Transcription
Okay. So, it's been said that true wisdom is knowing what to overlook, right? What doesn't deserve your attention, right? And in these the most noisy and distracting times ever, that's never been harder. It's never been harder in these noisy digital times to distinguish what is true signal from what is noise. You know what I'm saying? And e cousins.
In this episode of Percy Ponders, as we ponder together, we are going to get back to the basics of really minding the business that pays us by stepping into what we're going to call iconic tunnel vision. Right there. There is magic that happens when we adopt strategic tunnel vision and get good at overlooking stuff. Get good at overlooking the fact that, oh, why are you looking at the fact that they just got engaged? You don't even like them, right? Why? Or or why why are you looking at the fact that that person got a second home? Is that really your business? You haven't talked to them since middle school, Bethany. All right. Why are you on LinkedIn perusing everyone's professional highlights when you could be working on creating some of yours? You know what I'm saying? Why are you studying your ex's relationship? It's been 5 years since the breakup, Bob.
Okay, so let's get into it. Let's really get into this topic. And if you're new here, welcome. How you doing? My name is Travis. As mentioned, this is Percy Ponders and it's a podcast for sensitive and thoughtful ecosystems to figure out life and love together because let me tell you, we're in the emotional dark ages and we need to figure some things out together. We're going to start it like this.
So, when it comes to this topic of minding the business that really pays us and and profits our piece, too, social media, it's the hellscape where it all goes arai, right? Cuz now we got like a little peepphole, some binocular vision into a lot of things that should have never been our business to start with. Some great things too, like this connection happening here, but also a lot of things that are really and truly none of our business. And we know around these parts, we talk about minding our iconic and professional business for a reason because that's essential activity. Mhm. But you know what I'm saying? And so anyh who, I'm watching this interview by James Ston, a very prominent divorce lawyer. He does divorce law for very wealthy, very established individuals. Okay? And he talks about how he notices a pattern in some couples, which is that one individual had some wandering eyes. And social media, the Instagram of it all, facilitated the micro cheating that led to real cheating, right? And it got me thinking about how, oh wow, we don't talk about that. We don't talk about how we are just inundated not only with distraction but if you are in a committed relationship, what are you going to do about social media? How do you set boundaries around that to protect the sanctity of your commitment to each other in a world where you can have wondering eyes but to what extent? If you want monogamy, right? If that's your goal, then how do you set up the precautions and boundaries and parameters to honor that in a world where you're just exposed to so much curated perfection, right? So many hot models or whatever your type is, right? Mhm. Hopefully your type isn't like, you know, Shannon Sharp going after 20 year olds a third his age. Mhm. Paying out half of his net worth to retire an Only Fans model. Mm- Seed the Lust will get you in trouble. And Shannon Sharp is an example of that among many other men who have poor judgment and poor discipline and abysmal self-control. That's neither here neither there. The point still remains what to do about the distracting elements of social media that tend to complicate love and also corrupt our peace.
Okay, I'm noticing for starters, you got to set parameters and boundaries and we don't talk enough about how you need a strategy to do this whole digital landscape. Instagram, Tik Tok, all of them without losing your mind and without constantly comparing yourself to the wrong reference points. What is worth overlooking online? Right? So you can only give your energy, effort, attention, and intention to what's really going to move things forward. H okay. So let me give you an example. I have gotten to a point where, and I want this for everyone, I've gotten to a point where I have learned to cultivate what is called JOMO. Okay? You have FOMO, which is the fear of missing out. Oh my god, they're going on vacation. I want to go. Oh my god, they're at the party. I want to go. Oh my god, they're Oh my god, they're doing all the things. I want to do it. Do do it, too. That's FOMO. JMO. Oh my gosh, E. Cousins, this is iconic. It's an iconic thing because with JMO, it's like, oh my gosh, they're doing that thing. And I'm happy missing out. Oh my god, they're at that party at that rave and I'm happy missing out because I have an appointment with my pillows and my high thread count sheets. Okay. And guess what? I'm waking up in the morning to see some awesome people for coffee and we're gonna go have fun, right? We're gonna do our version of fun, which isn't staying out until 5:00 a.m. Jo. And also I am in this season of of focus building right on the internet building and and launching a new wave of a coaching program I run for leaders and heart-c centered visionaries and so resources down below about that. And so I have to focus right and if I always had FOMO, oh, I'd get nothing done. Absolutely nothing done. Cultivating the ability to ruthlessly prioritize what will move you forward and closer to what matters to you and what you value. Oh my gosh, that's an underrated superpower in this age of chronic distraction and chronic FOMO. You're comparing yourself to the wrong people sometimes, let's be honest.
