The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 201 - Finding a Groove

Transcript:

Pete: Hey, listeners. We are stopping by with a very quick and very exciting update before this week's episode, and that is that there'll be a live recording of The Long and The Short Of It podcast in New York City on Monday, the 22nd of August at 6pm Eastern. Jen, what are the details?

Jen: If you are in the New York area and you'd like to be a guest for this live taping, head on over to thelongandtheshortpodcast.com/live and you'll find the registration form there. But hurry up, because space is extremely limited. So head on over there, register, and we'll see you in New York City. And now, onto this week's episode.

Pete: Hello, Jen.

Jen: Hello, Pete.

Pete: I've found myself saying something in the last two weeks that, as I pause and reflect on it, I'm not even sure what I mean. And so, I'm wondering if you can help me unpack what we might mean when we say, "I'm trying to find my groove."

Jen: Yeah, I feel this topic right now. So, let's go there. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Pete: So recently, I returned from a three week holiday/vacation (if you're in North America). And it was amazing. It was great. It was wonderful. I ate far too much pastry, far too much pizza, far too much pasta. And I've returned refreshed, rejuvenated, and also like shocked at the difference between European summer and winter in Melbourne. People have asked me, "How was it? Like, great?" And I'm like, "Oh, it was amazing." "And so, what's it like being back?" And I keep repeating this to people, like, "Ah, I'm just trying to find my groove again." And I think I know what I mean. But I'm also not sure what I mean. And so, I'm curious for your thoughts on just that phrase or that idea of, what does it mean to find a groove? What does it mean to have a groove? What is a groove?

Jen: I feel like I've got to get out my drum kit here to answer this question. Well, I'll just start by saying, the reason I said I feel this so hard is when you got back from the three weeks...so for the listeners, for context, before Pete went on this three week amazing European extravaganza, we did a very serious recording sprint to make sure we had everything we needed so that you could genuinely take three weeks off and not have to think about the show. So we recorded many days in a row, multiple episodes, and we had a groove.

Pete: We did.

Jen: We felt so good. These were episodes that basically didn't even need a word cut out of them. We were like on our game. Then we took three weeks off the podcast, we had our first recording session, and we basically couldn't even get through the intro. The first episode we recorded went straight to the cutting room floor. It was like, "Woah. We are out of practice, out of sync, out of rhythm." So, that's why I'm feeling this so hard. Because even the couple episodes we've done now at this point, I'm like, "Mmm. We're not exactly where we were when we were doing our sprint." So all of that to say, my current take on this is that you're in your groove when all of the pieces feel well-oiled and you're able to move smoothly through whatever the activity is, like recording our podcast, or even when you like get in the groove of a good writing practice, where you're like, "Every day, I'm nailing this, you know, forty-five minutes of writing," or, "I'm really in my meditation groove. I'm doing my two times a day for my twenty minutes, and I just haven't missed a day and it feels easy to do it." So, that's what's coming up for me right now.

Pete: I like the words you use, "practice", "sync", "rhythm". Like these are words that, if you are in a good groove, you are probably well-practiced, in sync, and working off a good rhythm. The image it conjures up for me is like playing with toy cars as a kid, and you had those like...I don't know if this is Australian, but I'm guessing this is like universal. You have those like, we call them Matchbox cars here in Australia.

Jen: Yes.

Pete: Yeah. And you have those like tracks that you can build, and you push the car along the track. And if it's on the track, it's like smooth as. But if one of the little toy wheels goes off the track out of the groove, it doesn't really move very well. And so, yeah, I conjure up that image with, I guess for our context in a podcast, it's like, one of the thought tires was up on the railing and we were like grinding to a halt. We weren't even really starting. We were like, "How do we start?" So anyway, I don't know, I just find that metaphor useful, because it's hard to smoothly or effortlessly make progress when we feel like we're out of a groove.

Jen: Yeah. And you know, I think the thing that is striking me right now is that being out of your groove is not being still. It's not like, "I have stopped myself. I'm just standing in stillness."

