The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 354 - Land Snorkeling

Transcript:

Jen: Hello, Peter.

Pete: Hello, Jen.

Jen: Today, I would like to talk to you about an activity I've been partaking in over the last several weeks.

Pete: Okay.

Jen: And I'm laughing ahead of time because it's so ridiculous, but I love it so much. Pete, I have been going land snorkeling.

Pete: What on earth is land snorkeling? This is The Long and The Short Of It. I have a visual of you, tiny Jen Waldman, with a mask and a snorkel on, walking around the neighborhood. That cannot be what this means, surely.

Jen: Well, it kind of is what it is. Okay, so Pete, this is what happened.

Pete: What is happening?

Jen: On the weekends, I listen to Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, the NPR news podcast. And it's funny. They basically make fun of the news. And a couple weeks ago, they were making fun of this article that came out about land snorkeling, and how silly and ridiculous the concept of land snorkeling is, which is basically, you walk around and you behave as though you've got a snorkel on, so you marvel at everything you see.

Pete: But wait, to clarify, you don't literally have a snorkel on the land, I hope.

Jen: Well, I don't. But maybe other people do.

Pete: Maybe they do. Alright, all the power to them.

Jen: Anyway, I found myself with about an hour between clients one day at the studio. And, you know, my studio is right by the High Line, which is this gorgeous elevated park in New York City. And I was like, "What if I go land snorkel for an hour?" So I went up to the High Line, and I walked around and I looked at everything, at about the pace that I do when I go actual snorkeling (which I love to do, by the way), and just sort of pointed at things and was like, "Wow, tree. Oh, grass. Flower. Statue. Sky." And I left my land snorkel adventure, the first one, and was like, "That was the greatest hour ever."

Pete: Oh my god.

Jen: So I've been in Nantucket, the most beautiful place on Earth, for the last couple weeks. And every morning now, I wake up with the sun and I go land snorkeling. And, Pete, it is marvelous. I stop to smell the flowers. I watch centipedes crawling on leaves. I stare deep into the eyes of a family of deer that lives around the corner from us. It's just been incredible. And so, the reason I want to give a shout out to land snorkeling is because it has actually made me start to appreciate other things that maybe I don't pay attention to on a regular basis, because it's around me all the time.

Pete: OK, I think I can see where this is going. Like, for example, your clients.

Jen: Like, my clients. But also, like the other day, I spent a significant amount of time snorkeling a peach. I was like, "I love peaches, but I don't know that I've ever really paid that much attention to the sensation of eating a peach. Like, I'm going to just enjoy this for a moment." Or I've even challenged myself to land snorkel an ad that comes on the TV when I don't want it to be there, and I'm like, "Let me see if there's anything pleasurable in these thirty seconds." Or like, "Maybe I will take in the room that I'm in, while this ad is playing," rather than living in the frustration of, "How dare these people demand my attention."

Pete: Alright. I mean, philosophically, this is such a beautiful practice. Right? Like, trying to stop taking for granted the things that are in our immediate world.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: It's also just the most brilliantly named activity.

Jen: Right?

Pete: Because it's so visceral. And I'm pretty sure most people have snorkeled before. At least in my world, they definitely have. And it's so true that the second you go actual snorkeling and stick your head under the water, you can't help but be blown away by things that are, if you were a water mammal, would be so mundane. Like, "Look at all the sand, and the seaweed, and the coral, and the fish, and the turtles." You're just blown away by the simplest of things. You move at such a slow pace, you're right about that. And you are so, I guess, present and aware of your surroundings when you're actually snorkeling.

Jen: Yes.

Pete: It's just such a great name for an activity that is essentially, "Can you focus on being more mindful," or, "Can you focus on being more present," would be the stock standard way of describing what you're describing. But "land snorkeling" is way funner. I'm here for this. I'm ready for some land snorkeling.

Jen: I mean, it's so silly until you try it. And then, it's like, "Hmm, maybe this isn't the punchline to the joke. Maybe the punchline is all the people who don't land snorkel."

Pete: Oh, okay. Yeah, maybe land snorkeling is actually what our current state, our default state should be. And that everyone else rushing around, not snorkeling...like, what's the equivalent in the ocean...swimming without goggles and just splashing around without actually taking anything in.