And then can we talk about gatekeeping our mind on social media like it's a place we care about, right? What if your mind was, you know, a special garden, right? A very special garden, right? With only top tier plants and and beautiful landscaping, right? And nice benches and and waterfalls and all that stuff. Let's make the picture real vivid. This is your mind. It has that potential. Would you just let anything anyone in there? I don't think so. You would you would you just let you know that influencer who's constantly making you feel horrible about your body take up residence in your mind? Would you let that person who's breadcrumbming you and dating and gives you just enough attention to make you think there's something there, but not enough intention and effort and investment to move the connection forward? Would you let them take up space in your mind by continuing to watch their stories and give them a sliver of your day, an ounce of your time? I don't think so. So what does it take to tend to the garden of our mind in this digital hellscape of social media? Like it's a place we care about. Like it's a place we want to be. You know what I'm saying? Like it's a place where we are helping to nourish all sorts of plants, vegetation that are going to be around for not just weeks or months, but years. You know what I'm saying? If you feeling, you feel me? Let me know down in the comments. Who do you need to block? Who do you need to mute? Who do you need to unfollow? It's really nothing personal. Right? This is about mental health. This is about only giving our focus and attention to what matters.
Let me tell you another funny story on this wave about prioritizing and focusing. So, Cavan stage the the comedian. I think it's Cavan. It's not Kevon. Let me know if I'm wrong. I could be wrong. Okay. So, the other day someone asked him, you know, how do you stay so committed to your wife all these years, right? There's so many distractions and you're a successful man. You guys have been together for so long. They ask Cavon, "How do you not cheat on your wife after all these years?" And he kept it so simple. For starters, he likes her. Okay, a lot of people don't like their spouse and they don't want to admit that. Check yourself. Might want to check your circle. Check who you're calling love. Check who you're calling boo. Some people in relationship with people they don't like or who don't like them. He likes her. And also what he does when he's on the road rather than staying out until the late late early hours of the morning. Till the break of dawn, right? Rather than being out here in the streets like he going till he can't get enough, right? He takes his ass home and so he's not tempted. There's no exposure to any sort of, you know what I mean, that would even make him consider, oh, greener pasture. No, I'm committed to this person. And his response got me thinking again about how true wisdom is knowing what to overlook. True wisdom is realizing, "Oh, I can never have enough of what I don't really need." I'm not saying everyone has to be monogamous. If you really don't want that, don't do that. And there are certain people who are committing to monogamy who really can't keep Mhm. Their eggplant to themsel and so they should be out there. They should be in a different arrangement if they don't know how to to sit in one spot. But if you want a certain committed monogous arrangement, what are you doing to structure and orient your life for that to happen? You have to overlook certain things. You have to be willing to say, "Okay, maybe I'm getting a little bit too old now to be out here in the club, we all fam, until 4, 5, 6 a.m. Are my actions congruent with the thing I say I want?" And in my process of coaching people, I've noticed there are a lot of people who actions are not remotely congruent with what they say they want. You're saying you want a healthy, happy, committed relationship, but your social media presence doesn't signal that. Okay. Is your lifestyle structured for the connection you say you want because you're always busy and always gone? Okay. Also, yeah, if you're trying to attract a certain person, probably go where they are, right? That's all I'm going to say. Go where they are and start to structure your time around that.
If I'm being frank, I've had talking stages with certain people where I realize, okay, our lifestyles are just incompatible. Was talking to someone many, many moons ago, and this person was like, "What's your idea of fun, Travis?" And I was like, my idea of fun is time with friends, you know, travel, exploring new places, love to dance, love new food, art, music. I'm a musician, right? But doesn't take a ton for me to have fun because fun is more a state of mind for me first and foremost. Then it can be activities. It's first and foremost a state of mind because one thing about me, we're going to have a good time no matter what we doing. Okay? Whether we're outside, outside, inside, inside, whether we're up on the rooftop with Saint Nick, okay, we're going to have a good time. This person's idea of fun revolved around, you know, staying out super late and drugs and all the things and large groups of friends. And I was like, yeah, that's not my thing. And it took me a long time to get to a point where I accepted that my definition of fun is different than certain people's definition of fun. And that's fine. It's not a judgment on your definition of fun. I don't like things that interfere with my sleep. I don't do drugs. So, if y'all are doing coke, I probably won't be invited. That's all right. Or I'll be over in a different room people who don't do coke having a regular conversation, having sober fun because that's how I roll. Okay? Going to keep my old factories nice and tight. Okay? Not interfering with my slick. Addiction runs in my family. We don't do that. No thanks. I have some some bold and wild and audacious goals to accomplish. Got to take care of my health. That's me. That's not a judgment on you. And so it's like a big part of the maturity game is knowing what to overlook when it comes to let me send out the right signal if I want this sort of relationship. Let me do the things that would attract that sort of person. It also looks like, okay, how can I structure my time to entertain only what is going to bring me closer to where I want to be? Hyperfocus, some level of focus and intention, the joo of it all. These are superpowers cousins.
