In this Music, Creativity and Mental Health roundtable we discuss the podcast with singer, songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist Max Frost. THat conversation was full of Max's deep reflections and insights and this prompted an equally deep and significant discussion with my friends from Nettwerk Music. Topics covered included: the music industry as a 'rat-race' in which the prospect of the loss of status is worse than never attaining it; the 'cycle of torture' that increasing one's audience can subject artists to; managing one's ego, especially managing social media comparison; that although social media has amped up concern with metrics, this has always been there in the industry; that there are 'many doors to the room of creativity'; the chaos of overwhelming commoditisation of music; and the seductive and perverting nature of fame.
In this roundtable discussion of Personality & Developing Character Part2: Can You Change Your Personality?, we explored a wide range of issues: How ageing and declining neuroplasticity may make personality recalibration more difficult; how we really need to be motivated for change to be possible; how becoming more comfortable with who we are allows us to better curate our environment; how it is harder for younger people to change due to lack of experience; how humility is a part of self-acceptance; how understanding personality's hereditary nature may help us be less prone to the fundmental attribution error; do certain personality profiles make it harder to garner self-insight?; ageing and the dropping away of filters to the real self; how an introvert may learn to do public speaking by making it a more introverted style; and how self acceptance needs to be paired with caring for others.
This podcast, Can You Change Your Personality, is part 2 of a series on personality and the building of character. It begins with a brief summary of what personality is and then focuses on the deeply debated question of whether you can substantially change your personality. Recent research suggests by mindfully practising alternative approaches you can somewhat recalibrate the expression of your underlying personality. It is not wholesale change. That doesn’t mean it’s not incredibly helpful. Typically, we seek to chang personality where our natural preferences lead to trouble, especially where our egocentric bias leads us astray. Moderating these mismatches between personality and the world is a great idea. This then leads to an introduction to the idea that character is what results from this kind of intentional , mindful practice. An analogy is made with computing: that personality is akin to the computer’s operating system and recalibration is like software patch applied to fix glitches. Finally, I discuss how this recalibration can have deep moral implications, a topic I’ll take up in the third podcast.
In this Music, Wellbeing & Mental Health podcast I talk with singer, songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist Max Frost. We had a wonderful conversation and we touched on many topics including: the role of anxiety in the creative process; learning to drop expectations that ‘this matters’ and learning not to care so much; technology and the evolution of art, especially the speed of music production; the myth of the tortured artist; tthe relationship between great art and psychological pain and suffering; the relationship between the imposter syndrome and career success; being transported by music as a meditative-like experience; the unconscious, non-literal and poetic elements of creative production; the mystery of why and how music effects human beings so powerfully. All in all, it was a great conversation and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
This roundtable discussion of the podcast 'Personality and Developing Character Part 1' was very lively and filled with insights from the participants:. Topics discussed included: the surprising virtue of being average on personality dimensions; the understanding of a wider range of people when you are centrally located on the traits; some fantastic examples of the egocentric basa!; a live personality assesmmet of one of the participants; the importance of reciprocal altruism in business deals; how an understanding of the Big 5 can really help us better navigate relationships and not take things quite so personally; how understanding the Big 5 breeds tolerance and empathy. All in all a fantastic discussion!
This is the first in a podcast series on personality and the building of character. I’ve called it ‘Being the Best You Can Be’ because, in my opinion, this is the best way to fulfill our most important of desires: to maximise wellbeing for ourselves and for those around us.
An important way to maximise wellbeing is to understand one’s own personality and to have the skills to recalibrate it to function more wisely in everyday life. This is what I mean by the development of character.
1. This first podcast will address the questions: ‘What is personality?’ and ‘Why does it matter?’
2. Podcast 2 will suggest practical strategies for adaptive change. This naturally raises the highly debated and important question of whether you can change personality, including how we can recalibrate our natural preferences when needed.
3. Podcast three will then apply all this to the development of character and a practical moral outlook.
In the first podcast describe the general features of personality:
• that it is a preference system and thus motivates us emotionally
• that this deep motivational system is largely unconscious, that is before we reflect on it consciously, we are already predisposed to situations in predictable ways
• that personality it is crucial to understand as it influences everything we do and knowledge of that is of utmost importance in living a happy and successful life
• that personality is largely genetic and for most people doesn’t change much across the lifespan, so accepting, working with it, it is absolutely necessary
• that each dimension of personality is distributed on bell curves and the further we are apart from each other on each dimension, the harder it is to understand that person
• that this is a part of the egocentric bias, whereby we project our worldview onto others and become upset when they are not like us… but they of course do the same towards us!
