The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 349 - Turn the Tassel

Transcript:

Jen: Hello, Peter.

Pete: Hello, Jen.

Jen: I've realized that there's a certain pattern that I encounter with actors when helping them to see that they have a habit that they're ready to break. I will point out what the thing is, and they will then tell me, "Oh yes, that's a bad habit of mine." Then, I will tell them that, "It's not a bad habit, because it was a habit that was useful to you up until this very moment. And now, it is time to turn the tassel."

Pete: Turn the tassel? I'm not even sure I know what that means. Let me try. Let me try and find out. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Pete: Okay, so I was following everything. I was following you until you said "turn the tassel". Now, I'm confused.

Jen: Okay. So before you all get your minds into the gutter, listeners, I'm not talking about twirly tassels in a burlesque house.

Pete: Oh, right, right, right.

Jen: I am talking about the tassel on a mortarboard, which is the graduation hat that's shaped like a square, and there's a tassel on one side. And then, when you graduate, you turn the tassel to the other side, as a symbol that you've graduated.

Pete: Wow. I don't know if I knew that that's what you did, that you went from one side to the other. I don't think I knew that.

Jen: Yes.

Pete: Does one still throw the hat in the air? Is that a thing?

Jen: One still does. And then, the tassel ends up wherever it wants to end up, but prior to that...

Pete: Prior to that, you're meant to take the tassel from one side to the other, which is signifying, well, I'm moving from here to there.

Jen: Yes. You're graduating from this to the next thing, whatever the next thing is.

Pete: Wow, two minutes in and I'm already learning. This is great. Turn the tassel. I like it.

Jen: Yes, it's symbolic. And this is the way I think about habitual behaviors we pick up along the way, because we don't pick up habits intentionally because they're bad habits. We pick up habits because they serve us in some way. Now, the way they serve us may not always be in pursuit of fulfilling our potential. Some habits do keep us from our potential, but we pick them up for a certain reason. And when it comes to the kind of work I'm doing with actors, we're talking about habitual behaviors like stomping their foot or dropping their arms or over-breathing before singing a specific phrase. Like, we're talking about those kinds of habitual behaviors, which up until the moment that they get pointed out in our session, have been serving them. And what I'm trying to help them see is that that habit is no longer serving them. It is time to turn the tassel and graduate from that habit to the next thing. And what I want us all to be gentler with ourselves about is labeling a habit as bad.

Pete: I'm glad you went back to that. Because one of the first things you said, I think was actually perhaps the most rich or important, which was we didn't deliberately pick up a bad habit because it wasn't serving us. We picked up a habit that was serving us in some way, at some point in time, for something, whether that was, "It's serving me to check my phone while I'm standing in line, because it helps me not be bored or annoyed or frustrated that the line's taking so long. Like, I'm not saying that scrolling through my phone is an awesome habit, but it served me in some way, in that moment." So I like this idea of...it feels like it gives you a lot more agency to think about your habits as things that you did as a way to serve yourself in some way, at some point in time. And if that's been something you've done before, then you can seek to turn the tassel (what a fun expression), and either get rid of or incorporate a new habit. Alright, I'm following.

Jen: And you pick up your habits when you know what you know at the time that you pick it up. So like, in the example of an actor dropping their arms instead of completing a gesture, likely they weren't even aware they were doing it

Pete: Right.

Jen: Or they became aware of it and did not have the tools they needed to adjust the habit in a different direction. But now, they know what they know in this moment. And at least my role in that moment is to give them a tool to redirect the energy, so they can choose something else. And then, they can move forward. But it doesn't make them bad. And it wasn't a bad habit. It was just a habit.

Pete: Love it. I like this. So now I'm like, where does this apply to me, when I'm not necessarily acting and singing and performing? How does this apply to leaders? How does this apply more broadly than in the audition room? I feel like there's all sorts of applications for the habits that we have picked up along the way.

Jen: Okay. Here's one, Pete.

Pete: Alright, hit me. She's smirking, everybody. Jen's smirking at me.

Jen: There are certain softwares that analyze conversations, and will break down the percentage of time each participant spent talking in a conversation. Now, some people might be surprised to know...and I'm not in any way saying this about you, Pete. This is just a hypothetical person. Some people might be surprised to know that they dominate a conversation, but they didn't know it until they knew. And now that they know it, they know it's a habit and it might be something that they're ready to graduate from. So, what do you do? Provide them some tools to become better listeners.

Pete: Yeah. Right. Just on that, can I provide a tool?

Jen: Please.

