this stuff, right? So you learning french? If we go back to the adaptability idea, you learning french adapts you to be able to communicate better with others and to be able to read french, to be able to understand things going on in the French-speaking world. If you happen to need to talk to someone in French, or somebody else is like hey, chris, I can't talk in French, can you help me out with this? You would be adapted to that situation.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So and also think about the idea that it's not just about you and what you can do for yourself. Like, let's go back to the physical fitness idea. Okay, if I'm physically fit and I wear that on myself, others can see that I have the discipline and the strength and determination to be physically fit. Because they see that in me, then when they need something there, who are they more likely going to ask? You know if, if a lady needs help uh, moving furniture are they going to ask the child, who is clearly small and probably can't lift something? Are they going to ask, you know, the guy who looks like he's been working out like oh yeah, you're at the top of that list, my friend, for sure, I'm getting there.
Speaker 1:But I mean, that's the thing, it's a communal thing. It connects you more with others and they're more likely to rely on you in those situations. Sure so same thing with language right, You're adapted to speak better to other people. Or if you're a smart person and you've demonstrated that in the way you talk and your vocabulary, they're more likely to ask you questions about smart things like hey, this guy probably knows hey, I know chris fixes technology things. Maybe he can help me fix my computer.
Speaker 2:Certainly don't, so but I love that your gift is something that you can then give to others too. You know we talk about success a lot Like what's the secret. I think that's one of, if not the secrets of success that they don't say Like what it is that's innately yours, innately your gift, or something that you've've cultivated that someone else can have need of that, that when you provide that to someone, and that's a value.
Speaker 2:Yeah, then you'd make a harmonious exchange. It's not, it's not some fabricated thing. You're like well, I can actually do this and this actually creates a harmonious, good situation for this person. And then there's that you know, there's the interdependence between you.
Speaker 1:You're giving of your skill and then that person is hopefully reciprocating in some way that that fulfills one of your needs I would go as far as to say that the whole point of self-mastery and learning skills in general is to help you better integrate into your community. I mean, what is the point of just learning things only to keep yourself alive for longer, like what's the point of just you know, if you're a guy on an island? Yeah, there's, there's the skill of surviving on the island, but at some point it's just a means with no end. You want, we as humans are social creatures. We naturally are inclined to integrate each other and we we want to work together and there's a joy in that is that what you learned on the island, tom hanks?
Speaker 1:well, I mean even in castaway, tom hanks needs to create some volleyball person to commune with. He has to, or else he's lost without it. Yeah, even to the extent that he's willing to risk his own life to save this volleyball figure. That's how important the communal aspect is, even in a movie where you're a man on yeah.
Speaker 3:It reminds me of that meme where that guy's got a bow tie on and he's like Of course I talk to myself, I need a professional opinion every now and then. That guy's got a bow tie on and he's like, of course. I talk to myself. I need a professional opinion every now and then. Nice, I didn't see that.
Speaker 2:I like that one you need to call in an expert opinion and it's me Monocle On point with the answer Yet again.
Speaker 3:I mean, all jokes aside, I think that's self. You can't attain self-mastery and superior, like functional fitness, without talking to yourself every now and then. I think that I keep thinking that this podcast is revolving around the idea of the four archetypes. I mean, when we talk about planning, right, that's the magician's supervisory, organizational ability. But when we talk about making it reality right, actualizing that potential, we talk about the warrior aspect of the self. Yes, unless I'm mistaken, I think, talk about the warrior aspect of the self.
Speaker 3:Yes, unless I'm mistaken I think it's the warrior right?
Speaker 2:No, totally, the one who's going and carrying out the quest and carrying out the actions.
Speaker 3:Carrying out the quest. Yeah, yeah, I never thought about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Because the king? He just kind of sits there. Well, think about it, the king is the one who sends the knights and them out on the quest.
Speaker 2:Right, the king is the leadership and I love that you went there too. Thank you for going to the archetypes, of course. Yeah, the warriors going out and doing the quest and doing the actions that are going to make that thing a reality. You know, even the magician sitting up in the mind or sitting up in the, the tower, writing out the plans, and then warrior is the one who goes out and does the things you know, and the lover makes the whole thing fun and vibrant, of course.
