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The Two Parachutes Podcast is a collaboration, well, more like a conversation, between a CEO and an FBI Agent. Shawn Baker-Garcia and Scott Olson first met when they were working at US Embassy Baghdad; Scott for the FBI and Shawn for the US State Department. Over the years they’ve worked together, given advice and assistance to each other, and now see that the synergy which comes from open, civil, and thoughtful discussion is very much needed in the modern discourse. Join them as they dive into everything interesting to humanity. The goal of 2PP is to recreate the experience most people have had when they stumble into an insightful conversation with a new acquaintance at a conference or a dinner party. The kind of conversation that makes the rest of the room stop talking and listen. The kind of conversation that gets your mind working as new thoughts tumble out. Let the 2 Parachutes Podcast drop into your world!
Hey, Scott. How are you?
Scott:Doing okay. Like,
Shawn:fine. With that?
Scott:Got a water spot on my shirt because I noticed that my hair was like this, and so I'm crambling around to be presentable and didn't make it.
Shawn:That's okay, you and I are it's funny how we continue to be like in some weird synchronization because the first thing I thought was I'm wearing a hat because I have this weird rash that's breaking out all on my face here. Again, I'm not super vain, I don't think, but I was just like, I just don't want that to be distracted. If you can kind of see it and stuff, I was like, Oh! So yeah, that's okay. We're pulled together, we are.
Shawn:Casual is cool.
Scott:Yeah, well I think it's our, think it's actually part of what we're trying to do and
Shawn:Be real.
Scott:Well, I'm pausing a little bit because I don't wanna make it like part of a moral code or ethics or whatever, but I think it's at some level it's sort of modeling behavior. It's, you know, we're doing a podcast and we're doing what we can, but in your daily life, you know, just because things aren't perfect doesn't mean that you should stop doing what you're doing and make things perfect. You still need to get work done. And so That's what we're
Shawn:doing. Doing I feel like, yeah, we're perfecting imperfection. It's fine.
Scott:Oh, we're gonna make t shirts that say that. Love that. How
Shawn:was your weekend?
Scott:My weekend was I'm trying to think. I kind of just focused on my self this weekend. Mean, had great meetings last week with the TV production company, we got some work done, and, earlier in the week I sort of have a work in progress with where I live. For some reason, God's hand is here and, He loves to grow horsetails and blackberry vines. And you can almost see these things coming out of the ground.
Scott:I mean, in two days, a horsetail will put six inches of vertical height on it. It's remarkable. So a week, week and a half ago, I went through one of these phases where I was chopping things down and trying to make it good. And so when I came to this weekend, I realized, wow, I don't have any of that stuff to do. So I got a bunch of sleep, I had a really nice bottle of wine, I got to the gym, I got to yoga, and you know, even though it's the middle of the summer and you're supposed to already be slimmed I got to tell you, I found this little wine shop, in the Ravenna area of Seattle, which is kind of north.
Scott:They are wonderful. But the problem is they keep sending me emails saying, hey, we have this great wine. How much do you want? So I'm spending more money than I really should on wine, but it's really great wine.
Shawn:Yeah. You're you're you're in the wine club now.
Scott:Exactly. So what about you? That's me. What did you do?
Shawn:No, was just saying, we're gonna remark Greg, I think had a similar experience as you this weekend. Like he's very accustomed, we're on almost an acre and so and he does most of the landscaping, the day to day, you know, landscaping and maintenance. And so it's a lot, you know, not all of us, there's a lot of grass, even though there's also a lot of forest type environment. But it was funny, at one point he kind of looked up and he was just like, I think I have to do anything. He's so used to doing it.
Shawn:And I mean he was troubled. He was just like, don't know what to do with myself now. And he's like, well, mean, I guess I could go take a nap. Like, I, you know, it was just really funny. And, you know, he did actually end up going out and doing a little bit of mowing and whatnot.
Shawn:But, yeah, I feel like from our side well, actually, don't know if this is maybe a similar thing that you guys go through in your part of the country, given how rainy it is over there, that climate. We've just had a remarkably wet summer. Like I'm talking rainforest levels, like it's just relentless. It's relentless. And so the growth as a result, we're used to a little bit, or I should say I say we as if I'm out there mowing.
Shawn:I'm like, gotta we are used to getting
Scott:Community property state, it's all there.
Shawn:Legally, it's a we, but practically it's a him. He's used to getting a bit of a break, you know, because summer tends to slow down the growth and stuff. We've got kind of creek thing bed down at the bottom of the hill and the grass, you know, gets a little drier. It just doesn't grow quite. But right now, we're like it's like the Yucatan out here.
Shawn:We're like, you know, civilizations are getting lost. I'm like, what's happening? I don't like there's so much growth. Wow. Yeah.
Shawn:I don't know how it so anyway, so yeah. So it was kinda nice for him. So we also just focused on us. We'd we'd, you know, do every other week custody with with my stepdaughter. And so, like, we had her for the prior week, so we didn't have her this weekend.
Shawn:She's back now. So it was just the two of us and we had no summer intern boarder with us. So we're just like, what do we do? Like, I don't I don't know what to do. So we're like, do we need to go to Costco?
Shawn:No. Not really. Okay. Well, what else? Like, what else can we do?
