Reflection: 2019
As we have just passed our second anniversary of Feeding Curiosity, it was time to look back on the year!
The New Year is an exciting time of the year. It's one of the few times of the year that people openly reflect on the course of their life over the previous year, not to mention the countless New Years' resolutions as well.
In the process of outlining my thoughts on this Review of 2019 for Feeding Curiosity and by extension myself - one year and a lot can happen!
The best place to start is with Feeding Curiosity and what we released. Overall, the unique visitors to the website increased by 400% in 2019! Feeding Curiosity entered 2019 with a complete design overhaul. My brother, Nick Wenzel is instrumental in creating the templates and logo for this experiment. I couldn't be more proud of the design and what it reflects on my thoughts.Here's what we released:
Episode: 51 (not counting a few bonus episodes thrown in!)
Blogs: 17
Feeding Frenzy - A weekly post on something worth listening, reading, watching, and thinking about!
20 Feeding Frenzies for 2019
These posts will continue in their own home to allow for the blog posts to have their own space without getting buried by the Feeding Frenzies.
Now let us look at some of the most popular content. The following lists are the most popular listened to podcasts:
Most Popular Podcast for 2019:
Jordan Criss: Visionaries Psychedelic Research and Creativity
Dan Thiel and Wyatt Mach: Stories from the Engineering Classroom
Jordan Criss and Alex Ivy: Influence Social Media and Information
Most Popular Podcast All Time:
Now for the website traffic most popular posts:
The Most Popular Post: Wearables: Meet WHOOP and Oura Ring
This year was the year of wearables and understanding recovery. Looking inside your body and understanding how your body is responding (body responds to stimuli such as…) to stimulus such as sleep, exercise, diet, etc. This post received almost 3000 unique visitors alone, with many people reaching out to get my thoughts on this class of technology. I believe this space is only the very beginning of how it can be useful for others to push their performance. Keep an eye out for more on this technology!
That covers what happened with Feeding Curiosity at the 10,000-foot view. What I'll go into next is a bit of deep dive into some of the critical events that shaped 2019 for me personally.
Final Semester of School
2019 started off soft.I completed my senior design project for an Engineering Degree in December of 2018. Even though I had not graduated yet, it felt as if I already had, I didn't want to become complacent. This final semester of school failed to push me in the directions that were captivating my interests. I felt as if my education was being held back by taking classes. I wanted to expand out of the engineering space.
Enter: Capstone with Compete to Create
I've been an avid listener of Finding Mastery with Michael Gervais. Michael is a high-performance psychologist who works with the Seattle Seahawks and co-founder of Compete to Create. While listening to Finding Mastery in December of 2018, he let his listeners know about Finding Your Best course starting in January of 2019. There was an application process to vet would-be students. I had no idea what to expect, but I was interested in pushing myself further. I wanted something to keep engaged as I finished college. I thought this could be my capstone. Feeding Curiosity was about to turn one year old (February 9th). I asked myself, “Am I going to take this podcast seriously? If so, I have to brush shoulders with people who push themselves in similar ways.
Personal Philosophy First Attempt: Be Curious, Be Present, Be Authentic
About midway through the eight-week course, we were exposed to the idea of personal philosophy. I spent many hours trying to work through something that moved me to my core. What I came up with felt right at the time. We'll be revisiting this near the end as well.
Be Curious, Be Present, Be Authentic
Reading it now, I feel it was two-thirds of the way there, and in practice, what I highlighted most was Be Present. (This also helped me codify the philosophy for Feeding Curiosity as well you can read about Think. Question. Synthesize at NOW Page.)
Learning To Be Present
If I could pick one common theme for me this year would be present. I entered 2019, trying to understand meditation and mindfulness. This time not just using apps but trying to immerse myself in what brought me to be present and where do these practices come from. One of the first books I read was “10% Happier,” by Dan Harris. This book came at the right time, allowing me to get past my skeptical tendencies and to always think forward.
Beyond that, I began to experiment with creating better routines to facilitate the present moment. This goes beyond using an app or mindfulness to understand this. I would look at people and activities where time would not be a factor.
Ask yourself, what do you get lost in?
As you may have guessed, having in-depth meaning conversations is the source of this for me.
Completing Finding Your Best
The Finding Your Best course wrapped before my graduation but felt more like a passing of the torch on what I had worked towards since starting Feeding Curiosity. The course laid out categories or frameworks that top performers are always striving to be their best. Not only that, the course emphasizes discovering and using your character strengths to their fullest potential. (You can find your strengths too at VIA)
The real capstone here was being able to have a conversation with Nicole Davis who is a former two time Olympian volleyball player, who was my mentor while taking the course. You can listen to our conversation here. I wanted to use that conversation to unpack more of the ideas on the best think about these principles. I gained so much from this conversation. My story with Compete to Create doesn't end here in 2019, and there is more yet to come.