Speaker 2:But I wanted, I wanted to talk about uh, you say superiority, or it's okay, it's this, this dichotomy that we have between superiority and inferiority. But then there's a third right, which is interiority. Okay, so you know, superiority and inferiority only happen in comparison with yourself, relative to other people. Now you can measure your progress. You can measure yourself in these different ways, but where the real vitality is is yourself, say, competing with yourself, or yourself in your own personal development. Like, even when you're in a game of some kind and the other person say you're playing chess and the other person is making their moves, you can't control that person making their moves. They're a set of, they're creating a set of factors on the board. All you can only ever do is play your own game. You can only ever respond in the way that you're going to respond. That's all you have control over right.
Speaker 2:So when you have that level of self-discipline and self-control, then you're able to play the best game that you possibly can with that person. Then, as uh, I had to use the word sounding board as a, as feedback, you know so you're yeah, so you're rubbing up against that, that challenge. You know you're striking against that, that challenge, but you're rubbing up against that challenge, you're striking against that challenge, but you're the one who's developing you and they're the ones who are developing themselves through the crucible of the game that you're playing.
Speaker 1:The game is a vehicle toward the mastery of something deeper.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, you are practicing your adaptability in the realm of strategy oh yeah, well, yes, so take a look at yourself and take a look at the conditions that you find yourself in, and those conditions will express the potentiality of your own character. Right, that's right, okay, well said Beautifully said, beautifully said.
Speaker 1:I like to think a lot of things we do are just practicing this idea of adaptability. Like, let's say, you just get really good at chess. Well, chess in the realm of survival isn't really necessary. It's not like you need chess in order to adapt to surviving in nature necessarily. It's something you do.
Speaker 1:It's almost practicing a form of thinking it is you're practicing, coming up with, coming up with ways to move several steps ahead, and you're expanding that part of your brain. A lot of people practice chess and it's entertaining too, you know there's there's the entertainment aspect of it, but deeper than that, I think, is you're practicing how to adapt this, this part of your brain that's learning how to think ahead and keeping you know certain moves and things and looking, trying to predict what this guy's move is going to be, and there's something about that that can map on what you're doing in chess onto your greater reality.
Speaker 3:Right, and that skill in chess is called a strategic forethought.
Speaker 1:Okay, right, strategic forethought Okay Right, strategic forethought.
Speaker 3:So if I can think ahead four or five moves in advance, which is extremely advanced to do, by the way, I think I've in my day managed like one, maybe two moves ahead, and it's been a long time. But yeah, so if you have that skill in chess, you can actually map that out into real life all the time. I mean, chess is always about taking the resources that you have currently right on the position on the board. You might be down, I don't know, a bishop, right, a knight or several pawns, and that mentality does come out into real life. You realize, okay, so these are the resources I have right now. I can expect these resources later, but in the meantime this is going to happen on this day it's just organizing your life in a on a calendar right. That helps, kind of like how playing video games like video games aren't necessary for survival, right, but if you play enough video games, your reaction time can improve yeah, video games are kind of like.
Speaker 1:It's a form of being able to test something out in a virtual world without actually putting any real risk yeah into the thing in a weird way. And that's kind of what imagination does too. Right, if you're able to kind of imagine a scenario in your head and then what you're imagining actually maps onto reality, you're able to play out a scenario without really taking any actual risk. In fact, I think that's probably a good reason why imagination potentially evolved oh yeah, have you guys seen the show queen's gambit, by any chance?
Speaker 3:oh, yeah, yeah okay, well it's.
Speaker 2:It's about this girl who she ends up being a chess prodigy right Starts from a very young age and she learns from this guy in a boiler room in her you know girl's orphanage right, and so she's laying in bed. There's this one scene where she's looking up at the ceiling and you have this holographic image from her mind and she's imagining these different moves being made on the ceiling. And you have this holographic image from her mind. She's imagining these different moves being made on the ceiling. So even outside of playing the actual game, she's imagining these different chess scenarios. Then she goes and plays this guy and she ends up surpassing him because even outside of that game she's thinking about chess, she's obsessed with chess right, and oh my god, how obsession um goes into into self-mastery as well.