• that re-calibration is the answer when we find ourselves in environments that don’t naturally suit us.
I then give brief summaries of the Big 5 : Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness Extraversion, Agreeableness and Emotional Stability. Finally, we explore a number of combinations of these 5 traits, indicating how they help us ‘cut through’ and understand people and their behaviour more clearly.
This is a roundtable discussion with my friends from Nettwerk Music. Our subject was the Music, Creativity & Mental Health podcast with Robot Koch. It was a deeply insightful and wide-ranging discussion that appropriately matched the often deep and fascinating discussion I had with Robert. Topics discussed included: Why do people decide to be artists even though they know it is likely to be difficult, insecure, stressful and so on; Becoming comfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity, learning to trust it, even value it, as a key for creativity; Fluid versus Crystallized intelligence and how that informs intuition; Quietening down and placing the brain in a more contemplative state to encourage intuition; Social Media and the shifting music industry landscape, especially the ‘compare and despair mindset that can result; Sensitivity and listening to the quiet inner voice of intuition, and tuning the internal antenna; The importance of navigating difficult experiences for one’s creative and personal development.
This roundtable discuses the third podcast in the Staying Composed series and is titled ‘Cultivating Equanimity Within Everyday Life’. Topics discussed included: how so many small things can build equanimity; how we should cultivate a certain skepticism or epistemological humility in the face of misinformation and disinformation; how we need to transcend particular disputes looking for the larger picture; how we need to strike a balance in attending to, and turning away from, media reporting; why we ought to be grateful for our existence; how eudemonic happiness is central to equanimity in modern times and the importance of having a ‘why’ for what we do’; how authentic relationships are central to general equanimity and the primacy of action in the face of a divided world.
The first 2 podcasts in the Staying Composed in Troubling Times series focused on more direct psychological strategies for equanimity, but the focus in this third podcast is on less direct, but nonetheless very practical strategies that lead to inner calm and composure. I broke these into four, overlapping categories: 1 Maintaining physical health & resilience; 2. Intentional information and media consumption; 3. The active pursuit of purpose and of awe and; Prosocial action, compassion, gratitude and civility. Although there is much to worry about in the world, it is fortunate that there are so many ways to practically nurture equanimity and this series, hopefully, gives people a few extra practices they can add to their wellbeing toolkit!
Today in this Music & Mental Health Podcast I’m talking with artist, composer and record producer Robert Koch, who is much better known by his stage name, Foam and Sand. Originally from Germany, At the age of 13 he was inspired by MTV videos and embarked on his musical career. Now residing in Los Angeles, Robert has a stellar background in composing and producing his own work as well as for other major artists. Our topics are creativity and music and their relation to mental health, with a focus on what challenges our wellbeing and our creativity and what Robert has found that nurtures his creativity as well as he physical and mental wellbeing. I found this conversation very uplifting, and topics touched on included: the toll that touring took on him physically and psychologically; his decision to follow his passion, trust his intuition & stop touring; artistic sensitivity as a ‘super-power’; the relationship between intuition and a sense of coherence; meditation and accessing intuition; egolessness and the problems of the ego; healthy perfectionism and intrinsic motivation; being comfortable with the unknown; and other topics.
This roundtable on cultivating equanimity psychologically, with my esteemed friends from Nettwerk Music, explored many implications of the podcast: that you can always exert some control over your response to the world; that playing the victim keeps us stuck and is a psychological trap that extends our suffering; that the Fundamental Attribution Error feeds into polarisation and hatred; that mindfulness is at the core of slowing down and magnifying mental contents so they can be recognised and changed; that we must start with self before we try to change others and the world, and thereby we can better infleunce others; and that choosing our repsonse is circumscribed by the very real constraints on our access to high qulaity information and knowledge, and by the pressures to 'choose a side' and not take more nuanced and middle-gound positions. As always with my colleagues from Nettwerk, thsi was a wonderful conversation!
Many of us are finding contemporary life unsettling. This second podcast in the series focuses on psychological pathways to equanimity. We cover a lot of gground: the Serenity Prayer and the freedom that potentially lies in the space betwen stimulus and response; the power to choose as exemplified by Viktor Frankl; The role of courage and of Mindfulness in equanimity; the Buddhist notion of the Sacred Pause and how this can be applied using the 2 Conditions Test and finally, how all of these strategies are 'defusion' techinques as we defuse our identity from our automatic thoughts and feelings.
