7 for Sunday

7 for Sunday is a weekly serving of 7 things for you to savor. — It’s an email containing my reflections on interesting things I find laying about, seasoned with some quotes from my collection. See https://7forsunday.com/.

Reflections on 7 years and ~2,000 episodes

December 25

Frankly, that’s seems impossible.

First, unrelated to podcasting, I’d like to jump on my soapbox about keeping a personal journal. It takes a lot of effort, but it is invaluable for getting perspective on one’s own life. It’s also just plain fun to read your own thoughts many years later. The best day to start journaling was yesterday; but today would also be good.

December 27th 2016 is my “okay, fine, I’m starting a podcast” date. The first episode of the Movers Mindset podcast (with a different name back then) came out in early January 2017. So—despite my disbelief and denial—it’s been 7 years. And 2,000 episodes? …I don’t know the exact number, but it also seems impossible.

Some things I’ve done on purpose. What happens if you try to publish a daily show for four years? What happens if you have a show you love and just ignore the urge (and advice) to publish on a schedule, and instead just put them out whenever?

Some things have just been a delightful surprise. The times people surprise me and ask me to join them on their show. The countless conversations next-to the conversation that became a podcast. The countless hours of my life spent with others who are passionate about podcasting. The times I’ve said, “Hello, I’m Craig Constantine” in person, and been recognized by the sound of my voice! And, when someone says that some podcast conversation really helped them as a listener, or as a guest.

I’ve taken the enormous amount of opportunity, resources, luck and others’ passion that I’ve been so generously given, and poured in as much of my own (passion, time, energy, blood, sweat, tears, money) as I can. The result has been miraculous.

This post is prompted by someone asking me how many years it’s been… and my stumbling over the math. Hey, thanks Özlem, for asking.

Takeaway? CYCLES!

Everything flows and ebbs. Be grateful for the flow and for the ebb. You already know that. I already knew that before Dec 27, 2016. The takeaway is to find a way to be reminded of this.

I hope you’re doing well, and I wish you the strength and courage to move along your own path tomorrow, next month, next year, and beyond.

Cheers!

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Actively decide

December 24

It takes some commitment to decide. I find my urge is to wriggle. My urge is to try to keep my options open. My urge is to take on more. In the case of this little missive, I mean to seek more and more information. To go beyond actively seeking, to passively permitting more and more things to flow at me.

Does this content move me closer to or further from my ultimate aim? If what we consume becomes our thoughts, our thoughts become our actions, and our actions become our character, can I give the things I watch, listen to, and read — the things I’m turning into — a grade of B or above? The lure of a compelling headline aside, does this topic actually interest me? Does this content educate and edify? And when I’m seeking pure entertainment, which everyone sometimes needs, does it at least not appeal to the most reptilian part of my brain, and make me feel lower, baser, and stupider as a result?

~ Brett McKay from, https://www.artofmanliness.com/character/behavior/sunday-firesides-be-a-ruthless-editor-in-chief/

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Still, I resist the urge to decide and invite the self-made disaster of overwhelm. Why? Because it takes real courage, in the presence of others and in the presence of others’ vociferous opinions… It takes courage for me to say, “I don’t know.”

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The flywheel mind

December 22

It can go well, my sitting and thinking. But only if there’s actually something that requires solving. Far too often I’m just spinning my wheels. Like one of those old-timey air raid sirens that staaaaaaaaaaaaaarts low and slow and builds to a heinous scream. A heinous scream in my head. Fun times.

Focusing on concrete things. For me, I think all of the supposedly therapeutic effect of not thinking comes from having to focus on moving carefully, from being actively distracted from my flywheel mind.

~ Gavin Leech from, https://www.gleech.org/why-yoga

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It’s not practical for me to shift by mental effort away from the heinous scream of the flywheel mind. Physical activity works, though. I take my screaming mind and taunt myself thinking, (read this in Condescending Wonka voice) “yes, interesting, oh yes, tell me more about that, yes…”, while moving. Lots of kinds of movement work, like yoga or running. Not light-silly-fun movement, but rather concerted, hard-working movement.

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Hunger

December 20

I’m intrigued by the word hunger. It can convey so much more than the simple hunger for food. It’s power begins to show when deployed as hunger for nourishment— Hunger for freedom— Hunger for power. For as long as I can remember I’ve struggled with body image. I feel like that’s a better way to convey the feeling instead of a more surface-level, “struggled with weight.” Only a precious few times (in my 50+ laps around ‘ol Sol) have things around me lined up, juust right, and I’ve found myself in a shape to my liking; Found myself in a shape that enabled me to do what I wanted.