Speaker 2:That that combustion, that drive, you know that you just, you're fed off of the activity that you're doing to such a degree that you think about it. You are practicing it, you're honing it all the time. So that's gonna. You're gonna get so much further than someone who just does it casually or is resting on their laurels. They might think that they're very talented, indeed. They might, they might be very talented, but you have that velocity.
Speaker 1:You have that rocket ship of obsession going for you yeah, you know I was thinking of um stances, like in martial arts. Um, I was specifically thinking of jujitsu. There's certain positions that are optimal for certain scenarios, right, um, you, there are some basic phases that you go into, like mount or side control, or you know different things like that to where optimal. There are optimal things that you can do from there. Or, if you're in one of those positions, you want to get into a more optimal position to get yourself out. You know, if someone's mounting you, you do this, then you do this. I was even thinking about, um, like general step fighting stances before you've even gotten into the fight. Right, you want to get into a position that makes it the most adaptable or the most optimal for you to face whatever's going to come at you. Right, and the same thing goes with chess. Right, you have certain opening scenarios that people memorize, right?
Speaker 1:You have, you know, the Queen's Gambit. Or you have like have the London system, where you kind of set up your pieces and they're supposed to be set up in a way where you have optimal offense and defense and you can play that system effectively against different scenarios, against you know, different scenarios, and I was just thinking about different forms of optimal positions, right? Um, like I think in maybe it's tai chi or something you kind of like have this general space stance that you get into before you kind of like move into these other ones. Um, trying to think of another one. Um, maybe when you're playing pool, there's like an optimal position to hold the cue, yes, so that you can hit the ball properly wherever you're uh standing or something now, now you're in my zone with the pool.
Speaker 2:Um, I'd like to tell people, having the having your stance together in pool is at least like 50 of your game right there, because when you're set up and you have this almost lunge with your legs and you're as low down as you can be comfortably to see, at eye level with the pool table, with the cue and you're, it's almost like looking down the barrel of a rifle and it's that aiming right when you have that optimal you have optimal.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so when you have your you know your resting hand set up like there's a tripod I don't know, you know, if you're watching video you could probably be able to see this, but like the tripod, right, like that, there we go. So you have the cue going through. Here you have your arm like this on the back.
Speaker 2:It's like a pendulum like this, so you can just easily like that and hit the ball and just master that smooth motion like that. Then all you have to do is worry about aiming. I mean from there. If you have your stance together, then you don't have to master that anymore. So that's, and it becomes second nature.
Speaker 1:You can almost turn on autopilot once you've kind of mastered the initial stance.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And everything after that is kind of Same thing you ever notice when you're driving, when you first are learning how to drive. Everything's new. And so it's like, oh God, I'm going to hit the curb. Oh, my foot needs to go here.
Speaker 2:Wait should.
Speaker 1:I put two feet down, you know like you're trying to master all these things at once. But at some point you get so good at it that you can drive and get to your destination without thinking about driving at all and you'll be like, oh, oh man. I don't even remember, I was like totally in my head the whole time. But I'm, like you know, taking all these turns and everything. But it's so ingrained into your mind that you can put the mental energy towards other things.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, so it's automatic, automatic, it is even, uh, another one's like playing guitar right at first. It's like learning all the chords really hard. My fingers hurt. Uh, I gotta learn how to strum properly. It feels weird my hand. These things are awkward. And at some point where you kind of get everything going, you're not even thinking you know exactly where that note is, like oh yeah, a minor, oh gee, and you're just oh yeah, and then you can put that mental energy towards actually coming up with some musicality absolutely in the song. You create your own music intuitively, without having to literally think of the note yeah, because you have built up those skills.