Shawn:Yeah. It's just so funny how and maybe that's a good pivot point for us for for today's discussion is it's funny, routine is fantastic because it gives you an efficiency that you build in and you're working towards things on a daily or a weekly rhythm. But then there's also it leaves you no time to think about, well, maybe we wanna go antiquing this weekend, or maybe we wanna take a drive to go apple picker. Well, it's probably too early for that, but you know what I mean. We just didn't know what to do with ourselves when we had spontaneous downtime.
Shawn:And what I found was that can become quite an irritant because you're anxious you're trying to figure out what you should do, and then maybe one of you starts to do something, but then the other one is doing it his or her own thing. I'm not saying we didn't get into an argument or anything, but there was a moment of tension where it was like, wait, what are what are we doing with our lives right now? And, like, what should we be doing? And then, you know, fun versus, you know, housekeeping, like, you know, just things you put off. I didn't know.
Shawn:We didn't know. And so I guess my the moral of my story is for anybody listening, have a spontaneous to do list, both fun and functional. That way if you're not in the mood to do the work, you can just go do something. Because because otherwise, you just you guys kinda just you you spin out. You just be like, I I anxiety.
Shawn:I don't
Scott:know what to do. It really is funny, but I think it really is important too. I mean, you spend a lot of your life being overwhelmed with all the stuff you have to do, whether it's work or building a career or raising kids or all the three or building a relationship. And when you get to that point where you're dealing with being overwhelmed. And it's funny because you know when you're young and coming out of school you're not used to being overwhelmed and so you have to figure it out.
Scott:And it's, as I have friends that are going through this sort of empty nest thing, part of it is their kids aren't around anymore. I get that because my kids have been long gone for a long time. But your situation is really cool because you have them and then you don't. And it makes it more instructive when you just have them, you never understand what to do when you don't have any have to do's. Yeah.
Scott:Because you get out of practice just thinking about what you want to do. And I don't know, wanna hear a little more about your sort of coping strategy of making a list to deal with it or having things on deck, because my instinct is sort of the other way. It's to spend time thinking about what is fundamentally a hard thing for me to do, which is what do I really want to do? And for this weekend, for me, it was just sort of remembering, hey, the thing that people of my age, early 60s, really need to pay attention to is fitness and health because at this age, if you don't, you can't get away with it. When you're 50, you can get away with it.
Scott:Certainly when you're younger than 50, you can get away with it. And I find that when I pay attention to that stuff, I fundamentally feel better. My heart health activity is doing intervals and I can do it outside running up the hill in my neighborhood or at the gym on an incline and it's just, I'll set up the speed so that I'm running and do a 100 steps and then set it back down. And if I do that three times, my heart rate is up and recovers, it's up and recovers, and it doesn't take much, three or four of those and I'm good. But I find that if I get into the fourth day of not doing that, all of a sudden I feel it.
Scott:My body gets heavy, my heart isn't where it needs to be. And so decades ago, was you're doing all this work stuff and you're doing all the stuff that you have to do. And if you can get to the gym, get to the gym. If you can go for a run, if you can go for a bike ride, try and get some exercise when you're coaching your kid's soccer team. And it's funny because at some point you think, well, if it's what I want, then it's selfish.
Scott:And actually, if it's what you want, it's just what you want. And part of that too for me is, my kids are grown, I'm not in a relationship, I'm a decision making committee of one. So I think in some ways it's easier for me to go to the gym and, eat when I'm hungry, not eat when I'm not hungry, because I'm by myself. And it feels less selfish because I don't have another person or a group of people to coordinate all that with. But I don't know, for you and for Greg, does doing what you want create some sort of emotion?
Shawn:Think you're steps ahead of where we were. I think for us where we landed was simply, there was like, if And I don't want to speak for Greg, but what I was sensing was, and maybe this is why I had anxiety, was like a pressure to know what you wanted to do. Neither one of us knew what we wanted to do. The reason why my brain, which is hyper, hyper attuned to efficiency, And again, this is, I'm sure there's some deep childhood trauma there that like created, you know, this instinct in me to, you know, curate every moment of my waking life to be very efficient. But but for me, was just like a, oh crap.
Shawn:Like, I don't have like well, this actually so when you and I first started talking about a podcast, we swapped, idea lists. Right? And and genuinely random, they weren't like these beautifully organized and focused narratives or even bullet points, really. It was just words on a digital page. And it was a little bit chaotic, but it's because I think you and I are similar in that when we think of something or come across something and we're intrigued, don't have time to deep dive on that today, but I want to come back to it and remind myself.
Shawn:It's like mental sticky notes or digital sticky notes everywhere. That's how I am for everything. So, like, for people with gifts and things like that, like, if I see something really cool, I'm like, oh, someone said might like that. I put it into my digital note because, again, I'm not buying a gift today for that person, but Christmas will come or a birthday will come or an anniversary or something like that. So I think for me, one, we're not used to not having time to ourselves.
Shawn:And so when we had it, we didn't know what to do with it. I think the fitness thing is huge. Funny enough, we did actually end up spending time kind of creating a more comfortable living space down in our it's not a basement. It kind of feels like a basement because this is a split level, but it's it's really ground level. It's off of the driveway where we parked cars because we don't have a garage.