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: But it is that feeling of grinding your gears, where it's like taking a lot of extra effort and you're having to like, you know, really maneuver your way through.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: There is a lack of ease.

Pete: Yes, a lack of ease. And the other thing you mentioned, which I quite like, was almost like the opposite of being well-oiled, so like a squeaky and lots of friction in the way that we're trying to change gears. I guess we're throwing so many metaphors at everyone right now, but I'm finding it really helpful.

Jen: Yeah. In the Vujà Dé episode, I shared with you that I had done like multiple thousands of performances of the same show over and over again.

Pete: Wild.

Jen: And when you're doing that, you become very aware of when you are in your groove and when you're out of your groove, because you've done the thing so many times. And what I think is worth calling into this conversation is that you, the expert on yourself, the expert on your own skill set, can be very aware of how effortful being out of the groove can be and just so self-conscious about not being at your best. And yet, someone on the other end observing you might have no idea that you're not in the groove.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: Now, of course there are times where it's very obvious. But like, in terms of us as podcasters, having these...well, one of them was so bad that it had to go straight to the cutting room floor. So like, we were not completely out of touch with reality. But our not-so-in-the-groove episodes were still good enough to release. And it's possible that if we asked the listeners to tell us, you know, which episode numbers are the ones, all around this same time, that were in the groove versus out of the groove, would they be able to tell the difference? I don't know.

Pete: Yeah. Yeah, it's like we are our own worst critic.

Jen: Yep.

Pete: And I don't just mean that we, you and I, I think that's true of a lot of people. And so we're more aware of when we're not in the groove than perhaps when others are out of their groove, unless it's like really obvious, yeah. Yep, yep, yep. Okay. Okay. Okay. The other thing, as I think about grooves, I was having a conversation with a friend of ours actually, Kirsty Stark, who we've mentioned many times on this podcast, award-winning director, Emmy Award winning director. And we were talking about...I was sharing with her, "I'm trying to like find my groove." And in a very Kirsty Stark way, she just kind of said, "It's not that you want to find your old groove. It's actually, you want to create a new groove." Because, you know, things happened on the trip that I learned about that I now want to implement, for example, like some self-awareness on certain things. And so, you want to perhaps put some of those learnings into place.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: Tracey and I also, we also got married overseas. So there's like, surprise!

Jen: There's that.

Pete: There's that. And so, what does that mean for the new groove, being a husband and wife as opposed to engaged? Like, does that change our day to day? Maybe so. Maybe it's like a new groove, as opposed to searching for something that once was. What do you think?

Jen: First of all, how Kirsty to drop such a significant knowledge bomb in exactly the right moment.

Pete: It's so Kirsty, yeah.

Jen: I think that's really interesting. Because any time we add elements, we're going to need to find our footing again as we carry all this new stuff forward. So, I think it's such an important reminder, to give ourselves the gift of patience as we evolve and find the new groove.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: And the other thing that's making me think of is our Cup O' Noodles mentality as a society, where we just want to add hot water, stir, and like have a meal. That it feels like it should be faster to get the groove back, or to get the new groove going. Where it's like, "Why is this taking so long?" But especially, like your situation is such a great example, you left as a fiancee and you came home as a husband. That is so different.

Pete: Right.

Jen: It changes the way you feel about yourself. It changes the way you feel about your partner. It changes your expectations. It changes your legal status. Like, it changes so much that it's not going to be a snap your fingers and I'm going to find it. It takes time to settle and for you to have enough reps, enough days in the can as a husband to feel like you have your husband groove going.

Pete: Yeah. Yeah. So true. So true. This reminds me of the, I mean, so many of our past episodes around practicing patience, but also recently about mistakes.

Jen: Mmm-hmm.

Pete: And, you know, the example of that first podcast we recorded in seeking to create our new groove was like, we had to get that horrible one out where we dusted off the cobwebs, in order for us to hopefully find a new groove. Which is, yeah, like you can't just necessarily, like you said, dive in and pour the noodles into a cup and add water, and now we've got a new groove and let's record twenty more podcasts this week. It's like, "Alright, let's acknowledge that this is going to be a bit of a thrash to start with."