Speaker 2:Like we think of this, the skills as building up a pyramid right so we have skills stacked on skills, stacked on skills, stacked on skills so if you're just starting out and say you're playing guitar and you're learning how to play guitar, you want to learn something basic, like how to strike the chords properly or how to hit those notes, something easy. So then you do that for long enough, then that skill gets baked in. Now you can move to a more advanced skill and you can do that until that becomes second nature, and then you start stacking those up and then you know, then you don't have to worry about learning all of these skills all over again, you can focus on something that's really what you want to be focused on. Yeah, like, oh, I I know how to, I'm very good at timing, I know how to uh, you know, maneuver the scales. I know how to, how to like, hit the notes without looking at the guitar, that type of thing. So you can be more free to to imagine, you can be more free to to create something that's, you know, really fluid.
Speaker 2:And so, talking about the, the journey of mastery, that's something that happens along the journey and how you're able to achieve those higher levels of mastery. Because you've you've done the good work of building up all of these little meta skills. That's why, would you know, basketball players I mean some of the greatest basketball players talk about like the fundamental master, the fundamentals right. You get those really down pat. If you know how to move right, you know how. If you know how to move right, you know how to switch balls from this hand to that hand and how to shoot from over here and over here and your footwork and all those type of things. And you see other players doing all this, trying to do this fancy shit, but they don't have all the fundamentals down and you have spent all that time mastering those grounding skills and all of that stacks up over time and then it's really the person who has the fundamentals most well together that is going to end up succeeding in the game it's funny, I was talking to my son about something really similar.
Speaker 1:Oh well, I was telling him.
Speaker 1:You know, I'm always telling him, don't be on autopilot, like you know he'll be doing the dishes and he'll be doing them all wrong and it's like, hey, you got to get out of autopilot and really focus on what you're doing. But then I recently was telling him, well, because he's like you shouldn't be on autopilot, and I was like, well, there, you can be on autopilot. If you're really good at the thing you're doing, then you should be on autopilot. You don't want to be on autopilot if being not present is hurting the thing that you're doing, but you do want to be on autopilot if the thing you're doing is optimal.
Speaker 2:That's an interesting distinction between what would we call that, between being careless versus being fluid right, there you go, fluent yes like I was thinking mindful, but yeah mindful, yeah, well yeah it begins with mindfulness and then turns into.
Speaker 1:You have to be present at first and refine your technique. And well, I like the word fluent because it's like language right at first. When you're learning a language, um, you're almost translating in your head, right when you're like this word equals this and then this word equals this, and you're trying to connect them. And it's a little weird because in different languages you have to switch the grammar around. You're like oh, and spanish adjectives actually come after the word and you're you're doing all these mental tricks to try and get your brain to like grasp the thing. But ideally, once it's fluent, you can skip that middle step and the word is just immediate, the word just. You're fluent in that language. You can actually say what you really want to say without having to lego build with words, right right, I was trying to think of what's the appropriate like skill metaphor, dishes, I guess.
Speaker 3:Right, you have to sit down, you have to like really focus and make time for it, and you know, scrub, scrub, scrub, rinse yeah okay, but then well it's like what's the goal of dishes
Speaker 2:right times.
Speaker 3:You know you're just like. You don't need to make time for it anymore.
Speaker 1:You just if you have if you have the goal in mind, you you can optimize the strategy. So, like, the goal of dishes is to be able to make sure they're actually clean. So if you are doing them but you're on autopilot and you're being careless, you're not noticing that the dish isn't actually clean, that's bad, that's not a good thing to do. But if you're just so good at the dishes that everything you do just makes sure that they're clean and you can also put your mental energy towards something else while you're doing that, you know you're a master.
Speaker 2:You're a dish master having, oh my god, uh, how much of your internal resources you have to allocate to that skill too. It's like at the front end, it's objectively more challenging for you. So you have to be more mindful, you have to think more about it and put more of your focus into it than, after a certain point, your brain's just oh, you know I, I got this right, not in a cocky way like you've actually. You, you actually know what you're doing. You actually have some, some fluency at it, so you don't have to think as much about that thing. You don't have to. You don't have to be as as conscious as you would have been just learning the thing. It's like. There is, you know, doing getting the difficulty out of the way first. Actually, there was this, this great video I saw recently, where you have have these two kids that are maybe like seven years old, each right and these rows of 10 balls, and the idea was they had to run and go get those balls and put all of them into the buckets behind them.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:So they did two opposite things. The kid on the left goes and grabs the ones that are closest to him first. So he grabs the first one right here bucket this one bucket, this one bucket. The other kid ran all the way to the end, got that hardest ball first. He ran all the way to the end, got that one ran back, ran all the way to the end got that one, brought that one. Ran back, ran all the way to the end got that one, brought that one back.