Graduation
Graduation was not something that felt like an achievement. Instead, it felt like a pit stop and taking lead weights out of the truck that was holding me back. I felt like a weight had been lifted from my yearning to learn of my own accord. I didn't have professors' assignments to dictate what or how to absorb new information. I was untethered from formal education for the first time in my life after twenty-one years. Not that I ever let that hold me back.
One of my favorite parts of graduation is that my brother graduated on the same weekend. In a stroke of luck, we walked across the stages of college to receive our diplomas. In that process, I was able to convince my brother to appear on the podcast. They are episodes 50 and 51, respectively. Nick is as deep as a thinker as I am, and within Graphic Design, he understands at a level deeper than most people. I'm lucky that my brother not only supports this podcast but also thinks in a similar way but in different domains.
Adjusting to the Vacuum College Leaves Behind
After being in college for seven years, it feels strange not to think about or honestly, having to worry about an assignment to turn in. Luckily for me, I'm not one to sit on my hands, but again I was wary of myself. Understanding yourself is vital in this, and by being present, I knew that it would be very easy for me to become a workaholic. Quite honestly, it feels good to get things done, but when you focus on an aspect, other areas suffer.
There were days and weeks where I would work an extra few hours every day. The problem was that I wasn't strict on my commitments. My only thought was that I go to the gym after work. But I didn't have a specific time to hold myself accountable, so then I began to go to the gym later and later, which left less and less motivated to push myself because it had cascading effects the rest of my evening.
I want to be clear; I'm not saying that you shouldn't stay late at work - quite the contrary. I understand there are times where it is necessary, but don't make staying late a habit. Learn to know when you've reached your productivity limit. After about 10 hours of work, any more time I spend with a lot of useless time that I'm not able to focus appropriately. For me, a huge thing that helps me clear my mind is movement (Movement podcast)
As the weather warmed up for the Chicago summer, I began to spend more and more time outside rather inside the gym. A little absurd, but I think air conditioning is cheating and if the weather's nice, I'm going outside so I can get sun and the lovely vitamin D while it lasts. During this period, I was heavily referencing my recovery from my wearables Whoop and Oura Ring.
There were days where I could run about five miles, no problem with green recovery (about 67%), and still be in the green the next day I was blown away. Looking back on the summer months and directly after post-graduation. I saw a considerable jump in positive directions for both my resting heart rate and heart rate variability. This is not only a positive adoption from my running routine, but I also believe the indicator of the underlying stress that I was carrying because of school that was holding back my recovery as well!
During my runs, I would absorb content in the form of audiobooks or podcasts. One of the audiobooks that made an impact was Stealing Fire, which seemed to add connective tissue to all these areas I had viewed as separate. That brings us back to exploring what it means to be present at a much deeper level.
Fundamentals of Flow and Being Present
After completing the Finding Your Best, I had been invigorated to keep trying to brush shoulders with more people who were pushing their edge. Reading Stealing Fire and learning about The Flow Genome Project.
All I know is I wanted to dig deeper! In that process, I enrolled in their Fundamentals of Flow course. In the process, it showed even more clearly what was resonating with me the most in my journey to be present.
Here's what I've learned:
One-on-one Deep Meaning Connection/Relationships
I feel most present when I'm able to learn about another person. Learn about the struggles, triumphs, and what they are working towards. On the other side of the spectrum is the people I am close to that can get me out of my own head and stop me from working forever. I've been prioritizing those relationships this year and being vulnerable to share when I feel like I need to give myself a break.
Another aspect of this is that as I've been trying to understand what it means to be present, it pushed to deeper areas of introspection. One of the most intense experiments was two one hour sessions of sensory deprivation. For those not familiar, sensory deprivation tanks (sometimes called float tanks) is a tank filled with 1000 lbs of Epsom salt, so the body floats on top of the water. The room and water are set to the same temperature as the body, and you close the chamber to block out all outside noise. Depending on where you go, the tank will have lights or music playing that you can turn on or off. The purists have no lights or music during sessions.
The result is if you can achieve stillness in the water, the sensation of having a body will disappear and allow for a deeper meditative experience than you would be able to reach otherwise. I found even doing this only twice extremely beneficial, leaving me with an afterglow effect through the rest of my day post-float.
I did deal with some sense of trepidation on my experiences as I went deeper into exploring my own. My question was: Could I go too deep? I didn't want to lose the ability to communicate my experiences to those who may be skeptical or become a zealot in the process of this exploration. I read Scott Carney's book The Enlightenment Trap, which helped me work through some of the doubt. Again my friends who were exploring along similar lines were integral in working this as well.