This roundtable with my colleagues from Nettwerk Music explores the podcast with Martin Kerr, a British Canadian singer songwriter based in Edmonton, Canada. It was a broad-ranging discussion on topics including: creativity as a connection to the ‘undermind’ or unconscious intelligence; the central role of intuition in this process; the role intuition has in life decisions and career moves; the importance of learning from one’s own experience and the problem that others can’t really tell you what you should do; the centrality of music in communal spirit; how music can be a mirror window into the human experience that allows that listener to connect to the artist through this feeling; collective effervescence in a group as a feeling that transcends you, but includes you; eudemonic joy being based in meaning and purpose beyond self; and how the latter relates to the purpose at Nettwerk of connecting people and artists. A great discussion!
This roundtable discussion of the first 'Staying Composed' podcast is full of deep and practical questions and insights. The topics discussed included: how equanimity is not a one-off, not a black and white phenomenon, but rather an ongoing activity that results in a continuous changing of our experience; how often after a triggering reality is in the past, we have to now apply equanimity to our ongoing thoughts, feelings and reactions; the power of taking one's upset as useful data and thereby choosing to be less upset and taking relevant action as a result; the issue of virtue signalling where'I'm superior to you because you are not suffering as much as I am'; how everyone has to find their own path to equanimity; how elite sportspeople practice a type of equanimity; and about de-identifying with, and letting go of, upset in favour of pragmatic problem-solving. A wonderful conversation.
The central theme of this podcast series is equanimity as the antidote to the stress of living in turbulent times. Defined as the ability to maintain inner calm when the world around us is objectively disturbing, this podcast begins by exploring the nature of equanimity. We see that it is a very active psychological state that is in dynamic engagement with the world. It is not passive and is not a state of retreat from the world. We then suggest there are three broad methodologies for cultivating equanimity: Psychological; Practical and Action-Based; and Social. We begin by exploring the foundations of emotional intelligence: remembering to take responsibility for our emotions. We then see how paying attention to our reactions, especially our mindset, allows us to rethink and to redirect our attention, and thereby, to be more equanimous. The following podcasts will go into more depth in explaining these three broad ways to cultivate equanimity.
In this Music & Mental Health Podcast I’m talking with Martin Kerr, British-Canadian singer-songwriter based in Edmonton Canada. Martin shares what he's found that helps him balance music, relationships and family life. We discuss many topics, including: how success is the result of years of grassroots community building, how music is fundamentally about community, communication and sharing emotional truths, how intrinsic motivation is the key to a creative life, how singing and performing are both therapeutic and restorative, and other topics! A wonderful conversation. I hop eyou enjoy it.
This roundtable explores how we manage others to better navigate difficult conversations. Topics covered included: a discussion of a workplace culture of 'feedback for redirection', which is more akin to coaching rather than telling; how asking questions for which we don't have the answer does not mean we shouldn't prepare ideas or have opinions entering into difficult conversations; how and why it is more challenging to have difficult covnersations with people we are closer to; and how important trust-building is to an honest feedback culture (where we cannot always guarantee a positive outcome to someone if they tell us the truth).
Part 3 of the Mastering Diffiicult Conversations podcast series focuses on how we manage other peoples' psychological states. Topics discussed include: how confidence reduces our avoidance of difficult conversations; how we help others to reframe, refocus and redirect; and how peolpe's needs are legitimate and helping them feel safe also helps them them shift to higher needs such as partnering and co-experimenting.
The Music & Mental Health roundtable discussing my podast with Jon Bryant was very insightful and stimulating. As usual, my friends at Nettwerk Music took the conversation to very interesting places including: an exploration of how meditative mind states generate openness and curosity to what shows up - a 'waiting-upon' rather than a predictive mode; the metaphor of the mind as a 'mobile' as a means to understand how the conscious and unconscious mind integrates experience; the maturing artist becoming less self-focused, more aware, more balancd and the healthy integration that creativity can bring; and how there is a type of 'resonance' as we tap into a more collective consciousness, feeling a part of something that transcends yet includes us. All in all, a thought-provoking discussion!
This Q & A explores issues arising from 'Mastering Difficult Conversations Part 2 (Managing Self). Topics discussed included:stepping outside one's reaction and pausing and seeing how this breaks habitual patterns in self and others; how, in dealing with personality-disordered people it is less about changing them, and more about protecting self and others around them; when we are not getting win-wins the importance of equanimity and how to get our ego out of the way and not be upset by the other person's non-willingness to change.