Shawn:But we ended up switching out some things and putting down a new carpet thing where this gross old workout mat was because the cats shred the workout mats and it gets the black you know, stuff everywhere. You know? And we just we just oh, I don't wanna say we did some refurbishing or anything because that sounds too that is way too aggressive. It was very chill, but just some light touches reorganizing a space. And but our inclination was go towards something like where we would wanna be down there more and actually work out.
Shawn:We talked so about that ended up being the thing that we did. So funny enough, it was oriented towards self and health and well-being, if only to kind of set the stage for creating the space where we would want to do that stuff. But the checklist thing for me was just, if I don't have something to go to, I have a really hard time coming up with something on the spot. And then you kinda end up just wasting the day because you're just like, oh, I don't know. And then there's so much stress around the pressure of coming up with something.
Shawn:And I think he might be a little bit the same way. We're not spontaneous like that, where we're just gonna think of something cool to go do. Then like, he's not gonna say, hey, let's go to the bowling alley or let's go shoot some pool or something. We could be people who do those things, but we're not people who just come up with those things off the cuff. There's got to be something behind it.
Shawn:I don't know. This is kind of unwieldy. I don't know where we're going with this exactly, but it's just about like relationship management and personal time management, I guess.
Scott:Well, I love what you're saying. And as usual, you know, we've we got some overlaps and, you know, the Venn diagram isn't, you know, one circle. There's overlap and separateness. I do like the concept of if a thinker and a preparer, I mean, there are some people who just know what they want to do in the instant, and they're blindingly fast and it's how they're wired and I don't understand it because I'm not that way either. I mean, think and prepare, and so I appear to be able to move fast, but it's only because I've spent three days thinking about it and now I'm in that situation.
Scott:And so pick your metaphor, whether it's a sports metaphor or a battle metaphor, whatever it is, negotiation metaphor, you've already done your decision tree and so you can move quickly and you can make judgments on the fly because you've already thought about it. But there's another aspect to it too, which is you know, the pressure that comes from the universe. And it's a broader thing where you're trying to accomplish goals and you're frustrated because they're not coming through. And maybe you process it in terms of, well, this door is shut, so find the open door, you know, or do I decide to try and push through the closed door and then deal with that set of consequences? But sometimes the universe just hands you, the pause, the rest, And maybe it's because you need to rest, maybe it's because you need the nap.
Shawn:Maybe
Scott:not, maybe it's for some other reason. But my push question to you in that context is, you guys ended up doing some reorganizing of a part of your house. Do you like doing that? I mean, that fill you with joy or does it not?
Shawn:Well, so not only does it fill me with joy, it's one of those things that And I love the question because Greg and I love it. Like if Greg and I had a whole other parallel universe we were living in where nothing was restraining our ability to do things, I think we would be chipping Joanna Gaines. I think we would do it because we work really well together on, like home conceptual, whether it's outside, like, like, he's really big on the landscaping. And I'm pretty good with like surgical, suggestions or, you know, challenges or ideas, but he's really like the one kind of with the vision and stuff. Certainly much more attuned to the follow through.
Shawn:But, you know, but both of us really enjoy the inside stuff. And probably I have the leading edge on the design piece for the inside stuff. And I don't know. Maybe this is also, you're talking about the divine or the universe. Feel like, one, let me just say, give that voice because I think that's important.
Shawn:I do think God was telling us this is a moment for you to slow down. And but then the reaction was we panicked. Because we didn't know how to like we didn't understand what the I don't understand what the question is. What? Like I don't you know what I mean?
Shawn:And so there's that. And I think that's important. People, if you haven't already identified this in your own lives, and I wager most people are gonna find themselves on the busier end. I don't know too many people who just don't have a lot going on. Like most people have a lot going on.
Shawn:So yeah, so maybe that is a call to just but like you have to learn how to do nothing. You can't just do nothing and have it be productive.
Scott:Yeah and that's so fascinating. And I think again I got 15 things to say and I'm gonna like try and keep it to two. But I think one is understanding that even if you're in a situation where you're uncomfortable, it's a calm or still, and you don't want the still. At the end of it, you guys still did what made you happy and I think that it's important to recognize that. It wasn't a wasted day.
Scott:It wasn't a, oh, know, we just straighten some stuff up. And it was fun, but I think it's important to recognize that what you did was fulfilling for you. And that matters because that leads to the happiness that comes from fulfillment. And you see a lot of people, that really worry. Did I waste a day because all I did was sit around?
Scott:Generally, I find, and I have yet to find really an example, in my life or in the world where a person has done something that they really didn't wanna do. You find people saying, well, didn't want to do that, but a lot of those people are, I do things that I'm forced to do people and so they're not going to do anything unless they're forced and so they're in this world that they are comfortable with, which is, I had to do that. You don't have to do anything, but if your paradigm is I do what I have to do and poor miserable me, then that's what it is. And so I think it's instructive to look at your own behavior. If you look at your own behavior, and I used to say this to my children, to understand who you are, look at what you've chosen to do, and then try and take yourself out of it and imagine what you would think of a person who did that thing.
Shawn:And
Scott:if you're evaluating your behavior in terms of you and Greg went and did this organization down in basement and it was a wasted day, for example. What would you think if your neighbor across the street did that? What do you think that says about them as a person? You're probably gonna have a different understanding of what that behavior means in terms of their personality, because you're thinking about it in terms of somebody else, and you can separate from the, oh, I wasted a day because this isn't valuable. And it's a difficult thing, but it's instructive because people actually don't behave different from their own characters.