Hunger isn’t in your stomach or your blood-sugar levels. It’s in your mind—and that’s where we need to shape up.

~ Michael Graziano from, https://aeon.co/essays/hunger-is-psychological-and-dieting-only-makes-it-worse

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The word I’ve been meditating on recently is ease. To avoid hunger (not just hunger for food, all the hungers) I must be in ease. Easy to say, impossible to do, but just maybe it’s be–able.

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Coincidence?

December 18

Coincidence appears often in our lives: For example, my turning on a light in my apartment building, at the moment someone else is looking up. This simple event—that perfectly timed light just as they look up—might strike them as being significant. But for me it may go unnoticed as an unremarkable moment. The perception of meaning in that coincidence depends on our contexts. It’s the context that is the special part, not the event itself. Understanding that, makes it possible to shift our perspectives.

Sonder: n. the realization that each random passerby is the main character of their own story, living a life just as vivid and complex as your own, while you are just an extra in the background

~ “Sonder” is credited to John Koenig

I’m just the random person flipping on a light. That other person, who I don’t even know is out there, is the main character of their story. But it’s just a coincidence.

Thirty years ago I bought a calculator. An HP-42S which, to this day, works perfectly in every respect. The keys don’t just still work but they are in perfect condition. They softly bump (the way a modern phone’s haptic motor dreams it might some day bump) and their labels remain pristine. It’s clearly a marvel of over-engineering. It takes 3 little button batteries, and they last about 3 or 4 years. When I bought it, it was moderately expensive. Not expensive per se, but also not something I’d want to lose. So I put a little white label inside the battery door and I wrote the date and my first name. (And I did once leave it in a laboratory, and retrieved it from lost+found by saying, “my name is inside.”) Being insane, I even wrote the month/year on that label as I changed the batteries. After about 15 years, the label was full and I stopped writing dates. A few days ago—on December 16th to be exact—the battery indicator said it was again, time. Normally (read “ALWAYS”), I’m a “jump up and do it now” sort of person. Instead, for no particular reason, I turned off my faithful 42S and simply set it aside. The very next day, I got three new batteries, opened the little battery door…

And it was December 17th. I bought my calculator on December 17, 1993. There I was, changing the batteries on December 17th, 2023. Exactly 30 years. It’s just an interesting coincidence, right?

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Hey, pay attention

December 17

I have a routine with my journaling. Over time, that routine has changed a lot and I’m sure it will evolve farther. Currently, I start a clean A5-sized face of a page for each day. I do not read the previous day’s entry; I’m never trying to continue where I left off in my thinking as I journal. No, the journal is simply a place for me to talk to my future self. Here’s why I did that thing I did. Here’s this really great idea… but I’m letting go of it, and writing it down hoping future-me gets a chuckle at the dumb idea I was wise to drop. Sometimes I record really big wins. Sometimes I record really big losses. A wedding! A birth! A death! But mostly, I’m just capturing how I feel, why I feel, what I think, why I think, … Sometimes I spend hours painstakingly handwriting long texts. Sometimes it’s just 60-seconds and a bulleted list. Vanishingly rare is a sketch. Occasionally a flourish of colored-penciling. There are often inset headings in block letters at the sides as signposts—first instance of this, last instance of that.

It helps me pay attention to my life.

~ Austin Kleon from, https://austinkleon.com/2018/02/20/what-is-the-point-of-keeping-a-diary/

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Yes, there’s much paying of attention to my life that happens in the writing.

But the true wizardry is in the years-later rereading.

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Utilitarian

December 15

“All work an no play makes Jack a dull boy.” It’s one of those life-truths that we all know, but which I slowly, increasingly, failed to heed. Doing some things mattered to get to some goals. Other things didn’t seem directly related. Choice by choice is how a life gets made.

Today’s world is a deeply utilitarian one, where everything must have a use or be ‘good for something’. Our lives are dominated by work and, unless we have been extraordinarily lucky, we work not because we particularly enjoy it but to get paid — payment that keeps us and our loved ones alive for a while and, if there is anything left over, allows us to do something more interesting than the work. Our lives are spent, largely, doing one thing for the sake of something else, which is in turn done for something else.