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: "But let's get through it. Let's get through the thrash. Let's keep showing up. Let's keep practicing." And then, you know, like wearing in a good pair of shoes or a brand new pair of shoes, or sitting on a new couch and having to like make it feel like you've got a groove in there, it just takes a little bit of time and a little bit practice.

Jen: I have a feeling our listeners are like ten steps ahead of us right now.

Pete: They always are.

Jen: But I'm just catching up to this moment and realizing that like on a more macro level, every single person in the world is doing this right now and dealing with this as we're finding our new....I don't want to call it post-pandemic because we're still very much in it...but like, late pandemic groove as, you know, things are opening up, as people are making decisions about, "Am I wearing my mask? Am I not wearing my mask? Like, am I socializing with people? Like, what is happening? What does work look like?" We're all carrying so much new information forward. Even if you were to try to return to the same structure of day that you had before, the person going through that day is a totally changed person.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: So we just, we are all dealing right now, with being a little funky with our grooves.

Pete: That is a great macro call out. I was working with an executive team at a big, big, large multinational late last year. And we were talking about, as they prepare to return to...well, return to the office, even that word "return" is an interesting one. They were getting prepared to commence a hybrid way of working, which is sometimes in the office/sometimes at home, the flexibility to do both. And we were actually talking about, and I was sharing with them, "You need to think about this not as returning to what was pre-pandemic. It's also not what we've had for the last two years. This is a new groove. This is a brand new path that needs to be trodden, worn in. And as a result, requires a level of humility, requires you to acknowledge there's going to be a bunch of mistakes and like random branches on this path that you didn't predict. And so, just giving yourself permission to work with the messiness of creating a new groove, I guess.

Jen: Mmm. Yeah. What that example brings up for me, because we've been talking about having patience with yourself as you're finding your groove, if you're working in a team, you must also find patience with other people, and allow others the space and time to stumble along until they find their groove too.

Pete: Yeah, which you've done really well with me in our example. Like we, in our podcast example, we had to catch up like a week ago, just after I got back. And you very graciously were like, "I don't think we should record this week," which I appreciated because I'm sure it would have been even messier if I had have tried to record in that jetlag state. So yeah, I think that you've done a good job of giving me permission to try and find my groove, a new groove for us to then create a new groove. So, thanks for leading.

Jen: Well, you're welcome. And I'll also take responsibility for the episode that hit the cutting room floor because I'm pretty sure I led that one off. So you know, we give a little, we take a little.

Pete: Exactly. Exactly. It's collaborating.

Jen: That's right. That's right. This is also making me think of, now that I've got pandemic on the brain, a very interesting phenomenon which I'm sure I talked about as it was happening last fall when I was getting back into in-person with my clients for the first time.

Pete: Mmm-hmm.

Jen: When people found their groove...and it was very scary to get up in front of people after not having sung live with a live pianist for like, you know, well over a year and a half, and people were wearing masks, and it was just weird. But what we found was that people's new grooves had like left behind some of the baggage that was weighing down the previous grooves.

Pete: Ah.

Jen: And people were doing the best work I had ever seen them do, which I don't think I or anyone else in the room had expected. I think we all expected it to be like awkward and weird and like, "Our work will suffer because we don't know what this groove feels like." And then, once we got the machinery working again and things felt really well-oiled, it was like, "Oh my goodness, this is so much better. This is extraordinary." So I don't know exactly what the takeaway is...but to say that, the experience of being awkward, and then finding the footing, and carrying new knowledge forward, and abandoning some of the old BS as we found our new groove was just so liberating.

Pete: Yeah, I think I have it. I think I have the takeaway from that, at least for me, which is the reminder that finding a groove is an opportunity and a gift, as opposed to a frustration or an annoyance.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: And so we should look at it as such, as an opportunity to intentionally create a new groove as opposed to a frustration to return to what might have been an old groove.

Jen: Groovy. And that is The Long and The Short Of It.