Scott:So if you look at what you do, you can begin to understand what your character actually is. Once you understand what your character actually is, you can decide if you like that or you don't, and then you can work on change. The other thing that I think is fascinating is people who want to move fast, and you plan. And so you talk about how you need to plan to be able to appear to move fast, but you love being overwhelmed with, I've got more to do than I need to do. And I see a lot of people, my mind is racing and I have to slow it down.
Scott:I have so much to do and I'm just overwhelmed. And so they try and find the calm, they try and pull back. And I'm at a point in my life where I think that's a mistake. I think that if you're going fast, if your brain is racing, you're in for a fight that you're going to lose if you try and slow it down. And so my recommendation is speed it up.
Scott:And the reason I think that is because if you go from conventional travel to warp speed, once you're going fast enough it feels like you're still. Once you're doing laps that are so ridiculously fast all of a sudden you pop out and it seems slow. I used to meditate when I would travel between Washington and New York on the Acela. And with meditation they say, never keep a thought in your mind, let things flow through your mind. Of course the challenge is if you have a thought in your mind, your mind is on it, so how do you let it go?
Scott:And what I would do when I was on the train is practice by looking out the window and you've been on that train before, you're in the forest and so it's trees and telephone poles and buildings, but everything comes and goes quickly. And so what I would try to do to practice meditating is look at a tree and then it's gone. So where's the next tree? And now there's a bush and now there's a telephone pole, now there's a rail car. And so the practice for my brain was the train was moving fast enough that the thing I looked at was gone, so it yanked it out of my brain for me.
Scott:So now when I meditate, I'm using that let it go, and what I find is I come to the peace and the calm by making that movement of thoughts and feelings and ideas go faster through my brain. Whatever the thing is, oh, this sucked, that hurt my feeling, that hurt my kid's feeling, what's the next thing, what's the next thing, what's the next thing? And what I come to all of a sudden is, wow, for I don't know how long I haven't been thinking about anything because it's just so fast that I can't keep up with it. And now I'm still. And I don't know if that makes any sense to you at all, but one of those counterintuitive things that actually-
Shawn:Yeah, as somebody who's constantly optimizing my brain waves to produce, again, it's like I'll be sitting at the breakfast table, if we're out at breakfast and I'll think of something and I'll just be like, oh, I need to do this and write this down because then I can do a thing that and you're just, you're go, go, go, go, go, go. So I do have to remind myself to be present important moments where it doesn't make sense to slow it down or to speed up because it would be rude to my family or to whatever. But I think in general, I appreciate that. It's kind of like asking a sprinter to just stop mid sprint and just even just slow it down to a walk, just come to a grinding halt. In a lot of cases from a health perspective, that's actually really dangerous because you go from like your heart a 100 miles an hour to zero.
Shawn:You you just so either slowing down out of it in a in a natural wind down, or if you're kind of at a comfortable jog and you feel like you should take time, but, like, you're like, but I don't really want to. I'm not comfortable taking it. Then then push yourself. Maybe that's in the run. That's where you push yourself to go harder.
Shawn:And like you said, you'll either find you know, and I think runners can relate to this. They find that zen moment where they're just in the zone and they're moving, but they're not really you know, they're just kind of in their own plane of of thought. And then you may kind of burn through and right, you get to the end. Or as you had started to say that because my brain is always trying to predict where people are going, What I where I thought you were gonna go is, like, you know, push harder because then you'll kinda you know, you'll wipe yourself out. At some point, you're gonna have to stop because you're just gonna get exhausted.
Shawn:Right? And sometimes maybe people need to run it off. Like when little kids were hyper and you're like, oh, go running around the playground, run it out, run it out. And then they can come home and, you know, take a good nap because they're tired. Right?
Shawn:So I think there's a little bit of that too. So well, it's actually three things. So one, it's you can do the method that you're talking about, which is just, you know, kick it into a higher gear and and and go with that instinct and then find that peaceful runs in that you're in high high, you know, productivity mode. You can push yourself for a sprint burst where you're like, nope. We're gonna go and we're gonna go hard, but then you're gonna have the inevitable, now I gotta stop because I'm exhausted.
Shawn:Or, you know, you can kind of do one or the other, but then make sure that as you're coming out of that, you're winding it down really slow and you're not forcing yourself to just be like, I have to sit here and meditate for twenty minutes now. That may That's kind of where I said, you have to practice being still. For people like myself, and it sounds like you might be in the same boat, our day is filled with so much here or or practically that, like, I remember once hearing about this, I don't know if it was Zen or Buddhist or something, but Proverb basically, is like, you know, you should aspire to meditate for twenty minutes a day unless you're too busy, in which case you should do it for an hour. Nothing drove me crazier than that little saint. Like, oh, that's the bane of my existence.
Shawn:I tell my people, especially my juniors a lot here at the organization, that they should try to break free from the chaos of what seems to be an if it's overwhelming, take a pause. Step away, chill your brain out, go watch a bad TV show, do whatever you gotta do to kinda reset and then come back. And you might be able to make better sense out of the chaos. I find for myself that's actually really true. Yeah.