While exploring the present, I had the opportunity to put jet fuel in my mindset training with Compete to Create in person.
Mindset Training and Finding Mastery Live
As part of the alumni group for taking the Finding Your Best, I was one of the first to be notified of the small group workshop in Seattle. After reading it, I thought it would be a fantastic experience to be able to meet Nicole Davis and the rest of the team behind Compete to Create. The bonus as well was again getting me in contact with more people who resonate with mindset training as well. In a stroke of fortune, I was able to make this trip a business trip through work in that knowing my unique interest and having taken the online course this training was funded by my work. On top of this, a Finding Mastery live podcast was announced for that evening of the training, and those attending the training would be able to participate in.
This trip served as a first solo trip and spurred a surge of clarity that I haven't experienced before. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Traveling to Seattle, I booked a package flight and a layover in San Francisco, which meant I was stuck in airports for most of the day. I didn't get to my hotel until about midnight, which coming from Chicago was more like 2 am. In any case, I woke up energized and ready for the day. This was my first event to push myself of my own accord outside of formal education, and I wanted to soak up as much as I could with the time I had available.
The workshop was held at a Coworking location called The Riveter, with spacious working areas and a comfortable, relaxed environment. The training started with everyone going around the room, sharing a brief bio of who they are and what they do. It was a mix of people who have taken the online course and those who hadn't. My peers around were all professionals ranging from engineers to editors, entrepreneurs, or educators. People from all walks of life, all of them trying to figure out how to be better. Not to mention, our teachers were not one but two former Olympians. Here I was the only person with only a few months out of college. The first time that day, I wondered: How did I get here?
The training day started as a refresher to the online course. Being with a small group was like having extra kindling to throw on the fire to get more out of the experience. A room full of people all working through the same concepts helped me focus. It should come as no surprise that when I'm interested in something, I can be somewhat intense and enthusiastic. This event allowed me to revisit some of the deeper topics.
Personal Philosophy and Vision Revisited
I've spoken about this a lot since then. I see personal philosophy as a guidepost for your daily activities. I ask myself, does this feel right to me? It's about orienting yourself around what you value most within yourself. For those interested, my current philosophy is "With Knowledge Comes Responsibility." I try to own it to the best of my ability and take stewardship of what I learn to put out in the world. This statement has been foundational to my character as a human.
The next piece was creating a vision for your life. I think of this growing dart into the future and asking what's possible for me? For me, Vision was challenging because of how broad of a learner I am. I have a hard time picking one category. By pursuing this podcast, I've narrowed down what fires me up internally in what I want to do with my life. My current vision is to provide blueprints for others to learn and lead a more fulfilling life. Again this is baked into the core of this experiment.
The last take away from the trip and workshop was being able to meet the amazing people that believe in the ability to train the mind. We train our minds to align our thoughts, words, and actions. Mindset training, to me, gives a sense of authenticity about someone they know what they stand for at every level. I met many people, not only from the U.S. but the world as well. To see how they internalize and work through these principles. Since then, I've been able to highlight some of them on this podcast and hope to keep doing this more in the future.
Already a full day in its own right, our training was not over after 8 hours. We had a short happy hour to unwind a bit before Finding Mastery Live podcast. If you've made it this far, I highly recommend that podcast. At the time, we didn't know who was going to be the guest for this podcast. For me, I was like a kid in a candy store excited not only to learn but see a podcast live. Michael Gervais interviewed Head Coach of Sea Hawks Pete Carroll. I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation. Coach Carroll embodies what it means to elevate the individual to achieve their maximum potential. Mike is the science and theory, and together they make an incredible duo to help individuals unpack what is inside them.
I didn't leave The Riveter until 9 pm that evening. It was one of the longest but most energizing days of my life so far. The sense of clarity that settled on me in large part to the experiences I had that day. I didn't realize how tired I was until I got back to my hotel and passed out almost immediately. I woke up the next morning to make the journey back to Chicago, still decompressing from the whirlwind of events and ideas. Again I wondered how I got here?
The Pressure Relief Valve: Yoga
Once getting back from Seattle, the clarity the fell over my direction in what I was aiming began to crystallize as I began to decompress and work through the principles more. Here's the thing, as someone who is very enthusiastic and, at times, intense. I NEED to dial myself back, or I become trapped in my head. I enjoy thinking and working through problems. I also believe creating spaces in between can allow for deeper reflection and better output overall. This is where one of my most unlikely additions to my weekly routine plays a significant role. Yoga. I entered into yoga at the encouragement of a friend, which was a huge factor in being able to let myself be there.
