Purifying the Airwaves (Cliffs Notes from a Curious Mind Episode 4)

Welcome back to another episode of Cliffs Notes from a Curious Mind! This is an abbreviated list of the top 7 things that I've learned, loved, listened to, and/or labored over. Today's topics are:

1) A bit of Martha Graham's wisdom
2) the vibrant spirit of John Batiste's 'American Symphony' (and his upcoming tour).
3) we peer through the lens of 'fundamental attribution error,' encouraging a deeper understanding of our judgments. 
4) Dacher Keltner's book, 'Awe' takes us on a  tour of wonder, inspiring us to seek out the extraordinary in the ordinary.
5) We dabble in neuroscience and find the healing properties of tears.
6) Brene Brown on finding friends who protect our light.
7) Rick Rubin and his advice on Metta Practice

***Bonus Quote at the end!

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Chapters

• 1:12 Cliffs Note #1
• 3:09 Cliffs Note #2
• 5:37 Cliffs Note #3
• 6:49 Cliffs Note #4
• 9:35 Cliffs Note #5
• 10:26 Cliffs Note #6
• 12:10 Cliffs Note #7
• 14:36 One Last Quote!

Transcript

LeAnna Azzolini: 0:02

Welcome to Curating the Curious, the podcast that celebrates staying curious in life and never settling into a box. This show is for the creators, the seekers, the explorers, the truth tellers and the forever students of life, no matter what age or stage you're currently at. This is not as good as it gets, and it is never too late to begin. Join me as we explore all of the questions that come with the idea of curiosity, a place where the possibilities are endless and you can always start again. Today I'm getting back to one of my favorite little things that I invented with this podcast, and it is called Cliffs Notes from a Curious Mind. What that means is that we will talk about the seven things that I have learned, loved, listened to and or labored over in the past several days, weeks, months who knows at this point, years, because it's been so long. The first is a quote that I am shocked nobody has read on this podcast yet, nor have I which I can't believe. It's by Martha Graham, and it often gets cut off early whenever people are quoting it, and the ending is so good and I don't know why people cut it off, so I am going to read it to you. There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action.

LeAnna Azzolini: 1:41

And because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. If you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, not how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours, clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. It's just this is what you want to express. Express it, don't judge it. You have no idea whose life you could affect by expressing this. You have no idea what you're doing to yourself by keeping it to yourself and not expressing it, not letting it out. I love the part where she talks about and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. There's only one of you in all time, so this expression is unique. It means maybe somebody has said something like that before, maybe somebody has created something like that before, maybe somebody has danced in that way before, but it's always unique coming from you. So please just let it out and give it. No two artists can create anything exactly the same. It's the best reminder for all artists, for all people, when they feel that stirring inside of them to share something but they're doubting it.

LeAnna Azzolini: 3:08

The second item that I want to share, number two, is the John Batiste documentary that I just watched American Symphony. Wow, that was. It's so inspiring. He is such an amazing guy, an amazing artist and person, and to watch the relationship between John and his wife, suleika, and what they go through during the filming of that documentary, their views on creating art and why they do it and it's just a way of survival for them and hearing them talk about that it just really solidified for me why we do these things. I highly recommend you go watch American Symphony documentary and also, I would say so, what spurred me to watch it was sometimes I listened to Armchair Expert with Dax and Monica and I listened to that with John Batiste. I don't know which one I liked better the podcast episode with John Batiste on Armchair Expert or the documentary. I don't know. That podcast episode was so inspiring and then I watched the documentary and I couldn't figure out which one was better. So do both. And then John Batiste he is doing a tour coming up this year and it's called Purifying the Airwaves. He's chosen to do this during the election year because he wants to put some good energy out into the world during something that could get messy, and he's only doing it in small theaters across America and he does it with his Stay Human group and if you watch the documentary you'll hear about that and also in the podcast and he calls it a love campaign, love revolution. He wants it to have a town hall feel, where it's intimate. It was so inspiring listening to him talk about all this stuff just run towards anything that features John Batiste. Really, I just love that he is getting so much attention right now because it's so well-deserved and what a beautiful and amazing soul he is and his wife Sulayka.

LeAnna Azzolini: 5:37

Number three is a little term that I learned and I love having a name for it. It's something that we human beings do all the time and it's so frustrating when you hear somebody doing it. But no, we all do it. It's called fundamental attribution error. Basically, what that is is sort of like oh well, me, when I do something, that's just a circumstantial. Those are my circumstances at the moment and so I'm behaving in that way when you do it. That is your character. That is everything about who you are and I will condemn you. Basically, I loved hearing that word for it. We're all guilty of it, but it's interesting if you really think about fundamental attribution error and how often it happens and how actually ridiculous it is. I don't know Me, circumstantial you, it's all character. It's kind of a good little check-in.

LeAnna Azzolini: 6:49

Number four is a book that I just started actually listening to.

