The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 185 - KYA Questions

Transcript:

Pete: Hey, Jen.

Jen: Hey, Pete.

Pete: I've got a strange question for you.

Jen: Okay.

Pete: Do I say [Australian accent] "ass" or [American accent] "ass"? Does this make sense?

Jen: You say [Australian accent] "ass" and I say [American accent] "ass"...what's happening?

Pete: It's so funny. I have these moments every now and then, I spend too much time with you where I forget if I pronounce it one way or an American pronounces it another way, and it throws me. Because I wanted to raise a topic for today's podcast, where we talk about...I've been noodling on questions. And particularly, I know we've done an episode in the past called Favo(u)rite Questions, but today, I wanted to talk about questions that kick your [Australian accent] ass/ [American accent] ass. So if you'll entertain me, I think we should talk about those questions that really kick you in the ass.

Jen: Wow, consider my ass already kicked. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Pete: Oh, wow. That might be either our best or our worst intro, I'm not sure yet. It remains to be seen.

Jen: Wowza. I love this topic.

Pete: You know what I'm talking about, though?

Jen: Yes, the ones that put you in the groan zone.

Pete: Yeah, the questions that put you in the groan zone. I think in the past, in episodes, we've talked about like a question that feels like it punched you in the gut or kicked you in the teeth, and now we're using a different metaphor, which is a kick up the ass. So I have a few in mind, and then I'm sure you have a few in mind. Maybe we could just go back and forward.

Jen: Okay. Let's do it.

Pete: Okay. So the reason this whole episode came to mind was like three days ago, my fiancee Tracy is reading a book by this incredible coach in Australia called Kemi Nekvapil (I'll put a link to her book in the Box O' Goodies) called Power. And we were just, you know, in bed reading, and then Tracy put the book down and was like, "I'm not okay." I was like, What's up?" And she goes, "Listen to this question." And the question was: What are you tolerating?

Jen: [groaning] Ooh.

Pete: Yeah. What are you tolerating? Which came from this book-

Jen: Groan zone.

Pete: -by Kemi, and it's been haunting me for the last three days, thinking about, "What am I tolerating and putting up with?" And so having heard Tracy say that to me, that was kind of what sparked this episode. But yeah, that was the first question I thought of, is like, what are you...I thought of it as: What are you putting up with? What are you tolerating? What are you willing to accept at the moment that maybe you shouldn't be? And I've discovered that I have a list about as long as my arm (which is quite long) of things I'm tolerating.

Jen: Wow. I'm sure I have a list as long as myself, in order to be as long as your arm. It's funny. Several years ago, maybe three or four years ago, I was ranting as I tend to do,-

Pete: Really?

Jen: -within my theater community, about some of the stuff going on in our industry. And I wrote a blog post called, We Get What We Tolerate, which was really about how to change culture. It's so interesting that in order to land on, "We get what we tolerate," we have to first ask ourselves, "What are we tolerating?"

Pete: Yeah. Yeah. And then I think, you know, I even go down the path of like, "Why am I tolerating it?"

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: "What am I afraid of?" Because I imagine it's fear.

Jen: Always.

Pete: It's always fear. "What am I afraid of that's making me tolerate this?" So yeah, I don't have any like solid answers to the question yet. Like, I want an example to share with everyone, but I can't even think of one. It's still rattling around in my noggin.

Jen: I want to put a hypothesis out there at the very beginning of this episode, which is that the sub-question for all of our questions is going to be: What are you afraid of?

Pete: Oh my god, it's so true. "And that is The Long and The Short Of It."

Jen: Right? Right? Okay. I can share one of my kick your ass, or KYA questions here.

Pete: KYA.

Jen: Okay, so I'm going to use a question that is from the acting world. And it's a kick your ass question when you're doing scene work to try to make the scene work better, but when you apply it in life, you know, it also kicks your ass. And the question is: How might you raise the stakes? In other words: How could you give yourself more to lose?

Pete: [groaning] Ooh. I feel like that's the opposite of the question that I usually ask.

Jen: Right. Right.

Pete: You know? I feel like often we ask, or at least I ask, of like, "Oh, how can I make this less risky? Or how can I make this a fun experiment where there's no wrong answer?" That feels like the inverse of that.

Jen: And, you know, the reason that comes up in scene work is because when the stakes are low, the scene is pretty boring. And this is interesting, I haven't actually put these dots together before. What we do when we raise the stakes is we create tension within the scene. And you have talked on many of our episodes about: How can we create more tension?

Pete: Yeah. Mmm.

Jen: Interesting.

Pete: Generous tension that creates change. Ah, that's interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jen: And you know, this could be...I'm going to see if I can like pull some examples for myself. Like in the world of reach outs, when you're seeking to meet new people, the people you already know or have one degree of separation from, kind of lower stakes.

Pete: Right.

Jen: But maybe reaching beyond, into the unknown, might be higher stakes. Or asking someone to introduce you to someone who has the potential to be a changemaker in your life, pretty high stakes. So that's just the first thing that came to mind, but I'm sure there are many, many more examples.

