My fear—or maybe it’s better written, as “my lament”?—is that for every made-it-big tech person who represents the worst of avarice and greed, there is a sea of regular tech people who are being ground up by the works. Countless pasty faces staring at screens, drinking diet soda, trying to live in the bites of life they can grab after hours, (taking their phone so they can be summoned, of course!) stressed-out, burnt-out…
So when I hear people talk about “tech people” as if we’ve collectively done something wrong and messed up the world, I look around and all I see are people who’ve been broken and smashed. The grass is no greener on the inside-tech side of the fence. To everyone outside-tech, what gets done inside tech is magic—it’s not, it’s factory work, round two.
I don’t mean this as a repost to what people say when they lament what has happened to the world, but as a commiserating plea: “Yes! Yes! The problem is everywhere.”
I was recently asked, “What’s the hardest part, for you, about podcasting?”
Staying out of the way.
I’ve spent so much of my life diving in and fixing things, that it has become my first instinct. To rush in and grab the controls. To attach a sense of artificial urgency to everything. To become frustrated that others aren’t immediately taking action now that a solution or idea has been found.
Certainly, an important step is to first cultivate a team who can do great work. But once that’s done enough, the hard part for me is staying out of their way.
Many people would say that I value action over thought. This is absolutely not the case. I am driven to find evidence, to investigate, to look for previous examples of similar solutions and ideas, to gather data, to analyze, to sort, to organize, to imagine… and then I act— often frenetically.
It is right before that last step that I’m learning to self-intervene.
It’s the very last thing, isn’t it, that we feel grateful for: having happened. You know, you needn’t have happened. You needn’t have happened. But you did happen.
Most of the people that I work with do great work most of the time. (No, this is not about to turn into a back-handed compliment.) That means they make a few mistakes, or do a few things where I feel feedback would be helpful. Abitrarily, let’s say 90% of their work is good, and there’s 10% that I think could be improved.
…and so I start providing feedback on that 10%.
What does the other person experience? 100% negative feedback from me!
It doesn’t matter how good I might get at delivering great feedback, and helping them improve. If the only feedback I give is on the 10% of their work that I feel could be improved… ouch!
Instead, I need to think about the entirety of that person’s work. My feedback should be roughly in the same proportions as their work. This enables me to convey both the direct pieces of feedback and my assessment of the ratio in the whole. Continuing with the 90%/10% example, I should be giving vastly more positive reinforcement. That other person should be hearing vast amounts of positive feedback. This is not limited to people who work “for” you. This can be applied to everyone you have regular contact with and is relatd to my earlier post about, “if you see something, say something.”
There is a benefit for myself as well: If I’m only giving negative feedback, (focusing on that 10% as it were,) then it’s going to feel as if everything I encounter all day is negative. If I instead focus on increasing my ability to first notice that 90% of everything is great stuff, and then communicate that outwardly to the others, then it’s going to feel as if everything I encounter all day is positive. Since focusing on the negative stuff is one of my biggest problems, this is fertile ground indeed.
What’s your perception of what you encounter and does the feedback you give reflect that?
How does engaging in movement practices like Forró and parkour contribute to personal growth, emotional development, and professional coaching?
Naomi Honey shares her experiences learning the Brazilian dance of Forró, and how it relates to her other movement practices. She unpacks her work as a life coach; what that means, how it works, and why she loves it so much. Naomi wraps up by discussing her thoughts on her current interests, the idea of success, and self talk.
[It’s] amazing. I’m the cheerleader while they’re doing it, and while it’s difficult. And I’m the cheerleader when there’s success. And then—one of my absolute favorite moments—coaching is designed to end at some point.
~ Naomi Honey (11:45)
Naomi Honey discusses how her experiences with Brazilian dance and parkour have shaped her personal and professional life. She highlights the contrast between the individual nature of parkour and the partner-based dynamics of Forró, a Brazilian dance she has been practicing for over a year. Naomi shares how these practices have enhanced her ability to listen to her body and respond intuitively, revealing unexpected emotional blocks and new ways of engaging with others.
Her work as a life coach focuses on helping people recognize and overcome personal obstacles, drawing from her movement experiences. Naomi explains how self-talk plays a critical role in both movement and life coaching, recounting workshops where participants verbalize negative inner dialogues to foster awareness and shift perspectives. She also emphasizes the importance of celebrating effort over results, demonstrating how encouragement and playful experimentation foster growth and confidence in movement and beyond.
Takeaways
Engaging in movement practices — reveals emotional and mental blocks that impact personal growth.
Life coaching integrates physical practices — combining parkour and dance helps address personal fears and limitations.
Self-talk awareness — recognizing and addressing negative internal dialogue improves movement and emotional resilience.
Parkour’s impact on personal growth — confronting physical obstacles mirrors the process of overcoming psychological challenges.