Jen: Right. You know the other thing that is amazing about actual snorkeling in a body of water? You are so aware of your entire body the whole time, from head to toe, and particularly aware of your breath.

Pete: Your breathing, yeah.

Jen: You are paying attention to the rate of your breath. You hear your breath. I mean, the level of connection to your own self, as you're connected to the world around you, is so extreme.

Pete: Mmm, mmm. Okay, the other thing I love about snorkeling is it's usually a shared experience. And so, when you see something particularly remarkable, what you might do is get the attention of your friend or your partner or whoever you're snorkeling with, and point and go, "Look at this cool thing over here." And you have this shared experience of the cool turtle that's gliding through the water. And so, I wonder...you've been doing land snorkeling on your own. I wonder if there's also some magic in land snorkeling with other people. Like, can you have shared marvels, marveling in a shared capacity with other people on the land in the same way that we do that in the water?

Jen: Well, I've invited people to come with me. But I wake up before everybody else, so it's just me. However, for anyone who follows me on Instagram, I take photos in the morning when I'm on my walks. (Which used to be my runs, and that's going to be a future episode coming up.)

Pete: (It's coming. It's coming.)

Jen: And I share a photo each morning on my Instagram of, it could be a flower or the water or a bird. The other day, I had a bird eating a worm. And then, another bird eating a crab. It was kind of fun.

Pete: That's wild.

Jen: It was wild. But what I decided...because I think you're right, there's something amazing about sharing what you see. I've been compiling what's going to become a book of photos that I'll get printed and bound for my family, for presents for the holidays.

Pete: Nice. Do others know that you're land snorkeling? Is your family aware that's what you're out there doing?

Jen: No.

Pete: Is this a hidden secret that we're now revealing?

Jen: I'm revealing my land snorkeling. I've actually told Cate that I'm actively land snorkeling. But I think she maybe thought I was joking.

Pete: Oh, I love it.

Jen: So how might one apply land snorkeling beyond the relationship with nature? I realize that a lot of what I do with my clients, when I'm trying to help them find more courage and presence and resilience in audition rooms, is basically the equivalent of land snorkeling. So sometimes when an actor is feeling (and I'm putting this in big air quotes) "threatened" by the environment, they will sort of like pick a focal point and keep their eyes on this one place while they're doing their work, and I think it is to the detriment of their work. And so, I will encourage them, "When you're walking into the room, take a look around and ask yourself, 'What could I play with in here,'" or, "Look around the room and pick three or four things that you're going to make a commitment to see while you're working." So like, this idea of "be in your environment" is very much a land snorkeling thing. And then, the other thing that came up for me was, for almost thirty years, I have been practicing something called the Viewpoints. It's a movement practice. And it is basically land snorkeling. Like, you take in the world around you. You expand your peripheral vision. You pay attention. And so, we can use this idea of paying attention and taking in the world around us to actually make ourselves feel more confident, courageous, less averse to risk taking, like more excited about risk taking. There's so many positive consequences of awareness.

Pete: Yes, of land snorkeling.

Jen: Yes.

Pete: Alright, let me translate some of my own into...you are sparking some ideas in my own brain. So one of the things that I do with leaders, that we've talked about before, is try and help them identify (if they don't already know) what their unique superpower is. And one of the assertions that I have is that so often, the thing that we are uniquely skilled at, capable in, our unique superpower is sometimes not even something we are consciously aware of. And that will usually sound something like, when you say to someone like, "You ask questions that are so interesting and thought provoking," and they might say something like, "Oh, yeah, but doesn't everyone do that?" And usually when someone says that, it's like, "That's a good sign that you're talking about one of your superpowers." So I love this idea of getting aware of your strengths as a leader, as a human, as a performer, in whatever role you're in, whatever industry you're in, as a way to sort of marvel at them and be reminded of them and be aware of them, to land snorkel your own personality, your own strengths, your own motivators, so that you can spend more time on them and focus on them and appreciate them. I was ranting to a leadership team a few weeks ago about those personality assessments, and I was saying, "Look, they serve a role. They have a purpose. I kind of like some of them. I don't love all of them." And I said, "What I often find with them, though, is people look at the positive traits that reflects back to them and usually dismiss them. And they look at the opportunities or the weaknesses or the negative things that it reflects back to them and go, 'Oh yeah, that's definitely me. I'm self-sabotaging. I'm doing this.'“ And so, I sort of go, "I feel like this is self-defeating in a way, if it's just going to help us remind ourselves of our negatives." The thing I like about focusing on what your strengths are and doubling down on those is it's more affirming and empowering and positive. I actually think we could spend more time doubling down on our strengths and probably less time trying to fix our weaknesses, and we might all actually be a little bit more effective, which is a whole separate thing. So, let's land snorkel our strengths, is my first idea. What do you think?