Pete: Yeah. And I also, I feel like it's raising the stakes based on the story we're telling ourself, but in reality, the stakes aren't that high, really. You know?

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: Like in the reach out example, it's like, what's the worst that can happen? They don't reply. And it's like, "Oh no." So it's like, it's raising the stakes, but it's also not, in a way.

Jen: That's so interesting. Maybe they're like...the cousin kick your ass question to, "How might you raise the stakes," would be: What have you got to lose?

Pete: Mmm. Yeah, yeah. I like that.

Jen: Huh. Interesting.

Pete: Okay, I've got another one. I've got another one.

Jen: Okay.

Pete: Which sounds...I feel like this one sounds like quite a simple question. You might be like, "Why is that a kick your ass question, or a KYA, as we've coined?" And that is: What are you excited about? I'm sure you've been asked this question many times. I get asked this question quite a lot. "What are you excited about at the moment?" And I actually ask people this question myself, I guess because I've heard it from others. And I think the reason it can be a KYA question is because sometimes I don't have a good answer.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: And I'm like, "Oh. What am I excited about? What have I got coming up in the future, or tomorrow, or in the next year even, that I'm like super pumped, jazzed, fired up about?" And I don't know, I find it confronting when I can't come up with a good answer for that, because I want something in my life that I'm excited about. So I've found that to be a, yeah, like it could be a confronting question when you don't have an answer.

Jen: You know something so funny and coincidental, Pete? Is, I was at a dinner party last night, where the host made us go around the table and answer a question. And the question she asked was, "What are you excited about?"

Pete: Right. That's so interesting.

Jen: So it's a kick your ass question, and it's also a...everyone at this table, we were all strangers. She was the only, you know, connection point for us all. And I love parties like that, where I don't know the people and we actually get a chance to talk...but I digress. But it's also a wonderful getting to know you question.

Pete: Right. Yeah. I love those questions that you can ask of anyone, and often you create connections through that. You know, like, "Where's the fear," is quite a good question, because everyone's got fears, but like we never really talk about them.

Jen: Mmm. True. Okay. So my next question has a proper noun in it, I'm going to use someone's name. But listeners and Pete, replace the name I'm going to use with a name in your own life that would work for you. So the question for me is: What would Ida do? Ida is my mom's mom, my grandmother, who just had such a strong moral constitution and one hundred percent of the time chose to do the right thing. And so if I'm having a moral conundrum, "What would Ida do," is like a kick your ass question.

Pete: Mmm. I feel like that rhymes with: What would an older version of yourself do?

Jen: Mmm.

Pete: I've toyed with that question. I've actually done videos from my future self where I record myself talking to my current self. (It's all a bit meta.)

Jen: I love it.

Pete: And it can be like quite helpful. Or the question of like, yeah: What would my seven-year-old self say? I think that's quite an interesting rhyme. Huh. Ida. Yeah. "What would Elva do? That was my grandmother...or one of my grandmothers. "What would Joy do?" Huh. I like that. I like that. I like that.

Jen: From a creative perspective, I also use (and I've said this many times on the podcast): What would Lin-Manuel Miranda do?

Pete: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jen: That's a good kick your ass question.

Pete: Yeah. Who's the person you admire? And insert that name into that question.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: Mmm. I think another...I'm just like, I know we're just like throwing more questions on top of questions here. I feel like another useful way of framing that is: What would I tell my friend if they were in this position? Or my sister? Or my brother? Or my mother? Or my grandmother? You know, when you find yourself stuck...this has happened to me a few times recently. I find myself stuck on a decision, and you kind of say, "I wonder if Jen was in this position, what would I say to Jen?" And I'm like, "Oh, I know. I'd say this to Jen. Like, it's so easy."

Jen: Why is it so much easier to see it for other people, and so hard to see it for yourself? It's like one of life's greatest conundrums.

Pete: It really is. It really is. Okay, I'll keep the ball rolling.

Jen: Okay.

Pete: KYA questions...I think I mentioned this in a very early episode at some point, this question from Jerry Colonna, which I read years ago and still think about quite a lot. It's a bit of a mouthful, but it's a great question. It is: How are you complicit in creating the conditions you say you don't want?

Jen: [groaning] Oh my god. Say it again. My ass is so kicked, I can't even breathe. Say it again.

Pete: "How are you complicit in creating the conditions you say you don't want?" So I interpret this as like, we all have things that we are unsatisfied with, for example, in our life..."I don't want to have to get up at 5am and record a podcast," would have been a story I would have told myself two years ago, when we used to do that. So I say that I don't want that, but then how am I complicit in creating those conditions? Is, when Jen says, "Oh, can we do a recording at 3pm," I'm like, "Yeah, sure. That sounds great," without...like, I'm putting myself in that situation that I say that I don't want. So, that's a slightly comical example. But I feel like we just...I feel like we do this a lot. Is, put ourselves in situations, or contribute to situations without realizing it maybe, that we then decide to complain about or say that we don't want that.