The value of celebration and encouragement — celebrating effort rather than success fosters persistence and emotional well-being.
Physical closeness in dance — offers unique opportunities to explore connection and interpersonal dynamics, filling gaps not addressed by parkour.
Coaching designed to end — successful coaching encourages clients to become independent while maintaining ongoing connections for support.
Resources
Flytality — Naomi Honey’s life coaching business where she helps people achieve personal and professional goals.
Parcon by Andrew Suseno — A fusion of parkour and contact improvisation that explores movement through physical interaction with others.
Gerlev Idrætshøjskole — A movement-focused school in Denmark specializing in parkour and physical education.
What if you, whenever people did good stuff for you, you let them know they had a positive effect on you? You might have to come up with a unique way of saying it if you want to make explicit that you aren’t saying “I owe you”. We’ll leave that as an exercise to the reader.
Somewhen around 2005 was the trough of my expression of gratitude. Having now spent increasing time with this radical new notion of “expressing gratitude” I can say for sure… that I really need to keep working on it.
I’ve been stingy with positive reinforcement for a loong time. As I’ve begun to explicitly practice the habit of expressing gratitude, externally to other people, the results have been obvious and beneficial. My current intention is work on lowering my resistence to expressing gratitude. The most recent way I’ve been reinforcing the habit is to hold in mind a common mantra which I’ve repurposed: If you see something, say something.
I’ve found three ways that I’ve been practicing expressing more gratitude. There are others, obviously, but these are the three I’m currently practicing.
The first way plays out in direct conversation. While discussing one topic, my mind produces a tangential thought about something positive this person did on some unrelated topic. Spurred on by, “if I see something, say something,” the practice is then to mention that positive, tangential thing at the next opportunity in the conversation. Loong ago, I’d have let those tangential thoughts go by, not wanting to interrupt our discussion.
In short: Simply express gratitude now.
The second way is more subtle. Since those random thoughts of gratitude-moments-past are coming up today, I didn’t notice them in the past, or I suppressed expressing them in the moment. This reminds me to be more vigilant looking for the opportunities to express gratitude.
In short: Get better at noticing opportunities to express gratitude in the current moment.
The third way is to make a conscious effort to go looking for missed opportunites to express gratitude. If I have a meeting planned with someone, when I’m preparing I can make the small effort to think of a few opportunities I’ve missed.
In short: Practice actively looking for opportunities to express gratitude.
The genuine love for reading itself, when cultivated, is a superpower. We live in the age of Alexandria, when every book and every piece of knowledge ever written down is a fingertip away. The means of learning are abundant—it’s the desire to learn that’s scarce. Cultivate that desire by reading what you want, not what you’re “supposed to.”
This rant from Seth is a couple years old, but it remains as important as ever.
I talk often about the problems with social networks. But what I’m particularly interested in is what, (if anything,) actually works to change people’s minds. I bet you can guess what works: Basically, nothing works.
I wasted a lot of time trying to explain the problems with social networks using facts and rational arguments. You know how far I got with that. One day, I stopped trying to educate and explain, and started trying to plant seeds. Little seeds of inquisition. Little seeds of self-awareness.
How do you feel when you are not on that social network?
And how do you feel after it ate your face for 2 hours?
Do you like the way you look, all hunched over with spine twisted and your face completely facing the ground?
Could you make progress on your dream if you could just find 10 hours of time a week? (As if you only spent 10 hours on social networks this week.)
Hold your phone facing you at arms length. Look just to one side and notice the actual amount of your immediate world which it occupies. How do you feel about only living within that small fraction of your world?
Visualize your death bed. (Go ahead. I’ll wait.) Now begin to list your imagined regrets as you lay dying. (Seriously. I’ll wait.) Which items on your list were related, in any way, to online social networks?
You have Seth’s thoughts. You now have my thoughts. Do you have any thoughts of your own?
Are you part of the problem, or part of the solution?
What, I can experience an entire trip to the mall without sighing, grimacing or silently cursing? I can sit through an entire red light without fidgeting? I can make (or miss) my connecting flight without losing my shit even once? Can I live my whole life this way?
We can, if we’re willing to give time, as a habit. Nothing else makes sense really—it’s just experimenting with a willingness to live in reality as though there’s nowhere else to be. (Not that there ever was.)
Because sometimes I experience small periods of blissful serenity. I’d particularly like to be able to go there on a more regular basis. It seems to me that spending about 10 days doing nothing but meditating in silence would be a delightfully mind-altering experience.
Rarely, but with increasing frequency, I find myself enjoying sitting pefectly still. Doing perfectly nothing. Paying attention to the moment instead of being completely obliterated by an endless torrent of thoughts. Eventually a thought which I deem worthy enough arises urging me to go do this, or check on that, and I rise from my glimpse of serenity.
I always wonder what would happen if I just kept thinking: That’s not quite worth getting up for just now, I’ll wait for the next thought.