Pete: I have an example of a great tool that I learned in some sort of facilitation conversation I was having with a bunch of other facilitators, which was: move up, move up. So the idea of move up, move up is you might say to a class, to a group, to a leader, to someone who is either taking up too much airtime or not taking up enough airtime and you want to hear from them...so the classic is like you've got a highly extroverted or highly introverted, someone who's speaking up lots and someone who's not speaking up as much. So essentially, what you do is you say, "I want everyone to embrace this framework of move up, move up. What that means is if you're the kind of person who always speaks first or is very comfortable raising your voice or your hand, we want you to move up into a position of listening. And if you're the kind of person that often sits back, and is comfortable in silence, and likes to wait and see what other people say, we want you to move up into a position of sharing first. Both of these are just as hard for the respective party. And in the spirit of this session or this class or this workshop or this coaching, whatever, we just want to play around with that." And it is wild how effective that can be at getting the softer voices to speak up. I mean, you can see the extroverts like faces trying not to explode as they're busting themselves not to speak. Like, they start going red and steam comes out of their ears.

Jen: Oh, that's so funny. Well, I love how this ties back into our theme of turning the tassel. At my daughter's school, the school is kindergarten through twelfth grade, and it's broken up into three schools, lower school, middle school, upper school. So when you move from lower school to middle school, they don't call it graduating, they call it "the moving up ceremony". Oh, no way. So you would, I'm putting in air quotes right now, turn your tassel in the moving up ceremony and the same thing as you're entering high school. When you move from middle school to upper school, they call it the moving up ceremony. So I love this idea of move up, move up as a turning of the tassel.

Pete: That's great. Yeah, that also reminds me of one of my favorite Seth Godin riffs of all time, which was when he talks about commencement speeches and commencement. Which I guess is, I feel like this is a particularly common expression in American graduations. I don't know if it's as common in Australia, but we all know what it means because we've been so exposed to American culture. And it's so obvious when you hear him say it, but it's like one of those things that's right in front of that you couldn't see initially. He has this whole riff...and I will not do it justice. But essentially, what he says is like, think about the word "commence". This is not about mourning something that's finished or complete or not going to be part of your life anymore. This is the commencement of something new, of something extraordinary, of some new way of showing up in the world, of some new chapter that you have now opened because you've turned the tassel. So the use of either "move up" or "commencement", I think is complimentary to what we're saying here. It's like, it's not to lament or get annoyed about or beat yourself up for something that was happening prior and is now no longer part of your life. It's, "Here I am, commencing something new."

Jen: Yes. That once you recognize that there is something you want to change, it's the beginning of the chapter of change.

Pete: Yeah. My god, I must have mentioned this song and this line from the song so many times on this podcast, at this point. Do you remember this Mike Posner song that I've referenced so many times, with the line, "Beginnings always hide themselves in ends?" I feel like I've mentioned that a bunch. It just, it's so relevant.

Jen: You have mentioned this song quite a bit, and I still have never heard it. So I am going to turn my tassel from not listening to this song, to listening to this song today.

Pete: You've got to listen. I'm going to put it in the Box O' Goodies. The opening line is, "I wish Tracy Chapman was my friend." And so, I'm like, any song that starts like that, you know it is going to be a good song.

Jen: Oh my gosh. That's a great lyric.

Pete: Yeah, it is. It is. Because I, too, wish Tracy Chapman was my friend. Okay. So, what else? What else do we do with this? How have your clients received this? When you say it to them, are you like literally saying to them, "Time to turn the tassel?"

Jen: Yes. Those literal words come out of my mouth.

Pete: I love it. That's such a Jen Waldman-ism. I'm going to start using that. Are they on board? Are they excited? Are we starting to see some progress?

Jen: Well, yes. Yes. And what I think is very prevalent in my industry is people giving other people feedback about their habits and offering absolutely zero insights into how to modify or change them or try something new. So you hear a lot of generic lingo like, you know, "You have this," and someone might say, "...bad habit of doing X, Y, and Z. You know, stop doing that." And if the person says, "Oh, how do I do that?" They go, "You'll find it," or like, "Make it organic," or, "Just try and see what happens."

Pete: God, that's not helpful at all.

Jen: So I think there's an anticipated frustration when actors hear about these habits, that maybe they have been aware of and they don't know how to change. So, I think my role as the coach is to provide something that helps them implement the change they're looking for.

Pete: I love this idea of...not that you said this is always the universal application. But what I hear is like, this idea of giving them something to replace it with.

Jen: Yes.