Speaker 1:And on the surface, and they reversed so then, he was getting the closer balls and the other kid had to get the farther balls Exactly.
Speaker 2:Exactly Because he chose to do the harder thing first, so that kid who started off doing the easy things. The task got harder and harder and harder for him, because he had to keep running further, whereas the other kid got the hard work out of the way first and then he just ended up working his way back to where he got, to that last ball. It was just boom straight in the bucket and he ended up timing a little bit faster than the other kid.
Speaker 1:Interesting. That's pretty cool. You know, I was thinking about iq and there's two forms of iq. There's crystallized iq and there's fluid iq.
Speaker 1:Okay, and your crystallized iq is things that you've learned, uh, specifically, and memorized for studies. You know, like dates in history or like you know this specific uh equation for this specific pattern, and it's things that you've just stored up in your brain over a span of time. But they might not translate, um, if you hadn't memorized them. Like, uh, let's say, um, you're, you're adapted to writing really well in English. Well, you test kids from another country that don't speak English. They're not going to pass that IQ test because they don't know the language. They're not adapted to that specific scenario. But fluid IQ Fluid IQ is adaptable. It's your adaptability to different scenarios and you can test fluid IQ anywhere, with any age, at any time. It's just pattern recognition and so your crystallized IQ is all dependent on your level of education and how much you've memorized. Level of education and how much you've memorized and your crystallized iq. You can improve across time, but your fluid iq is ingrained in you. Your fluid iq never increases.
Speaker 1:It only decreases as you age okay, or I I don't know if that's 100 true, like maybe you can try to exercise your, your fluid iq, but generally that's something that we're born with. Like some people are naturally better at pattern recognition and fluid iq than others. Like it's just the hand you're dealt with. Some people are just smarter to some extent, but it's a different type of smart because you know you could have learned a lot of stuff in school and have a lot more crystallized cue than this guy. But if this guy had the same opportunity that you had, he would be heavy.
Speaker 2:So let's think about that in terms of character too, because say you go into you, say you you go to a different country and they have different rules, different norm, norms, different lore, different things that you got to learn. But say you're adaptable and say you have the will to learn and you know how to pick up things from around you and you know how to recognize patterns and so you can go into this completely different place. Be someone who is open to learning, be someone who has that curiosity and say actually we're. Oh my God.
Speaker 2:My wife and I were watching this movie Touch. I don't know if you guys have seen that one. It's about this Icelandic guy who lived in London and he met this Japanese girl who he fell in love with and he, he starts working at this Japanese restaurant and he learns Japanese Like he knows no Japanese going in, he just suddenly got a wild hair up his butt to go, you know, to go and work at this Japanese restaurant and ends up meeting this woman and, you know, while he's there he's learning the language, he's learning the customs, he's writing haikus and stuff like that, you know, like that you know so he's able to integrate himself into that environment by being adaptable, by being curious, and you know that, that confidence in that that will to learn yeah, and I'd say that guy is more of a self-master than a guy who might have the same skill, but he was just born in that environment, right?
Speaker 1:yeah, you could take that other guy, that second guy, and put him somewhere else. Would he be able to adapt as quickly? Not likely, it'd be tough.
Speaker 3:Well, if he had the desire to meet some girl, maybe.
Speaker 1:Right? I think so. The things we do for a living, that's right.
Speaker 2:Dude learn Japanese Straight up, Straight up learn Japanese right.