Jen: I love that. I also like that when I first brought it up, you said, "Oh, your clients." And I love the idea that you would land snorkel your team for their strengths, too.

Pete: A hundred percent. Your team. The job you're in. Like, I was thinking about...I'm going to butcher this, and I'll try and find the original. I'm sure a bunch of people have said this. I was thinking about this line that I read recently, which was something to the tune of, "The life that you're living now is probably a life that you once wished you had." Something to that effect, that like if you were living on Broadway and trying to be a performer, there was a stage in your life prior to that where you were like, "All I want to do is live in New York, and be around artists, and work at a great studio with amazing people." It's like, guess what? If you're in JWS, you've got that. And we're always looking for the next thing, and sort of forgetting the fact that this was once the dream that we had. We're living that life. So I feel like land snorkeling your team, yes. Land snorkeling your job, your career, your life, your geographic location, maybe your relationship. Like there's just so many things that we take for granted, that the idea of snorkeling them is just like rediscovering them. It's just so fun. So fun.

Jen: I love it so much. You know, this just occurred to me too. When you are actual snorkeling, you're going into this space...well, for most of us...that we just have no familiarity with, have no idea what lurks behind that rock or like what is in that seaweed over there. And every little detail matters. In the spaces that we're accustomed to, like our homes, our offices, for me, my studio, it's really easy for all of the details to blend together. So, putting the land snorkel lens on might help you empathize with someone else who's coming into the space for the first time. Like, what are the details that they will see? And when you put that lens on it, are you satisfied with what a new person's experience might be? Or is there a way to enhance it? And, you know, it's the difference between seeing a pile of trash in the ocean versus a beautiful coral reef.

Pete: Right. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. The other thing that I think we do when we're snorkeling (actual snorkeling, snorkeling, snorkeling, whatever we're calling that) is, because of the fact that it's a little bit unsure, because of the fact that it's all a bit new and novel and interesting, we naturally are quite curious. And so, we might be like, "Ooh, what's over here? And ooh, what if I kick over there and see what that seaweed thingy is? And ooh, what's that little rock over there?" And like, we're kind of constantly in this state of curiosity and discovery. And I think that idea, that skill, that posture of curiosity serves us very well when we're on dry land, when we're maybe in a difficult conversation, or maybe we're leading a team, or maybe we're in a job interview or an audition. What if you showed up with the same type of curiosity, and asked questions that you were genuinely wanting to know the answer to?

Jen: Hmm.

Pete: Or, well, yeah, I'm specifically thinking about, in those contexts, asking questions that you're actually interested in. That promoting curiosity on dry land, I feel like, is where I spend a lot of my energy with leaders. And now, I just have a cool metaphor for that. It's just land snorkeling. I'll never get sick of this. This is my favorite episode in so long. I love this idea.

Jen: Oh gosh, it's great. You know, the other thing about snorkeling snorkeling... is that something that is specific to the English language, that we say a word twice when we really mean it? Like, "Snorkeling, snorkeling?" That's so interesting.

Pete: We could just call it "snorkeling".

Jen: But another thing about snorkeling snorkeling is, you never know what you're going to get. So you might go into the ocean hoping that you're going to see a humuhumunukunukuapua'a, for example, in Hawaii. And instead, what you might see is an eel.

Pete: Right. A lot less exotic.

Jen: And a lot fewer letters.

Pete: Or you might see nothing.

Jen: And you might see nothing. That's right.

Pete: And yet, in my experience, even if I go snorkel snorkeling and I see nothing...I go back to something that my mom told me as a kid (which I think fits this metaphor somehow), which is, "You'll never regret a swim."

Jen: That's right.

Pete: And I would extend that to this conversation, as to be, "You'll never regret a snorkel."

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