Shawn:That's different than stopping, right, altogether. I
Scott:think what's different about it is that you're still living in the moment. You're not saying, oh, it's 11:30 and so I need to stop and meditate. You're going to a point, like what you're telling your kids, your kiddos, is when you're overwhelmed, that's the time, get off that train. And so if you're overwhelmed a lot, you're gonna get off that train a lot. And I the think key to well-being is recognizing the symptoms and then acting on them.
Scott:It's noon and so it's lunchtime. Well, if I'm not hungry, it's actually not good for my body to eat. If it's 10:00 and I ate at 08:00 and at 10:00 I'm hungry again, I need to listen to that and not eat a pizza at 08:00 and another pizza at 10:00, unless that is what my body seems to want. But I think part of it is curating your own understanding of the symptomology of your body. And just because you're feeling away doesn't mean that it's bad.
Scott:I mean, your brain is going really fast and it feels good, let it go. If your brain is going really fast and it feels bad, that's when you need to step off and either take it to light speed so it feels like it's slow or to try and pull it back or to do whatever works for you. But the tempo of everybody's life is different, and that comes back to the dance. I mean, when you are dancing you are in the tempo with another person, and if one of those people isn't feeling the tempo then the dance doesn't work. And so sometimes you just need to I'm not sure why that happened.
Scott:Sometimes it doesn't work. Sometimes you need to step away, sometimes your dance partner needs to step away. And then you deal with that. But I think that's kind of where I think it's an important component of self awareness is to understand, I would really like to get this done and I'll get it done in another hour, but I'm just starving and I need to feed my body. And then the other side of it is, drink enough water and you see people forcing themselves to drink all this water and they spend all their time peeing.
Scott:And now we know that that's actually really unhealthy. To drink eight glasses of water a day is actually really bad for you.
Shawn:I've heard not to get us on a side quest, but I actually had come across that perspective not that long ago. Yeah. Oddly enough, that's the thing that's become known.
Scott:And when you think about it, if you drink more water than your body needs, it dilutes the electrolyte balance in your body, and you're eliminating a lot of the electrolytes in your body just because you have a little bit of electrolyte dissolved in so much water that your body needs to remove the water and removes electrolytes with it, so you actually get out of chemical balance by drinking too much water. When you're thirsty, drink. I get that. But, this idea of, oh, you need this. Another thing, when I was involved in scouts, and again when my kids were growing up, advice was, if the entire world is telling you to make a right turn and your instincts are screaming at you to make a left turn, turn left.
Scott:Even if it turns out to be the wrong decision, at least you're dealing with the consequences of your decision. If you want to turn left and you turn right because the world tells you to, every bad thing that follows for you is gonna be somebody else's fault. And that's a trick box. It's hard to get out of. What was fascinating was I had this conversation about six months ago with a young man who had been in that troop, and he reached out to me through the Honor Foundation, which is the Navy Seal.
Scott:I'm getting out of the seals. How do I function in private industry? And he'd been to Bud's twice and ended up on the special boat team. And he shared with me how happy and fulfilled he is now, even though he was removed from Bud's both times, for injuries. He said, Everybody was telling me that BUDS and the SEAL team wasn't for me, and I ended up not being a SEAL, but that pathway, going through what I went through, has made me who I am today.
Scott:And he goes, all I remember is you saying, if the world's telling you to go right and your instincts are telling you to go left, go left. You'll be better off How because you're
Shawn:about that?
Scott:Yeah, wonderful. Gives me goosey telling that story. But it's true and it's a way of being, and it helps, I think, a person accept themselves. It's not this, well, you're you, and so you're good enough. It's not that.
Scott:It's like your decisions drive consequences. This is just causing memories to come back for me. There's a Danny DeVito Gregory Hines movie called Renaissance Man, And it's Danny DeVito, gets in trouble with the law, and he's like a high school, classics professor. So he's gotta go and teach Shakespeare to some kids that are failing out of boot camp, and Gregory Hines is boot camp sergeant major or whatever. But I remember at one point, you know, these kids are asking them, Why does this matter?
Scott:Why should we do this? And the phrase that stuck in my mind was, The choices you make dictate the life you lead. The choices you make dictate the life you lead. And it's a comedy movie, but there's truth in that. And it's your choices, not other choices that you decide to subscribe to.
Scott:It's what makes sense for you. And it's as fundamental as when to eat and drink and sleep, and it's as esoteric as how to plan for stuff, how to look like you're moving fast when you move slow, how to decide that you're gonna reorganize stuff, on the 1st Floor of your house because that's fun for you. That's fulfilling. That's a great way to spend a weekend with your partner.
Shawn:It was both fun from a creative aspect as well as functional because it just looks so much better down there now and we want to be down there now. Even had this conversation and we were like, okay, I think for our Christmas present to ourselves this year, we're going to get a little ceiling drop TV and anchor it then turn all the equipment around. Then now we have a proper workout space that we can have a sports center on or pardon the interruption.
Scott:Can you see this right here?
Shawn:I can, well maybe. Oh, that that you're actually
Scott:That is my ceiling drop TV and what it does is when I push the remote it comes down. So out here is my view of the lake and so it comes up, so I love a ceiling drop TV.
Shawn:That's great, I love it.