And it also connects with career in a way that I wish someone had taught me sooner. That cultivating a certain level of tunnel vision in your career, especially as a sensitive and thoughtful person who who needs to find work that doesn't just feel like passing time, but has intention to it, right? That actually helps people. That's very important for sensitive and thoughtful people. In my experience, having a certain level of tunnel vision with your career really helps. And so I'll put it like this. You cousins as someone whose purpose is multiple things, right? Maybe you relate with this if you are multihyenate, multi-passionate. For the longest time, I thought that, you know, bump the culture. Shame on you all for telling me to pick one thing. I'm going to be all of me. I'm going to be Travis Persy, the musician, the writer, the corporate dude. I'm gonna be Travis Percy, the the talker, the professional hiappa on the Percy Ponders podcast. Send this to homies, by the way, if you find this useful. And then I got to a point where I realized, okay, to get to the next level at what I'm doing actually requires a level of focus. Because a level of focus and a singularity of focus will unlock everything needed to take my work to the next level. A level of focus, right? Even as a multi-passionate will unlock what you need to take everything you're doing to the next level, which could look like saying of the 10 things I would love to do as my work, one to two things could I focus on that will unlock more resources and opportunity for me to do all the other things? That is one thing that I leaned into and it finally started to create momentum for me in this career as not only a content creator, an artist, a writer, talker, musician, also as a transformative coach to leaders, right? It was focusing on really just getting this darling child of a business off the ground that is now putting me in a position where I can now relate with my music from a space of abundance rather than space of fear and scarcity. Back when I was a musician who was also trying to write and talk and and dabbled with this and that and coaching working my corporate job, I just felt so scattered. And once I left my corporate job to focus on internet career, I said, "Okay, I'll make music, but that doesn't have to be part of what I market right now." And so I just focused focused on what I'm doing, focused on the podcast, focused on being consistent with the right sort of content to reach the people that I I seek to serve and support. And that has unlocked so much freedom.
And the second thing I wish I'd learned sooner about the tunnel vision with regard to career and how tunnel vision unlocks opportunity is, oh wait a minute, I don't always have to pick and choose. Actually, all the skills you cultivate as a multi-hyphenate, you can stack all those skills to be in a category of one of one in what you do. Can I get an Heyman? Hey. Yeah. But you know what I'm saying? Like you get to combine your seemingly unrelated skill sets and abilities and talents in a way that makes you actually highly skilled in a way that is unique to you. And so I've realized, for instance, whereas a lot of people in the self-help genre, kind of boring, you know, very broy genre, I mean, I'm wearing a backwards hat that's kind of broy, but a lot of the people in this genre are so just straight white guy, similar perspective, same jawline, right? It's just similar. And so to come into this as an artist, you know, an infused sensitivity and thoughtfulness and a queer black dude's perspective on certain things is such a radical departure from the norm. And so I'm learning that I get to integrate more and more of myself into what I'm doing, not feel so siloed. And so you can stack your skills, right, as a multi-hyphenate and stack them in service of focusing on keeping whatever your main thing is your main thing that can pay bills that can open bigger doors for you to do more of what you do, right? And you know, you can look at a well childish Gambino, you know, well Maya Angelou, you know, well all these professional multi-hyphenets who've been tremendously successful. You you can look at them and say, "Yeah, okay, they they've had tremendous success being super multi-hyphenate." But if you really look at the genesis of their career, most of them started off getting one project or facet of their career to pretty high heights and they leveraged the momentum in that one area to spin off, pivot into those other things, right? So I believe Child just came up doing comedy stuff and that allowed him to pivot into direction, production, writing, all sorts of things once he had money and momentum that gave him freedom.
And so there's so much power in cultivating tunnel vision on the internet. There's power in cultivating tunnel vision in your love life. There's power in cultivating tunnel vision realizing when enough is enough and accepting that you can never have enough. Of won't of what won't satisfy you and then the tunnel vision in your career to be like, okay, I value this and I'm going to go after this, going to tune out the noise, I'm going to figure out how to forge a path that suits me. There's power in tunnel vision and again, in these noisy wy and chaotic times, one of the hardest but most essential things to do cousins is to figure out what is worth overlooking and what deserves your attention, attention, care, and focus. What comes up for you after hearing this episode? I'd love to hear from you down in the comments. And if you found this useful, let a friend know as well. Let a friend know about this. And if you are heart-c centered visionary in a season of reinvention and transition and your work life or your love life, resources down in the caption. We'll talk soon.