Jen: Yeah. It's...oh, gosh. Like, I see, I just see so much in this question. But the thing that's coming up for me is there's the complicit action, and then there's complicit inaction, they're both contributors. Like, an example of complicit action is what you just described. You don't want to get up at 5am to record a podcast, but you actively make the choice to put that in your calendar. And then there is, um, there's a bit of a mess in my bedroom right now. We had a flood, it's a whole thing. But in any case...

Pete: It's a whole thing.

Jen: And I'm looking at it, going like, "Ugh, someone needs to get all the stuff that we moved because of the flood out of here." And then, I sit in inaction.

Pete: Yeah. Like, no decision is also a decision.

Jen: Exactly.

Pete: Huh. Yeah. That's a good example. So yeah, that question definitely is KYA. That is one I think about a lot.

Jen: Okay. My next question pings off of an episode we did recently called What Comes Next, something that I've been struggling to answer for myself. But this question is even shorter. And it is: What's new?

Pete: "What's new?"

Jen: Yeah. You know when we see someone we haven't seen in a while, we say like, "What's new? Like, what's up?" That's not what I mean. What I mean is: What is actually new in your life that was not there before? Who are the new people? What are the new learnings? What are the new ideas? What are the new podcasts? What are the new habits?

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: So when I can't answer, "What's new," I know I'm stuck.

Pete: Yeah, interesting. That reminds me of how I think about, "What are you excited about?"

Jen: Mmm.

Pete: Yeah. If I can't think of something to, "What's new," or, "What am I excited about," I'm like, "Oh god, am I stagnant? Am I stuck? Am I in a rush? Like, what's going on?" I also love the way that you...for some reason, when I hear a question like that, I think, "Oh my god. I need to have like this grand change, or this grand new thing. Like, 'I just changed my entire career, or life, or job, or whatever." (Career and job are pretty similar...) But I like the examples that you use, which is like, "Oh, I've got this new podcast I'm listening to. I'm reading this new book." That is a really helpful way to think about it, I think. Like, it can be small micro things.

Jen: Totally. Totally. I mean, it's just...without change, you don't grow. So if there's nothing new, growth isn't really happening. And it can happen on the micro. I always say this in my classes, that, "Progress can look like a grand jete forward." (In dance terms, that's a leap.)

Pete: Okay.

Jen: "Or it can be a teeny-tiny baby step. But if you're moving forward, you're moving forward." It comes in all different shapes and sizes, but we want to keep going forward instead of staying still.

Pete: Yeah. Okay. Okay, okay. I like that. I have one more. I don't know how many more you have, I have one more.

Jen: Oh, I had capped myself at three. So give us the bonus, Shep.

Pete: I have a bonus fourth, because it's something that I think about every single day. Oh my god, this question is KYA. The question...which again, I've definitely mentioned this on the podcast at some point. But it's: Are you inventing work to avoid the important? And my goodness, if you could win a gold medal for inventing work, I would win that award. Hands down, I would break the world record. I caught myself doing this yesterday, I catch myself doing this almost every day, where I'm doing something that I've convinced myself is necessary. I mean, an easy example is like sending an email, or checking an email or a Slack message. I find those to be very easy examples. I'm inventing that to avoid the one thing or the two things that I actually should be doing.

Jen: Yep.

Pete: And, ugh, it's just...every time I think about it, I go, "Yep. I am inventing work to avoid the important. Great, great, great, great, great."

Jen: Oh my gosh, that question. It makes me laugh, but it's like that uncomfortable laugh of recognition, you know?

Pete: The awkward like, [fake laughter] "Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha."

Jen: "Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha." The thing that I love about it is, it's so simple. It's a yes or no question. "Are you inventing work?" And then, I think there's like a follow up question that has to happen. If the answer is yes, then it's: What are you going to do about that?

Pete: Yeah. I also wonder, is the answer ever not yes? Like, are there people...listener, if you're out there and you answer that question no, my gosh, please make yourself known to me and tell me your secrets.

Jen: You are the new mascot of The Long and The Short Of It.

Pete: Right.

Jen: Wow, I love this collection of kick your ass questions. I feel like these are going to come in quite handy. I just keep saying this on recent episodes, but I'm just like navigating this funky moment of things feel like they're changing and I don't know where they're going, and the easiest thing to do would be to hide.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: So instead, I shall bruise my own ass.

Pete: Bruise it. Yeah. And I think it's, I guess it's in alignment with every episode of this podcast that we've ever recorded, where often we come out with more questions than we do answers. And I think it's because I certainly believe, I know you believe that the quality of our life can often be determined by the quality of the questions that we're asking of ourselves, of others, but in this case in particular, of ourself.

Jen: Absolutely. A motto here in our house is: Ask better questions. And I think the addendum to that is: Ask better questions and kick your [American accent] ass.

Pete: Or [Australian accent] ass. And that is The Long and The Short Of It.