LeAnna Azzolini: 6:55

The book is called Awe by Dacker Keltner. It's a W-E-aw and I love it. It's really. It's got me thinking about paying attention, noticing, being in a state of wonder or awe, just looking around and paying attention to the things that really make you stop and think or stop and stare. Something that I thought was really interesting about that is I think when we all hear the word awe, we think of nature. In the book they talk about a global study that was done on determining the top ways that we as people experience awe. After this global study, everybody was assuming that nature would be number one and I would completely think that nature would be the first way that people experience awe. It actually came in at number three. This is what really grabbed me about it all.

LeAnna Azzolini: 8:02

The number two way was called collective effervescence. We experience collective effervescence when we go to a concert and you feel that you're in that ocean of human joy. Or Burning man, which I still haven't gotten to experience and that is on my bucket list. Or people who go to church with the Gospel Choir those things are collective effervescence. Once I heard that I thought, oh yeah, you know what that might be higher on my list. Number one was called moral beauty. I don't love that term when I first hear it because I think of you know, judging the morality of people. But what moral beauty really is witnessing people at their best, when they're showing courage and kindness and kindness and equanimity. So number one on the awe scale was moral beauty witnessing people at their top. Number two collective effervescence. I love collective effervescence. I'm a concert junkie. Number three is nature, taking in nature. So this book is pretty cool. So far I haven't finished it, but it's got me thinking about, you know, joy, awe, wonder, curiosity. It's pretty cool.

LeAnna Azzolini: 9:34

Number five is it has to do with one of my favorite topics in the world, which is neuroscience. I listen to people like Hubert Mann. I love the scientific part of all of the brain and behavior things, why we do what we do, what causes us, the reactions of things and I loved hearing that crying literally heals your body and when we cry and release the tears, we release oxytocin and endorphins and it brings our bodies back to a parasympathetic state. So scientifically, it's healing and something that we actually need to do, physically and emotionally, obviously, but that was a pretty cool little neuroscience fact. Number six is a term that I just recently had a talk with my daughter about that I learned from Brene Brown. I just loved the analogy or metaphor I never know the difference between the two that she shared on.

LeAnna Azzolini: 10:43

I think it was in her Atlas of the Heart show on Netflix, but I saw a little clip of it in a video. She's talking about candleblower outers and she says you know, you have this flame and this flame is your spirit, it's your soul, it's your light and sometimes it's going to shine really, really bright and you want to surround yourself with people who, when it's shining bright, they think wow, what a beautiful light and they protect your light. And you want to be the kind of friend who protects others' lights too. You want to surround yourself with people who love and appreciate your light, whose light you love and appreciate, and we do not want to surround ourselves with candleblower outers. And after Brene told about all of that, she asked the audience to raise their hand if they've ever had a friend or someone in their life who was a candleblower outer. And as my daughter was watching this, she raised her hand. I think it's so powerful and important who we surround ourselves with. It could be for any reason that they're a candleblower outer. It might just be a phase of life, but for whatever reason it is, we have to be able to point those people out and move them over to the side where they can't blow out our candle, they can't blow out our flame.

LeAnna Azzolini: 12:09

And number seven, my last one, is it's called meta-practice, and Rick Rubin was talking to Rich Roll. I will listen to anything that Rick Rubin speaks on, because I love what he has to say. He always has something new and different to talk about and his voice is amazing. So he shared with Rich his meta-practice that he's been doing for years and it's very simple. It's something that everybody can write down and repeat to yourself every day, every morning, whenever you want to kind of remind yourself, to get into a certain mindset, or if you do meditate, like I do. It goes like this May I be filled with loving-kindness, may I be well, may I be peaceful and at ease, may I be happy. And you repeat those four lines over and over. He does it, I think, for at least five minutes. He says 10 minutes, I can't remember and he repeats it. I like that so much that I wrote it down for myself, I have it up on my wall for me to repeat each day and I put it in my daughter's room for her to repeat, because it's very simple and easy and just kind of like makes you feel good when you repeat them. So those are my seven things that I wanted to share today.

LeAnna Azzolini: 13:38

I want to make sure to keep coming back here and sharing things and make this as consistent as possible. I don't have any hard and fast rules right now. I'm just sort of trying to get myself back into the swing of being here. I want to get moving on another interview very, very soon and I just want to keep coming back here and sharing because I love it. So hopefully it'll be every week, if not maybe twice a week and maybe like I'll skip a week here and there, who knows? And Rachel Larson Weaver's interview was my first one back here at the beginning of this month, january. Check that out if you haven't heard it, because she's just such a light, so joyful and wonderful and eye-opening and just a very cool person all around.

LeAnna Azzolini: 14:36

Ooh, and one quote I want to share with you. I love this In winter, I plot and plan. In spring, I move. I love that. That's kind of a reminder you don't have to be doing all the things right now. You can be plotting and planning and restructuring the way you do your daily life, your daily habits, and then, when spring comes and thaws everything out, you make your moves. And that quote was by Henry Rollins Alright, until we meet again, stay curious.