Pete: Like, a tool to replace it with or a prompt to replace it with. It reminds me of, gosh, a few weeks ago, I was running a workshop in New Zealand, in Auckland, for this amazing group of people. And it was on effective communication as a leader. We had forty leaders in the room. And it was going really well. And people were engaging. And I don't know, halfway through, one of the participants raised their hand and was like, "You haven't said 'um' once. Can you explain how you're doing that? You haven't got a script. You haven't got slides. And you haven't said 'um' once." And I was like...it was quite funny. I was like, "Well, thank you for noticing. It's something that I've worked my ass off at." You and I have talked about this before. And the unlock for me...not that I don't have verbal tics now, because I definitely do. But the unlock for me with "um" and "uh" was when I heard a podcaster say, I think it was Alex De Palma, "Instead of saying 'um', just say nothing. Replace your 'um' with silence, and give yourself that omission." And once I did that, with a bunch of practice, I realized that it's quite easy to replace "um" with silence. The challenge is getting comfortable with a little bit of silence. Which as an extrovert, and I know many extroverts, really, we struggle with it, so we say "um" instead because we need to fill the silence. But yeah, that idea of replacing with, as opposed to, "Just don't say 'um'," you go, "But what do I do?"

Jen: Right. "Well, what do I do instead?"

Pete: "What's my filler? How do I, you know, connect sentences together, if I'm thinking?"

Jen: Right. So, this goes back to an episode we did a million bajillion years ago. I'm going to have to look up the number, but it was about the Internal Google Translator, of taking "don't" and replacing it with "do", or taking "can't" and replacing it with "can". So in your case, if someone gave you the note, "Don't say 'um'," you're left with nothing to actually do. But if someone says to you, "Do replace your 'um's' with silence," then you actually know what to do next. And that's what's so frustrating about fake notes, like, "Just do the work," or, "Make it organic," or, "Just feel it."

Pete: "Be authentic."

Jen: Right.

Pete: "What? What are you talking about? What does that even mean?"

Jen: Right.

Pete: Oh, that's good. My mind is racing about all different applications for that particular note. I feel like I've completely forgotten about that episode, Internal Google Translator.

Jen: It was on my mind because I was talking about it in class today. So just so you know, it wasn't just like an immediate call up for me. I happened to have planned to talk about it in class today.

Pete: Nice. Part of me also wonders if an important way to replace and graduate and turn the tassel on habits is, I feel like there's an acknowledgement or an aha moment for a lot of people in thinking about how this habit has served you.

Jen: Yes.

Pete: Like, I feel like we kind of brushed over that element of it. Which is, it served you in some way. And so now, it's about replacing it, because it's no longer serving you. But I think that, "It's serving you in some way," could be massively probably challenging for some people, myself included, about certain habits, and worth thinking about, "How is this serving me?"

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: That it's easy to go, "I don't like this habit of mine, and it's not beneficial in any way at all or providing me any value whatsoever." Whereas what we're actually saying is, well, it probably is. It's serving you in some way, otherwise you wouldn't do it. So how is it serving you, first? Which, then, could provide more clarity on why it's worth changing or replacing or addressing. So I don't know, I just felt the need to back over that part, like reverse over that. Is it worth spending time, for people listening, on, "How is this habit serving me?"

Jen: So let's go back to the "um", as an example.

Pete: Alright.

Jen: The "um" is serving the um-er by giving them extra time to locate their thought.

Pete: Right. To think about, "What was the thread that I was on, and what am I going to say next?"

Jen: Right. And so, it's not a suggestion that you avoid giving yourself time to find your thought. It's that your intention is a good one. Find your thought.

Pete: Right.

Jen: And what other ways are there?

Pete: That's brilliant. So you almost go back to first principles of, "What is this habit doing? How is this serving me? What's the role it's playing? Why does it exist?" And then, "Is there another way I could get the same result, that is perhaps less um-y, in this example?"

Jen: And when you think about the move up or turn the tassel or graduate to the next chapter, going back to the um-iness of it all, when you're adding "um", you are lengthening the amount of time it takes to get to the next thought. So then, when you replace it with silence, you might start with a couple seconds of silence as you process silence, rather than "um". But over time, you will likely start finding your thoughts more quickly than if you had kept up the "um", which just became muscle memory after a while. "I'm thinking, therefore I'm um-ing."

Pete: Totally. Yeah. It's a really good way to think about it, as it becomes muscle memory for some people. Because sometimes, you're listening to people who, you know, know what they're talking about.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: And so, it's not as if they're thinking of original thoughts on the fly, because they know the subject matter that they're talking about. And it's become almost a crutch, an unconscious habit.

Jen: Right.

Pete: All that to say, yes, I agree. I agree. Wow. Turn the tassel. This is a fun way of acknowledging things that I have, habits that I have, and that I perhaps don't necessarily love or want to take forward. And instead, looking for ways to get clear on how they've served me and what I might do differently about them.

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