Yoga has since been part of my decompression at least three days a week. There is a sort of afterglow effect I have once I leave class since yoga is the ying to a strength training yang. I was allowed to explore other skills physically that strength training doesn't typically encompass. It's fun to be a beginner again and shake up the routine. For me, it's part exercise and part moving mediation and can be done at many different intensity levels. That way you can come at it in whatever way your feeling that day.
Overall, my movement routine has become much more balanced between strength, cardio, and mobility with the addition of yoga. Yoga has also helped me identify tightness I had become accustomed to that has been caused due to weightlifting and daily life. I'm still exploring movement as a function of recovery and strain. I hope to keep expanding on this in 2020 in more detail.
Relationships
One of the main reasons I dove into mindfulness was to explore a better relationship with myself. The reasoning behind it was the double edged sword that comes with my deep, seated sense of responsibility. When appropriately used, responsibility is a powerful tool for a driven person who believes in what they are doing intrinsically. Where responsibility is dangerous is when your relationships come to an end. In that scenario, I would try to perform mental gymnastics to figure out how I could have done things differently to change the outcome. Or, in most cases, mentally berate me in some form for being an idiot. In both cases, these are not useful mindsets to carry with you. What I wanted was a way to pattern interrupt. I wanted to be able to distance myself from that adverse reaction to see it for what it was. From there, grow from the experience so I wouldn't make the same mistake regardless of where the blame lay. I've also spoken about how the inner voice we have says things about us that we would never say to anyone else or if someone did, you wouldn't put up with it for very long. I want to change this for myself but also others too. The loathing of yourself that we all carry needs to be dampened. It's honestly utterly unproductive thinking. While I am by no means saying everything will be sunshine and rainbows, we don't need to beat ourselves into submission either.
On the other end of relationships, I realized how powerful they are in shaping you and guiding you. One new friend who I've come to know very well this year has had a massive impact on how I organize myself and exposing me to many of these ideas through our conversations. The bond that's formed when someone can hold space for you. When you let out what you are working through without judgment. Or when someone shares their deepest thoughts with you, there's something deeply moving about that vulnerability, and I gained a fresh appreciation for that kind of connection for those closest to me.
Here's an example, as someone who loves audio content, I have headphones on for most of the day. This can be listening to podcasts, audiobooks, or music, and the remaining time is while I am editing or evening recording podcasts of my own. While headphones themselves aren't bad, what they do is create a bubble around you. They separate you from the world, (maybe from the present if we wanted to get philosophical) wearing headphones gives the wearer a choice to opt into what's happening around them. I hadn't noticed until I began to spend hours with my friend exploring the world around us talking, laughing, and being in the world. I don't think I've been more present in my life or explored outside of my comfort zone at that time. Looking back on it now, I can barely tell what the specifics are because I was busy enjoying the moment. All I know is we'd pick a place to walk around or a place to try. Once there, it would unfold; however, it would. Then we'd head back home, and I would be content. I want to do more of that. That's what I want to orient my life around.
In many ways, I'm incredibly lucky to have a group of people in my life that I have. Many of them say I'm an inspiration for them and that’s exciting for me. Honestly, this takes me back to some degree because I am more honored by what they bring to my life than anything I provide in theirs. I quite honestly don't think I could describe in words what those closest to me have allowed me to accomplish. In many ways, they are the reasons I can do what I do. Having people that believe in what you're capable of is a potent force.
2020: The Year of Growth
Overall, 2019 was an incredible year, with many life events taking place. But rather than feeling like a milestone felt like a passing of the torch. Completing my degree was a sigh of "about damn time" now I can learn in my own way. That learning took me in an unexpected direction with Compete to Create. I never expected myself to be an advocate for training your mind. But when I stop and think about it, that's what I've been doing for so many years already. Beyond that, I was recently struck by my perception of time. I saw a memory on Facebook and realized I only knew about graduation for one year, but what I felt as I had accomplished so much in the last six months. I've been nothing short of energized as 2019 ended. 2019 was a year of learning to be present for sure. That's very much a work in progress, but now 2020 will be the year of growth. I'm putting more effort into Feeding Curiosity and myself professionally and personally. I want to push my friends and family those I connect here to think about what their 2020 will be about and aim for something. Let us get there together!
Stay Curious!
Erich Wenzel
Today on the podcast, we are joined by Joe Jackowski. Joe is a Marine Corps veteran and current graduate student at Vanderbilt University in the Cognitive Psychology in Context program. His primary interest is meaning in life, which broadly extends to problems in ethics, A.I., and culture.
In this episode, we sit down to discuss his first long-form article on his new sub stack, Apotheosis: A Philosophy for Influencers