~ Mark Rowlands from, https://aeon.co/essays/it-is-play-and-not-work-that-gives-life-meaning

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It’s not that the things I chose to do became less fun—more ‘good for something’… No. It’s that I was choosing. Play happens in that liminal space where the “yes, and…” of improvisation is the only choice.

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Apply ass to chair

December 13

Literally for writing, but metaphorically in general. Discipline is the only way. Discipline does not mean one has to be austere; It implies clarity and fidelity about one’s goals. Discipline is deeply tied to affecting real change within oneself and to personal integrity.

Discipline, primarily, is our capacity to make a commitment in time.

~ Robert Fripp from, https://austinkleon.substack.com/p/the-meaning-of-discipline

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Motivation will get you out the door, but it fades over time. A good book or podcast might give you the momentary impulse to take your first steps along a path, but when the road gets tough only discipline will keep you moving forward.

~ Dan Edwardes from, https://danedwardes.com/2020/11/17/motivation-is-temporary/

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Without discipline I’m the pinball in the pachinko machine: I’m clearly directed (me by my goal, the pinball by gravity) but buffeted randomly (me by everything, the pinball by the pins) ending up in an uncontrolled final position. The critical thing to combine with discipline is ease. Not bashing, not self-loathing and certainly not self-violence. Ease within training.

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Humility

December 11

Each year I choose a word or short phrase as a reminder. I use it as a talisman throughout the year. Some years I’ve chosen something to keep me mindful of a goal, and in other years something to keep me away from a pitfall or mistake I see that I’m too-often making. In the most recent years I’ve been choosing something aspirational; I’ve been choosing something which every day—even after 365 days—reminds me of where I want to be going.

You can also see how it might similarly interfere with your ability to change your beliefs in pursuit of the truth – it’s hard to let go of false beliefs when they feel true because you believe them. It’s hard to imagine things from perspectives that are not your own. It’s hard to accept that you are limited and fallible, prone to error.

This is where humility comes in.

~ Jen Cole Wright from, https://theconversation.com/humility-is-the-foundation-to-a-virtuous-life-207897

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For 2024 I’m choosing the word humility. There are lots of reasons why I think humility is a virtue. But I’m picking it because it feels difficult for me to aspire to being more humble. I have clear evidence (journaling for the win) that humility is a powerful antidote to my occasional fits of petulance. And, as an echo of Yoda‘s wisdom, putting a fine point on something I can improve, by making it my touchstone for 2024 is the way forward for me.

As we’re approaching the end of 2023 I’m sure you, Dear Reader, have already begun some self-reflection. I wish you peace and flourishing for the coming year and I look forward to our continued journey together. Cheers!

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Chop wood, carry water

December 10

There is a well-known trumpet player named Rick Braun. Although a few years younger, he was born in the same city and went to the same high school as my dad. And if my memory serves, they were in high school at the same time and at least knew of each other. My dad played the trumpet in high school, even performing in a band. Many year ago, my dad saw Braun somewhere—a concert I think—and had a chance to speak with him. The story goes that my dad said something complimentary about Braun’s ability and talent. (Yes, this is all hearsay.) Braun’s reply? “What a lot of people mistake for talent is simply a lot of hard work.”

At Time in the nineteen-fifties, the entry-level job for writers was a column called Miscellany. Filled with one-sentence oddities culled from newspapers and the wire services, Miscellany ran down its third of a page like a ladder, each wee story with its own title—traditionally, and almost invariably, a pun. Writers did not long endure there, and were not meant to, but just after I showed up a hiring freeze shut the door behind me, and I wrote Miscellany for a year and a half. That came to roughly a thousand one-sentence stories, a thousand puns.

~ John McPhee from, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/09/14/omission

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John McPhee is a stellar writer. He’s written a lot and, okay, sure, I get that. There are greatest-of-all-time musicians I’ve heard of who still do scales daily 30 years on. And McPhee wrote a thousand puns(!), a thousand titles, and a thousand one-sentence stories cut-down from larger stories. (And go read McPhee’s article right now, about omission.) And now here’s Braun’s comment. Frankly, I’ve heard this sentiment countless times in countless variations: The path to mastery? Chop wood, carry water.

The thing I’m not certain of though, from my dad’s story, is whether the takeaway for him was, “Oh cool, Braun’s just a regular guy who worked really hard!” or “Fudge, I shoulda’ stuck with the trumpet!”

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