Scott:But your smile says it all. Your smile when you're talking about doing this shows that it's really not about having a more functional place. I mean it is about having a more functional place, but it's really about the process that you And I'll give you this as juxtaposed, I hate doing that stuff.
Shawn:Really?
Scott:Absolutely hate it. I love going to the gym. I love going to the gym and picking up heavy things running intervals. And so many people hate it and I get that, but I love that. I love going hiking.
Scott:When I have to weed whack my, yard here, I hate it. I do it because I like the result, but doing it is really an interesting exercise for me in recognizing that I've decided to do this thing that annoys me because I want the outcome and not because I love doing it.
Shawn:Sacrificing that short term pleasure for that long term gain.
Scott:Yeah, but it still is important for me to own the decision because it's really easy for me to go back to my childhood when I was made to pick weeds from my parents in the backyard, which I hated. It's like, oh well now I'm doing this again and I have to. It's like no dude, you don't have to. You're choosing to do this because you know that later when you're doing what you want to do, which is sit out on your deck with a glass of wine, you're going be annoyed if you see those blackberry shoots coming up. And so what you're doing is preparing for that, and so it makes it better.
Shawn:You've just taught everybody, this is adulting. That is the literal definition of adulting is you you're going to want to have that glass of wine in your hand and you're going to be so irritated looking if you could see this.
Scott:Yeah, and it is that trade off and I suppose it is a mature thing, I've seen young people do that too. I wanted to ask you about something that you said a few minutes ago. You're talking about being out to breakfast and you have all these things running through your head and you want to be present, but you want to take notes so that you're not going to forget anything. I love that conundrum, and I just wonder if there is a reason why you keep that in at the table instead of sharing it? You have this potential turmoil.
Scott:I wonder what that emotional set is for you.
Shawn:Well, think mostly because nobody is typically super interested in a lot of stuff that I'm interested in. You know what I mean? Admittedly, it may be something that's just very either of a work nature that isn't really anything anybody's that maybe even I don't wanna talk about because I'm just like, well, don't know the time for me to talk because I don't wanna talk about work like it's Sunday brunch, but Or if it's of a personal nature where I'm like, oh, I need to go research that underarm. But it's just because our minds are so malleable. And here's the thing that takes us down a slightly different rabbit hole.
Shawn:I have always been fascinated by the human stream of consciousness, So how we even converse as one human to another is, you know, we hear something just like you did, and then you made a conscious decision to follow-up on that idea or that thought. And I think that a lot of times when people in and maybe you can appreciate this being former FBI is like in the intelligence agencies, or if you're in a job or a position that forces you to be a good student of human behavior, it was almost like once you figured out the stream of consciousness thing, it's almost like a superpower that puts you into a room. Like you could be at a cocktail party and people are talking about something. You can almost figure out what's in their stream of conscious because of what's in the room that's triggering them to say a thing. Because the clues are mostly there.
Shawn:They're either observed in the environment or spoken by the people who you are interacting with. And it's especially true of family because you're around them so much and you know them so well, you can almost tell what's in their brain. But that like for me, I could be at an IHOP and I'll overhear a snippet of a conversation and I'm like, oh, I need to go look up that kind of a lawnmower thing. But you know what I mean? Like, you know, it's so it just depends on how you receive input in the environment around you.
Shawn:And then how much you care about that. Because my brain is moving so fast all the time. And because I have so many things I'm trying to accomplish in a given day, month or year, again, my brain is always looking for the efficiency. So I'm like, if I can write this down, then I will if I forget, then I can go back to my little mentalist and be like, what was that thing you were interested in? What kind of a bug is that?
Shawn:And what is it? You know what I mean? Like, I'll take a picture of the bug and then I'll go look it up later. So I don't know if this is like a normal human trait or if I have a touch of the ADHD. Like, I don't know.
Shawn:But it's definitely a thing I do. And I guess I don't sometimes I'm probably I suspect I probably do share with my family sometimes or whoever I'm sitting with, like if I'm at a lunch or something. And there are times I will ignore the instinct to do it if it's inappropriate or if it feels weird. Like right now, if I thought of something, I'm not gonna be typing it on my phone to remember that. But I will want to.
Shawn:I will badly want to.
Scott:Yeah, and that's the fascinating thing to me is the presumptions that are built in with that. And it's, you know the appropriateness that makes perfect sense. Know if what's on your mind just isn't something that should be spoken in front of your grandmother or
Shawn:a client or you know like.
Scott:All that stuff and I get that, but the presumption is actually something you said and I feel like I'm throwing little challenges at you today, is just part of what's happening today I guess, and it's the presumption that other people aren't interested in it. Sure. And the way that I would sort of attack that presumption is there are two components to it. One is people are or aren't interested in the content. You you overheard a snippet of conversation and so you wanna look up this kind of bug.
Scott:Are other people or are they not interested in that content? It's very easy to presume that nobody would be interested in that, and maybe they are and maybe they aren't. You don't know. Maybe they heard the same thing. The other is the presumption that if they're not interested in the content, then they're also not interested in you.
Scott:And that's the deeper thing. Right? I think overall, a lot of people don't say what's on their mind because they don't think that it's valuable simply because it's what's in their mind instead of what somebody else is doing. And so you get into the flow of the conversation and you're being an easy conversationalist, rather than inserting and trying to take over the conversation by this is what's on my mind, this is what's on my mind. But I think too, particularly when you're with good friends and people who already like you, so they're gonna forgive you if, you know, you say, I just can't believe why my brain is just going crazy today.
