Thinking on Thinking

Can taking blood on your hands be a kindness? Is it a niceness? What does it mean to be nice vs. kind? Can kind things be done in a polite way, or is politeness and niceness tied at the hip?

This week, we briefly talk about kindness (vs niceness) in ending relationships before getting deeply caught up in kindness in death before turning our attention to unpacking the interplay between niceness and kindness, and have some very interesting insights about how niceness shapes our constructs about motivation and what people “like us” do.

We also bring up and discuss both the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Civilizing_Process and the several scenes from the book Less, by Andrew Sean Greer.

Theme music is by Steve Combs, available here: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Steve_Combs/Steve_Combs_Premium_Preview_EP_1325/06__Steve_Com

What leads to you feeling successful ? Are they the things the same things that lead to you feeling confident ?

This week, we continue the discussion from Episode 3, “Cognitive and Emotional Experiences & Models for Failure,” and discuss what events in our lives have led to feelings of confidence, how other people’s perceptions of us and those events influenced the feelings of confidence, and whether those events were a success or a failure.

We illustrate this with some personal anecdotes, and briefly gossip about Adam Neumann and Mark Zuckerberg.

Also discussed in this episode are Matt Levine’s newsletter, Money Stuff,  optimism bias, as discussed in the book Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, the wo men podcast, and the healthyGamerGG YouTube channel.

Theme music is by Steve Combs, available here: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Steve_Combs/Steve_Combs_Premium_Preview_EP_1325/06__Steve_Com

Is the way you do one thing, the way you do everything? It’s a common Buddhist saying but this week, we examine if it is actually true, and we talk about how we learn things: from the people around us, from practice, from exposure and from adapting models from culture. We also explore how persistence and learning are connected to our expectations of outcomes.

This was a super fun conversation because we end up diving into things that are core to what joyus is about, and we discuss how we have arrived at some of those learnings in our own lives. And there is some stuff about competing with duolingo, which definitely we have never done ourselves. Nope. Never.

Theme music is by Steve Combs, available here: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Steve_Combs/Steve_Combs_Premium_Preview_EP_1325/06__Steve_Com

Why is pain helpful? How do we distinguish between different kinds of pain? How can we be cognizant of when we’re acting to protect ourselves, and when those protective instincts becomes routines that guide our thinking? And why does the world have so many golf courses?

In this episode, Kahran and Divya discuss pain and the ecosystem that exists around it, both why pain is needed for learning, and where pain and addiction start to intersect. The idea of the mind-body connection comes up in the context of Kahran’s experiences with Forrest Yoga, and Divya talks about some of her experiences while discussing the book Body Keeps Score, available here: https://www.besselvanderkolk.com/resources/the-body-keeps-the-score

Divya also mentions (and misremembers some of the details) of the study, Rats Prefer Social Interaction to Heroin or Methamphetamine, available here: https://nida.nih.gov/news-events/nida-notes/2019/08/rats-prefer-social-interaction-to-heroin-or-methamphetamine

Kahran also briefly mentions the book In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts in the context of addiction, available here: https://drgabormate.com/book/in-the-realm-of-hungry-ghosts/

Theme music is by Steve Combs, available here: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Steve_Combs/Steve_Combs_Premium_Preview_EP_1325/06__Steve_Com

What are the expectations of your audience? Can you support those expectations? Are those expectations uniform across the audience? 

In this episode, Divya and Kahran begin by talking about the presumed expectations of their audience, but quickly realize they themselves have different ways of listening to podcasts. Divya is nearly as taken aback to hear that Kahran binges podcasts, as Kahran is shocked to hear that Divya has a rotating pattern by which she listens to podcasts of different cognitive and emotional intensity. 

We  discuss Matt Walker's podcast, The Matt Walker Podcast, about sleep, available at https://themattwalkerpodcast.buzzsprout.com, as well as touch on The Knowledge Project, hosted by Shane Parish, https://fs.blog/knowledge-project-podcast/ as well as Esther Perel's podcasts, available here: https://www.estherperel.com/podcast.

Divya did not reveal the comedic podcasts in her rotation, but we shall push her to tell those secrets as well in a future episode!

Theme music is by Steve Combs, available here: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Steve_Combs/Steve_Combs_Premium_Preview_EP_1325/06__Steve_Com

What does it mean to accept the data but not the feeling? How does our ability to accept failure influence our ability to do new things? What are better ways to fail?

This week we explore different kinds of experiences, and how they shape behavior. We think about why it feels bad when we have failure, and the difference between accepting failure cognitively versus emotionally. We also think together about how it feels to access painful memories, how to reduce trauma when you relive and share it, and finding where to grow.

We both also share some deeply personal anecdotes about how we have fought with our siblings, and forced biscuits on past employees, and otherwise behaved foolishly.

Theme music is by Steve Combs, available here: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Steve_Combs/Steve_Combs_Premium_Preview_EP_1325/06__Steve_Com