Speaker 1:That takes us back to that idea of the lover being like the fuel Right, like the passion drives you, puts you on the path and gives you energy to get towards the goal. And so if you can orient the passion with the goal in mind, you're unstoppable. Oh man you're a force if they're pulling in opposite directions, then you've got an issue right yeah, yeah, you gotta gotta bring those two together you know the sword in the rose man yeah, all right.
Speaker 1:I mean, is there any, uh any other pieces of self-mastery that you guys kind of want to dive into?
Speaker 2:You know I think it's the if we're going to the last piece, the unfolding over time and the vision of who you could be. Say you are who you are right now, but you are also who you could be. And say you are who you are right now, but you are also who you could be in the future. And say that version is invisible to people around you, unless you have someone who's perceptive to your potential, someone who has that insight into who you could be.
Speaker 1:But I would go as far as to say who you ought to be, because who you could be could be a bad thing. You could be a drug addict.
Speaker 2:No, good point, no good point. Ok, let's say the the even more evolved version of yourself, right? So people around you who don't have that same vision that you have, they would probably have to Well, I know they would have to continually learn new versions of you as you're unfolding. So either they would have to do that or you would have to. You know, bring in a new circle who does match well with these continually evolving versions that you are, versions that you are. So where does it can be to say, sometimes the people who have, who have met you most?
Speaker 2:recently know you better than the people who knew you previously and have seen well but not really, uh, paid attention to, or acknowledged or understood your evolution over time. It can be, it can be completely invisible. Then they can think of you as that same exact person when you're like no man, I'm like, I'm me. Now like I yeah, of course I grew, you know.
Speaker 1:Of course I hope I would have changed over so many years, you know I like to say change is inevitable, but either you take an active participation in how you change or you let what happens happens but no matter what you've got to change. So are you going to change in a positive direction and put the work in, or are you going to submit to chaos and hope for the?
Speaker 2:best you know. You know when this is a great thought experiment I like to go to is because I've had to let a lot of things go over my life and I've had to make a lot of evolutions, right, and I can look back at that and say there used to be a time where this was true. And the fact that it's no longer true and it never has been true since, right, it's like I used to be a smoker, from you know, 18 to 30 years old, more on than off, and I tried to quit multiple times. I got to that one point where I'm like, damn it, no, I'm done, you know, and I finally, I thank you I finally hit that point where I could, where I could, make that breakthrough right.
Speaker 2:It's like I can look. I can look back at that, I can look back at at multiple things. Be like you know what. That used to be true. That's not true anymore. I evolved right and so when I'm facing a challenge like that now, having that experience, I can say you know what? It's only a matter of time. It's only a matter of time.
Speaker 1:until that shit changes, I would almost say that's kind of the function of consciousness. We already kind of talked about consciousness before, but going back to that whole conversation, it's like an aiming mechanism, right. And it's not just an aiming mechanism, it's a recognition mechanism. So you're taking in and then you're putting out, but it's communal with your environment. It's the environment informs who you are and you inform what your environment is, and so there's a give and take right, give and take right. And so with our consciousness we're supposed to, we're supposed to recognize what we need to change in our environment and try to effectively change it, but we're also supposed to recognize what we can't change and allow grace for things to happen. It's true, can't control everything.
Speaker 3:If only Ultimate power.
Speaker 2:What do you think we're trying to do with this podcast? I don't know same thing we do every day, trying to take it a little, we're trying to deal with this podcast for good, for good, good, good, okay. So so, chris, you got a definition for self-mastery for us Jesus.
Speaker 3:Talking about all that theory versus practicality, I liked the idea of accepting suffering for the sake of discipline. To the end of functional fitness, okay, okay, to the end of functional fitness, okay. I had this whole idea about occupying space that we didn't get to, but that's okay.
Speaker 1:All right. Well, with that, I think this has been a pretty productive podcast, so let's call it there All right. Thank you everyone for taking the time to listen. If you made it this far, let's call it there All right. Thank you everyone for taking the time to listen. If you made it this far, we really appreciate it and we hope that you'll join us next time. Please like, comment, share, subscribe or whatever you can do to support us, and we hope to see you next time. Can't wait. It's been real All right.
Speaker 2:Thanks you guys, and enjoy.