Scott:I think that maybe there's a catharsis to it, but just understanding that it is good to model the behavior of what I'm feeling and what's on my mind if it's appropriate as something that I'm gonna share is good because again, I think it becomes sort of a mental health thing if you get into this notion of I'm not gonna say things because they're probably not appropriate and nobody really cares anyway, you run into what I really think is a small I integrity issue. I mean, a lot of people think the word integrity means honesty, and I don't think it does. Integrity comes from being integrated, which means that what you show to the world is what you actually are. And a lot of people don't have that type of small eye integrity of this is what I really think, and this is what I'm gonna show because a lot of people who do can come off as rude. It's like, oh, you think that?
Scott:Well, I think you're wrong and this is what I think. And we've talked about this before, how do people who disagree speak? But you know, sitting there and struggling with, I got 20 things on my mind, and I'm here at breakfast, and I'm sitting here with Greg and my stepdaughter, and now you have this struggle. They can tell. And, you know, when you're in that party, you know, you're listening to people, but you also see the people who aren't saying things.
Scott:You see those people that are stopped and everybody responds to something, but five people don't. And they're the ones who don't feel like they can share. And so it's complex, but I think, and this is maybe gonna sound random, but it's like why people journal. Yeah. Why do people journal?
Scott:I had no idea why people journal until six months ago. And it's because you have all this stuff in your head, and if you don't have a place to say it, it gets stuck. And you get in this whirlwind, and you need a place to release it. And so writing a journal allows you to do that. I had my heart broken in February and I really was having a hard time because I would many times a day get caught in this heartbreak, sadness.
Scott:I'm 63 years old and I'm heartbroken, what the hell am I gonna do? And what I discovered was anytime I had a thought, just write it down. It's not like this diary, here's what happened to me today, but just taking the thought and putting it on a page helped me manage the thought because I expressed it in some way. And people go to therapy for that. Therapists say journal because it takes it out.
Scott:And you sitting at breakfast with Greg made me think of the idea of you sitting there struggling because you have all this stuff that you think you can't say, and it's not the end of the world, but it's also not great because you're sitting there with Greg and he probably sees you for what you are. So I don't know.
Shawn:Yeah. Well, and I think just to be fair, do tell Sadie and Greg a lot when we're at those situations. I'm a lot though and I think part of my issue is how I present. I am a hurricane and they're just like, ah. So I think my communication style, know, I've had to learn how to be more like receiving, like, you know, what are you guys thinking about, you know, and I'm sure you probably resonate with that because you also interact with me quite often now.
Shawn:I can be just like a tornado. But I will say what is interesting that, again, this got my brain thinking. So it'll be an example of me sharing what came to my brain is I wonder because of the way that humans now act from sadly, probably the time a kid can hold a phone, right? Because let's be honest, a lot of parents are just putting the phone right in their hands. Very early.
Shawn:I wonder how much of that breakfast table conversation skill set is going to have to be cultivated in a way to accommodate, which is essentially the new entity at the breakfast table, which is the phone. And it's there and everybody knows it's there. And most people will tell you, put it away, don't look at it, just tune out and turn off and be present. And there's a lot of people out there on the internet who are advocates of this and I understand that perspective. And I think that there's a lot of really valid moments for that.
Shawn:But you're not always going to control the environment and people are going to put their phones on the table. But I think it's interesting. It'll be interesting to see how the next generations manage it because they're doing this a lot Just because it's who they are. You talk about integrated, it is integrated into their whole present. This is them being What if this is them being present?
Shawn:And so
Scott:Is that interesting?
Shawn:Will new protocols, like new human protocols for conversation kind of slowly start to make their make its way into those interactions because where it's not considered rude, if you pick up a phone and say, oh, I love that idea. I'm gonna jot it down really quick because I wanna look into that later. But like kind of, again, going back to your metaphor of a dance. Now we have multiple dance partners because maybe you have four people at the the breakfast table or even more than that. And now it's like, what is the new human protocol for how we're integrated?
Shawn:And maybe this is the first tiny baby steps to a future that looks a lot more like Isaac Asimov or know, some of the science fiction writers, you know, it's like you have an actual artificial intelligence, you know, entity sitting there with you. Like, I don't know. I mean, it just got me going in a million directions because it it it's it's a tool now. It's becoming a bigger and bigger part of people's lives. You know?
Shawn:We probably won't see it, you know, but Sadie might in her lifetime, you know, and it might become an even bigger, you know, especially with all the AI technology stuff. But, but yeah, it it is important. It's important to share yourself with your people and to work things into the conversations rather than just kind of firewall or, keep yourself overly isolated. But also I think it's partially just the entrepreneur in me because I'm constantly late and not everybody and again, I'm sitting there, I'm thinking, okay, well, is an idea for a podcast and this is an you know what I mean? And I also like to be really mindful that I'm not just projecting at everybody.
Shawn:Like, it's not Sean's world, you're all just get you know what I mean? Because it's because when you live with naturally calmer people who are quieter and it's really easy. So I spend most of my days just kind of not like bridling who I am, but giving them space to take their time to say a thing. That enforces a little bit of quietude on my side because otherwise they wouldn't get a chance because I would every single time talk.
Scott:I think you've asked a really important question, which is what does being present mean today? You know, and it's not what it has meant before. It shouldn't be. You know, before being present meant, you know, we walked the three miles to the barn raising and, you know, spent all day building this thing. Then, you know, the people whose barn we built today, gave us dinner.
Scott:That's not what being present is. And we've gone through these, okay, now we have these devices and people who didn't grow up with them don't understand them. And it's rude to have your face in your phone, said every grandparent to every grandchild ever.
Shawn:Yeah, anybody over 50 has uttered those words, I assure you.
Scott:Yeah, but it's funny too, because I'll give you the example of my mom, I love my mom. She's been an educator her entire life, and so growing up in the 60s not every house had a TV. Even in the 70s not every house had a TV, and she was vigorously, angrily opposed to having a TV in the house because she wanted us to read and she thought watching TV was passive and would in some ways erode brain development. And now my 90 year old mom spends at least four hours a day watching YouTube videos on her computer. Now it's all research, it's all the geology of this and how to frame a wall using new modern technology.
Scott:And so it's keeping her brain function going, but she spends tons of time in front of a screen and doesn't see the dichotomy. She just doesn't see it. And so, I mean, I had my first phone when I was well into my like early 40s was the first time I had a phone go back and forth. And now I barely walk out without a phone. It's a functional thing.
Scott:And so I think your question is so important. What does being present mean? And I think part of the answer is telling people what you're doing. I have hearing loss and I have hearing aids. And the wonderful thing about my hearing aids is that they're Bluetoothed into my phone so that I can turn them up and turn them down, across a variety of parameters on my phone.
Scott:And so when I can't hear anybody, if I sit down in a restaurant and I can't hear anybody, say hi to everybody and I immediately go to my phone. And I realized everybody responded to that negatively. And so what I started doing was saying, I'm just gonna turn my hearing aids up here. And then half the time it became a conversation of, hey, let me see that thing, and we talked about hearing aids and how wonderful are, but your instinct that you're not just gonna make a note on your phone, but you're gonna say, hey, I just had a thought, I made a note on the phone. You're not taking your hurricane whirlwind and making it the topic of conversation, but you are acknowledging that you have this and not making it everybody's responsibility to figure out what you're doing.
Shawn:Care about it.
Scott:Yeah, and I think that's the sweet spot in conversation is sharing what you're doing and what you're thinking without making it the topic of conversation. And maybe that's the beginning of being present is sharing yourself without obligation. I'm going crazy today.
Shawn:I'm ask you. I
Scott:really need a Yeah. Yeah.
Shawn:If we can take that, you know, I'd like to revisit that in in, like, the next session we record because I think there's a lot to unpack with that both for the younger generation and in terms of how people in our generation or even older like how do we mirror that and meet the younger generation where they live for what that new definition of being present in this, you know, because again, nothing's ever all bad or all good. You know, their way is not gonna be better than our way because there's gonna be a lot of stuff that we did that it's gonna be produce better results than what they're doing. And and I think that's pretty clear. But we are evolving. I loved the story about your mom and the TV thing because we all had people in our lives, you know, older than us who, you know, every single thing that comes down the pipeline, you know, is gonna introduce a technology that agitates the older generation because they're all afraid of the same thing.
Shawn:So let's let's go back to that in the next session talking about how are we defining what mean present means and, you know, how does that play out in terms of how we are all relating to each other? Because again, what I love about our podcast is where I think we're going with this is we're just trying to illustrate for folks like, let's bring conversation back and let's do it though in a way that honors where we've come from and takes the best of those principles that we used to just take for granted in human interaction. But that also honors the next phase of our evolution, which these, I'd say 34 unders are modeling and will increasingly model. Oh, by the way, that demographic is just going get bigger and bigger as we get older and older, right? So it would behoove us to try to be a bridge in terms of linking these two communities together.
Shawn:And I think it's a great thing to chat about because I think there's a lot to discuss about that. What does it mean to be present and what is the technology role in all of that? What's that going to do to relationships moving forward?
Scott:You had such a great approach to this, and I couldn't agree with you more. And we're right on our hour as well. So you're just the best partner for this ever. I appreciate you so much. But, yeah, I think that, next time we should start with that and see where that goes, which is really what conversation is about, right?
Scott:It's not a pre planned exercise, which is interesting for two people that plan everything that we're engaging in conversations just to see where the path takes us. We can talk about that too.
Shawn:No, think that's perfect. And you know, I think conversation is never truly over until one of us dies.
Scott:Yeah, and comes back to haunt them.
Shawn:And I think I was just
Scott:like, probably
Shawn:you said that, that's what I was thinking too. And even then I'll be like, Scott, Scott, I had a thought. You get off
Scott:that easy. And don't think it's my own thought when we'll, yeah.
Shawn:That's fine. That's the whole idea of it. It was like, well they have ghost writing so that's like ghost thinking. Exactly.
Scott:Yeah. That'll be exactly what it is.
Shawn:Well I think
Scott:we Yeah. Might close a meeting perfect time to sign off. Another hour zip by.
Shawn:I know.
Scott:Makes me feel so good. Yeah, have a great week and I'll see you next
Shawn:See you next time, Scott. Thanks. Bye.